Philosophy of Social Science

from Internet encyclopedia of social science http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/socscien.htm

 

Table of Contents (Clicking on the links below will take you to those parts of this article)


1. The Question: Are the Social Sciences Really Sciences?

 

The philosophy of the social sciences may include discussions of methodological, epistemological, metaphysical and logical issues in psychology, sociology, anthropology, history and related domains. The existence of such a discipline suggests that there might be some important difference between "science" and the social sciences. There are of course some obvious differences, if we use 'science' to denote physics, chemistry, and other physical sciences. Those sciences deal with a subject matter which is often unfamiliar to the scientifically uneducated, and provide theories or claims about their subject matters which are almost always "news" to non-scientists, news which often is or verges on the unintelligible. Not so with the social sciences. There are some narrowly technical inquiries within the social sciences (for example, into perception in psychology). But to a very large extent the subject matter of the social sciences is largely familiar, as the illustrations below will indicate. This latter fact is logically connected to what is perhaps the most troublesome question in this domain, a question which is the point of departure for the discussions in this article, namely what I will call 'The Question;'

"Are the social sciences really sciences at all?"

Put slightly differently, can there be a science of people in the same sense that there is a science of planetary motions or even of the weather? To suggest that there CAN be is troubling to some people, since it seems to imply that people are not much different from chunks of rock or low pressure areas. So there is some more or less emotional resistance to the idea. Science in that sense seems incompatible with "human values." On the other hand, science has proved to be a powerful tool which has enhanced human life in many ways. Might not a science of human beings be put to many beneficial uses?

No one can claim to have a definitive or uncontroverted answer to The Question. Part of the reason is that there is no agreement on just what constitutes the genre science (of which the social sciences might be considered a species). Inquiries into the history of science (e.g. by Kuhn) have made the usual accounts of what makes some inquiry scientific look naive. Apart from that general problem, there are difficulties which seem to be peculiar to the social sciences since in them the subject of investigation is human beings, or has as its eventual aim the better understanding of humans. Humans seem to be able to guide their own behavior in accord with reasons in a way that the rest of nature cannot. A rock or a plant cannot "act" on reasons (the downward motion of a unsupported rock near the earth's surface is not accounted for in terms of reasons the rock might have had for moving downward rather than, say, to the left).

The social sciences investigate the actions of individuals (why Jones smokes), groups (why a certain tribe migrated), social and institutional structures and mores (political forms, taboos like the incest taboo). The actions of individuals would appear to be basic, although some social scientists argue that the basic unit of analysis is groups.


2. Folk Psychology and Causal Laws

 

Suppose we begin with explanations of individual human actions. Unlike explanations of some natural phenomena, which may mystify us (lightning, a drop of acid making a hole in a thick piece of metal), explanations of human actions come quite naturally. We understand peoples' actions in the light of their desires and beliefs. Thus, a student may attend class because she desires an 'A' and thinks attendance the best way to get one. Such explanations come so naturally that the principles they employ have been dubbed "folk psychology", the implication being that they are part of a common theory about behavior which even the least educated can and do employ in explaining actions.

Can social scientists use folk psychology? Assuming a pretty minimal notion of what constitutes "science" it would seem they can only if folk psychology supplies us with causal laws or principles. For the main and most characteristic thing the sciences do is to supply us with causal laws such as figure in causal explanations. That is especially so in that paradigm case of science, physics. Consider the following explanation of the top of a container heated in a microwave blowing off. ('E' stands for 'explanation' 'P' for 'physics' or 'physical')

EI
P1. The container contained gases.
P2. All gases expand when heated.
P3. Whenever a gas in a closed container expands the pressure on all sides of the container increases.
P4. The top (ignore the sides) of this container could only stay in place at pressures less than 1 psi.

P5. The contained gas when heated to more than 200 degree F. exerts more than 1 psi.
pressure on that container's top.
P6. The oven heated the gases to more than 200 degrees F.
P7. The top blows off.

EI is a sketch of an explanation. 3 and 4 are vernacular versions of physical laws (they are "nomological" statements, from Greek 'nomos' which means 'law). 1,2, and 5 mention initial conditions (IC). 7 follows deductively from 1-6. The laws cited "cover" the relations between the gas, container, etc. So this form of explanation is called "deductive nomological" or "covering law." Physicists are in the business of discovering precise versions of such laws as those mentioned in 3 and 4. 7 is explained by 1-6. But moreover, if we knew 1-6 to be true, we could have predicted 7 (I will speak of predicting or explaining 7 itself, rather than what 7 states).

Now consider a similar explanation of a human action.('S' stands for 'social science')

EII
S1. Bill desires a hot fudge sundae.
S2. Bill believes the best way to get a hot fudge sundae is to go to the DQ.
S3. Whenever anyone, x, desires F, and believes the best way to get F is to do A, x does A, ceteris paribus.
S4. Bill goes to the DQ.

At first EII looks a lot like EI. We could think of S1 and S2 as initial conditions. S3 could be construed as a causal law belonging to folk psychology. Let us call it 'FL.' 1-3 deductively imply 4. They explain 4 and if we knew them we could predict 4. There is one difference however. S3 contains a ceteris paribus clause. That means "other things being equal." For example, we could only predict 4 from 1-3 on the assumption that Bill does not desire some sushi even more than a hot fudge (in which case he would not likely go to the DQ), or on the assumption that Bill knows how to do A (go to the DQ) and so forth for many other possible qualifications. The failure of these assumptions would amount to other things NOT being equal. This ceteris paribus clause makes our explanation look too vague.

But greater problems loom. A closer look suggests that EII is fundamentally unlike EI.First of all, suppose S4 or P7 fail (are false). Then either the IC are false or the causal law or laws are (or both), by modus tollens. But which, the laws or the IC? In EI if P 7 failed we would have ways of checking on the truth of the IC to see if they are false rather than P2 or P3. For example, we might discover that the oven is malfunctioning and not capable of heating anything whatsoever. In order to discover that we could try heating other items in the oven, comparing their temperature with a thermometer before and after "cooking" and so forth. Notice that this checking procedure in no way involves using the laws mentioned in P3 and P4.

But in EII we have a problem. How can we know that, say, S1 is true without USING FL? If we ask Bill what his desires are, and he tells us he desires a hot fudge (utters those words), and we take that to prove that S1 is true, then we must be assuming that Bill desires us to know what he desires and believes saying 'I desire a hot fudge' (or 'yes' when we ask him if he so desires) would be the best way to get us to know that. What other reason could we have for taking those words as informative? (What reason could we have for even taking 'yes' as a word, rather than a peculiar sneeze?) That is, we have just used FL to determine the truth of S1. Why is that a problem? Because in doing that we assume the truth of FL and thus beg the question respecting its truth. We cannot show that the IC is false rather than FL when the only way we have of checking the IC is by using FL.. And there is no way, apparently, of checking on the truth of the IC in EII other than by using FL. For example, if we observe Bill's behavior, and see that he walks towards the DQ, how would that verify S1, unless we assume that Bill believes that he is walking towards the DQ, or that he is walking towards it because he desires a hot fudge (i.e. we assume the truth of the thing we are trying to prove), and so on for many other assumptions.

