Lecture 7

Question 1

Functionalism

Answer 1

Emile Durkheim: “In the nature of society itself we must seek the explanation of social life.”

Question 2

Holism: (3 aspects)

Answer 2

1. In addition to individuals, there also exist ‘wholes’ such as social institutions and
   communities.
2. Explanations in the social sciences refer to individual actions and to social
   phenomena.
3. Social science theories are logically independent of “lower-level theories.”
   - So, macro phenomena do not reduce to micro phenomena

Question 3

What is functionalism, exactly?

Answer 3

• Functional explanations are system explanations.
• Provides an answer to a “why question” by identifying the function or purpose of a
  phenomenon within a system.
• Functional explanations appear in different forms and disciplines:
  o In biology
  o In economics
  o In psychology and cognitive science
• Typically contrasted with mechanistic explanations.

E.g., Durkheim’s theory of criminality
“If the differences in the level of prosperity increase and if individualism goes up, then
crime-rates increase.”
Response: collective sentiments that reinforce solidarity:
- Media/discussion about distressing incidents.
- Offenders are demonized, social pressure builds.
Result: recover balance in crime/safety.
- Durkheim: in the face of the threat of disintegration, a society strives to restore
balance.

Question 4

Problems for functionalism

Answer 4

• Functionality indicates the purpose that is being served.
• But how is this goal achieved?
• Distinction between
  o Functional explanation (in terms of a goal).
  o Causal explanation (in terms of causes).
  o e.g., Cuckoo clock

2 examples:
- Functional vs .causal explanation of inherited traits (evolutionary biology)
- Functional vs. causal explanation of drink preferences (economics / cognitive
science)

Question 5

E.g., Durkheim’s theory of criminality

Answer 5

Q: What is the causal mechanism responsible for balance?
- It is difficult to explain how society restores the balance.
- This is because there are many causal links which ensure that crime leads to
increasing solidarity.
- But if we explain functions of social systems by identifying the underlying
mechanisms, do we not end up with an individualistic theory … ?!
- How is this this case similar to or different from:
o Pepper moth
o Tea preference

Question 6

. Individualism vs. holism

How do revolutions occur?

Answer 6

J-Curve” theory (Davies):
- When gradually rising prosperity hits a dramatic (economic) decline.
- Mental state of anxiety, frustration, and a negative mood are seen as characteristics
of society, characteristics that refer to individual feelings.
Q: But how does a revolution arise?
Q:What conditions need to be met?

Question 7

The free-rider problem in practice

Answer 7

• if a revolution is like a prisoners’ dilemma, then revolutions will never occur…
• the free-rider is always incentivized not to cooperate (defect) because cooperation involves high risk.
• bottom-left and top-right cells are the risks for those who cooperate with defectors

By changing the game you can solve this

Question 8

Jack Goldstone’s solution to the problem of defection

Answer 8

• 1st individuals make choices on the basis of solidarity to form groups (churches, trade unions,)
• 2nd Groups make rational choices to participate or not participate in a revolution

Question 9

Why does this matter for the individualism vs. holism debate?
It raises two important questions:

Answer 9

- Can systems be reduced to individuals?
o Ontology
o Theory
o Explanation 
- Or is something essential lost by attempts at reduction?
o The problem of the remainder
o The problem of multiple realization

Question 10

The problem of the remainder

Answer 10

Individuals play different roles… So, what explains these roles?

• We need to account for internal structure (procedures, norms, and rules).
• Every attempt to explain these structures appeals to more structures

Question 11

The problem of multiple realization

Answer 11

• Same phenomenon can be realized in differen tways.
• Different properties and conditions give rise to common event or idea.
• It is only at the social (macro) level that some properties become visible.

