The Philosophy of Social Explanation

239 Pages·1973·28.81 MB·English

by  Alan Ryan

OXFORD READINGS IN PHILOSOPHY
Series Editor G. J. Warnock
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL EXPLANATION
Alsopublishedinthisseries
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MoralConcepts,editedbyJoelFeinberg
TheoriesofEthics,editedbyPhilippaFoot
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ThePhilosophyofLanguage,editedbyJ. R.Searle
SemanticSyntax,editedbyPieterA.M.Seuren
CausationandConditionals,editedbyErnestSosa
PhilosophicalLogic,editedbyP. F. Strawson
TheJustificationofInduction,editedbyRichardSwinburne
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THE PHILOSOPHY
OF SOCIAL
EXPLANATION
Editedby
ALAN RYAN
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
OxfordUniversityPress, WaltonStreet, OxfordOX26DP
OXFORD LONDON OLASOOW
NEWYORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON
IBADAN NAIROBI DARESSALAAM CAPETOWN
KUALALUMPUR SINGAPORE JAKARTA HONGKONG TOKYO
DELHI BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI
ISBN 19 875025
© OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1973
FirstPublished 1973
Reprinted 1976, 1978
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
J. W. ARROWSMITH LTD., BRISTOL, ENGLAND
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
I. TheIdeaofa Social Science
byAlasdair Maclntyre 15
II. Reason and Ritual
by Martin Hollis 33
III. Bringing Men BackIn
by George C. Homans 50
IV. Function and Cause
by R. P. Dore 65
V. IdealTypesand Historical Explanation
byJ. W. N. Watkins 82
VI. SocietalFacts
by Maurice Mandelbaum 105
VII. Methodological Individualism Reconsidered
by Steven Lukes 119
VIII. Assumptionsin EconomicTheory
byErnest Nagel 130
IX. Neutralityin Political Science
by Charles Taylor 139
X. Isa Scienceof Comparative Politics Possible?
byAlasdair Maclntyre 171
XI. WhatisStructuralism?
by W. G. Runciman 189
XII. ProblemsofInterpretive Sociology
byAlfred Schutz 203
Notesonthe Contributors 221
Bibliography 223
IndexofNames 227

INTRODUCTION
Itisall butdefinitiveofaphilosophical problemthat itsstatus should be
uncertain, andthatthereshould beconsiderabledoubtaboutwhat would
in principle count as a solution to it. On this criterion, the philosophy of
scienceinrecentyearshasdonemuchtoconfirmitsphilosophicalstanding
with widespread disagreement over the proper aims ofthe discipline. To
putitcrudely,thedisagreementturnsonwhetherthephilosophyofscience
isadescriptiveoranormativediscipline.Isitspropertaskthatofreporting
onthetactics ofdiscovery and thecanons ofexplanation which scientists
do employ, orthat oflaying down norms ofscientific proprietyto which
they oughtto conform, whether or not they do? Thefirst step in making
thisaccountlesscrudeis,ofcourse,torecognizethatnooneistobefound
occupyingtheextremepositions. It isasunattractivetoclaimthatscience
is just the sum of the activities of self-professed 'scientists' as it is to
pretend that it would do no damageto an account ofscientific activity if
no scientist could recognize in it even an approximatepicture ofhis own
practice. The history of science plainly contains a great deal of poor
science; in retrospect, scientists are often moved to condemn their own
performancesas'unscientific'.Yet,itwouldbedifficulttounderstandasa
philosophy of science one which did not recognize as scientific achieve-
mentsatleast mostofwhat scientistsand laymen accept assuch.1 Perhaps
the second necessary step is to recognizethat this dilemma characterizes
otherphilosophical disciplines, too. Themoralphilosopherwishesneither
to legitimate every moral position whatever nor to give an account of
moralitywhichmakeswhatweordinarilytaketobemoralpositionssimply
unrecognizableassuch.