Any evidence that we might present for the truth of S1 will only BE evidence given the truth of FL (if you doubt this, try producing a counterexample). Thus we get caught in a vicious regress with EII type explanations. In order to know whether S1 is true, we must know whether other statements about Bill are true. But in order to know those other statements are true we must know that further statements are true. And so forth. Supply your own examples.

These difficulties have suggested to some social scientists and others that FL is not a causal principle at all. If it is not then the explanations in which it functions (Like EII) are not causal explanations, and if not that, then perhaps not scientific at all. One is particularly likely to think this if one thinks that no principle could count as alaw in science if it could not be falsified (Popper), for it seems FL cannot be falsified. But even apart from such stringent (Popperian) demands on what counts as science, problems remain.

It appears that the way FL functions is very different from the way P2 and P3 function. The latter underwrite causal connections. Causal connections are contingent. If pollen causes sneezing, it is not because 'pollen' means 'stuff that causes sneezing' but because the pollen, which can be identified independently of anyone's sneezing, has been discovered through experiments to be connected to sneezing. But at first sight it looks like the connection between reasons and actions is logical. An example of a logical connection would be the connection between Bill's being a bachelor and Bill's being single. That is not a connection that is discovered but one that is determined by the meaning of 'bachelor' etc. Now is the connection between Bill's desires and beliefs and his action as in EII contingent or logical? Can we specify what Bill's desires and beliefs are independently of his actions, or vice versa? Perhaps not. Perhaps what it means to say Bill acted (as opposed to saying he just twitched, blinked, or knee-jerked) is that he had certain beliefs and desires which arelogically connected to the action more or less like being a bachelor is connected to being single. We do not discover that wanting hot fudge etc. is connected to eating hot fudge. If Bill has that desire etc. then if he did NOT get the fudge we would infer he did not have that desire after all (ceteris paribus, of course) just as, if we discovered Bill was married, we would infer he was not a bachelor after all. What justifies the inferences is the meaning of the terms used. This is the "logical connection" argument.

Now that argument may go too far. For it is possible to describe an event, such as the blowing off of the cap (see EI) as "the event caused by expanding gases!"(call that description 'CG'). Then we could make the following trivially or logically true;

The event of the blowing off of the cap was the event caused by expanding gases.

Just replace 'the event of the blowing off of the cap' with 'CG' and you will see. These are two different descriptions of one and the same event (just as 'bachelor' and 'single male adult' are two different descriptions of one and the same thing, e.g. Bill, given that he is a bachelor). But that is no reason for denying a causal connection between expanding gases and the cap blowing off. Whether a statement describing an event is logically true or contingent depends on how the event is described. For example, 'the event of the blowing off of the cap was caused by the event of expanding gases' is a contingent statement.

Nonetheless, "Bill ate a hot fudge because he wanted one' looks very near to being logically, trivially, true. Descriptions of actions, beliefs and desires seem linked, as though we could not give a description of one (an action, say) without bringing in another (a desire, say). It is as though we could only describe the cause of a spot on my nose as 'the cause of the spot on my nose.' It will of course be true that whatever caused the spot on my nose was the cause of the spot on my nose! But that isn't too informative! It does not follow of course that there is no independently specifiable cause of the spot. (Supposing it does is the shortcoming of thelogical connection argument).

There is a further problem with supposing EII is a causal explanation and that S3 states a causal principle. This may be the biggest problem of all. For S3 is couched in intentional language. Beliefs and desires are intentional, that is, they are about something, or have content. A dark horizon is not 'about' bad weather, though some person might take it to indicate bad weather is on the way. But the belief that bad weather is on the way is definitely about something, namely, about bad weather, or more specifically, it has the content expressed in the following proposition: bad weather is on the way. Now mere physical things or events are never about anything, they never have content, in that sense. If the sciences are only capable of dealing with what is physical, then the intentionality of desires etc. would seem to be enough to rule out a science of the human. The philosopher/psychologist Franz Brentano took intentionality to be the definitive mark of the mental, and argued that it could never be eliminated from accounts of human beings' actions. The conclusion should be evident.

One way to determine whether a term is intentional depends upon a linguistic fact, which we might expect since the content of beliefs, desires etc. is propositions, which are expressed in languages. Consider the following:

1. Bill believes Tully was clever.

Suppose, unknown to Bill, Tully was also called Cicero (in fact, he was). Then does it follow that

1'. Bill believes Cicero was clever?

No. He might think Cicero stupid. Or he may never have heard of Cicero. What we see from this example is that if we replace 'Tully' with a co-referential term (a term referring to the same thing) such as 'Cicero,' then 1 can be turned from true to false. 1 contains what is called 'an intentional context' and in such contexts one cannot safely substitute co-referential terms without risking loss of (change of) truth (cannot substitute such terms salva veritate, (while 'saving truth')).

A famous argument in the history of philosophy is fallacious because it fails to note this fact. Descartes argued

D1. I can believe I am not a (my) body.
D2. I cannot believe I am not I.
Therefore, I am not my body.

(This argument depends upon the further principle that if two things are identical, whatever is true of the one must be true of the other.) That is like arguing

TC1. I can believe Tully is not Cicero
TC2. I cannot believe Tully is not Tully
Therefore, Tully is not Cicero.

Some argument! What is even worse, Descartes' argument contains the terms 'can'(is possible) and 'cannot' (is not possible) and contexts governed by these terms are also such that we cannot safely substitute co-referential terms salva veritate.

Philosophers have coined a term for language such that in it co-referential terms cannot be safely substituted. It is called intensional language. The language of folk psychology, and certainly FL, is intensional through and through.

Many philosophers and scientists hold that the language of science is and must be extensional (such that co-referential terms can be substituted salva veritate). Scientific truths cannot depend upon how we refer to the entities postulated in scientific theories. If they are right, then folk psychology cannot provide us with principles for scientific explanations of human actions, unless it is somehow possible to reduce intentional notions to non-intentional ones. There are powerful arguments against the claim that that is possible. These facts have an interesting consequence. People often speak about the brain as knowing, believing etc. The brain is a physical thing. Suppose that when I believe Mary is here, my brain is in state A. That state is physical. Thus it is not about anything. Thus it is not about Mary. A dim awareness of this fact often leads people to speak of the brain as though it housed a little person, who takes the various states of the brain and interprets them (in somewhat the way someone might look at the lowering sky and interpret it as indicating an approaching storm). But of course the "little person inside" (sometimes called a homunculus ) must in turn have a brain, which in turn needs another little person to interpret ITS states, and so forth. Given the obvious stupidity of this strategy, it is amazing how much it turns up in popular accounts of thought, belief, etc. including many found on PBS programs.