Question 12

The problem of the remainder raises concerns for individualism

Answer 12

What properties belong to an individual?
- Can these properties be understood independently of their social roles?
Zahle:
- Social role terms are relational,
- ought to be part of the individualist’s descriptive repertoire as well.
Consider Pele an the Pope:
- We cannot understand their actions independently of their roles in professional
football / Roman Catholic Church

Question 13

The problem of multiple realization raises concerns for individualism

Answer 13

• Is there a unique causal/mechanistic story for each social phenomenon?
• What is the relationship between parts and wholes of social phenomena?
  Multiple realization indicates that “higher order properties” supervene on “lower order
  properties”
• E.g., revolution
• This drives a wedge between ontology and theory/explanation

Question 14

Type of “non-reductionistic individualism”:

Answer 14

• Individualistic: social entities do not exist.

- Non-reductionistic: social properties are irreducible.

Question 15

General problems for individualism AND holism

Answer 15

➢ Starting from individualism → no general explanations possible due to multiple
realizability.
➢ Starting from holism → problem: causal relationships are produced through
individual actions

Question 16

Both perspectives are needed and complement each other:

Answer 16

• Individual explanations appeal to holistic concepts
  o E.g., “revolution” (macro level) and “riots” (micro level)
• Holistic explanations cannot do without a reference to individuals.
  o E.g., a revolution or riot doesn’t make sense without individuals

Question 17

Understanding social action - Hollis
Four peculiarities of meaning

→ No obvious parallel in physics and little in biology
→ The problem of Other Minds is central to the social sciences

Answer 17

1. Actions have meaning
   Contrast between natural signs and conventional symbols
   - Natural signs → E.g., ring around de moon ‘means’ rain
   - Conventional symbols → E.g., a flag at half mast
   Natural signs and their underlying causes are the stuff of scientific explanation
   → Some questions about scientific ideas invite us to recognize that science, like religion, is an
   attempt to makes sense of experience in ways involving symbolic kinds of meaning
   Actions have two peculiar sorts of meaning:
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2. What they mean is so far as they are signals taken from a common stock of
   conventions
3. What the actor means or intends by them
   → To understand: we need a line on Other Minds which allows the reconstruction of both
4. Language has a meaning
   Language is often seen as the key to understanding how thought informs action.
   Wittgensteinians → ‘language games’ are the subtlest and deepest illustration of the general
   theme about rules
   Understanding what people think and do is not only like understanding the uses of language,
    but can even be equated with understanding how words mean what they do if one
   construes ‘language’ so as to garner the insights offered by phrases like
   o ‘the language of mathematics’
   o ‘the language of art’
   o ‘the language of politics’
   There are many games, many ways of thinking and many forms of life
   → Each constituted by its own rules
   → Just as languages have their own rules
5. Practices have meaning
   Previous paragraph: stresses the meaning of words
   → this paragraph: stresses what people mean by their words
   Individualist kind of analysis
    Linguistic conventions emerge as an aid to individuals and individual thought is prior
   to the linguistic vehicle of its expression
    Practices similarly emerge as convenient solutions to individual problems
   Wittgensteinians work the other way around, with the existence of practices as a
   precondition for individual actions which rely on them
   Practices are not merely habitual regularities of behavior
   → They embody shared values and give rise to normative expectations
   → Couched in a moral language of praise for fulfilling them and blame for failure
   By enriching the notion of a game so as to stress its normative texture, we can propose a
   sense of structure appropriate for the ‘understanding’.
6. The complex that social actors have models of the world and of themselves in their
   minds
   They credit one another with such models
   Weber defined social action as action ‘which takes account of the behavior of others and is
   thereby oriented in its course’
   → The account taken soon becomes very sophisticated

Even unreflective people are players of games where they constantly need to know what
others want and believe which require mutual recognition of subtle normative expectations
Models of social action, put in circulation by social scientist, influence these models.
→ suggests disconcertingly that whether an account of social action offered by social science
is correct may depend on whether it is believed

Question 18

Social sciences seem to investigate two kinds of object

Answer 18

1. Individual persons with their beliefs, values, emotional responses etc.
2. Law, cultures (systems)
   - Can the social level be reduced to the individual level?

Question 19

Explaining revolutions

Answer 19

Revolutions are most likely to occur when a prolonged period of objective economic and
social development is followed by a short period of
sharp reversal.
- Political stability and instability are ultimately dependent of a state of mind, a
mood, in a society (Davies).

