Is ecological economics mainly a natural science or a social science? Ecologists may start from a natural science perspective emphasizing positivism and value-neutrality as their theory of science. When looking for similarly inclined scholars in the social sciences they will find friends among neoclassical economists. But theory of science is not limited to positivism and economics is much more...

There is a growing interest in pragmatism within organisational and informational studies. Pragmatism has been seen as a viable alternative to positivism and anti-positivism. This paper explores the meanings of pragmatism in terms of implications for how to conduct research on information systems. Its main source of inspiration is the American philosophy of pragmatism. The paper describes the n...

With their focus on documents, interpretation and intersubjectivity, Web 2.0 technologies have surprising analogies with philosophical hermeneutics, including the theory of text interpretation. Philosophical hermeneutics was generalised from Biblical hermeneutics by Dilthey in the 19th century and chosen as an alternative to positivism as a foundation for the epistemology and methodology of the...

This chapter examines economists’ indefensible attachment to the positive-normative distinction, and suggests a behavioral economics explanation of their behavior on the subject. It reviews the origins of the distinction in Hume’s guillotine and logical positivism, and shows how they form the basis for Robbins’ understanding of value neutrality. It connects philosophers’ rejection of logical po...

In this discussion of Emad Atiq's article "There are No Easy Counterexamples to Legal Anti-Positivism" I pose three challenges his construction an Inclusive Anti-positivism. firstly argue that, contra Atiq, the moral facts that both ground IAP and allow it satisfy extensional challenge sometimes reducible social facts. Section II, briefly discuss internal- external-to-practice appraisals legal ...