Philosophy of social science
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The philosophy of social science considers the nature of confirmation and explanation in the social (or human) sciences, such as sociology, anthropology and political science. Philosophers of social science are often concerned with the differences and similarities between the social and the natural sciences, as well as the ontological significance of structure and agency.
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[edit] Epistemology
In any discipline, there will always be a number of underlying philosophical predispositions in the projects of scientists. Some of these predispositions involve the nature of social knowledge itself, the nature of social reality, and the locus of human control in action. [1]
Social sciences, at least in their classical guise, aim to understand human societies through scientific methods. The fundamental task for the philosophy of social science has thus been to question the extent to which positivism may be characterized as 'scientific' in relation to fundamental epistemological foundations. These debates also rage within contemporary social sciences with regard to subjectivity, objectivity, intersubjectivity and practicality in the conduct of theory and research. Philosophers of social science examine further epistemologies and methodologies, including realism, critical realism, instrumentalism, functionalism, structuralism, interpretivism, phenomenology, and post-structuralism.
Though essentially all major social scientists since the late 19th century have accepted the discipline faces challenges that are different from those of the natural sciences, the ability to determine causal relationships invokes the same discussions held in science meta-theory. Positivism has sometimes met with caricature as a breed of naive empiricism, yet the word has a rich history of applications stretching from Comte to the work of the Vienna Circle and beyond. By the same token, if positivism is able to identify causality, then it is open to the same critical rationalist non-justificationism presented by Karl Popper, which may itself be disputed through Thomas Kuhn's conception of epistemic paradigm shift.
A particularly famous criticism of sociological positivism in the cannon of literature on the philosophy of social science is found in Peter Winch's The Idea of Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (1958). Winch's Wittgensteinian work argues that social science, through the use of its particular languages, is little more than a style of, or interface for, philosophy, and thus largely metaphysical.
Max Weber and Georg Simmel pioneered the antipositivist perspective within sociology. Weber proposed that 'social action' is the fundamental building block of social phenomena, and thus the object of examination for sociologists through holistic and interpretative means. The linguistic and cultural turns of the mid-20th century marked a further step away from positivism, and a rise in increasingly abstract literary and hermeneutic material in social science, as well as so-called "postmodern" perspectives on the social acquisition of knowledge.
One underlying problem for the social psychologist is whether studies can or should ultimately be understood in terms of the meaning and consciousness behind social action, as with folk psychology, or whether more objective, natural, materialist, and behavioral facts are to be given exclusive study. This problem is especially important for those within the social sciences who study qualitative mental phenomena, such as consciousness, associative meanings, and mental representations, because a rejection of the study of meanings would lead to the reclassification of such research as non-scientific. Influential traditions like psychodynamic theory and symbolic interactionism may be the first victims of such a paradigm shift.
The philosophical issues lying in wait behind these different positions have led to commitments to certain kinds of methodology which have sometimes bordered on the partisan. Still, many researchers have indicated a lack of patience for overly dogmatic proponents of one method or another[2]. Social research remains extremely common and effective in practise with respect to political institutions and businesses. Michael Burawoy has marked the difference between public sociology, which is focused firmly on practical applications, and academic or professional sociology, which involves dialogue amongst other social scientists and philosophers. In recent years sociologists have frequently engaged with figures such as Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty, just as social philosophy has often met with social theory.
[edit] Ontology
Structure and agency forms an enduring debate in social theory: "Do social structures determine an individual's behaviour or does human agency?" In this context 'agency' refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and make free choices, whereas 'structure' refers to factors which limit or affect the choices and actions of individuals (such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, and so on). Discussions over the primacy of structure or agency relate to the very core of social ontology ("What is the social world made of?", "What is a cause in the social world, and what is an effect?"). One attempt to reconcile postmodern critiques with the overarching project of social science has been the development, particularly in Britain, of critical realism. For critical realists such as Roy Bhaskar, traditional positivism commits an 'epistemic fallacy' by failing to address the ontological conditions which make science possible: that is, structure and agency itself.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Cote, James E. and Levine, Charles G. (2002). Identity formation, Agency, and Culture, Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- ^ Slife, B.D. and Gantt, E.E. (1999) Methodological pluralism: a framework for psychotherapy research. Journal of clinical psychology, 55(12), pp1453-1465.
[edit] Bibliography
- Braybrooke, David (1986). Philosophy of Social Science. Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-663394-3.
- Flyvbjerg, Bent (2001). Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again. Cambridge. ISBN 052177568X.
- Hollis, Martin (1994). The Philosophy of Social Science: An Introduction. Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-44780-1.
- Little, Daniel (1991). Varieties of Social Explanation : An Introduction to the Philosophy of Social Science. Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-0566-7.
- Rosenberg, Alexander (1995). Philosophy of Social Science. Westview Harper Collins.
[edit] Journals
[edit] Conferences
[edit] Graduate Programs
[edit] Books
[edit] External links
- Philosophy of social sciences (Daniel Little's article for the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
- Philosophy of social sciences (Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online)
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