Theimportanceofthisdilemmaforthephilosophyofthesocialsciences
is that it is frequently felt that the normative orcritical tendencies ofthe
philosophy ofscience operate with a fierceness which is not apparent in
discussions ofthe natural sciences. Philosophers, it might be said,justify
theachievementsof,say, physicswithamodelofscientificrectitudeanda
theory of explanation which they covertly derived from physics in the
firstplace.Buttheycriticizetheachievementsofpsychology,sociology,or
economics,notbyreferencetostandardsdrawnfromthosedisciplinesbut,
once again, by the standards drawn from physical science. Philosophers
11. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge
(Cambridge, 1970),passim.
2 INTRODUCTION
who resent the accusation that they have alternated between toadying to
the prestigious natural sciences and bullying the less prestigious social
sciences have several quite adequate defences, however. In the first place,
itisnottruethatall philosophers haveelevated the physical sciences into
models of epistemological and logical virtue. There has been a long
tradition which has stressed that in some respects we know more about
humanbehaviouralreadythanweshalleverknowaboutthenaturalworld.
On this view, the implied comparison between the developed state ofthe
physical sciences and the primitive state ofthe social sciences rests on an
illusion. Secondly, it is an adequate ad hominem retort to observe that
social scientists themselves have for years tried to model their work on
that of the physical scientist. Complaints that the social sciences have
generatednotriumphsof'socialengineering'torivalthefeatsofmechani-
calengineeringmadepossible byphysical scienceareheardas often from
social scientistsasfrom politicians orphilosophers. Thirdly, it iscertainly
plausible to argue that present differences in methodology, rigour, and
reliability are inessential and temporary differences between the social
and physical sciences. Social science is the natural science of social
life; and we naturally look to the most successful natural sciences
asthestandardofwhatwemightachieveandastheguidetohowwemight
achieveit.
It is manifestly inconsistent to rely on all of these defences simul-
taneously; buttheyallraisetheoneissuewhichhasobsessedphilosophers
ofthe social sciences: are the social sciences a branch or branches ofthe
natural sciences, and is the kind ofknowledge they produce the same as
that produced by the natural sciences? These are not clear questions.
A shortanswer, saythatbothsocial andnatural scientistslookforcausal
explanationsofempiricallyobservedphenomena, canaswellbedismissed
as a miserable play on 'causal' and 'explanation' as accepted as the
recognition ofa genuinesimilarity.Thefrequentclaimthat anaffirmative
answer to the question depends on our eventually 'reducing' the social
sciencestooneormorebranchesofappropriatephysicalsciencespresents,
as we shall see, some difficulties created by the opacity ofthe concept of
reduction involved. Yet, there is surely a common-sense assumption run-
ningthroughmuchoftheliteratureonthissubjectthatthesocialsciences
simplymust be, in principle, part ofthe complete science ofnature. This
feeling amounts to the claim that since men and their social dealings are
part ofthenatural order, theymust in principlebe amenableto explana-
tion in terms ofthe same sort ofnaturalistic principles that every aspect
ofnatureconformsto.Historically,thishasbeenthekeynoteofempiricism,
andfromKantonwardsithasbeenmetbyavarietyofIdealistarguments
INTRODUCTION 3
intended to show that we are at any rate not merely part ofthe natural
order. These historical origins of the argument go some way towards
explainingthe shockedtones in which contemporaryempiricists confront
—
the denial ofthe 'naturalness' ofhuman behaviour as ifthe denial was
eitherwilfullyobscure,orthefirststepininvokingthesupernatural. None-
theless,the claimthat thesocial sciencesare, orcan be,part ofthecorpus
of the natural sciences is itself obscure.
