Showing papers in "Philosophy of the Social Sciences in 1984"

Philosophy and the Mirror of Rorty

Abstract: VIH. The proof of this pudding is not in the eating but, supposedly, in the history of philosophy. In the excitement generated by the effort to conceal his vicious circle, it has escaped our hero that in eschewing knowledge as the philosophers’ domain, he has deprived himself of the right to appeal to historical knowledge. IX. The Conversation of Mankind. A tragi-comedy entitled Kibitzing in one act. The resemblance between the opinions expressed by the characters and some real opinions is not accidental.

Some Problems with Falsificationism in Economics

Abstract: If Blaug is caught in an inconsistency (and I believe that he is), he must give up either his position on philosophy or his optimism about the prospects for putting falsificationism to work in economics. Though Hands’s points are well-taken, they would not persuade a convinced Popperian. An advocate of falsificationism would first note that Popper has responded to his growth of knowledge critics, none of whose positive programmes have themselves escaped unscathed from criticism. He would next argue that, since falsificationism is a prescriptive methodology, its failure to be tried so far should not count against it: the point of a prescriptive methodology is to change behaviour, after all. And finally, a proponent would point out that the general claim that falsificationism may not work in the social sciences is unimpressive unless it is supported by specific reasons why one should expect it to be unsuccessful. To complete the task begun in Hands’s review, it is necessary to demonstrate that falsificationism is, indeed, an inapplicable methodological stance for economics. After briefly describing falsificationism, such a demonstration is attempted.

Testability, Flexibility: Kuhnian Values in Scientists' Discourse Concerning Theory Choice

Abstract: In this paper we will examine this argument in some detail. It will be suggested that there are important tensions in Kuhn’s argument, centred around the question of how far scientific values can constrain the activity of theory choice. A close examination of the way a particular group of scientists use the value of testability will be developed to illustrate certain fundamental difficulties with the values-as-constraint model. As

Balance Theory: Progress and Stagnation of a Social Psychological Theory:

Abstract: The development of theories in the social sciences follows an apparently lawlike pattern: at the outset some more or less precise theoretical ideas are advanced. If these elicit the attention of other scientists, the following happens: some authors catch on to these ideas, modify them and conduct empirical investigations to test them. Further modifications and empirical investigations follow. After some years there exist a great many different versions of the initial ideas and numerous empirical investigations. Nobody knows how exactly the many variants differ, which research results confirm or falsify which variant and which variant is superior. The interest of the scientists in the respective theory declines and they turn to other questions. There exist once more a great many unsolved problems and the expectation of finding a theory nearly

The Role of Conservation Principles in Twentieth-Century Economic Theory:

Abstract: once insisted that, ’There is nothing in economics corresponding to either momentum or energy, or their conservation principles in mechanics’.2 In contrast, Paul Samuelson in his seminal Foundations of Economic Analysis suggested that variation of the demand for a factor with a change in its price was analytically similar to thermodynamic variation in the pressure, volume and temperature of an ideal gas.3 3

Can Indirect Realism be Demonstrated in the Psychological Laboratory

Abstract: The psychological experimenter has his apparatus of lamps, tuning forks, and chronoscope, and an observer on whose sensations he is experimenting. Now the experimenter by hypothesis (and in fact) knows his apparatus immediately, and he manipulates it; whereas the observer (according to the theory) knows only his own ’sensations’, is confined, one is requested to suppose, to transactions within his skull. But after a time the two men exchange places: he who was the experimenter is now suddenly shut up within the range of his ’sensations’, he has now only a ’representative’ knowledge of the apparatus; whereas he who was the observer forthwith enjoys a windfall of omniscience. He now has an immediate experience of everything around him, and is no longer confined to the sensations within his skull. Yet, of course, the

