5MARKERS Flashcards
What is Popper’s conception of science?
A critical and objective methodology which consists of tentative attempts to solve our problems through a “consciously critical development of the method of ‘trial and error’” which exists independent of any value judgement.
What’s the point of saying that the philosophy of social science is ‘empirical’?
It is measurable in ‘scientific’ terms which means theories in social science can be tested in a similar way to theories in the natural sciences through hypothesis, experimentation and revision (if necessary).
What is logical positivism?
Logical positivism is the belief that all meaningful problems can be expressed in terms of things that can be checked, verified or falsified; thus solved by logical analysis. Valid conclusions must be based on empirical observation. Philosophical analysis can and should have a critical as well as descriptive function.
Briefly compare Guala’s with Popper’s view of where economics sits.
Guala believes that economics is a science because it deals more in objective fact, which sets it aside from the social sciences. Popper on the other hand believes that economics is in fact a social science, and because it has a purely objective method it demonstrates that empiricism has a place in the social sciences.
What’s been the main intellectual change in the philosophy of social science?
The move from methodology (the question of how we should study the social science) to ontology (the question of what social science is).
Kincaid identifies four objections to the possibility of a science of society. Choose and briefly describe two.
One a priori objection Kincaid mentions to the possibility of a science of society is the notion of multiple realizability, which is the idea that social ideas have infinitely many plausible physical realizations and as such cannot be systematically linked to the physical, if this is the case, then social kinds cannot support genuine laws. Another a priori objection mentioned is the idea that the social realm is not “closed”, and therefore there cannot exist any universal laws as the open realm is subject to outside forces.
What is multiple realisability? Illustrate by means of one example.
Multiple realizability is the idea that social ideas have infinitely many plausible physical realizations and as such cannot be systematically linked to the physical. If this is the case, then social kinds cannot support genuine laws. One example is money, which exists in the social realm and can be realized in many different forms, for example in the form of gold, paper or a digital code.
What is a ceteris paribus clause in social science?
The Ceteris Paribus clause means ‘all other things equal’, and is used to qualify theories in the social sciences. It works by asserting that a causal explanation is true IFF other possible interfering factors are held at a constant. This way the causal factor discussed is isolated.
What is the traditional account of laws according to Mitchell?
The traditional account of laws according to Mitchell is such that a law can be a considered a law only if it meets the following criteria: (a) logical contingency (have empirical content), (b) universality (cover all space and time), (c) truth (exceptionless); and (d) natural necessity (not accidental). It comes from formal logic, and these conditions amount essentially to a universally quantified conditional which cannot be vacuously true.
Why does Mitchell compare social knowledge with biological knowledge?
Mitchell compares social knowledge to biological knowledge because “like knowledge of the social world, biological knowledge does not appear to fit the image of scientific law advocated by many philosophers”. As such, both the social sciences and biology share this doubt of whether the disciplines are capable of producing laws in their respective fields of inquiry. The underlying reason for this is both of their limitation to contingent truth, or ceteris paribus qualifications.
What is the Chemical Method? And why does Mill argue that it is not an appropriate method of inquiry for the social sciences?
The chemical method is the view that properties of a social entity are associated with the component parts of that entity, yet the properties of the social entity cannot be inferred from the properties of the component parts that make up the entity. Mill argues that social entities do not act in this way – men when brought together do not form some other kind of substance. Human beings, he argued, have no properties but those which are derived from the laws of the individual man (methodological individualism).
How does the Concrete Deductive Method work?
The concrete deductive method described the deduction of social scientific facts and laws from the conjunction of individual causes. Mill claims that to determine the effects produced by social phenomena one must look to the vast array of individual effectual circumstances, and from this one can deduce social laws. Final step is verification.
What does the Inverse Deductive Method aim to provide, and how?
