Philosophy of anthropology and sociology

885 Pages·2007·7.82 MB·English

by  Turner S.P.

GENERAL PREFACE
Dov Gabbay, Paul Thagard, and John Woods
Whenever science operates at the cutting edge of what is known, it invariably
runsintophilosophicalissuesaboutthenatureofknowledgeandreality. Scientific
controversies raise such questions as the relation of theory and experiment, the
nature of explanation, and the extent to which science can approximate to the
truth. Within particular sciences, special concerns arise about what exists and
how it can be known, for example in physics about the nature of space and time,
and in psychology about the nature of consciousness. Hence the philosophy of
science is an essential part of the scientific investigation of the world.
In recent decades, philosophy of science has become an increasingly central
part of philosophy in general. Although there are still philosophers who think
that theories of knowledge and reality can be developed by pure reflection, much
current philosophical work finds it necessary and valuable to take into account
relevant scientific findings. For example, the philosophy of mind is now closely
tied to empirical psychology, and political theory often intersects with economics.
Thus philosophy of science provides a valuable bridge between philosophical and
scientific inquiry.
More and more, the philosophy of science concerns itself not just with general
issuesaboutthenatureandvalidityofscience,butespeciallywithparticularissues
that arise in specific sciences. Accordingly, we have organized this Handbook into
many volumes reflecting the full range of current research in the philosophy of
science. We invited volume editors who are fully involved in the specific sciences,
and are delighted that they have solicited contributions by scientifically-informed
philosophers and (in a few cases) philosophically-informed scientists. The result
is the most comprehensive review ever provided of the philosophy of science.
Here are the volumes in the Handbook:
Philosophy of Science: Focal Issues, edited by Theo Kuipers.
Philosophy of Physics, edited by Jeremy Butterfield and John Earman.
PhilosophyofBiology,editedbyMohanMatthenandChristopherStephens.
Philosophy of Mathematics, edited by Andrew Irvine.
Philosophy of Logic, edited by Dale Jacquette.
Philosophy of Chemistry and Pharmacology, edited by Andrea Woody and
Robin Hendry.
vi DovGabbay,PaulThagard,andJohnWoods
PhilosophyofStatistics,editedbyPrasantaS.BandyopadhyayandMalcolm
Forster.
Philosophy of Information, edited by Pieter Adriaans and Johan van Ben-
them.
Philosophy of Technological Sciences, edited by Anthonie Meijers.
Philosophy of Complex Systems, edited by Cliff Hooker and John Collier.
Philosophy of Earth Systems Science, edited by Bryson Brown and Kent
Peacock.
Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science, edited by Paul Thagard.
Philosophy of Economics, edited by Uskali M a¨ki.
PhilosophyofLinguistics,editedbyMartinStokhofandJeroenGroenendijk.
Philosophy of Anthropology and Sociology, edited by StephenTurner and
Mark Risjord.
Philosophy of Medicine, edited by Fred Gifford.
Detailsaboutthecontentsandpublishingscheduleofthevolumescanbefound
at http://www.johnwoods.ca/HPS/.
Asgeneraleditors,weareextremelygratefultothevolumeeditorsforarranging
such a distinguished array of contributors and for managing their contributions.
Production of these volumes has been a huge enterprise, and our warmest thanks
go to Jane Spurr and Carol Woods for putting them together. Thanks also to
Andy Deelen and Arjen Sevenster at Elsevier for their support and direction.