The Autonomy of the Mentally Ill: A Case-Study in Individualistic Ethics

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to show the futility of debates about the morality of enforced treatment in psychiatry because all participants accept a framework I shall call ’individualistic ethics’. This framework has the all-too-convenient property of endorsing contradictory answers. Hence fruitful debate will only come when the framework is challenged. In the last quarter of a century a number of writers have registered forceful complaints against psychiatric practices, and particularly against enforced treatment. A number of variants of this complaint exist but most of them attack psychiatry on the basis of an individualistic ethic. Not without justice, Thomas S. Szasz is viewed as the leader of this trend of thought that understands mental illness as, among other things, a deliberately chosen way of life. An individualistic ethic views the individual as autonomous, as the sole agent responsible for his actions even when mentally ill. Furthermore, such an ethic must regard forcible treatment of the mentally ill as utterly unacceptable, since it deprives the patient of autonomy. Alfred Adler seems to have been the first to view mental illness as, among other things, a way of life, and to integrate this view into a general theory of mental health and disease. According to Adler, one’s life-style, that is, one’s way of perceiving and of acting in the world, namely, one’s way of communication-with one’s self and with one’s fellow humans-reflects the very meaning one gives to one’s life.2 2

Blaug's Economic Methodology:

Abstract: Mark Blaug is one of the few economists whose perspective on ’economic methodology’ has been profoundly influenced by recent developments in the philosophy of natural science For instance, Blaug was the first economist to introduce the work of the influential philosopher of science Imre Lakatos to the American economic profession. He is also unique for including a detailed discussion of current philosophy of science in his popular history of economic thought textbook.2 2

Critical Theory and Sociological Theory

Abstract: J. Habermas’ new two volume work entitled ’Theory of Communicative Action’2 is most imposing. This isn’t just due to its enormous length and its examination of a large amount of highly diverse materials, such as theories of argument in philosophy, speech-act theory, and discussions of method in sociology and sociological theory. Rather one is struck by the fact that one dominant theme remains present throughout: the possibility and failure of rationalization in developed industrial societies. Habermas takes the daring step of fully integrating his own researches with Max Weber’s examination of the history of ’okzidental rationalization’. His argument aims at a reconstitution of critical social theory by showing how its older tradition was too dependent on Weber for it to realize the need for a more differentiated concept of rationality (and of processes of rationalization) than Weber (or Lukacs following Weber) could offer. Habermas endeavours to resolve this dependency by addressing sociology much more systematically than has ever been done before in the history of critical social theory. A critical theory of society reconstitutes itself insofar as it makes its foundations explicit and shows the relevance of this form of discourse for a theory of society geared toward the grasp of substantial problems in the society, such as the conflict-full history of ’okzidental rationalization’.

Genetic Epistemology and the Child's Understanding of Logic

Abstract: Philosophers have tended to ignore the epistemological theory of Jean Piaget rather than to support or refute it. Some (Popper 1979) state the case for a biologically based epistemology without reference to such works as (Piaget 1950, 1971). Some (Feyerabend 1975; Churchland 1979) do refer to Piaget’s work but conduct their philosophical discussion in isolation from it. Explicit consideration of Piaget’s views by Hamlyn (1967, 1978), Mischel (1971), Rotman (1977) and Boden (1979) is the exception rather than the rule. The discussion initiated in Philosophy of the Social Sciences by Johnson (1976, 1978) is, therefore, wel-

Durkheim as a Methodologist Part II - Collective Forces, Causation, and Probability

Abstract: same category. But his response to these concerns is sharply limited. He argues only that there is a common feature to all of the things he places in the category, a ’collective aspect’ which he construes in each case as involving ’consciousness’. He declines to give conceptual or philosophical arguments about the nature of the conscious’ , or place it within any ontological scheme. His motivations for classing social facts in the category of facts of consciousness are obvious enough. Doing so avoids a painful set of difficulties over causality. For instance, if there are ’laws’ of sociology, there must be some medium in which these laws operate, such that a causal force may be transmitted from one object to another. Conceiving of social facts as facts of consciousness avoids well known Cartesian

