Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction: doing philosophy of social science / Harold Kincaid -- Micro, macro, and mechanisms / Petri Ylikoski -- Mechanisms, causal modeling, and the limitations of traditional multiple regression / Harold Kincaid -- Process tracing and causal mechanisms / David Waldner -- Descriptive-causal generalizations : "empirical laws" in the social sciences? / Gary Goertz -- Useful causal complexity / David Byrne and Emma Uprichard -- Partial explanations in social science / Robert Northcott -- Counterfactuals / Julian Reiss -- Mechanistic social probability : how individual choices and varying circumstances produce stable social patterns / Marshall Abrams -- The impact of Duhemian principles on social science testing and progress / Fred Chernoff -- Philosophy and the practice of Bayesian statistics in the social sciences / Andrew Gelman and Cosma Rohilla Shalizi -- Sciences of historical tokens and theoretical types : history and the social sciences / Aviezer Tucker -- RCTs, evidence and predicting policy effectiveness / Nancy Cartwright -- Bringing context and variability back in to causal analysis / Stephen Morgan and Christopher Winship -- The potential value of computational models in social science research / Ken Kollman -- Models of culture / Mark Risjord -- Norms / David Henderson -- The evolutionary programme in social philosophy / Francesco Guala -- Cultural evolution : integration and scepticism / Tim Lewens -- Coordination and the foundations of social intelligence / Don Ross -- Making race out of nothing : psychologically constrained social roles / Ron Mallon & Daniel Kelly Mallon -- A feminist empirical and integrative approach in political science : breaking-down the glass wall? / Amy G. Mazur -- Social constructions of mental illness / Allan Horwitz -- Cooperation and reciprocity : empirical evidence and normative implications / James Woodward -- Evaluating social policy / Daniel M. Hausman -- Values and the science of well-being : a recipe for mixing / Anna Alexandrova.