3. Teleology, Mentalism, and Constraints on Causal Principles

 

Another way to put the points raised in the previous section is this: the principles of folk psychology seem to be irreducibly teleological and mentalistic (see # 2 below). So it is understandable that those who want to pursue a "science of human beings" would suggest giving up those principles completely, and looking for new, genuinely causal principles. Those principles would have to meet such conditions as these:

1. They would have to be expressible in extensional language.
2. They would have to eliminate all explicit or covert references to purposes, goals, etc. (after all, it was the penchant for "teleological explanation" which precluded the development of science in the modern sense prior to the 17th century, and teleology is closely tied to mind, the ability to represent the world, goals, etc,)
3. The elements that enter into those laws, and into the initial conditions and the predicted observable consequences, should be specifiable independently of one another.

It looks then as though social scientists may be facing the following dilemma: either give up the claim that the social sciences are sciences, or give up folk psychology. Some take the first route (interpretationalists), others the second (e.g. behaviorists in psychology).

Let us consider each of these three conditions or constraints a bit further. Why do scientific explanations have to be expressible in extensional language (#1)? In an extensional languages, what makes the statements made in those languages true or false is how things are in the world. Right? Take the statement 'The breeding of hybrids with true breeding shorts will produce about 1 short out of 4.' This prediction from Mendelian theory turns out true. What makes it true is the way the world is. That is how things are, because of the genetic make up of pea plants and the facts of dominance etc. Notice that this same fact could be expressed in very different terms without changing the truth of what is asserted. Suppose we used the term 'mating' instead of 'breeding.' As long as 'mating' is used to refer to the same thing (process, arrangement) as 'breeding' refers to, the truth of the statement, after substituting 'mating' for 'breeding' will of course remain unchanged. What matters is the facts, how things are, not how we talk about those facts. We expect genuine science to tell us how the world is. We do not care what language it uses, so long as it gets the facts right, so long as its theories and claims are constrained by a world which is independent of thought, language, or any system of representing it.

In an intensional language things are quite otherwise. There, it is not the facts that determine whether a given statement is true. Take the statement 'Scott is the author of Ivanhoe.' Suppose Ivanhoe is the only novel in English with exactly 90, 247 words. Then that expression ('the only novel in English with exactly 90,247 words') refers to exactly the same thing as 'Ivanhoe.' So it follows that if 'Scott is the author of Ivanhoe' is true, then so is 'Scott is the author of the only novel in English with exacty 90,247 words.' It is the facts about the world (in this case the fact about how many words there are in Scott's novel called "Ivanhoe" ) which make either of these statements true. But, suppose it is true that 'George believes that Scott is the author of Ivanhoe.' Does it follow that it is true that 'George believes that Scott is the author of the only novel in English with exactly 90247 words.'? Obviously not. George may have no idea how many words are in Ivanhoe, even though he has read it 10 times. So what makes either of these statements true (or false) cannot be simply how the world, as a physical thing, is. Something else has interfered with truth here, in this case, something impenetrably obscure in itself, namely, belief.

A good scientific language needs to be clear and unambiguous. The statements in such a language need to be such that their truth or falsity depends only upon how things are in the world, not how we happen to be thinking about, talking about, or otherwise representing to ourselves, that world. To suppose otherwise is to open the door to rampant subjectivism in science (which of course is what some people would like to do!)

Now consider condition #2. Why do we need this constraint? The notion of a "goal" naturally goes with the notion of something that has that goal as a goal, something that thinks, imagines, or believes something about that goal as (qua) goal. Take a goal line, to illustrate the point. A line on a field is just a mark. Only when there are minds to think it as a goal line does the line actually become a goal line. Its mere physical characteristics and location tell us NOTHING about it as a goal. What tells us that is its functioning in a game, within which people have plans, intentions, etc. Likewise for the action of achieving the goal (aim) of the game, i.e. scoring a touchdown. That action is just physical movements which mean nothing, just as the line itself means nothing, apart from people thinking and believing and desiring things. So how things are physically hardly matters at all in thinking about what makes a goal line, or a touchdown. But how things are physically is just about all that does matter in a science which seeks genuine causal laws.

The inability to think of nature as simply matter, as "physical" in a modern sense, and the tendency to import into nature irrelevant "purposes and goals" such as only minds of some sort can have, was precisely what precluded the development of genuine science in the ancient world (or so the story goes). The ancients saw mind, or something mind-like, operating everywhere. Moderns would like to see it operating nowhere. So you can see that intentionality (i.e. believing, thinking etc.) needs to be excluded from science as we understand it in the modern era. It should be pretty obvious by now how #1 and #2 overlap.

Now consider condition #3. Again, why? Take explanation I . It contains the statement 'the container contained gases' (P1). Is there any way of indicating what we are talking about here, namely, gases, which does not involve remarking that gases are something which expand when heated? That is, can we specify what we are talking about in statement P1 independently of the statement that all gases expand when heated (P2)? Of course. There are all sorts of tests for whether something is a gas. If there were not, if the only test for whether something was a gas was that it expanded when heated, then "All gases expand when heated" would be like " all bachelors are unmarried." That is, it would be an empty and uninformative tautology, it would be true by definition. Anything that expanded when heated would be a gas, and vice versa (and wouldn't that be weird? A metal that expanded when heated would then be, you guessed it, a gas! Practically everything would be a gas! The gas law is of course much more precisely formulated than is P2). What made it true would not be how things are, what the world is like, but merely how we had decided to use words. A fancier way to put that would be to say that P2's truth would be due to a feature of our mode of representation (in this case language) rather than to a feature of what is represented. But the gas law is NOT a mere definition and what makes it true is how the world is. And now you can perhaps see how #3 overlaps with #1 and #2. AlSO, if we cannot specify laws and initial conditions independently of one another, then our laws or theories (theoretical models) may be unfalsifiable in principle. For example, if we have to use FL to determined whether our ICs are true, we will not be able in principle to show that FL is false. We will have to assume its truth in order to get started with the project of determining what went wrong when a prediction failed. But laws or theories which are immune to falsification fail to meet the most rudimentary condition for being scientific.

Here is a sample, from within a social science, of an attempt to meet those three conditions.

1. Emitted behavior which is reinforced positively will be repeated with greater frequency (etc.), or if reinforced negatively will die out.[BL, Behavioristic Law, sometimes called the Law of Effect)]
2. This rat's emitted maze-traversing-to-location-A behavior has been positively reinforced.
3. This rat's emitted Maze-traversing-to-non-A-locations has been negatively reinforced.
Therefore, There will be an increase in this rat's maze traversing to A, and a decrease in its maze traversing to non A.

This looks like a typical causal explanation of the deductive nomological type. #1 is a statement of a causal law. #2 and #3 state initial conditions. The consequence is explained and predicted by 1 - 3. Presumably this type of explanation could be extended to other creatures, including humans, which exhibit what appears to be goal oriented (teleological) behavior.

Moreover, 1 - 3 appear to be couched in extensional language (Condition #1). There is certainly no explicit mention of goals etc. (Condition #2). And it seems that we ought to be able to specify what the behavior is, what constitutes a reinforcement (positive or negative), and what the environmental constants (stimuli) are (the structure and appearance of the maze) independently of one another (condition #3).

