Gabriel Abend
Biographic Data
| ID | 263246 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gabriel Abend |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gabriel |
| FAMILY NAME | Abend |
| SIGNATURE | ABEND G |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0703-8194 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 393 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 22 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
New Frontiers in the New Sociology of Morality
Where is the new sociology of morality headed? We identify and examine some of its new frontiers, both empirical and conceptual. First, we consider moral practices, discourses, and institutions surrounding AI technologies. A second empirical frontier concerns the relationships between inequality and moral evaluation, along with concomitant practices of classification and attribution of causation, responsibility, and deservingness. Next, we turn t…
Words and Distinctions for the Common Good
Making Things Possible
I argue that what-makes-it-possible questions are a distinct and important kind of sociological research question. What is social phenomenon P made possible or enabled by? Results won't be about P's causes and causal relationships, but about its enablers and enabling relationships. I examine the character of what-makes-it-possible questions and claims, how they can be empirically investigated, and what they're good for. If I'm right, they provide…
Una modesta proposición
Thick Concepts and Sociological Research
I consider how to do sociological things with thick concepts, what's the relation between thick concepts and social facts, what's unique about thick concepts, and what's unique about creatures in whose lives there are thick concepts
Moral decisionism and its discontents
Decisionists use decision/choice concepts to understand and represent X : bees, Deep Blue, and Ron Carter make decisions. Explicit decisionists argue that X should be understood and represented using decision/choice concepts: it's correct to speak of bees', computers', and jazz improvisers' decision‐making. Explicit anti‐decisionists disagree: bees, computers, jazz improvisers, algorithms, and drug addicts aren't correctly understood and represen…
Outline of a sociology of decisionism
I propose an agenda for empirical research on decision, choice, decision-makers, and decision-makingquasocial facts. Given societyS, groupG, or fieldF, I make a twofold sociological proposal. First, empirically investigate the conditions under which something-call itX-is taken to be a decision or choice, or the outcome of a decision-making process. What mustXbe like? What doesn't count (besides, presumably, myotatic reflexes and blushing)? Whom o…
The Love of Neuroscience
I make a contribution to the sociology of epistemologies by examining the neuroscience literature on love from 2000 to 2016. I find that researchers make consequential assumptions concerning the production or generation of love, its temporality, its individual character, and appropriate control conditions. Next, I consider how to account for these assumptions' being common in the literature. More generally, I'm interested in the ways in which epi…
The limits of decision and choice
What are neural correlates neural correlates of
Interview with Gabriel Abend "The Moral Background Makes the Playof Life Possible" (interviewed by Elena Gudova)
Gabriel Abend discusses his interest in the sociology of morality and the main ideas of his book The Moral Background: An Inquiry into the History of Business Ethics [Abend 2014]. According to Abend, the business ethics discipline and its growing popularity at business schools deals not only with the tension between making money and being ethical, but with the preconditions which enable moral life: the moral background. Abend states that studying…
The Moral Background: An Inquiry into the History of Business Ethics
In recent years, many disciplines have become interested in the scientific study of morality. However, a conceptual framework for this work is still lacking. In The Moral Background , Gabriel Abend develops just such a framework and uses it to investigate the history of business ethics in the United States from the 1850s to the 1930s. According to Abend, morality consists of three levels: moral and immoral behavior, or the behavioral level; moral…
Transcendental Sociological Arguments
What the Science of Morality Doesn’t Say About Morality
In this article I ask what recent moral psychology and neuroscience can and can’t claim to have discovered about morality. I argue that the object of study of much recent work is not morality but a particular kind of individual moral judgment. But this is a small and peculiar sample of morality. There are many things that are moral yet not moral judgments. There are also many things that are moral judgments yet not of that particular kind. If mor…
