The Philosophy of the Social Sciences

 

1. Explanation

What is the philosophy of science about? The task of science as the production of explanations; different accounts of explanation, psychological and logical; causal explanation and its analysis; causal laws and accidental generalizations.

 

2. Recipes for Scientific Progress

Mill’s ‘inductivist’ programme; Popper’s ‘conjecture and refutation’ model; T.S. Kuhn and scientific revolutions; Feyerabend and ‘anything goes.’ Post-empiricism.

 

3. Are there Social Laws?

What would social laws look like if they existed? Universality, generality, exactness: must they be in competition in the social sciences? Some candidate laws and their difficulties. Indeterminacy and unpredictability.

 

4. Reasons and Causes: Hermeneutics

Is social science essentially interpretive?  Verstehen from Dilthey via Weber to Winch. Are there constraints on valid interpretation; if so, what are they? If not, what makes for better and worse explanations? Fear of relativism.

 

5. Reasons and Causes: Rational Choice

The attractions of rational choice theory; its more obvious weaknesses and some simple rejoinders; are human beings ‘rational’? In how many different senses?

 

7. Wholes and Parts

Varieties of ‘holistic’ theory; holism of meaning versus holism of causation; roles, rules, and situations; what is (or was) ‘methodological individualism’? Point to point explanatory narratives and their variety. Marx vs Durkheim.

 

7. Social Evolution and Functionalism

Why does functionalism refuse to die gracefully? Varieties of functional theory. Assorted concepts of integration and assorted invisible hands. The attractions of evolutionary social theory.

 

8. Value Neutrality

Should the social sciences be ‘value-neutral’?  Can they be?  Description, interpretation, explanation, evaluation.

 

 

Reading:

To make life (a little) simpler, the lectures rest quite heavily on readings to be found in Michael Martin and Lee C. McIntyre (eds), Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science (MIT, 1994, 5th printing, 2001). Some of these are near-classics, others simply useful. Many of them are reprinted in other places. This collection is referred to below as M&M. What follows is divided into general text-books, background, and lecture-by-lecture reading.

 

Textbooks:

Martin Hollis, The Philosophy of Social Science: An Introduction (Cambridge, 1994)

David Braybrooke, The Philosophy of Social Science (Prentice-Hall, 1987)

Alexander Rosenberg, The Philosophy of Social Science (Westview Press, 2nd ed, 1995)

 

Classics:

John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Bks III and VI

Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method

Emile Durkheim, Suicide

Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences

 

Readings for Lectures:

 

1.    Mill, System of Logic; C.G. Hempel, “The Function of General Laws in History,” M&M, ch3; idem & Oppenheim, “Studies in the Logic of Explanation,” in Aspects of Scientific Explanation, ch 10;

 

2.    Karl Popper, Conjecture and Refutation, ch 1; T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd ed.), Imre Lakatos & Paul Feyerabend, Against Method

 

3.    M&M, chs 5,6, 8-10; Rosenberg,

 

4.    Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science; Charles Taylor, “Interpretation and the Sciences of Man,” M&M, ch 13; Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” M&M, ch 14  [M&M, Part III, throughout is useful.]

 

5.    M&M, part IV, ch 18, Lukes, “Some Problems about Rationality,” ch 19,     Føllesdal, “The status of Rationality Assumptions in Interpretation and in the Explanation of Action,” ch 20, Elster, “The Nature and Scope of Rational Choice Explanation.” Amartya Sen, Rationality and Freedom, ch 1. Donald Green & Ian Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice, (Yale UP, 1995)

 

6.   Popper, The Poverty of Historicism [the ur-text]; M&M, chs 27 (Durkheim), 28,    Watkins, “Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences,” 29, Lukes, “Methodological Individualism Reconsidered.”

 

7.    Reading: M&M, part V, omitting ch 26: (i.e., Hempel, “The Logic of Functional Analysis,” Dore, “Function and Cause,” Cohen, “Functional Explanation in Marxism,” Elster, “Functional Explanations in the Social Sciences.” Also, Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, ch 8

 

8.    M&M, chs 34-36 and 40. W.G. Runciman, A Treatise on Social Theory, vol I.

 

Course Objectives

 

The primary objective of the course is to introduce students to some issues in the philosophy of the social sciences, with as much discussion of the background of the philosophy of science more broadly as is fruitful. It is not anticipated that the course will make much difference to the students’ competence in handling research methods as such, but that it will make a good deal of difference to their fluency in making a choice of methods and in discussing the prospects of attaining a particular kind and level of understanding of their material.

 

The issues to be discussed include:

 

the nature and value of the philosophy of science; whether it can play a critical role as well as an analytical one, either in respect of the sciences generally or in respect of the social sciences in particular;

the supposed ‘backwardness’ of the social sciences and its causes;

recipes for progress in science and theories of progressive and degenerating research programmes;

‘naturalism’ and ‘anti-naturalism;’

the ‘hermeneutic turn’ and critical theory;

methodological individualism and methodological holism;

functionalism;

rational choice;

value-freedom and objectivity.

 

Alan Ryan

September 2004