Unfortunately, a closer looks suggests otherwise. Take condition #2 first. Exactly what is the behavior which is mentioned in 1 - 3? How can it be identified? Certainly not by such things as the purely physical motions of the rat, which will no doubt vary a great deal from case to case. It rather looks as though the relevant identification takes place through reference to the end result, getting to A, that is. And that of course is a bit of teleology. Any behavior which gets to the goal will be the behavior in question (end result = goal). In fact it looks as though the expression 'maze-traversing-to-A behavior' is just a way of saying 'seeking A behavior' or 'going after A behavior' and these are teleological and are certainly not extensional. Thus #1 is violated also. You can see that they are not extensional in the following way; 'A' is simply the "reward" location, and the rat will "seek" it even when the reward is not there, so it is not the reward itself being there, but the rat's ability to represent to itself that the reward is there, which explains its behavior. Obviously if the reward is not there then it cannot explain anything. What explains is the representing capacities of the mind. "The rat is seeking A" will be true where 'A' is described as 'the reward site" but false where 'A' is described as 'the reward site without the reward' even though, in the case where the reward has been removed, those expressions are co-referential. There are further problems with providing independent specifications of the behavior, the reinforcers, etc. which will be omitted from this discussion.

If you have followed this so far, then you are in a position to see some problems with the idea that FL is a causal law. And if BL has the same problems as FL, if its problems are a mirror image of the problems FL has, as has been argued above, then the scientific status of behaviorism begins to look very doubtful. We will either have to abandon the claim that it is science, or expand our account of what science is, or simply settle for a pragmatic approach, in which we keep something around for its practical value, even though it solves no theoretical problem, gives us no real insight into the world. Maybe the behaviorist can give good advice on how to advertise cereal. It does not follow that he has done anything more than simply refine folk psychology a bit

Behaviorism in psychology and the social sciences is but one attempt to develop a science of human beings in the sense of 'science' appropriate to physics etc. Many have come to view it as a failure ( for the kinds of reasons just mentioned and other reasons as well). But so far there do not seem to be any very promising replacements (though developments in cognitive science might be the next wave). Consequently many have come to think that there can be no science of human beings in that sense of 'science.' So perhaps what we need to do is return to folk psychology and attempt to refine and develop it in various ways.


4. Folk psychology, Interpretation, and Meaning

 

One of the reasons [FL] is such a failure as a causal generalization, particularly when applied to people, is that there are so many exceptions (the "ceteris paribus" or "other things being equal" clause is hopelessly complex). Suppose I desire a hot fudge, believe going to the DQ will enable me to get a hot fudge, but do NOT go to the DQ. Then we infer that other things were not equal, that there were other over riding desires, or other competing beliefs, etc. Perhaps someone desires to stay skinny, even to the point of starving themself, even though they also desire hot fudge. But we are not likely to think we understand such behavior if all we know is that they have that desire to be skinny. We want to know why they have such a desire, and it seems that in order to understand that we have to know what being skinny MEANS to them. What we are after is an interpretation of their behavior, in which the meaning of that behavior becomes evident. Thus it often seems that understanding someone's behavior is more like reading a book then it is like finding a causal principle. (We talk, revealingly, about people being 'an open book' when it is easy to interpret their behavior).

One way to get at the notion of "interpretation" in this context is to think about how we can grasp someone's behavior when we know what rules they are following. Suppose I want an explanation of your moving your pawn one space forward in a chess game. Part of the explanation will consist in citing the rule which you follow in so moving. There is a sense in which I will never understand what you are doing until I at least know that much. But finding out what rules you are following is hardly a matter of discovering causal principles! Rules don't explain behavior the way physical causes do. That is particularly obvious when you consider that rules can be broken without their ceasing to be rules. Moreover, the very idea of "following" is heavily intentional.

But what has this got to do with the behavior of the anorexic, or with a great deal of other human behavior? Maybe quite a bit. If we loosen up the notion of 'rule' enough it is not implausible to say that the anorexic is following certain rules. Perhaps most of human action (as opposed to mere behavior or reaction) is, or heavily involves, rule following. Certainly all behavior which involves language is very rule governed, and the bigger and more important part of human action does involve language. Perhaps, in order to understand the behavior of people, what we need is a grasp of the rules they are following.

Consider the anthropologist trying to figure out the behavior of some Australian aborigines. At first their actions don't make much sense. They seem to do pointless things (stabbing footprints, chanting by the cornfield, and the like). Then as the anthropologist begins to learn the language and becomes familiar with customs and practices, things begin to "make sense." It is a lot like the way a book in a foreign language is at first just marks on paper, but begins to make sense as we catch on to the language. In such cases what we are catching on to is the rules, broadly understood. Interpretation consists in learning rules, conventions, agreed upon ways of doing things, often to the point where we could ourselves engage in the practices in question (speak the language, play the game, perform the ritual, etc.). It is not, be it noted, a criterion for such learning that a person actually be able to state the rules (probably none of us could state the rules for English, but it does not follow that there are none, nor that we do not generally follow them).

Another name for the science of interpretation, in the sense just suggested, is "hermeneutics." The word originally refers to the interpretation of written texts. "Reading" someone's behavior may be a lot more like "reading" a book then we at first realize. That, at least, is the dominant view among those who endorse "interpretativism" in the social sciences.

Clearly, on this view, the crucial thing is to try to get a firm grasp on the idea of following a rule. It turns out not to be an easy thing to do. Wittgenstein (whose thinking on this topic has been uniquely powerful and influential) and Peter Winch (in his book The Idea of A Social Science) address this matter. Their arguments have been widely discussed and the interpretation and evaluation of those arguments have been widely disputed. One prominent feature of the Wittgensteinian approach is the stress on the public nature of rule following. There cannot, logically, be private rules or private language. The application of a rule requires public criteria publicly inculcated. One consequence that seems to ensue is that the understanding of any social form or form of life requires participation in that form or the developed capacity for it. If I cannot understand a bit of human behavior without initiation into the social form of which it is a part, then social science is unlike any physical science. Clearly I can understand the behaviour of the planets, for example, without first grasping the rules the planet follows since, clearly, it does not follow any. This point is often associated with the idea that a special kind of empathetic understanding, dubbed "verstehen" from the German for 'understanding,' is required in all attempts to understand human behavior. But it is perhaps worth noting that the Wittgensteinian approach does not assume any particular "psychology of understanding" in the sense assumed by proponents of "Verstehen."

Another approach to the social sciences stresses the ways in which self deception, even at an institutional or culture-wide level, operates in forming behavior and even the "scientific" attempts (of sociologists, economists etc.) to understand it. This approach has been heavily influenced by Marx and other "masters of suspicion" who stress the need for a science the aim of which is to grasp the legitimizing function of social norms or the ways in which they further the interests of some against others. This "critical social science" appears, however, to rely on folk psychology just as much as does the hermeneutical school, so more detailed consideration will be omitted from this review.