Styles of Causal Thought
While most work on causation in ethnography addresses the normative question of what ethnographers should do, this article addresses the empirical question of what ethnographers actually do. Specifically, it investigates whether ethnographic articles make causal arguments and how these arguments are made. The authors draw on a content analysis of 48 ethnographic articles sampled from four groups of sociological journals: contemporary generalist j…
Thick Concepts and the Moral Brain
Drawing on Williams' distinction between thin and thick ethical concepts, I argue that current moral neuroscience and psychology unwarrantedly restrict their researches to thin morality only. Experiments typically investigate subjects' judgments about rightness, appropriateness, or permissibility, that is, thin concepts. The nature and workings of thick concepts -e.g., dignity, integrity, humanness, cruelty, pettiness, exploitation, or fanaticism…
What’s New and What’s Old about the New Sociology of Morality
Living in a Material World
The Meaning of 'Theory
Theory' is one of the most important words in the lexicon of contemporary sociology. Yet, their ubiquity notwithstanding, it is quite unclear what sociologists mean by the words 'theory,' 'theoretical,' and 'theorize.' I argue that confusions about the meaning of 'theory' have brought about undesirable consequences, including conceptual muddles and even downright miscommunication. In this paper I tackle two questions: (a) what does 'theory' mean …
Two main problems in the sociology of morality
Estilos de pensamiento sociológico
Una revista científica, con revisión por pares, que publica investigación empírica y contribuciones teóricas en sociología, antropología, sociodemografía, y disciplinas afines. Nuestra misión es presentar los resultados de la investigación de la más alta calidad, con énfasis en América Latina, pero con proyección y alcance global
Styles of Sociological Thought
Both U.S. and Mexican sociologies allege that they are in the business of making true scientific knowledge claims about the social world. Conventional conceptions of science notwithstanding, I demonstrate that their claims to truth and scientificity are based on alternative epistemological grounds. Drawing a random sample of nonquantitative articles from four leading journals, I show that, first, they assign a different role to theories, and inde…
The Meaning of 'Theory
Theory' is one of the most important words in the lexicon of contemporary sociology. Yet, their ubiquity notwithstanding, it is quite unclear what sociologists mean by the words 'theory,' 'theoretical,' and 'theorize.' I argue that confusions about the meaning of 'theory' have brought about undesirable consequences, including conceptual muddles and even downright miscommunication. In this paper I tackle two questions: (a) what does 'theory' mean …
Styles of Causal Thought
While most work on causation in ethnography addresses the normative question of what ethnographers should do, this article addresses the empirical question of what ethnographers actually do. Specifically, it investigates whether ethnographic articles make causal arguments and how these arguments are made. The authors draw on a content analysis of 48 ethnographic articles sampled from four groups of sociological journals: contemporary generalist j…
Two main problems in the sociology of morality
Styles of Sociological Thought
Both U.S. and Mexican sociologies allege that they are in the business of making true scientific knowledge claims about the social world. Conventional conceptions of science notwithstanding, I demonstrate that their claims to truth and scientificity are based on alternative epistemological grounds. Drawing a random sample of nonquantitative articles from four leading journals, I show that, first, they assign a different role to theories, and inde…
Thick Concepts and the Moral Brain
Drawing on Williams' distinction between thin and thick ethical concepts, I argue that current moral neuroscience and psychology unwarrantedly restrict their researches to thin morality only. Experiments typically investigate subjects' judgments about rightness, appropriateness, or permissibility, that is, thin concepts. The nature and workings of thick concepts -e.g., dignity, integrity, humanness, cruelty, pettiness, exploitation, or fanaticism…
Making Things Possible
I argue that what-makes-it-possible questions are a distinct and important kind of sociological research question. What is social phenomenon P made possible or enabled by? Results won't be about P's causes and causal relationships, but about its enablers and enabling relationships. I examine the character of what-makes-it-possible questions and claims, how they can be empirically investigated, and what they're good for. If I'm right, they provide…
Thick Concepts and Sociological Research
