What are the groundings and purposes of social science?

[ebola?]

I've been bouncing this around in my head a bit (lol, parochial). . .
How should we approach social science, in relief with 'natural science'?

As a sociologist, I see two main currents:
1. Positivism, a la natural science: there are objectively true (existent independent of the context of investigation) social facts. We must rigorously document these and the objective laws that govern them. Epistemically, something is 'true' if that statement corresponds correctly to the present set of social facts and laws.
2. 'Anthropologized Science': This is something like Burawoy's Extended Case Method (1991). There are no prior objectively true social facts. Rather, society is a rich body of possible entities and tendencies. Investigative intervention into and documentation of society effects more stable 'facts' and laws, albeit within that particular context. This also points to a new epistemology (a la Marx's Theses on Feurbach: the dichotomy is not that of true and false, as we usually think of it. Rather, the question is whether a body of theory transforms the beginning social world as it is applied..or even constructed ('true'), or if it instead leaves the world it looked at in the first place unchaged (~'false')
3. Some 'post-modernist' thing that I don't 'get'.

Given the attention that I've devoted, I clearly side more with number two. One reason why:

Is the task of social science to penetrate past appearances to get at some unknown dynamic and...well, world of entities? I think so, because otherwise, common sense would be not only enough, but simply 'true'. Okay, given this task of social science, the epistemological criteria of take #2 above (the 'equivalents' to true and false) fit way better, as does the overall ontology (one of intervention).

yeah, i got more, but I'll return with less THC in brain. . .

ebola

 

[yougene]

Rupert Sheldrake makes a treaty of 1 and 2 in the context of morphogenesis( which he extends to all categories of form ). New patterns look like probabilities, established patterns look like laws. The more a pattern is repeated the more it becomes an established pattern. So addressing the objectivity of social sciences it depends which end you are looking from. Looking at the past trends you'll see social "laws." Looking at the future you'll see probabilities of potential.


I think 2 seems like the leading edge of development but I'd also like to see more elements of positivism in its right places. Utilizing technology for research, there are all sorts of opportunities for cross-pollination amongst the fields.

 

[Belisarius]

If those are the three options offered, I'd say I'm about:

50% positivist
30% "anthropologized science"
20% "po-mo"

I can't shake the belief that human behavior is not outside of hard rules. We are evolutionarily-derived; much, but not all of our behavior must to some extent be adaptive. Take polygamy; the number of present and past societies that have practiced it exceeds those of polyandrists by a huge margin. It makes more evolutionary sense for a male to impregnate multiple females (and thus rapidly increase numbers) than for multiple males on one female, even if the female has a finer choice of her mate.

Let me get this out in the open, though: I'm not a strict evolutionary psychologist. Those people make perfect sense, until they start trying to nail every single facet of human behavior down to evolution. Helen Fisher has said that oral sex developed out of a need to visually inspect the genitalia of mates for disease or whatnot, which I think is bullshit for obvious reasons. Ditto for Desmond Morris and company.

What's interesting is what's left over after evolution, and that's where I think variation, choice, and perhaps even nonlinearity (e.g., chaos) get into the picture.

<<Investigative intervention into and documentation of society effects more stable 'facts' and laws, albeit within that particular context.>>

I'd agree with that, but only in context, as you say.

 

[satricion]

I think the first question you need to ask yourself is why are you considering social science 'in relief with natural science'?

From a traditional philosophy of science perspective, in terms of the 'groundings' of the various disciplines, there is no difference. Observations are necessarily theory laden, theory is on some level always metaphysical, etc etc. The difference between social and natural science on this level is merely the necessarily political nature of all paradigms which theorise the social. This is not to say that politics never influences the natural science (as Thomas Kuhn has famously pointed out), but rather that the political differences between, say, Parsonian Functionalism and the Frankfurt School are rather more obvious and reflect different social processes than the processes leading to theoretical change between the laws of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics (which, a la Kuhn, reflect political processes within the disciplines rather than more wide ranging ideologies connected with the politics of modernity.)

This also influences your question about the 'purposes' of social science. I don't see why the purpose of all science isn't to get past initial appearances to a 'world of entities', although I would argue that a better way of phrasing it would be to understand the processes (rather than 'entities') which govern the way that social life works.

I also think the epistemological viewpoint you've detailed in point 2 is bullshit. The fact that knowledge doesn't lead to some kind of revolutionary praxis doesn't make it false, and this epistemological viewpoint has in my view fucked up the social sciences no end ('this research is shit because it isn't politically radical enough.') The kind of praxis that the social sciences lead to is a product of theory and its relationship with the broader social world, not merely the truth value of empirical work (which is determined by theory anyway).

 

[ebola?]

I think the first question you need to ask yourself is why are you considering social science 'in relief with natural science'?

haha! Incisive question. I actually treat the two similarly (epistemologically and ontologically), but I thought that for the purpose of this discussion, focus on the social sciences would bring in more discussants and point to an area where this issue comes to the fore.

