Philosophy of social science

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"Philosophy of the Social Sciences" redirects here. For the academic journal, see Philosophy of the Social Sciences (journal).

Auguste Comte and positivism

Main articles: Auguste Comte and Positivism

Comte first described the epistemological perspective of positivism in

philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term.[1]
For him, the physical sciences had necessarily to arrive first, before humanity could adequately channel its efforts into the most challenging and complex "Queen science" of human society itself. His View of Positivism would therefore set-out to define, in more detail, the empirical goals of sociological method.

Comte offered an

secularisation
.

The early sociology of Herbert Spencer came about broadly as a reaction to Comte. Writing after various developments in evolutionary biology, Spencer attempted (in vain) to reformulate the discipline in what we might now describe as socially Darwinistic terms (although Spencer was a proponent of Lamarckism rather than Darwinism).

The modern academic discipline of sociology began with the work of

Protestant populations, distinguished sociological analysis from psychology
or philosophy.

The positivist perspective, however, has been associated with '

instrumental rationality as meaning that scientific-thinking becomes something akin to ideology itself.[6]

behaviourism
.

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.

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 that the discipline faces challenges that are different from those of the

justificationism presented by Karl Popper, which may itself be disputed through Thomas Kuhn's conception of epistemic paradigm shift
.

Early German hermeneuticians such as

post-structuralists
.

The mid-20th-century linguistic turn led to a rise in highly philosophical sociology, as well as so-called "postmodern" perspectives on the social acquisition of knowledge.[12] One notable critique of social science is found in Peter Winch's Wittgensteinian text The Idea of Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (1958). Michel Foucault provides a potent critique in his archaeology of the human sciences, though Habermas and Richard Rorty have both argued that Foucault merely replaces one such system of thought with another.[13][14]

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.[15]

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.

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.

See also

References

  1. ^ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/ Stanford Encyclopaedia: Auguste Comte
  2. ^ Wacquant, Loic. 1992. "Positivism." In Bottomore, Tom and William Outhwaite, ed., The Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Social Thought
  3. ^ Gianfranco Poggi (2000). Durkheim. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  4. ^ Durkheim, Emile. 1895. The Rules of Sociological Method. Cited in Wacquant (1992).
  5. ^ Schunk, Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective, 5th, 315
  6. ISBN 978-0-7456-4328-1
    p.68
  7. ^ Cote, James E. and Levine, Charles G. (2002). Identity formation, Agency, and Culture, Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  8. ISBN 0-521-63722-8
    .
  9. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7456-4328-1
    p.22
  10. ISBN 978-0-7456-4328-1
    p.19
  11. ISBN 978-0-7456-4328-1
    p.23
  12. ISBN 0-7456-3379-X
    .
  13. ^ Jürgen Habermas. Taking Aim at the Heart of the Present in Hoy, D (eds) 'Foucault: A critical reader' Basil Blackwell. Oxford, 1986.
  14. ^ Richard Rorty. Foucault and Epistemology in Hoy, D (eds) 'Foucault: A critical reader' Basil Blackwell. Oxford, 1986.
  15. ^ Slife, B.D. and Gantt, E.E. (1999) Methodological pluralism: a framework for psychotherapy research. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55(12), pp1453–1465.

Bibliography

Journals

Conferences

Books

External links

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