The System-Property Theory of Goal-Directed Processes

Abstract: Various philosophers and scientists have objected to the practice of ascribing goal-directed behaviour to biological systems. Such objections have rested in part on the assumption that ascriptions of goal-directedness are inherently mentalistic. On this assumption, it is patently anthropomorphic, for example, to describe an amoeba’s behaviour as goal-directed. Notwithstanding this line of objection, talk of ’goal-directedness’ remains common in the biological sciences. In response to this situation some philosophers have proposed an interpretation of ’goal-directedness’ which treats such ascriptions as a species of non-mentalistic causal-mechanical explanation. Ernest Nagel, in The Structure of Science, and more recently in Teleology Revisited, offers such an explication in an effort to demonstrate the legitimacy of talk of ’goal-directed behaviour’ in the biological sciences.1 Such an explication has obvious implications for similar ascriptions in the social sciences. In this paper I will argue that Nagel’s theory does not provide an adequate treatment of ’goal-directed behaviour’.

Naturalism as a Philosophy of Social Science

Abstract: David Papineau’s For Science in the Social Sciences is a solid, clearheaded, well-organized presentation of the view that ’the social sciences can and ought to conform to the standards set by the natural sciences’ (p. 1). Such a presentation requires that one offer both an account of what is essential to the natural sciences, and an analysis of what is distinctive about social phenomena to see if explaining them requires abandoning or transcending the natural scientific approach. Papineau accomplishes both of these tasks. In Chapter Two he outlines

Racism, Ethics and the Subversive Nature of Anthropological Inquiry:

Abstract: 1 In a critical reaction to the various new rules and regulations concerning research, Wax (1977) underlines the degree to which they have brought about an expansion of administrative procedures and university bureaucracy, while at the same time restricting the ’hard-won rights of academic freedom’. He also emphasizes the fact that such rules and regulations were introduced ’without prior consultation with professional associations and without regard to social-scientific reviews of the moral questions and dilemmas of their researches’. Although Wax concludes with a novel suggestion for dealing with the ethical issue—requiring fieldworkers to provide a detailed account of their methods and findings several months after beginning a project, rather than prior to it—there is a reactionary tone in the paper with which I do not agree. That is, anthropology is portrayed as a discipline that has little to answer for with regard to ethical issues; the implication is that it has always been morally responsible, and thus there is little reason

On the Indeterminacy of Action

Abstract: Whereas Quine’s radical translation argument has provoked lively interest about its consequences for what may be construed loosely as anthropological concerns, discussion of these issues has centered on, and most often been limited to, the putative effects the truth of this indeterminacy thesis would have on methodological aspects of tbcoretical and field linguistics, and on procedures for capturing, reconstructing and comparing cognitive patterns and conceptual schemes. Quine’s arguments have attracted relatively little attention with respect to their application to the characterization of actions and social practices. This neglect might be considered vindicated in part by citation of Quine’s observation that his ’position is not that alien cultures are inscrutable. Much can be determined about a culture by leaving language alone and observing non-verbal customs and taboos and artifacts’.’ But while alien cultures may not be judged totally inscrutable, the theses Quine has advocated indicate that alien cultures are considerably less scrutable than many ethnographers, anthropologists and philosophers have recognized. Spelling out the extent of the cultural inaccessibility to which Quine’s indeterminacy theses commit us is the aim of this paper. To do this, I will present three arguments, each suggested by Quine’s radical translation argument, to support the claim that an inscrutability similar to that which is said to be endemic to reference and meaning is also found in action and practice, and that the sort of indeterminacy which haunts linguistic translation inhabits (and inhibits) the individuation of actions and the identification of social practices. Next, I will turn to a discussion of some of the ramifications of these arguments, especially as they relate to anthropological endeavours, and also discuss some of the possible responses to these arguments. I will begin with a brief summary of some of the salient features of Quine’s radical translation argument.