I consider how to do sociological things with thick concepts, what's the relation between thick concepts and social facts, what's unique about thick concepts, and what's unique about creatures in whose lives there are thick concepts
Outline of a sociology of decisionism
I propose an agenda for empirical research on decision, choice, decision-makers, and decision-makingquasocial facts. Given societyS, groupG, or fieldF, I make a twofold sociological proposal. First, empirically investigate the conditions under which something-call itX-is taken to be a decision or choice, or the outcome of a decision-making process. What mustXbe like? What doesn't count (besides, presumably, myotatic reflexes and blushing)? Whom o…
What the Science of Morality Doesn’t Say About Morality
In this article I ask what recent moral psychology and neuroscience can and can’t claim to have discovered about morality. I argue that the object of study of much recent work is not morality but a particular kind of individual moral judgment. But this is a small and peculiar sample of morality. There are many things that are moral yet not moral judgments. There are also many things that are moral judgments yet not of that particular kind. If mor…
New Frontiers in the New Sociology of Morality
Where is the new sociology of morality headed? We identify and examine some of its new frontiers, both empirical and conceptual. First, we consider moral practices, discourses, and institutions surrounding AI technologies. A second empirical frontier concerns the relationships between inequality and moral evaluation, along with concomitant practices of classification and attribution of causation, responsibility, and deservingness. Next, we turn t…
The limits of decision and choice
Moral decisionism and its discontents
Decisionists use decision/choice concepts to understand and represent X : bees, Deep Blue, and Ron Carter make decisions. Explicit decisionists argue that X should be understood and represented using decision/choice concepts: it's correct to speak of bees', computers', and jazz improvisers' decision‐making. Explicit anti‐decisionists disagree: bees, computers, jazz improvisers, algorithms, and drug addicts aren't correctly understood and represen…
The Love of Neuroscience
I make a contribution to the sociology of epistemologies by examining the neuroscience literature on love from 2000 to 2016. I find that researchers make consequential assumptions concerning the production or generation of love, its temporality, its individual character, and appropriate control conditions. Next, I consider how to account for these assumptions' being common in the literature. More generally, I'm interested in the ways in which epi…
Transcendental Sociological Arguments
Styles of Sociological Thought
Both U.S. and Mexican sociologies allege that they are in the business of making true scientific knowledge claims about the social world. Conventional conceptions of science notwithstanding, I demonstrate that their claims to truth and scientificity are based on alternative epistemological grounds. Drawing a random sample of nonquantitative articles from four leading journals, I show that, first, they assign a different role to theories, and inde…
Estilos de pensamiento sociológico
Una revista científica, con revisión por pares, que publica investigación empírica y contribuciones teóricas en sociología, antropología, sociodemografía, y disciplinas afines. Nuestra misión es presentar los resultados de la investigación de la más alta calidad, con énfasis en América Latina, pero con proyección y alcance global
The Meaning of 'Theory
Theory' is one of the most important words in the lexicon of contemporary sociology. Yet, their ubiquity notwithstanding, it is quite unclear what sociologists mean by the words 'theory,' 'theoretical,' and 'theorize.' I argue that confusions about the meaning of 'theory' have brought about undesirable consequences, including conceptual muddles and even downright miscommunication. In this paper I tackle two questions: (a) what does 'theory' mean …
Two main problems in the sociology of morality
What’s New and What’s Old about the New Sociology of Morality
Living in a Material World
Thick Concepts and the Moral Brain
Drawing on Williams' distinction between thin and thick ethical concepts, I argue that current moral neuroscience and psychology unwarrantedly restrict their researches to thin morality only. Experiments typically investigate subjects' judgments about rightness, appropriateness, or permissibility, that is, thin concepts. The nature and workings of thick concepts -e.g., dignity, integrity, humanness, cruelty, pettiness, exploitation, or fanaticism…
What the Science of Morality Doesn’t Say About Morality
