Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 12:14:02 -0400
From: Doug Porpora <porporad-AT-duvm.ocs.drexel.edu>
Subject: BHA: Regression paper 


Hi Everyone,

Nick, thanks for your interest in my paper.  Andy, thanks for that synopsis
of my paper and the ensuing discussion.  I just need to type in some of the
changes I made while on the road and then will send you both a copy in Rich
Text Format. Marshall, I seem to recall your wanting a copy as well and
haven't forgotten.  I also intend to send a copy to CCR in time for posting
all the papers on the Web site.

Andy, you're right, I'm in sociology, which, it surprises me to say, does
not seem quite as bad as econometrics.  I would make only one qualification
in your description of my position.  I think the crux of the matter between
me and the CR economists is that I do not think that regression is an
explanatory tool at all but only an evidentiary too.  Thus, although I
quite agree with the CR economists that we are unlikely to find any
time-universal conditions of closure necessary for regression to be a
nomothetic explanation, such time-universal conditions of closure are
unnecessary for regression _often_ to be one useful piece of _evidence_ for
the contingent operation of a mechanism at one sociohistorical point and
time. Stable conditions are unnecessary if you are not positing a
time-invariant explanation.

Andy, I really enjoyed meeting you, too, and hope we can continue to be in
touch on these issues.  More generally, I very much enjoyed seeing the
people I already knew, like Colin and Caroline, the people I knew only
virtually, like Gary, and the many new people I met.

For those of you who so far have not been able to attend the CR conference,
I can only say it was great -- and amusing as well -- for me to be at a
conference where so many people shared so many of my basic sensibilities
that I could even appear to be the positivist in the bunch.  More
seriously, at a conference with those with whom you share a framework, you
are able to explore higher level issues instead of fighting and refighting
the basics.  For me that was novel and refreshing.

doug

doug porpora
dept of psych and sociology
drexel university
phila pa 19104
USA

porporad-AT-duvm.ocs.drexel.edu




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