5. Meaning, Language, Rules, Social Construction

 

It seems natural to many people to suppose that when I know that P (P could be just about any proposition, say, 'the earth is round') what happens is that I somehow accurately "represent" something (the shape of the world, say) which exists objectively, some "fact of the matter" which is what it is apart from human (or divine) thought and activity. Some philosophers speak repeatedly of propositions or thoughts as "representing" how things are. Some might think of the mind (or language) as "mirroring" an independent reality, and the tasks of acquiring knowledge as a matter of cleaning up and making straight that mirror (cf. a now famous book by Richard Rorty titled Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature). These ways of thinking about the mind (language etc.) are associated with empiricism and realism. This position is attractive because it suggests that our thoughts can be kept in check by an external reality, with the result that those who discipline their thinking, perhaps in a "scientific" way, can arrive at real truths, shorn of all superstition and prejudice.

But the nature of this "representing" or "mirroring" relation is hard to describe. So hard, that some people have given up the whole idea and concluded that in knowledge we produce or construct the world, rather than mirror or reflect it. Those who lean in this direction are idealists or at least inclined towards some variety of idealism. Empiricists and realists in the sciences think that the sciences give us more or less faithful representations or reflections of "the way things are." Contemporary idealists or anti-realists are more inclined to doubt the whole idea of "the (one) way things are." As one thinker of the latter type put it, there is no such thing as "the way the world is." The world is lots of ways, It is lots of ways because people have lots of ways of constructing it.

The realist position seems more like common sense. But it needs to explain HOW the mind represents the world or mirrors it. Since we think about the world and formulate propositions about it in a language, it looks as though there must be some very close relation, perhaps even an identity, between the way the mind represents reality and the way language does. Winch's essay is devoted to a discussion of precisely this matter.

Just how, Winch asks, does language represent the world? How, for example, can the word 'world' refer to, represent, reflect or be about, the world, and how can 'round' reflect a shape, etc. ? There is a great temptation to suppose that it does so by connecting up somehow to something which is intrinsically representative. The word 'world' itself is obviously not intrinsically representative. If it were then very different words, e.g. 'Welt', 'mundus' 'kosmos' etc. would apparently not be able to do what 'world' does, but of course they do exactly what 'world' does. For various reasons it looks as though we can only make sense in and through a language by virtue of a basic ability to follow a rule. We have rules for the use of 'world' and that means that there are correct and incorrect ways of using it. And it cannot be (according to Wittgenstein) that what makes a use correct or incorrect is something in my own (private) mind. Correctness requires a public practice, with public criteria in terms of which uses can be corrected or judged as already correct. So it begins to look as though what counts in the use of language, and thus in the acquisition of knowledge, is a social system, a set of public agreements in terms of which my "practice" with words can be judged.

But this conclusion is troubling. For now it looks as though the only external check on our thinking is the community's ways of thought, which are inscribed in the community's language and customs, its whole way of living, or "form of life." Yet surely an entire community could be wrong about any number of things. Primitive tribes, for instance, appear to have many mistaken beliefs about nature, cosmology, etc. If we deny this, then it begins to look as though "knowledge" will be something "constructed" in a variety of ways, and how will we be able to choose between those ways, or say that one is better than another (cf. Kuhn on the incommensurability of paradigms, which is an idea very close to the Wittgensteinian idea of "forms of life.")

An analogy may make these points clearer. Consider the following belief; " a face with high cheekbones, a slender straight nose, and clear complexion, (etc.) is beautiful." We might think that this belief simply reflects an independent fact, so that anyone, no matter in what culture (tribe) they were raised, no matter what rules they learned for the use of 'beautiful' etc., would be able to see that this statement is true. But it is quite clear that such judgments are not simply a reflection of how things are. The concept of beauty is a social construction, we learn to view certain features as beautiful, and ideas about what those features are vary quite a bit from culture to culture and from one historical epoch to another. This is not the same as the cliché that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

If these anti-realist considerations are at all on track, then our puzzles about the relation between the physical and social sciences take on a newlook. If even the physical sciences are social constructions, then there should be no need to show that the social sciences measure up, in terms of predictive capacity etc. to the physical sciences. If the latter represent just one way of "constructing knowledge" with no special privileges or status attached to it, then social scientists should not feel that their failure to find causal laws and sharp predictions somehow counts against the claim that their disciplines are "science."

But surely whether the world is round or not is something that can be settled once and for all by observation, in a way that judgements about beauty admittedly cannot? Surely "how things are" puts some limits, some check, on what we can reasonably think?

Perhaps what we need is a kind of modified "realism" which recognizes that there is always some element of construction in knowledge, but maintains the common sense view that the world external to or prior to our thought places limits on what can count as knowledge, particularly at the "macro" level. Such a view could be quite consistent with the view that when it comes to knowledge of humans and human affairs, the external checks on what we can think or on what constitutes knowledge are of quite a different sort from the kind appropriate in, say, physics.


6. Holism and Reductionism

 

We have seen that there are difficulties in using such principles as FL or BL to explain human behavior. Neither seem to meet the requirements of scientific explanations. Perhaps no "science" of humans is possible. Once again, humans seem different, apart from nature in certain ways, and thus not explainable in purely "natural" terms such as figure centrally in the "natural" sciences (physics etc.). BUT, before we give up, perhaps we need to consider the possibility that our problems are the results of focusing on individual human beings. Perhaps a social science will still be possible provided that we focus not on individuals but on groups, i.e. whole societies, tribes, cultures. Perhaps at that level we will be able to discover causal laws governing human behavior. The idea is that the behavior of groups is perhaps not reducible to the behavior of the individuals in it. This thought is encouraged by the collection of statistical data, which often suggest causal connections at the level of groups which we would not notice without the statistical data.

Durkheim fastened on this idea. He thought there were social facts, facts which cannot be explained in terms of, or "reduced to" facts about the individuals who make up those groups. The idea is "holist" (i.e. "Whole - ist"). Durkheim thought the dramatic rise in suicides in France between the 1850's and the 1870's (recorded in the statistics of the French government) must be such a "social fact", since the usual "individualist" explanations of suicide (in terms of such things as loss of job or loved one, depressing circumstances of other sorts etc.) remained constant through the period, even though the suicide rate changed. On the principle that a different effect (rate in 1870 as compared to 1850) requires a different cause, Durkheim reasoned that those "individual" factors must not be what explains the change. I.e. he constructed the following argument:

1. The suicide rate changed dramatically between 1850 and 1870.

2. The individual factors recorded as "causes" of suicide did NOT change

3. Therefore, Those individual factors do not explain the change in the RATE

4. Something 'non-individual' must explain the change. It would be a "social cause" operating on social "wholes" rather than on individuals.

So now we need to show that the behavios of social wholes are explainable in terms of extensional laws. Thus social science (including anthropology, social psychology, history) could be "scientific." We must simply avoid explanation at the individual level, since explanations of individual actions might still get mired in the kinds of problems afflicting FL and BL.

In fact, Durkheim tried to find functionalist explanations of social facts. For example, he thought that certain institutions (marriage, closely binding religious institutions) function to increase social cohesion. The lower incidence of suicide in certain groups (.e.g. married Catholics) could be explained in terms of the way such institutions functioned.

