INTERPRETATION & REALISM

M. Kremakova & E. PagePhilosophies of social science researchWeek 9, 4th March, 2015

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RESPONSE TO LAST WEEK’S LECTURE: REPORTS OF THE DEATH OF SOCIAL SCIENCES ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED• Big Data are cool, but they are just a tool: data don't speak for themselves. Danger of rampant reductionist rationality

• Role of social science? >>> Interpretivist and realist approaches:

• Good social science goes beyond method: • explain and understand through theories, vocabularies, conceptual

framework, lenses, viewpoints, but also:• Provoke, disrupt, dismantle: find surprising comparisons, show big

picture, deeper and long-term (in-depth, longitudinal) research, create brand new concepts, new ways of seeing the world, expose hidden inequalities, open up new horizons, discuss new possibilities. Role for both “blue skies" or "useless" social research (e.g. IAS) and empirical, even with smaller datasets.

•No rigid division between commercial and academic. Instead: collaboration; flow of researchers; mutual learning; competition; power struggle; public debate. [downsides]

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RESPONSE TO LAST WEEK’S LECTURE: REPORTS OF THE DEATH OF SOCIAL SCIENCES ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED Source:  Wikimedia Commons

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The Hollis Matrix

Systems 'Games’

Agents Actors

Holism

Individualism

Explanation Understanding

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

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The Hollis Matrix: Explanation

Function-alism

RationalChoice

Holism

Individualism

Explanation Understanding

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

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The Hollis Matrix: Understanding

Social rules

Hermen-eutics

Holism

Individualism

Explanation Understanding

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

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The Hollis Matrix: Atomism

Rational Choice

Hermen-eutics

Holism

Individualism

Explanation Understanding

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

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The Hollis Matrix: Holism

Structur-alism

Social rule-

following

Agents Actors

Holism

Individualism

Explanation Understanding

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

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The Hollis Matrix

Systems 'Games’

Agents Actors

Holism

Individualism

Explanation Understanding

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

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“Does the way in which you think about your discipline place it near to, or far from, the natural sciences?”

For seminar discussion…

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

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POSITIVISM>…

Positivism Hermeneutics/Interpretivism

Realism, Rationalism

Scientist: Legislator

Monologue

Objectivity

Explanation

Observation

Objective observer

Knowledge as Truth

Discovering facts

Truth: Singular (universal)

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POSITIVISM>HERMENEUTICS>…Positivism Hermeneutics/

InterpretivismRealism, Rationalism

Scientist: Legislator

Scientist: Interpreter

Monologue Dialogue

Objectivity Valid Subjectivities

Explanation Understanding

Observation Embodiment

Objective observer

Partial participant

Knowledge as Truth

Knowledge as Power

Discovering facts

Creating interpretations

Truth: Singular (universal)

Truth: Plural (multiple aspects)

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HERMENEUTICS (1): SOCIAL INQUIRY AS INTERPRETATION Social inquiry is seen to be about understanding rather than explanation (Weber, Winch) "Social relations  really exist only in and through the ideas which are

current in society;  or alternatively, that social relations fall into the same logical category as do relations between ideas." (Winch 1988)

“the social sciences are concerned with the nature of meaningful behaviour, that is, that behaviour that is "specifically human“ (Winch 1988)

A number of different philosophical movements are associated with the position German hermeneutics (e.g. Gadamer), Phenomenological approaches (e.g. Schütz), Ordinary language analysis (associated with Wittgenstein)

Gadamer deepens interpretative inquiry with his emphasis upon the historicity of understanding Focuses on prejudice and the unification of science and hermeneutics

Attention to language as a tool of interpretation

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HERMENEUTICS (1): SOCIAL INQUIRY AS INTERPRETATION

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Hans-Georg Gadamer

HERMENEUTICS (2): SOCIAL INQUIRY ≠ NATURAL SCIENCE Science is about generalisations; social inquiry is about particulars,

but it can access regularities by investigating “the nature of the rule according to which judgements of identity are made […] Such judgements are intelligible only relatively to a given mode of human behaviour, governed by its own rules." Winch 1988:84

Human behaviour governed by conventions and rule-following (neither laws, nor chaos). Human community is source of meaning. Science studies a domain of objects lacking intrinsic meaning – but in social science, the actors’ own meanings and understandings are important

Social inquiry is NOT complete until we have understood WHY something was done; (causes, reasons, motives, imperfect logic, false consciousness, adaptive preferences, beliefs, ultimate concerns, duty, obligation, love, power structures…)

Human beings are constituted in language => all social inquiry has a hermeneutic aspect (i.e. understand society and social action “as text”)

Prediction: never fully deterministic.  Falsification doesn't work the same way as it does in the natural sciences. Rules have exceptions. 

“Trying too hard to be objective” is bad: methodological self-alienation

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HERMENEUTICS (3): GADAMER ‘Anti-foundationalism’ (favours historical/genealogical

explanations) inter-subjective nature of understanding, inter-

subjectivity, Being, authenticity, fore-structure, presuppositions, prejudice, temporality and history

Knowledge as the willingness to learn, not as the will to power Opposed to the Enlightenment’s prejudice against prejudice He did not believe that Reason can provide its own foundations.