PREFACE
There was a time in the philosophy of social science when a volume like this
could cover the issues with half dozen essays. From the perspective of the early
twenty-first century, however, gaining a systematic overview of twentieth century
developments in the philosophy of the social sciences, and particularly the philos-
ophy of anthropology and sociology, is difficult. To a much greater extent than
most scientific disciplines, philosophical issues and perspectives have been a part
of the internal development of the fields. The large “methodological” literature
within the disciplines overlaps and often overwhelms the specifically philosophical
literature on the disciplines. As a result, it no longer seems appropriate to treat
the philosophical issues independently from the methodological and substantive
theoretical developments in the field.
The first generations of cultural anthropologists and qualitative sociologists
drewonGermanphilosophicaltraditionsofthoughtaboutinterpretation,culture,
and history. As hermeneutics and phenomenology developed, anthropologists and
sociologists continued to absorb and adapt their views. The analytic tradition
was influential as well. Wittgenstein’s ruminations on language and the mind
were picked up by Rodney Needham, Clifford Geertz, and Pierre Bourdieu. The
unity of science movement acknowledged sociology as one of the sciences to be
unified, and there was intense interaction between philosophers of science and so-
ciologists during certain periods. In the nineteen-fifties, for example, there was
a long-running seminar jointly conducted by Ernest Nagel and Paul Lazarsfeld,
with Robert Merton’s occasional participation, and Lazarsfeld engaged in corre-
spondencewith suchphilosophersof scienceasPatrick Suppes. The“positivistic”
sociologist George Lundberg was involved with the journal Philosophy of Science
in its early years, and was a personal sponsor of Carl Hempel. Hempel, in turn,
wrote on such subjects as functional explanation in publications devoted to so-
ciological theory. Sociologists were among the most avid consumers of Logical
Positivism, motivated by the project of “making sociology a science.”
Despite these strong connections, philosophical writing only intermittently en-
gaged anthropology and sociology, and rarely at the level of actual explanatory
practice. Discussion had its own internal direction and tended to revolve around
a stock set of examples. The primary concerns were either metaphysical (e.g. the
ontological status of social entities, or the analysis of intentionality) or epistemo-
logical (e.g. status of social theories, or the difference between social and natural
sciences). Towardtheendofthecentury,thischanged. Evenwithinstandardphi-
losophyofsciencetherelevanceofphysicsasamodelwaschallengedinsuchpapers
as Clark Glymour’s “Social Science and Social Physics” of 1983. The obsession
xii Preface
with the scientific status of sociology within sociology waned. Donald Davidson’s
“The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” placed issues that were previously spe-
cialisttopicsinthephilosophyofsocialscienceintothemainstreamofphilosophy.
Problemsofcausalanalysisinstatisticalsociologyemergedascoreproblemsinthe
philosophy of science. Feminist philosophy of science incorporated reasoning from
the sociology of knowledge. The anthropological concept of “practices” became a
standard usage in philosophy. Issues about the explanatory status of normative
concepts of rationality were shared between philosophy and social science. It is
now apparent that a philosophically adequate treatment of these issues needs to
be sensitive to the role that the key ideas play in the empirical disciplines.
This volume attempts to present the philosophy of anthropology and sociology
in the light of this on-going transformation of the field. Our aim has been to
provide a technically adequate background to the many philosophical issues that
ariseinrelationtoanthropologyandsociology. Wehavetriedtobemindfulofthe
history of these issues, which is often complex and deeply embedded in the histo-
riesoftherelevantdisciplines. Weareverypleasedthatthisoutstandinggroupof
contributors has done justice to the relationships among the philosophical ques-
tions, methodological debates, substantive empirical issues, and to the historical
development of philosophy, anthropology, and sociology in the twentieth century.
Thanks to Eileen Kahl and Steven Farrelly for their extensive efforts in copy
editing, indexing, and regularizing the texts. Thanks to Dov Gabbay, Paul Tha-
gard, and John Woods for the opportunity to edit this volume, and especially to
John Woods and Dawn Collins for their many useful interventions, as well as to
Jane Spurr for her work in getting the volume to press. The project was aided
by an opportunity to bring the authors together at a conference. We thank the
Emory University Philosophy Department’s Loemker Fund and the Emory Uni-
versity Graduate School for their generous support.
Stephen Turner and Mark Risjord
February 2006