BUT there are many problems here.

1. First, functionalist explanations are problematic for reasons already discussed ("function" involves the notion of purpose, and thus, of a "purposer" i.e. MINDS get back into the discussion. In fact, Durkheim even postulated the existence of a "group mind" or soul.) But minds and their purposes are what we are trying to get rid of in order to make way for "science."

2. It is not obvious how social institutions (marriage e.g.) could "function" at all without passing through individual psychology. The effect of marriage practices upon a society works through individuals and their attitudes towards the institution, or so it certainly seems. So it would seem that the "whole" is after all reducible to its parts.

The term "reduction" has occurred several times in this section. The nature of reduction is important in the sciences generally. Can chemistry be "reduced to" physics? Can the actions of groups be "reduced to" the actions of the members? These questions naturally call forth more detailed consideration of the notion of reduction.

We can distinguish three kinds of reductionism: ontological, semantic, explanatory. To say that a cloud is "reducible to" a mass of water droplets could be to say that what a cloud IS is simply (nothing more nor less than) a mass of water droplets. Statements about what is are "ontological." Your ontology is your view of what really exists. To say that what the word 'cloud' means is (nothing more nor less than) 'mass of water droplets' is semantic reduction (semantics is the science of meaning). To say that every explanation of cloud behavior can be reduced to (restated in terms of) explanations of the behavior of masses of water droplets, without remainder, is explanatory reduction. It seems plausible to think clouds are reducible to masses of water droplets in the first and third sense, but perhaps not in the second (at least not where we are thinking of meaning as "sense." Semantic reduction will be ignored in what follows.). Scientists and philosophers of science have a long-standing interest in reductionism. Some scientists believe that ultimately all genuine sciences will be reducible (but in what sense?) to some (future) physics.

Reductionism is of interest in thinking about the possibility of reducing various social sciences to such sciences as biology or chemistry or physics, thereby guaranteeing the scientific status of the former. We will investigate this possibility later.

Reductionism is also clearly pertinent to disputes between individualists and holists in the social sciences. Are social wholes reducible ( in any of the three senses ) to the individuals that make them up? There are more than two ways ('yes' and' no') to answer. For instance, someone could be an ontological reductionist (insist that a community, e.g. a church or town, IS nothing more nor less than the interacting individuals that make it up) without being a reductionist in the other two senses. Thus someone might claim that there are laws necessary for explaining group behavior which are not reducible to laws explaining individual behavior. How could that be? There are a couple of paths to such a view.

Consider a parallel. First, perhaps all pain is nothing but neuronal activity. That is an ontological claim. But it could be true in various ways. It would be true if every instance (token) of pain was identical with some instance (token) of a specific kind of neuronal activity. That would be "token-token identity." There are many reasons for doubting that there could in this case be such identity. But, if there was token- token identity we might expect that lawlike claims about pain would be reducible to claims about the laws governing neuronal activities (explanatory reduction). Ontological reduction would imply explanatory reduction.

But suppose every instance of pain were identical with some neuronal state or other, say N1, or N2 or. . . or some subset of that disjunction, i.e. something of the type "neuronal activity." That would be token-type identity. Suppose that a particular pain in my elbow is identical either with N1 or N2. But it might be that the causal connections between N1 and other events are distinct from the causal connections between N2 and other events (it might even be that the causal connections between N1 and my elbow pain are distinct from the causal connections between N2 and my elbow pain. Perhaps different "paths" would be involved). That suggests that the laws governing neuronal events might be distinct from the laws governing higher level events such as pain. For example there might be a casual connection between repeated swinging of a tennis racket and elbow pain which could not be captured (replaced without remainder) by any of the statements of causal connection between neuronal states etc. The best we could come up with might be a disjunctive explanation (either C caused E or C1 cause E or . . .) Suppose further that N1, N2. . .or some subset thereof could occur without pain. Then it seems even more likely that there would be laws covering the neuronal events which would not be reflected in the higher level laws about pain. Then the higher level laws might be said to enjoy a kind of "autonomy" with respect to the lower level laws. They might even express "emergent" properties of pain, properties which could not be predicted from complete knowledge of the neuronal states which pain is. The neuronal events may begin to seem necessary, but not sufficient, for the pain. In such a case ontological reduction would not imply explanatory reduction. The higher level explanations would have to be kept around.

Secondly, consider another analogy. Suppose that all laws governing masses are reducible to laws governing the molecules of which the masses are composed. Perhaps ideally the trajectory of a rocket could be completely accounted for by an account of all the causal relations entered into by the molecules making up the rocket, the atmosphere through which it travels, other bodies or physical masses. Yet such an account might be impossibly complex and beyond our computational and data-gathering capacities. On the other hand, the Newtonian laws governing the rocket's trajectory might be relatively easy to handle. Then we should stick to the Newtonian laws for their obvious practical advantages, even though in theory they are reducible to molecular laws. Here we keep explanatory laws at the higher level for pragmatic reasons.

Hopefully it is obvious how all of this might apply to the social sciences. Durkheim's laws about the connection between anomie and suicide might not be reducible to laws about individuals making up the groups involved, even though, ontologically, the groups are nothing more than those individuals. Or, the laws might be theoretically reducible to laws about individuals but nonetheless be worth keeping around for practical purposes. (Durkheim apparently did not think either one of these was the case. Thus he ends up postulating mysterious entities such as a "group soul" to do the explaining of the social facts.) Similar considerations might apply to the possibility of reduction of behavioristic to physiological laws (cf. Skinner's remarks on this).


7. Individualism and Invisible Hands

 

Problems with "holism" inspired renewed attempts to find explanations of human behavior, particularly at the group level, which did not require anything more than individuals and their individual motivations, or which could be "reduced to" (in what way?)explanations of individuals. Could such individualist theories explain the kinds of social facts Durkheim and others pointed out? Perhaps.

Adam Smith showed one way. Smith tried to show that the beneficial effects of market economies were not the result of individuals intending to produce those effects. In fact each individual in the market looks out only for #1. What then produces the beneficial effect for others? Not some mysterious "group mind" achieving its own purposes. Rather the market operates in such a way that the combination of many selfish acts produces benefit for all. The mechanisms of the market (the laws of supply and demand) operate as an invisible hand, i.e. something which works without being noticed by individual agents. But the operation of that invisible hand can still be explained entirely in terms of the way in which individual self-seeking and the constraints of supply and demand interact (such interactions are in fact the subject matter of economics). Perhaps similar invisible hand explanations might be available for non- economic social facts?

But, here too there are many problems. The main one is of course (you guessed it!) that Smith's explanations mention individual desires, fears, beliefs. But any explanation in those terms is a piece of folk psychology. And we know what problems that forebodes for anything claiming to be science.