Problématique des Méthodes de la Rationalisation dans les Organisations

Abstract: concept que celle du consensus qu’il reçoit, lorsque ce consensus existe. Dans tous les Il est aujourd’hui fréquent d’évoquer les échecs des projets de rationalisation menés dans les organisations et de commenter les insuffisances des prescriptions que formule pour y remédier la recherche dans ce domaine. Un examen attentif des études spécialisées portant sur ce thème révèle que des postulats essentiellement objectivistes étayent à la fois la pratique et la recherche de la rationalisation organisationnelle. Le propos de cet article est d’indiquer les raccourcis empruntés par

Philosophy, Psychology and Piaget: A Reply to Loptson and Kelly

Abstract: P. J. Loptson and I. W. Kelly (1984) contend that my paper (Smith 1984) states plausible views which are inadequately defended. I will briefly comment on, so as to reject, their main arguments which can be conveniently reviewed in the following three sections: (A) philosophical epistemology, (B) modal argument and (C) Piaget’s theory. In brief, I still maintain that philosophical claims are vulnerable to psychological claims, for example those arising from the work of Jean Piaget, about the way in which knowledge arises.

Foreign Policy as a Goal Directed Activity

Abstract: tional environment. [Modelski 1962, p. 6.] American foreign policies comprise the totality of purposes and commitments by which the United States, through its constitutionally designated authorities, seeks by means of influence, power, and sometimes violence to deal with foreign states and problems in the international environment. [Seabury 1965, p. 7.] Foreign policy is conceived to be a course of action that duly constituted officials of a national society pursue in order to preserve or alter a situation in the international system in such a way that is consistent with a goal or goals decided

The Role of Problems and Problem Solving in Popper's Early Work on Psychology

Abstract: With the publication in 1979 of Sir Karl Popper’s first, and long unpublished, work, Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie, a renewed interest in the development of his philosophy also seems to have got under way. Thus we find various historical hints in the Festschrift published in 1982 in honour of Sir Karl’s 80th anniversary, and with reference to his early works in psychology and education we find in Jurgen August Alt’s monograph, Die Früschriften Poppers, 1982, an excellent account of Popper’s scientific preoccupations during his Lehrjahren, and the time right after, as well as the influence they had on his later philosophy.’ i

Genetic Epistemology and Philosophical Epistemology

Abstract: We write in response to Leslie Smith’s paper ’Genetic Epistemology and the Child’s Understanding of Logic’, part of which argued against an earlier paper (Kelly 1981) written by one of us. A view we think other commentators on the psychological theories and ideas of Piaget and his followers share with us is that, while there is much in these theories and ideas that is interesting, appealing, and in many instances not implausible, the evidence that is offered in support of them is very often, completely inadequate to do so. Although it is sometimes tempting to see Piaget’s theories as not amenable to scientific confirmation or refutation (cf. Ennis 1978)-as non-scientific because consistent with all observational evidence-this is not in fact the view we take. We think Piaget’s ideas are, again, in many respects attractive, reasonable, and genuinely scientific-but simply without genuine evidential support in many instances. Smith (1984) asks two questions and offers his paper as answers to them. They

Periodization, Holism and Historicism: A Reply to Jacobs

Abstract: Struan Jacobs (Jacobs 1983) takes issue with parts of a paper in which I maintained that Popper has in his later work on emergence come to adopt positions outlined but rejected in his The Poverty of Historicism (Tilley 1982). Jacobs’s quarrel is with the suggestion (a) that Popper has embraced ‘periodization’-the notion that regularities are confined to periods, (b) that he has embraced ‘holism’-the notion that parts cannot properly be understood when abstracted from the totalities to which they belong, and (c) that the schema Pi T. T. E.E. -~ P2 is an historicist law. I deal with each of these in turn.

Philosophizing About Sex

Abstract: Professor Hunter has taken on a most intriguing and challenging task, that of examining our new, or should we say with him, evolving, sexual ethics in the light of analytical and linguistic philosophy. Moral philosophers of course have throughout the ages addressed themselves to sexual questions, whether it be Plato in the Republic or Bertrand Russell, in that still thought-provoking book, Marriage and Morals. But in Hunter’s case we have a fundamentally epistemological and linguistic theory (or technique) addressing itself to everyday problems of life, with the aim of refuting the commonly held belief that the prevailing schools of philosophy, in the English-speaking countries at least, are merely playing with words and outré concepts to the neglect of the supposedly traditional concerns of philosophy. It is a brave attempt to answer Sir Alfred Ayer’s criticism of modern philosophers when he notes ’the unfortunate disparity between the richness of their technique and the increasing poverty of the material on which they are able to exercise it’.’ No discussion of morals, of course, can be value-free. It can, on the other hand, be free of inconsistencies; it can evince rigorous logic and the close analysis of generally unexamined and vague concepts. This is part of the task Hunter has set himself. One should add that an interesting by-product of Hunter’s work is a painless introduction to the techniques of logical analysis and linguistic philosophy here applied to problems that concern the modern man and