The Inverse Deductive Method aims to provide a solution to the issue that the concrete deductive method is highly complex and requires significant understanding of individual and highly complex social circumstance. The inverse deductive method therefore allows one to look at historical circumstances and the associated human laws we exhibit, and from this ascertain social laws and facts.
What are Tendency Laws?
Laws have a tendency to turn out false – ceteris paribus. We must therefore treat them only as mere tendencies to exhibit this circumstance. Yet the fact they may only be tendencies, he argues, does not undermine their status as laws.
Why does Mill talk about Empirical Social Laws?
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What three criteria does Taylor give for the object of a science of interpretation?
The object of a science of interpretation must be describable in terms of sense and nonsense, coherence and its absence. It must also admit of a distinction between meaning and its expression.The third condition is that it must this meaning, distinguishable from its expression, is for or by a subject.
Describe the hermeneutical circle.
The Hermeneutical Circle highlights the idea that our understanding of a whole will require knowledge of the individual, and our knowledge of the individual will require knowledge of the whole. The example Taylor uses is of an interpretation of a reading. We are trying to establish an interpretation for the whole text, and for this we appeal to partial expressions, but because we are dealing with meaning where expressions only make sense with relation to others, the reading of partial expressions will depend on those of others and ultimately the whole. This circle is an issue as it undermines the notion of objective knowledge – our reasoning is always circular.
What does Taylor mean by ‘meaning’?
When we speak of meaning, Taylor says, we are using a concept with the following interpretation. (a) Meaning is for a subject, it is not the meaning in a situation, but its meaning is for a subject. (b) Meaning is of something; this is to say that we can distinguish between a given element-situation action or whatever- and its meaning (but this is not to say they are physically separable). (c) Things only have meaning within a given domain or field, that is with relation to other things. Things cannot be meaningful on their own – there is no such thing as a single unrelated meaningful event.
Why does Taylor invite us to think that “man is a self-interpreting animal”?
Taylor wishes to claim man is a self-interpreting animal as there is no such thing as the structure of meaning independent of man’s own interpretation of himself – one is woven into the other. What we know of object or relations is our experience of them – we describe them and form the subjective nature of these properties ourselves. Thus, that of which we are trying to find the coherence is itself partly constituted by self-interpretation.
Taylor suggests two ways of breaking out of the hermeneutical circle. Briefly explain.
The first way is the “rationalist” approach, which does not involve a negation of intuition, or of our understanding of meaning, but rather aspires to attainment of an understanding of such clarity that it would carry with it the certainty of the undeniable. The aim is to bring understanding to an inner clarity which is absolute. The other way, which we can call “empiricist,” is a genuine attempt to go beyond the circle of our own interpretations, to get beyond subjectivity. The attempt is to reconstruct knowledge in such a way that there is no need to make final appeal to readings or judgments which can not be checked further. The building blocks for such an approach are brute data.
What is social action, for Weber?
Social action for Weber is an action whose meaning is derived from the past, present or anticipated future behaviour of other individuals. That relation to others’ behaviour determines the way in which the action proceeds. The other people in question may be particular individuals known to the agent, or an indefinitely large group, none of whom are known to the agent.
Briefly compare Taylor’s concept of experiential meaning with Weber’s concept of subjective meaning.
Taylor’s concept of experiential meaning says primarily that meaning is something – a piece of mental content - that makes sense for the subject, i.e. something is meaningful because it is meaningful to the subject. Weber’s concept of subjective meaning is more or less the same, as he suggests that meaning should be as understood as what is actually intended by the subject or the meaning we attribute to them.
Weber identifies two types of understanding. Describe.
Understanding to Weber can either consist indirect understanding of the intended meaning of an action or it can mean explanatory understanding in the sense that we understand the motive of a certain action. For example, in witnessing a man cutting wood, there is the direct understanding of the action in the sense that we can understand ‘that man is cutting wood’, and there is also the explanatory understanding of the action in the sense that we can understand ‘that man is cutting wood because that is what he does for a living’.