“I think, therefore I am” – not really. Thinking, I cannot not be and be for (and by) others

Science is based in a lifeworld that is not a product of Reason: what we understand as reason is a product of our lifeworld

Gadamer is not a critic of the products of science, but of its self-understanding and the misuse of that self-understanding

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HERMENEUTICS (4): CRITICISMS OF GADAMER General conservatism of interpretation

The model of science and methodology

The problem of power.

If actors could have done otherwise, how do we know when they are doing otherwise (as an aspect of will) or merely appearing to do so as a consequence of our failures to understand the rules they are following?

What is the role of an explanatory undertaking in the social sciences?

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CRITIQUES OF HERMENEUTICAL/ INTERPRETATIVE APPROACHES Limits of hermeneutical understanding?

Systematically distorted communication and failures of understanding

Aim of critical theory is emancipation

But, who is to educate the educators?

Gadamer’s critique of science is naive, but his critique of positivism as alienation is profound

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REALISM (1): A THIRD WAY? Critical realists:

•acknowledge similarities with the natural sciences, but try to retain the grasp on interpretation of meanings. They oppose both positivism and naïve empiricism on the one side, and relativism and anti-naturalism, on the other.

•acknowledge that the existence of human agency and the limited possibilities for experiment in social science make it difficult to locate and identify these structures.

• believe that anti-naturalism in social inquiry is based upon a false conception of science.

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POSITIVISM>HERMENEUTICS>REALISMPositivism Hermeneutics/

InterpretivismRealism, Rationalism

Scientist: Legislator

Scientist: Interpreter

Monologue Dialogue

Objectivity Valid Subjectivities

Explanation Understanding

Observation Embodiment Combines both, but

Objective observer

Partial participant opposes both extremes

Knowledge as Truth

Knowledge as Power

(not as easy as it sounds)

Discovering facts

Creating interpretations

Truth: Singular (universal)

Truth: Plural (Multiple aspects)

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REALISM (2)

“Neither positivism nor hermeneutics can offer rational criteria for the choice of concepts”. (Outhwaite 1983 Concept formation in social science)

Realism is a transcendental project concerned to establish how the world must be for science as an activity to be possible

Philosophy is the self-understanding of science concerned with the conditions for the production of knowledge.

Distinction between epistemological and ontological realism.

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REALISM (3)

Epistemological “A natural account of the way in which scientific theories succeed

each other - say, the way in which Einstein’s Relativity succeeded Newton’s Universal Gravitation - is that a partially correct/ partially incorrect account of a theoretical object - say the gravitational field, or the metric structure of space-time, or both - is replaced by a better account of the same object or objects. But if these objects don’t really exist at all, then it is a miracle that a theory which speaks of gravitational action at a distance successfully predicts phenomena; it is a miracle that a theory which speaks of curved space-time successfully predicts phenomena.” (Putnam 1978: 19)

Ontological How must the world of physical objects be, for science to be

possible?Or:since we know science is possible, what does this fact tell us about the world we live in?

There DO exist ‘real objects’ outside particular theoretical statements of them, even though we may never grasp those objects except in fallible and historically changing constructions

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REALISM (4)

“strong programme” of realism: Roy Bhaskar Rationalism and realism both accept that truth exists; but diverge in

the way truth is to be found: rationalists have an a priory theory e.g. mechanisms, structures, naturalist worldview; realists seek “explanatory power”

Differences between rationalism and realism: rationalism has an uneasy relationship with agency (Hollis: “rational action is its own explanation”, doesn’t explain how there can be competing rational alternatives to a given situation)

Realism vs ‘empirical realism’ (Bhaskar) (emphasis on sense experiences) and ‘transcendental realism’ ( no systematic connection between science and the world)

What is “The Real”? Includes mechanisms, events and experiences. Not the same as “the actual” (events and experiences) or “the empirical” (experiences alone)

Experimental intervention greatly restricted in the social sciences Do we abandon empirical testability? No.

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REALISM (4)

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REALISM (5): REALIST CRITIQUES OF POSITIVISM Empiricists, it is argued, are concerned with the mere

association of events. We want to know how the events are associated; that is, to

identify causal mechanisms that operate as real forces with the character of necessity

Realists make a distinction between the real and the actual Real effects need not be actualised

Realism as a philosophy of science is unstable between epistemological realism and more pragmatic approaches

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REALISM (6): IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE Realism is concerned to establish that scientists act by intervening in the world and manipulating the operation of its structures to make a difference in the production of their effects.

This implies that social science is about objects which are also actors and this must distinguish social inquiry from natural science.

Realism in the social sciences offers no means of establishing the reality of social structures

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REALISM (6): IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bhaskar, Roy (1999). The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences. Routledge, London and New York, third edition.

Big Data. Wikipedia (consulted 3/3/2015)

Outhwaite, William (1983) Concept formation in social science. Routledge, London.

Outhwaite, William. (1986) Understanding social life: The method called Verstehen. Jean Stroud, East Sussex.

Winch, Peter (1990) The idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy. Routledge, London.

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