In this article I ask what recent moral psychology and neuroscience can and can’t claim to have discovered about morality. I argue that the object of study of much recent work is not morality but a particular kind of individual moral judgment. But this is a small and peculiar sample of morality. There are many things that are moral yet not moral judgments. There are also many things that are moral judgments yet not of that particular kind. If mor…
Styles of Causal Thought
While most work on causation in ethnography addresses the normative question of what ethnographers should do, this article addresses the empirical question of what ethnographers actually do. Specifically, it investigates whether ethnographic articles make causal arguments and how these arguments are made. The authors draw on a content analysis of 48 ethnographic articles sampled from four groups of sociological journals: contemporary generalist j…
The Moral Background: An Inquiry into the History of Business Ethics
In recent years, many disciplines have become interested in the scientific study of morality. However, a conceptual framework for this work is still lacking. In The Moral Background , Gabriel Abend develops just such a framework and uses it to investigate the history of business ethics in the United States from the 1850s to the 1930s. According to Abend, morality consists of three levels: moral and immoral behavior, or the behavioral level; moral…
Transcendental Sociological Arguments
Interview with Gabriel Abend "The Moral Background Makes the Playof Life Possible" (interviewed by Elena Gudova)
Gabriel Abend discusses his interest in the sociology of morality and the main ideas of his book The Moral Background: An Inquiry into the History of Business Ethics [Abend 2014]. According to Abend, the business ethics discipline and its growing popularity at business schools deals not only with the tension between making money and being ethical, but with the preconditions which enable moral life: the moral background. Abend states that studying…
What are neural correlates neural correlates of
Moral decisionism and its discontents
Decisionists use decision/choice concepts to understand and represent X : bees, Deep Blue, and Ron Carter make decisions. Explicit decisionists argue that X should be understood and represented using decision/choice concepts: it's correct to speak of bees', computers', and jazz improvisers' decision‐making. Explicit anti‐decisionists disagree: bees, computers, jazz improvisers, algorithms, and drug addicts aren't correctly understood and represen…
Outline of a sociology of decisionism
I propose an agenda for empirical research on decision, choice, decision-makers, and decision-makingquasocial facts. Given societyS, groupG, or fieldF, I make a twofold sociological proposal. First, empirically investigate the conditions under which something-call itX-is taken to be a decision or choice, or the outcome of a decision-making process. What mustXbe like? What doesn't count (besides, presumably, myotatic reflexes and blushing)? Whom o…
The Love of Neuroscience
I make a contribution to the sociology of epistemologies by examining the neuroscience literature on love from 2000 to 2016. I find that researchers make consequential assumptions concerning the production or generation of love, its temporality, its individual character, and appropriate control conditions. Next, I consider how to account for these assumptions' being common in the literature. More generally, I'm interested in the ways in which epi…
The limits of decision and choice
Una modesta proposición
Thick Concepts and Sociological Research
I consider how to do sociological things with thick concepts, what's the relation between thick concepts and social facts, what's unique about thick concepts, and what's unique about creatures in whose lives there are thick concepts
Making Things Possible
I argue that what-makes-it-possible questions are a distinct and important kind of sociological research question. What is social phenomenon P made possible or enabled by? Results won't be about P's causes and causal relationships, but about its enablers and enabling relationships. I examine the character of what-makes-it-possible questions and claims, how they can be empirically investigated, and what they're good for. If I'm right, they provide…
Words and Distinctions for the Common Good
New Frontiers in the New Sociology of Morality
Where is the new sociology of morality headed? We identify and examine some of its new frontiers, both empirical and conceptual. First, we consider moral practices, discourses, and institutions surrounding AI technologies. A second empirical frontier concerns the relationships between inequality and moral evaluation, along with concomitant practices of classification and attribution of causation, responsibility, and deservingness. Next, we turn t…
Sociology (18 works) · Epistemology (16 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice (11 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Morality (7 works) · Social and Cultural Dynamics (7 works)