According to Weber, crowd behaviour is not an instance of social action. Why?
Crowd behaviour is not an instance of social action because social action requires that the said action find its meaning in the behaviour of others as individuals. This does not occur in crowd behaviour, because in crowds the individual is not necessarily influenced by the behaviour of others within the crowd, but rather is reactive to the crowd as an aggregate entity. The meaning of the action is therefore not derived from the behaviour of others and because of this is not social.
Weber claims that the interpretation of action has to refer to collective concepts in three ways. What are these?
The interpretation of action has to refer to collective concepts in the following three ways. Firstly, the sociologist must refer to collective concepts in order to develop an intelligible terminology. Secondly, the sociologist must refer to collective concepts to be able to provide compelling causal explanations because these concepts actually represent something which in part actually exists and has a normative force in the minds of real people. Thirdly, the sociologist has to refer to collective concepts to be able to relate the ‘part’ to the ‘whole’, i.e. the individual and his behaviour must be interpreted in relation to the whole.
Durkheim claims that social phenomena are “things”, and ought to be treated as things. What does that mean?
In suggesting that the social phenomena are “things” and should be treated as such, Durkheim wants to suggest that social phenomena are real pieces of data, which are unique to the social sciences. Further, by calling them ‘things’, Durkheim wants to suggest that these phenomena are uninfluenced by the will. Rather, they determine the will from without.
What is Durkheim’s argument for the claim that social facts cannot be biological phenomena? Psychological phenomena?
Social facts cannot be biological phenomena, because whilst social facts consist of ways of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual enforced by some form of coercion, biological phenomena consist of representations and of actions. Similarly, social phenomena are distinct to psychological phenomena, which exist only in the individual consciousness and through it, whilst social phenomena exist external to individual consciousnesses.
What is a group mind, for Durkheim?
Currents of opinion impel certain groups to act a certain way (more marriages, more suicides, higher/lower birthrate etc.). These currents of opinion are purely social facts, but it might be hard at first to disentangle them from the forms they take in individual cases. But statistics furnish us with the means of isolating them - we look at birth rates, suicide rates, marriage rates etc. – the individual circumstances are neutralized out. The average then expresses a certain state of the group mind (l’âme collective).
Lukes identifies several versions of individualism. Choose three and describe them comparatively.
Social Atomism says that society whilst it might be made up of groups of individuals, it nevertheless solely consists of individuals. By comparison, the ontological approach goes further and suggests not only that society consists only of individuals, but that in the social world, only individuals are real. Social Individualism differs from both again by asserting that society has as its end the good of individuals, so it focuses on the purpose of social organization.
Lukes gives four examples of what ‘facts about individuals’ can mean. What are these, and how does he distinguish between them?
Lukes gives four examples of what facts about individuals can mean and calls these individual predicates. He distinguishes between these predicates by suggesting that they move along a continuum from the non-social to the most social. The first category of predicates, which are non-social in nature, are predicates which describe human beings by their physical properties. The second category includes predicates which presuppose consciousness but do not presuppose anything about the social. The third includes predicates which have minimal social reference and the fourth includes those which are maximally social.
What is “intentionality”? Describe in the context of Searle’s discussion of social ontology.
Searle suggests that intentionality is the capacity of the mind to represent objects and states of affairs in the world other than itself. Not all consciousness is intentional, and not all intentionality is conscious. Intentionality is important in understanding Searle’s discussion of social ontology, because he states that some features of the world, namely those of a social kind, exist only relative to the intentionality of the subject.
“That object is a paperweight”. What sort of fact does this statement describe, for Searle?
Calling an object a “paperweight” involves appealing to an observer-relative, as opposed to intrinsic, feature of that object. This is because the feature’s existence is dependent on there existing an observer. The fact is thus said to be ontologically subjective, but so long as it actually is a paperweight, the fact is epistemically objective. It is also an instance of humans applying an agentive function to a preexisting object, i.e. a stone.