But there is another problem, almost as big. Smithian explanation (roughly, rational choice theory) can be shown to fail as an explanation of "public goods." Such goods are goods that cannot be enjoyed privately (e.g. clean air and water, good lighting, etc.). There is an argument that goes like this:

1. A famous puzzle shows that individual rational agents acting out of self interest cannot produce such public goods.
2. There are such public goods, and that is an important social fact.
3. Therefore not everything about a society can be explained in terms of the actions of rational self interested agents.
4. Therefore, rational choice theory, with its invisible hand idea, cannot explain many important characteristics of societies.

The famous puzzle is often called the prisoners dilemma.

Consider two people, A and B, both of whom would like the benefit of an additional streetlight in their neighborhood. Suppose the city requires homeowners to pay all or most of the bill. Both A and B would of course like to avoid the expense but get the benefit (would like to be "free riders"). Suppose A argues that he can't afford it, hoping that B will pick up the whole bill. But B will try the same strategy. They will end up saving their money but getting no additional street lighting. They can't operate as rational (self- interested) agents and still get what they want, i.e. better lighting at minimal expense. If A agrees to pay just part of the bill, B will try to fake it in hopes that he can get A to pay the whole bill, or more than half at any rate. B will do the same. So they cannot reach the best result (i.e.. even sharing of cost and full benefit for both) unless they cease functioning as "Smithian" rational agents. However, people manage these sorts of cooperative endeavors all the time. So Smith must have been wrong, or at best only partly right.

There is, however, another kind of invisible hand. And this one doesn't require folk psychology. So it looks very promising to some who would like a viable reductionism in the social sciences.

DARWIN'S INVISIBLE HAND AND KIN SELECTION

The theory of natural selection (NS) is of course a theory that operates at the individual level. Only individual organisms can undergo the genetic mutations which are a necessary condition for natural selection. Societies don't have genes. Only the individuals that make them up have genes. So how could NS be invoked in explaining social facts, group behavior? Moreover, the problem of public goods would seem to arise here too, since the "survival of the fittest" is analogous to Smithian self interest. How could NS produce cooperative behavior in which individuals sacrifice the perpetution of their genes for the greater good? How could it explain any kind of altruism? The Answer? "Kin Selection"

Consider a bird that calls out upon the approach of a predator, thereby warning others in the flock so that they escape. Why wouldn't this "calling-out" behavior get eliminated eventually through natural selection, since the bird that calls out is going to have a short life indeed and thus won't have much chance to pass on his genes? Well, look at it like this. Suppose the calling-out bird has a bunch of full siblings in the flock. They have half his genes. He doesn't know this of course, since birds don't know anything about genes (neither do most people). Suppose that by calling out he saves three of his sibs. Suppose another bird doesn't call out and saves himself but his sibs all get eaten by the predator, who takes them by surprise. Which does better in the "gene derby"? The first. His actions results in 1.5 birds worth of his genes being saved, whereas the second only saves 1 birds worth of his genes. Of course the "altruistic" bird does not intend this result (just like the Smithian agent does not intend the good result of his behavior). Nor does he intend any result at all. We do not need anything like [l] to explain his individual behavior. He is just a bird, reacting to stimuli, like any robot or behavioristic entity. Nonetheless his "altruistic" behavior will be "selected".

Could it be that way with people too? Maybe. If so we might be able to explain various social facts including such things as public goods in terms of kin selection. And notice that we could get along entirely without reliance on [l] in these explanations. So the Darwinian invisible hand is one up on the Smithian in that crucial respect.

The Darwinian invisible hand looks promising in explaining such things as incest taboos, cross cousin marriage customs and even the specific proportions of patrilateral cross cousin marriage, the ideas of "special obligations" (e.g. obligations to parents, children, etc.) and the like. (You should try to formulate how, roughly, it would work for these customs.) But what would explain altruistic behavior of the Mother Teresa sort or even many less dramatic sorts (a stranger helping an old lady across the street)?

What explains social cooperation at a level where gene maintenance could not be a factor (e.g. fighting in a war for a large nation like the USA)? It turns out that in theory certain kinds of cooperative behavior might be selected even under broader social conditions. Tit for tat strategies do well in computer simulations of players playing under many kinds of circumstances. In a tit for tat I opt for the best choice in the prisoner's dilemma (the one in which, if you do the same, we both do as well as possible). If you however leave me in the lurch I retaliate the next time around. I then return to being nice. This more or less altruistic behavior actually gets selected over the long run even where there is no close genetic relations, given certain initial assumptions (in particular, there must be more than one tit for tater.)

But there are all sorts of problems here too. Some of them are problems for NS in general, namely, its tendency to degenerate into triviality, even when invoked in the purely biological realm. Even when we do not know what environmental factors would have selected a certain trait (say, the plates on Stegosaurus), we assume it was selected since it has survived. It begins to look as though those traits have survival value which survive, and we know that because, behold, they have survived! Some explanation! What is needed is an account of what makes a trait good for survival which is independent of NS. Sometimes at least, in biology, we can find such independent explanations (there is one for the whiteness of a polar bear, for instance). But do we ever have them in sociobiology? Not so far. That is what gives it such a speculative quality. Maybe it is worse than that (speculation isn't always bad). Maybe what it gives us is merely a set of "just so" stories, made up after the fact. There are further reasons for thinking so.

Consider the enormous variety of human customs and mores. Is it plausible to think that all or most of this variety is the result of NS? Surely the differences between, say, Greeks and Italians could not be explained in terms of selection. And surely there are many different social forms with equivalent survival value. So what explains the presence of these particular customs and facts? Here NS seems much too general. It seems to have about the same relation to the things we want explained in human life as does Newtonian mechanics. To be sure, people are bodies in motion. However knowing the Newtonian laws doesn't tell me what I want to know about why Tony shot his Delia (twas on a Friday night). NS doesn't seem to do much better, except that it stimulates sometimes interesting imaginative constructions.

One of the reasons why it doesn't seem to do much better is as follows: suppose that NS is invoked to explain sexual jealousy (cf. the PBS series "The Human Quest"). My sexually jealous behavior should improve the chances for my genes, since I will keep my wife/partner away from other men, thus ensuring that her children have MY genes. But this explanation will only work on the assumption that people naturally tend towards infidelity. That might seem a safe assumption but it is not. It begs the question in favor of the view that people naturally tend towards anything whatsoever (that is part of what is in dispute here) Certainly many social forms manage to prevent it for the most part. How can we simply assume that such social forms were not present in, say, Pleistocene hunter/gatherer societies?

The future of Darwinian invisible hands seems cloudy at best. Some argue that it is the straw grasped after by those who are committed a-priori to a naturalistic view of things. Others argue that such a naturalistic view is at the very least a methodological constraint on anything that claims to be science, and in science even unpromising beginnings often turn out to be enormously fruitful.


8. Summary: Two kinds of Science and the Sciences vs. Religion and other "Human Values."

 

The sciences which arose in the 16th and 17th centuries, i.e. the new physics, astronomy, chemistry, seemed almost immediately to conflict with certain "human values." Humans could no longer think of themselves as at the "center" of the universe (Copernicus), scientific claims seemed to conflict with some religious beliefs, and the world view that developed out of the new physics seemed to reduce everything in the universe to cold mechanical forces. Teleology (the study of goals, purposes, ends) was driven out as the new science separated from the old. The result was an essentially meaningless universe, without any religious, ethical or metaphysical bearings.