Question 20

What could it mean for a society to have a mood?

Answer 20

• Take “mood” and “expectation” to be the average of individual expectations.
• This would reduce the talk of social-level needs, expectations, and states of
  mind to the individual level.
• Reduced in this way, it is possible to see revolutions as the unintended consequence
  of a large number of individual actions.
• Each individual acts on the basis of his or her personal motivations, and as a result,
  the whole society changes.

Question 21

The fruits of the revolution are a non-exclusive good

Answer 21

Non-exclusive good = something that all enjoy whether or not they contributed to its
creation (free-riders) > plagues any attempt at collective action.
- Whether the choice to join the revolution is best represented as a prisoners’
dilemma.
- Strong norms of solidarity explain how some revolution overcome the free rider
problem.

Question 22

Strong norms of solidarity

Answer 22

The problem of individual free riders is solved at the level of the group, and the revolution is
explained by the actions of these groups.
- Group membership is individually rational and self-reinforcing

Question 23

The Individualism–Holism Debate

Answer 23

The debate over reductionism may be framed as a dispute between
two camps:
1. Individualists = those who propose that the social level
reduces to the level of agents
2. Holists = their opponents who resist such reduction are often called “holists.”

Question 24

Mill:

Answer 24

denying that the social world is a kind of thing over and above the individual human
beings which make it up.
- There are no social properties that are not already properties of individual humans
- Social phenomena are entirely composed of humans and their actions.
- No new properties emerge from the interaction of agents
- A proper science, in Mill’s view, should be able to derive specific or local laws from
more fundamental laws.
- We could make predictions about social-level events based on knowledge of the
psychology of the individuals involved.

Question 25

Durkheim

Answer 25

: a social science needs to postulate the existence of “social facts,” which go
beyond (or “transcend”) the properties of any collection of individual humans.
- In order to explain social phenomena—including the actions of individuals within a
social setting—we need to invoke social fact.

Question 26

Core arguments about reductionism in the social sciences:

Answer 26

Theoretical = individualists hold that the theories of the social sciences can be derived from
theories of psychology, while holists hold that social scientific theories are logically
independent of lower-level theories.
Ontological = individualists hold that only human agents and their properties exist, while
holists hold that social entities and properties also exist.
Explanatory = individualists hold that explanations in the social sciences must make
reference to individual actions, while holists also accept social-level explanations.
➢ As these arguments have developed over the last several decades, the concepts of
multiple realizability and supervenience have taken on a crucial role

Question 27

When presenting the problem of reductionism, it is natural to distinguish between higherlevel (social) theories and lower-level (psychological) on

Answer 27

➢ Theoretical reductionism: How do social-level theories relate to psychological-level
theories?

Question 28

Supervenience

Answer 28

Supervenience is a dependence relationship: there is no change at the social level without a
change at the individual level.

➢ Anti-reductionists contend that this is a real difference and that social properties are
distinct from individual properties
➢ However, since this is a claim about properties, not entities, it makes a non-reductive
individualist position possible

Question 29

Non-reductive individualism

Answer 29

holds that there are no social objects, only individual agents
(fire departments do not exist; only firefighters)

Question 30

Reductionism about explanation

Answer 30

n is a prominent part of the methodological individualism
debate in the social sciences.
= This debate is about whether social scientific explanations must always, sometimes, or
need never mention

Question 31

Methodological Localism

Answer 31

= Little’s methodological localism denies that there are causal relationships between sociallevel properties.
Recent decades have seen a movement toward mechanistic explanations in the social
sciences, explaining social phenomena in terms of how individuals respond to their
social environment.
➢ The explanatory focus is thus on the relationship between the macro and micro
levels.

Question 32

Methodological individualism (strong and moderate)

Answer 32

Strong methodological individualism: Finished or rock bottom explanations in the social
sciences must always refer only to individuals, their actions, and properties
Explanatory holism: Explanations in the social sciences need make no reference to
individuals; they may appeal only to social-level entities or properties.
Moderate methodological individualism: Explanations in the social sciences must make
some reference to individuals.