Drawing on Guala’s characterization (from Week 1), briefly present the Standard Model of Social Ontology.
SMOSO is constituted by three elements: reflexivity, performativity and collective intentionality. Reflexivity refers to the idea that social entities are constituted by beliefs about beliefs. Performativity refers to the idea that if social entities are somehow made of beliefs, they must be constantly ‘performed’ by the individuals who belong to a given social group. Collective intentionality refers to the idea that individuals are capable of thinking not only in terms of “I intend” but also in terms of “we intend”.
What are institutional facts, for Searle, and how do they contrast with brute facts?
Institutional facts are facts which exist only because of human institutions, whereas brute facts exist independently from any human institutions. For example, the fact that “this piece of paper is a five-dollar bill” exists only because of the human institution of money and thus it is an institutional fact. In contrast, “there is snow on the top of Mt. Everest” is a fact which is true regardless of any human institution (aside from language, but Searle accounts for this by differentiating between the fact itself and the statement of that fact).
Articulate the difference between constitutive and regulative rules.
Regulative rules are rules which regulate certain pre-existing activities. For example, the rule of driving on the left, which regulates how people should drive but driving can still exist as an activity without it. Constitutive rules, in contrast, are rules which create the very possibility of certain activities. For example, the rules of chess creates the game of chess; if you do not follow at least a large subset of rules, you are not playing chess.
Illustrate Searle’s view of collective intentionality by way of the Business School example.
Students at a business school are all indoctrinated to come to believe that they can best help humanity by pursuing their own self-interest. Each student thus has the individual intention of “I intend to do my part toward helping humanity by pursuing my own self-interest. Let us also suppose that each student believes the others will share this intention and will most likely be successful in carrying it out. This is not a case of collective intentionality because there is no sense of a “we intention”. This shows that the notion of “we-intentions” is central to collective intentionality and that it cannot be understood merely in terms of “I intentions” and mutual beliefs, because cases like this would slip through the cracks and mistakenly be identified as cases of collective intentionality.
What are we ‘we-intentions’, for Searle? Why are they irreducible to ‘I-intentions’?
‘We-intentions’ cannot be reduced to ‘I-intentions’ because the notion of a we-intention, of collective intentionality, implies the notion of cooperation. The mere presence of I-intentions to achieve a goal that is believed to be shared with others does not entail the presence of an intention to cooperate to achieve that goal. In other words, ‘I-intentions plus mutual beliefs’ do not provide sufficient conditions for cooperation.
Explain why the irreducibility claim and the individual ownership claim are in tension.
The irreducibility claim is that collective intentionality is not merely an aggregation of individual intentions; in other words, collective intentionality is irreducible to individual intentionality. The individual ownership claim is that each individual has a mind of his or her own and has a sort of intentional autonomy; there is no ‘group mind’. The tension that arises between the two claims therefore is that collective intentionality is not merely reducible to individual intentionality, but at the same time only exists in the minds of individuals.
Some authors claim mental states are collective if they have a collective content; others claim that they must be entertained in an irreducible mode to count as collective; still others claim that collective intentionality presupposes the existence of a plural subject. Choose one view and explain accordingly.
The ‘content’ view can be explained as saying that mental states are collective if the intention is expressed in the form ‘I intend that we J’, where J refers to a joint activity in which the intending agent participates. For instance, if Alex and Ben go for a walk together, their respective intentions refer not to their own individual walks, but to their joint walk. It is thus in the content of the intention that collectivity is found; i.e. in the ‘jointness’ of the walk
In what sense is collective intentionality a building block of the social reality?
Collective intentionality is considered a building block of social reality because it is required to create and maintain social institutions. For instance, the existence of money, a social phenomenon, depends at least partly on collective intentional attitudes, or on a shared practice of treating certain pieces of paper, and not others, as money.