Book Reviews : Forms of Explanation. Rethinking the Questions in Social Theory. By ALAN GARFINKEL. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981. Pp. 184. $16.00:

Abstract: Alan Garfinkel, a student of Hilary Putnam’s, has outlined for us a philosophy of explanation in the style of Putnam. ’Style’ is the appropriate term, for the text is distinctive primarily for its adherence to Putnam’s special philosophical and rhetorical manner, including such features as the analogical use of examples from arcane branches of physics or mathematics with some intrinsic interest but

Elster, Rationality and the Rational Choice Approach in the Social Sciences

Abstract: In the four essays in this collection Elster deals with what he calls the ’descending sequence of perfect rationality, imperfect rationality, problematic rationality and irrationality’. The conception is fascinating, and so is its execution. I shall criticize Elster’s analysis on each of the different levels. However, as my criticism will in most cases in fact support his case against his own doubts, these criticisms can hardly be viewed as distracting from the importance of the book. Perfect rationality is analyzed in terms of the capacity for global maximization vs. the possibility of merely local maximizing. Here a locally maximizing ’machine’ is one which has to accept a favourable mutation and hence cannot wait

Rethinking History: For and Against Marx:

Abstract: ness of Giddens’ contributions and to their preoccupation with philosophical issues. Such objections are to some extent countered by A Contemporarv Critique of Historical Materialism, in which Giddens’ concerns are as historical and political as they are philosophical, as substantive as they are abstract. Nevertheless there are, I believe, a number of difficulties in the views advanced by Giddens. Some of these difficulties are expressed as tensions within his own work, while others assume the form of arguments which are insufficiently precise. For the sake of brevity, I shall limit my critical remarks to three themes: the theory of structuration, the analysis of capitalism, and the critique of evolutionary theory. In laying down the contours of a theory of structuration. Giddens has made an invaluable contribution to social theory. He has recast the old problem of the relation between the individual and society in new and constructive terms; he has elaborated a standpoint from which many other theoretical approaches can be seen as reductive or one-sided. By conceiving of structure as ’rules and resources’ which actors draw upon in their everyday activities, he has highlighted both the way in which structure is productive of action and the way in which action, reciprocally, reproduces structure. The difficulty is that as soon as one turns to a more concrete analysis of the social world, this attractive account of the ’duality of structure’ seems to be inadequate. Already in Central Problems in Social Theory Giddens found it necessary to introduce the idea of the ’structural elements’ of, for example, the capitalist mode of production, such as private property, capital and the labour contract; and he referred to these elements as the ’structural principles’ which govern the institutional organization of a society. The concept of structure is further ramified in A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, where Giddens distinguishes three levels of ’structural analysis’. At the most abstract level, one can study structural principles: ’To study the structural principles involved in the reproduction of a society across time-space is to analyse the modes of differentiation and articulation of the institutions which constitute that society’ (Contemporary Critique. p. 54). A less abstract level of structural analysis may concern itself with particular ’sets’ or ’clusters’ of rules and resources. On a more concrete level still, one can attempt to identify certain ’axes of structuration’, for instance the axes of class structuration which Giddens examined in The Clasps Str-uctrrro of the AdB’llI1Ced Societies (London: Hutchinson, 1973). However, in distinguishing between these three levels of structural analysis, Giddens appears to exacerbate the problem which the theory of structuration was, above all, supposed to resolve. The study of ’rules and resources’ now becomes only one level of ’structural analysis’, a level whose connection with the other two levels is by no means clear; and hence it would seem unsatisfactory to view the relation between action and structure in terms of actors drawing upon the rules and resources which, in Giddens’ original conception, constitute structures. It is my opinion that such difficulties can be overcome only by abandoning Giddens’ original conception of structure and replacing it with a more abstract notion focussed on the idea of structural elements and principles. This would largely accord with the practical analyses in A Contemporary Critiqlle c)f~Hlsll)I’IC’CtI ,’l~lcetc·ricrli.sm, where Giddens rarely (if ever) formulates anything like a ’rule’ in his study of the structural properties of societies. It would also prepare the way, I believe, for developing a more satisfactory account of the relation between action and structure, an account which would nevertheless preserve the spirit of Giddens’

