Causation and Explanation in Social Science

The dispute between the empiricist and interpretivist conceptions of the social sciences is properly conceived not as a matter of reduction or covering laws. Features specific to the social sciences include the following. Explanations of human behavior make reference to intentional causation; social phenomena are permeated with mental components and are self-referential; social science explanations have not been as successful as those in natural science because of their concern with intentional causation, because their explanations must be identical with the propositional content of the mind of the actor, and because a social phenomenon exists only if people believe it exists. Elements of an apparatus necessary to analyze this problematic social ontology are given and include selfreferentiality, constitutive rules, collective intentionality, linguistic permeation of the facts, systematic interrelationships among social facts, and primacy of acts over objects.

The debate about explanations in social and human sciences is multifaceted. In my view the fundamental dispute concerns deep metaphysical convictions about the relations between individuals and society and how one conceives a human being, a person. The dividing line goes between those who conceive individual human beings as basically independent of society and other persons, (which seems to be implicit in the liberal political tradition), and those who rejects this view, holding that a human being is constituted by its social relations. The former view is taken for granted by thinkers in the liberal tradition, and latter view is clearly expressed by Marx and is also stated by Aristotle. These views give rise to different methodological views regarding scientific explanations; those who conceive man to be constituted by its social relations are naturally methodological collectivists, while those who think of people as independent individuals are methodological individualists. The difference concerns what is explanans and explanandum: collectivists hold that explanans are social structures and explanandum consists of individual’s actions, whereas methodological individualists have it the other way round: explanans consists of individual’s actions and explanandum consists of social structures and facts.

Critics of functional explanations in social science maintain that such explanations are illegitimate unless a mechanism is specified. Others argue that mechanisms are not necessary for causal inference and that functional explanations are a type of causal claim that raise no special difficulties for testing. I show that there is indeed a special problem that confronts testing functional explanations resulting from their connection to second-order causal claims. I explain how mechanisms can resolve this difficulty, but argue that this does not provide support for methodological individualism since it is not necessary that the mechanisms be described in terms of individual interactions.

In this paper we examine the question of whether complexity-like explanations can be applied to the psychology of individuals, and its implications for the scope of complexity explanations of social phenomena. We start by outlining two representational-cum-computational models of the mind—a symbolic model and a networks or connectionist one—and their pros and cons. Based on this we then outline a radical, non-representational and non-computational alternative model that has been gaining ground recently, and which has significant affinities with complexity explanations in social science. Deploying neo-Kantian considerations, we then argue that due to the discursivity, or conceptual dimension of our cognitive system, the radical alternative must be incorrect insofar as humans are concerned. Indeed, human psychology must involve, at least partly, a representational understanding of the sort provided by the symbolic model. Relatedly, we show how the discursiviry of human cognition complicates our psychology and makes it difficult to account for. Finally, we briefly address the question of how the complicated nature of individual psychology, implied by human discursivity, may affect complexity explanations of social behavior.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the nature of explanations as given in both natural and social sciences. It discusses models of explanation adopted in natural and social sciences. The author also elaborates upon naturalistic and anti-naturalistic views and other types of explanations such as functional, purposive, etc in social science. The volume elaborates upon themes like bridge principle; functional explanation; purposive explanation; teleological explanation; prediction; methodological individualism; methodological collectivism; illocutionary redescription; principle of action; and dispositional explanations to understand whether the explanations given in the realm of social sciences are the same or different from the explanations that are given in the field of natural sciences. This introductory book is a must read for students and scholars of philosophy of science, logic, science and technology studies, social sciences and philosophy in general.

