Modal Constructions in Sociological Arguments
Michael T. Hannan, László Polós, Greta Hsu · Durham Research Online (Durham University) · 2009
This paper introduces modal logics to a sociological audience. We firstprovide an overview of the formal properties of this family of models andoutline key differences with classical first-order logic. We then build amodel to represent processes of perception and belief core to social theories. To do this, we define our multi-modal language and then addsubstantive constraints that specify the inferential behavior of modalities forperception, default, and belief. We illustrate the deployment of this language to the theory of legitimation proposed by Hannan, Polos, andCarroll (2007). This paper aims to call attention to the potential benefits ofmodal logics for theory building in sociology.