Social action-functions

Abstract: 1. A functional explanation of the presence of an item (e.g., behaviour) is typically an explanation telling us that it is there because it has such and such a function in some suitable system. Before we can try to spell out this kind of functional explanation we obviously must say something about what it is for an item to have a function in a system. Function-talk abounds in biology, as we all know. From there it was borrowed by the social sciences especially by those social scientists who compared social systems to biological organisms. Our aim below will be to study social functions or, rather, action-functions in the case of collectives of agents (such as social groups) and social institutions. There have been several attempts to characterize functions in recent philosophical literature. It seems that at least the following types of characterization can plausibly be distinguished (cf. Achinstein, 1977b): (1) the good-consequence doctrine, (2) the goal doctrine, and (3) the explanation doctrine. The Aristotelian good-consequence doctrine, advocated recently by, for example, Hempel (1965) and Woodfield (1976), can be taken to basically assert the following. The (or a) function of an item A (in a system S) is to do something X if and only if A does X (in S) and doing X (in S) confers some good upon S (or perhaps upon something associated with S, e.g., its user in the case of artifacts). According to the goal doctrine, the (or a) function of A (in S) is to do X if and only if A does X (sin S) and doing X (in S) is or contributes to some goal which A (or S) has (or which the user, owner or designer of A (or S) has). A well known representative of this goal-view is Nagel (1961; 1977). One of the leading advocates of the explanation doctrine is Wright (1976). His version of it can be summarized as follows. The function of A is to do X if and only if A is there because it does X, and X is a consequence of A’s being there. Achinstein (1977b) has discussed the above doctrines in a comprehensive and penetrating way. He has provided criticisms of each of them to the effect that, at least without some modification, none of them can be regarded as tenable. Because of the availability of Achinstein’s lucid discussion I shall not here go deeply into these doctrines. Let me just briefly present some examples which serve to indicate the faultiness of the above formulations of these views. Consider thus a sewing machine

Processed World: Technology and Culture in the Thought of Marshall McLuhan

Abstract: technology begins with his transposition of the literary principle of metaphor/metonymy (the play between structure and process) into a historical methodology for analyzing the rise and fall of successive media of communication. In McLuhan’s world, novels are the already obsolescent content of television; writing ’turned a spotlight on the high, dim Sierras of speech’;1 the movie is the ’mechanization of movement and gestures just as much as photography is the ’mechanization of the perspective painting and the arrested eye’ .3 To read McLuhan is to enter into a vortex of the critical, cultural imagination, where ’fixed perspective’ drops off by the way, and where everything passes over instantaneously into its opposite. Even the pages of the texts in Explorations, The Medium is the Massage, Through the Vanishing Point, or From Clichi to Archetype are blasted apart, counter-blasted actually, in an effort to make of the act of reading itself a more subversive act of the artistic imagination. Faithful to his general intellectual project of exposing the invisible environment of the technological sensorium, McLuhan sought to make of the text a ’counter-gradient’ or ’probe’ for forcing to the surface of consciousness the silent structural rules, the ’imposed assumptions’ of the technological environment within which we are both enclosed and ’processed’. In The Medium is the Massage; McLuhan insisted that we cannot understand the technological experience from the outside. We can only comprehend how the electronic age ’works us over’ if we ’recreate the experience’, in depth and mythically, of the processed world of technology.