The conflict between science and some human values, in particular religious values, increased as science gained in power and prestige. The ability of the new physicists to explain, predict (cf. Halley) and control nature seemed to many to be overwhelming proof that science had the truth and that older ways of thinking colored by religion and teleology were obsolete. The new methods stressed the construction and scientific testing of theoretical models and theoretical hypotheses.

The mechanistic picture of the universe associated with Newton gave way to some degree in the 20th century to less deterministic views, but new problems arose as scientists produced horrendous inventions (especially the nuclear bomb), made possible certain unethical and destructive experiments on the earth and on people, and in some cases openly attacked traditional ways of life and modes of thought.

The authority and prestige of science made its progress particularly threatening to certain human values, but that authority and prestige were themselves threatened by the development of studies in the history of science which suggested that the ideal of objectivity and impartial attention to evidence which supposedly enabled the growth of scientific knowledge might in fact be largely an illusion. On Kuhn's view, for instance, science does not progress over the long run, although there is progress within paradigms. (i.e. within normal science). By the end of the 20th century even the most exact sciences (physics ) have been put in question by constructivists, feminists and other thinkers with historical and sociological perspectives. Kuhn has been a major influence on these trends, even though he disassociates himself from the more extreme denials of scientific objectivity.

The recognition that science is not purely objective even in its most austere forms (physics) can be joined to an argument to the effect that when science conflicts with religious or other values it is often actually motivated by non-scientific commitments, or in Plantinga's terms, is a form of "Augustinian science." Important parts of biology might be Augustinian, as for example when it is claimed that a common genetic code must strongly confirm the theory of common ancestry. Most of physics on the other hand appears to be Duhemian. The French physicist Duhem was a methodological naturalist, but not a metaphysical one. So, it might be argued, parts of science may need to be methodologically naturalistic, but none need be metaphysically naturalistic. And when various kinds of Augustinian science arise, they can be challenged from outside science on philosophical or other grounds. It is arguable that the social sciences are more often than not, Augustinian.

In the last few centuries attempts to develop scientific studies of human nature have produced new and even more troubling conflicts with many deeply held human values. Some psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, economists and historians have attempted to produce "scientific" accounts of human behavior in which humans are sometimes pictured as little more than clusters of atoms obeying meaningless mechanical laws or at any rate as subject to forces over which they have no control. But these sciences have not succeeded in commanding the same degree of respect as the physical sciences. There has been continuous debate as to whether these sciences are really science at all, and many have held that they are merely pseudo-disciplines. Alternatively we could expand our notion of science, allowing in all sorts of "Augustinian" theories, and keep the label "science" for the social sciences.

Others have attempted to understand these "human sciences" as disciplines quite distinct from the exact sciences, as geisteswissenschaften rather than naturwissenschaften. These debates have been fuelled by the general inability of the social sciences to discover any interesting laws of behavior or produce any non-controversial explanations of behavior which improve on common sense. That inability seems to many to be a function of the irreducibility of the mental to the physical, the intentional to the non-intentional, the intensional to the extensional. Not that there have been no sustained attempts at such reductions. Skinnerian behaviorism attempted to use BL to explain behavior without making any mention of beliefs and desires, purposes, intentions etc. That attempt has been criticized so forcefully that it has few adherents left. It is doubtful whether the Skinnerians produced any examples of interesting laws or succeeded in producing interesting predictions beyond what could be produced by any competent folk psychologist. Folk psychology, using such natural intuitive principles as FL, seems to provide satisfactory explanations of much human behavior, and to enable a certain amount of prediction. But it does not seem to be subject to the kind of refinement and improvement in explanatory and predictive power and scope of laws which we find in the physical sciences.

Some in the social sciences nonetheless stick to folk psychology or to modes of explanation which depend heavily upon it. In particular interpretativism in the social sciences relies heavily upon FL and similar principles. Interpretation is an activity which applies to meaning. Behavior in the sense of action as opposed to mere reaction (winks as opposed to blinks) seems to have meaning or sense (cf. " what he did just didn't make sense") and understanding action is, arguably, more like understanding verbal utterances or written texts than it is like the understanding of nature in terms of laws (as per the ideal presented in the deductive nomological theory of scientific explanation ). Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation, interpretation both of texts and of human actions. It exploits the fact that most human mental phenomena seem to be closely connected to language, to the ability to represent the world with propositions, which is the very thing which distinguishes the intentional.

Others in the social sciences have thought that scientific progress might be possible by focusing on the behavior of groups or social "wholes" (thus, "holism") rather than individuals. But some who favored this approach, e.g. Durkheim, produced functional explanations of social facts. But the very notion of function is itself intentional. But what is needed for science, it seems, is elimination of all such mentalistic and teleological thinking, at least if physics is any example of what science is or should be.

It is also possible to give explanations of social facts in terms of the behavior of individuals through invisible hand explanations. Methodological individualists naturally prefer such strategies. Adam Smith devised this notion to explain how certain "group effects" (e.g. high social prosperity) could result from the actions of individuals who did not think of or intend those effects. But Smithian economics still explains what happens in the market place in terms of the desires and beliefs of people, and thus does not seem to move beyond folk psychology. Moreover it is difficult to see how Smithian approaches, or rational choice theory in general, could explain the existence of public goods. For the prisoner's dilemma shows that such goods should not arise if the assumptions of rational choice theory are true.

A different kind of explanation of social facts of a certain kind does move beyond folk psychology, namely what might be called Darwinian invisible hand explanations. Sociobiologists (SB)for example, argue that altruistic social practices, or the existence of public goods can be explained in terms of the operation of natural selection (NS) in the social domain. For while in biology selection generally is thought of as operating on individuals, it can operate on groups via kin selection. And even in groups of non-related individuals it is possible, given certain assumptions, that somewhat altruistic or trusting strategies such as tit for tat might be selected over more selfish strategies. It is thus at least conceivable that there might be sociobiological explanations of such facts as cross cousin marriage practices and the incest taboo.

There are however many problems with sociobiology. NS itself, even in the purely biological realm, has seemed to some to be threatened with triviality and non-falsifiability. But in biology it is at least sometimes possible to give independent accounts of what traits contribute to survival ( independent of NS, that is). That appears not to be the case with typical SB explanations. Moreover SB explanations are not subject to experimental test for obvious reasons.

The scientific study of human beings often seems to be a threat to ideals of human freedom and dignity. The threat becomes very real when scientists contemplate experimentation on humans, including experiments which require deception, invasion of privacy, infliction of various sorts of harms or withholding of benefits. That is to say, ethical values, which are primary among "human values" often stand in the way of work in the social sciences. It is in the light of such facts in particular that one needs to understand W.H. Auden's injunction: "Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit a social science."

 Author Information:

Norman Lillegard
Email: nlillega@utm.edu