Modal Constructions in Sociological Arguments

Laszlo Polos, Michael Hannan, Greta Hsu
2009 Social Science Research Network  
2009) 'Modal constructions in sociological arguments.', Working Paper. Durham University, Durham. Further information on publisher's website: http://www.dur.ac.uk/business/faculty/working-papers/ Publisher's copyright statement: Additional information: Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full
more » ... phic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Abstract This paper introduces modal logics to a sociological audience. We first provide an overview of the formal properties of this family of models and outline key differences with classical first-order logic. We then build a model to represent processes of perception and belief core to social theories. To do this, we define our multi-modal language and then add substantive constraints that specify the inferential behavior of modalities for perception, default, and belief. We illustrate the deployment of this language to the theory of legitimation proposed by Hannan, Pólos, and Carroll (2007) . This paper aims to call attention to the potential benefits of modal logics for theory building in sociology. * We thank the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Durham Business School for financial support.
doi:10.2139/ssrn.1331665 fatcat:ifk3j4dwifeehadlolbypsvaym