As early as 1970, M. S. Archer argued that Bourdieu's sociology of education was the product of the particular conditions of the French educational system within which it was formulated. The same argument was subsequently advanced more generally by Richard Jenkins, who insisted that Bourdieu's sociology of culture, particularly the analysis contained in La Distinction/Distinction (Bourdieu, 1979, 1986), was an expression of the peculiarly French emphasis on taste as a basis for social differentiation. Bourdieu was himself interested in the relations between particular and universal explanation in social science, and in many of his later articles he focused specifically on the question of the transferability of his concepts, such as ‘cultural capital’. The English Preface to Homo Academicus (Bourdieu, 1988) is an explicit discussion of how the analysis presented in the text of French higher education should be read and adopted by English readers, while Practical Reason (Bourdieu, 1994, 1998) contained published lectures in which Bourdieu considered the applicability of La Distinction to Japanese society. The purpose of my proposed contribution is to trace the development of Bourdieu's sociology of education in the context of educational policy developments in France during his lifetime and, equally, to trace the ways in which his work has been used in the British context during the period between the first reception of his educational work in the United Kingdom in Knowledge and Control (Young, 1971) to the reception of his more polemical political interventions of the 1990s, many of which implicitly invoked earlier educational thinking. The intention is that this discussion should revive interest in the relevance of Bourdieu's work to the British situation by reference to many of the later texts that appeared after the emphasis of the British field of reception had shifted from education to cultural studies. La noblesse d'e´tat/State nobility (Bourdieu, 1989, 1996) and La mise`re du monde/The weight of the world (Bourdieu et al., 1993, 1999) have direct implications for British thinking about education that are different from the implications of the texts of the 1960s, and it is important to disrupt the tendency still to see the importance of Bourdieu's educational work primarily in relation to Les he´ritiers/The Inheritors (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1964b; 1977) and La reproduction/Reproduction (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1970, 1977). Finally, the discussion will confront the question of transferability and ask whether the comparative conditions in Britain and France between 1960 and 2002 justify the transfer of his analyses and research methods across the cultures in the future beyond his death.

Darwin’s Conjecture is a bold attempt to bring evolutionary explanation to the social sciences, particularly economics. The book outlines the history of Darwinian explanation in social science then puts forward a generalized replicator account of social evolution by natural selection. The authors identify habits and routines as examples of the generative replicators necessary in order that social evolution is Darwinian. This reviewer notes that the replicator approach limits the generality of this account and suggests that habits and routines might better be seen as members of a Darwinian population in the tradition of Godfrey-Smith’s (2009) generalized account of natural selection instead. Furthermore, the existence of levels of social evolution will constrain what evolution can occur low in the hierarchy.

Laws and explanation in social sciences

The Problem of Explanation in Social Science: A Weberian Solution?

This chapter explores why and how — path dependence explanations offers us a useful way to analyze the role of history in social change. However for path dependence, to help us to achieve better understanding we must clearly specify it. For these reasons the emphasis in this chapter lies in differentiating and defining the many approaches all which are now confusingly called path dependence, even when each is based on a different set of assumptions about how the world works, and hence, embody different ontology and give us different ways in which to understand social change and conditions for change (Hall, 2003). In so doing this chapter is taking the challenge issued by Paul Pierson, Kathleen Thelen, John L. Campbell, and Colin Crouch to encourage such a debate (Campbell, 2004; Crouch, 2005; Pierson, 2000a; Pierson, 2000b; Thelen, 2004).

Journal Article XI.—NEW BOOKS Get access Explanation in Social Science. By ROBERT BROWN. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963. Pp. viii+198. 25s. PETER WINCH PETER WINCH Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Mind, Volume LXXIII, Issue 291, July 1964, Pages 451–455, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/LXXIII.291.451 Published: 01 July 1964

Book Reviews: Communication and Social Order, Explanation in Social Science, Evangelicals in Action. An Appraisal of Their Social Work, the British Political Elite, on the Shop Floor, Coal and Conflict, the Enterprise and its Environment, Dark Strangers: A Sociological Study of the Absorption of a Recent West Indian Migrant Group in Brixton, South London, the Urban Villagers: Group and Class

On the Independence of Singular Causal Explanation in Social Science: Archaeology

In this chapter, the author responds to Jon Elster's criticism of his use of functional explanation in his account of historical materialism. Elster rejects the association between Marxism and functional explanation, arguing that there is no scope for functional explanation in social science. He therefore concludes that the Marxist theory of society and history should abandon functional explanation and that it should, instead, draw for its explanations on the resources of game theory. The author offers an explanation of historical materialist theory that he attributes, on a textual basis, to Karl Marx, and that he articulates and defends in his book Karl Marx's Theory of History. He asserts that game theory cannot replace functional explanation within Marxist social analysis and that it has no place at the heart of historical materialism, alongside functional explanation.

Some explanations in social science, psychology and biology belong to a higher level than other explanations. And higher explanations possess the virtue of abstracting away from the details of lower explanations, many philosophers argue. As a result, these higher explanations are irreplaceable. And this suggests that there are genuine higher laws or patterns involving social, psychological and biological states. I show that this ‘abstractness argument’ is really an argument schema, not a single argument. This is because the argument uses the ‘is lower than’ relation, and this relation admits of different readings. I then suggest four rigorous definitions of the ‘is lower than’ relation, and show that the abstractness argument’s prospects are much brighter for some of these definitions than for others. To show this, I evaluate the so-called ‘disjunctive threat’ to the abstractness argument.