The defence ofwhat is sometimes called 'jjnified science' is often am-
biguousasbetweentheclaimthatthereisaunityofscientificmethodand
the claim that ultimately all the disparate sciences ought to be 'reduced'
to some single science. The success of Newtonian mechanics and its
accompanying, if not wholly congruous, atomism has long been the
symbol of the ambition to derive all the sciences from the science of
matter in motion. On this analogy, it has been a frequent ambition to
reducesociologytopsychologyandpsychologytophysiology,thuspaving
the wayTor a complete reduction of the social sciences to the physical
sciences. The propriety ofthis programme has been an extremely bloody
battlefield in the philosophy ofscience. But one gain from the discussion
has been the demonstration that sincethe terms belongingto the science
which is to be 'reduced' areofa different logical category fromthose of
the scienceto which it is proposed to 'reduce' it, the process ofreduction
cannotbestraightforwardlydeductive.2Rather,itrequireswhathavebeen
called 'bridge-statements', theoretical and therefore empirical linking
—
propositions to the effect that one kind of phenomena say changes in
—
the colour ofa light source are also, or can properly be understood as,
—
phenomenaofadifferentkind saychangesintherateofphotonemission.
The argument over the extent to which reduction can be assimilated to
deductionneednotconcernushere, savetopointoutthatonthisreading
there is no question of any of the 'reduced' sciences becoming merely
branches, or special cases, of the science to which they are reduced. To
reduce the social sciences to the natural sciences would therefore be the
result of empirical discoveries which expanded the scope of the natural
sciences, not of philosophical legislation. Chemistry is not a branch of
physics in any straightforward sense, even though chemists take it for
granted that there is some kind of physical explanation of chemical
phenomena.Similarly,sociologywillnotbecomeamerebranchofphysio-
logy even though it is surely likely that we shall eventually know more
about how our social life depends upon the behavioural possibilities of
organismsconstructedlikeourselves.
2E. Nagel, The Structure ofScience (London, 1961), pp. 358-66.
4 INTRODUCTION
If the claims of reduction are not clear, the claims of the unity of
methodareagooddealclearer.Theyaretheclaimthat thelogical proper-
ties ofan adequate explanation are the same throughout science, and the
attendant assumption that any methodological requirements valid in the
natural sciences will be equally valid in the social sciences. The most
famous defence of this claim is. perhaps, Mill's System ofLogic, but it
has been equally vigorously defended by Popper and Hempel in the
past fewyears.3 Briefly, theclaim is that theessenceofexplanatoryvi—rtue
lies in deductively relating the cxptanandum what is to be explained to
explanans—ihc laws and conditions explaining it. Hence the proper
method of science is the constant testing of explanatory principles by
matching derived predictions against observed results, whether these
results are obtained experimentally or thrown up by nature. Of course,
there will be many differences in the characteristic interests of particular
sciences, both natural and social; but these neither fall into categories
whichcoincidewiththedivisionbetweenthesocialandthenaturalsciences
nordotheyrequireanysubstantial modificationofthisdeductiveaccount.
Thus, forexample, historians are often said to be interested in explaining
—
single casesby_ja£g/)7>/£ laws, rather than infinding or testing them but,
it can fairly be said that a good deal of natural history is equally ideo-
graphic. Thus, much ofthe so-called 'theory ofevolution' is a matter of
applying lawsto asingleprocess, a sequence ofuniqueevents, and in this
way itsresemblanceto the practiceofhistorians isconsiderable. (And, on
this view, Engels's claim that Marxwas the Darwinofthe social sciences
would not be a surprising one.) The oft-asserted, if not quite accurate,
claimthatthesocial sciencesarenon-experimental scienceswouldmarkat
most a practical distinction concerning theeasewith which wecan obtain
evidence, it obviously being simpler to manufacture most chemical reac-
tions than to rerun the Russian Revolution for the sake of testing our
understanding of it. Practical difficulties aside, then, what makes any
discipline scientific is the seriousness with which it pursues the deductive
explanation ofits observations and the seriousness with which it tests its
principlesagainst its observations. Thereisnoclaimthattheexplanations
of social scientists look like deductive arguments; but it is claimed that
they can in principle be turned into deductive arguments, a move which
both elucidates their explanatory force and renders their covering laws
amenable to test. The extreme diffidence with which social scientists
usually proceed when asked to formulate their explanations in this form
3e.g.J.S. Mill,ASystemofLogic(London, 1961),VI.i.2;K.Popper, ThePoverty
ofHistoricism (London, 1957), sect. 29; C. G. Hempel, 'The Function of General
LawsinHistory',JournalofPhilosophy, xxxix(1942), 35-48.