The difference between social and natural science on this level is merely the necessarily political nature of all paradigms which theorise the social. This is not to say that politics never influences the natural science (as Thomas Kuhn has famously pointed out), but rather that the political differences between, say, Parsonian Functionalism and the Frankfurt School are rather more obvious and reflect different social processes than the processes leading to theoretical change between the laws of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics (which, a la Kuhn, reflect political processes within the disciplines rather than more wide ranging ideologies connected with the politics of modernity.)

I concur, although I lacked the insight to include this point in my prior post. Well put.

This also influences your question about the 'purposes' of social science. I don't see why the purpose of all science isn't to get past initial appearances to a 'world of entities', although I would argue that a better way of phrasing it would be to understand the processes (rather than 'entities') which govern the way that social life works.

Do we really disagree on this? I think that part of penetrating the 'illusion of the immediate' is to turn to processes rather than things (to de-reify). And if the immediate is the truth, why would we need social scientists?

I also think the epistemological viewpoint you've detailed in point 2 is bullshit. The fact that knowledge doesn't lead to some kind of revolutionary praxis doesn't make it false, and this epistemological viewpoint has in my view fucked up the social sciences no end ('this research is shit because it isn't politically radical enough.') The kind of praxis that the social sciences lead to is a product of theory and its relationship with the broader social world, not merely the truth value of empirical work (which is determined by theory anyway).

Pretty strong indictment, but I think that here you misunderstood my perspective and might misunderstand (Marxian?) praxis. I do not take the....what I'd call 'vulgar Marxist' reading, where a theory must impel an effective political movement to be valid (this I think comes from people taking Theses on Feuerbach #8 in isolation). A theory that changes things (praxis proper?) may simply change the constellation of objects that are intelligible, their relations, and then their dynamics. I think that you were getting at this in the first part of your concluding statement. A theory that leaves our view of things and how they work, be they common sense or prior 'science', unchanged is the ideology/false consciousness/etc.

This all gets back to the purpose of social science, which I think is to move past the everyday, but at the same time explain it and show how 'common sense' functions in the system that gives rise to it. (now I'm just repeating myself...sorry.)

ebola

 

[satricion]

Do we really disagree on this? I think that part of penetrating the 'illusion of the immediate' is to turn to processes rather than things (to de-reify). And if the immediate is the truth, why would we need social scientists?

No I don't think we do disagree.

Pretty strong indictment, but I think that here you misunderstood my perspective and might misunderstand (Marxian?) praxis. I do not take the....what I'd call 'vulgar Marxist' reading, where a theory must impel an effective political movement to be valid (this I think comes from people taking Theses on Feuerbach #8 in isolation). A theory that changes things (praxis proper?) may simply change the constellation of objects that are intelligible, their relations, and then their dynamics. I think that you were getting at this in the first part of your concluding statement. A theory that leaves our view of things and how they work, be they common sense or prior 'science', unchanged is the ideology/false consciousness/etc.

This all gets back to the purpose of social science, which I think is to move past the everyday, but at the same time explain it and show how 'common sense' functions in the system that gives rise to it. (now I'm just repeating myself...sorry.)

ebola

Well okay but am I missing the point of the question? I mean, the view that the purpose of science is to move beyond appearances in order to explain these appearances (with theory), and that good theories are those that allow us to see the world in new ways, is pretty much taken for granted whenever people are doing research into anything, right?

(As a caveat I haven't read Marx on epistemology since I was a 19 year old second year undergrad so I'm beyond rusty on that score)

 

[Jamshyd]

3. Some 'post-modernist' thing that I don't 'get'

You put this there just for me, didn't you? .

Like I told you a while ago, at the time I was studying sociology (2003 - 2007), there seems to have been a movement in (Western? (Canadian?)) Academia for the fusion of social/antro/historical/linguistic- and literary/artistic/film-theory and criticism. Even in a post-structuralist atmosphere, Lukaucs and the Frankfurt school was alive and well, and Foucault was in vogue, Derrida falling just a few steps behind. Queer theory was there, but still not quite as prominently as I think it should be. Notice how all these theorists are applicable to both sides of the theory and criticism spectrum.

There seems to be a movement towards something like Guy Debourd's Society of Spectacle. (Ebola, if you haven't read this yet, you ought to - but take a good dose of speed before you do ). The idea of society as film (roughly) or illusion seems to have been emerging.

While I cannot say for sure where the Social Sciences may be headed, I can say that at least psychology is probably going to become obsolete with the advent of Neuroscience (good riddance I say, after all psychology has always wanted to be a science but couldn't).

 

[satricion]

You put this there just for me, didn't you? .

Like I told you a while ago, at the time I was studying sociology (2003 - 2007), there seems to have been a movement in (Western? (Canadian?)) Academia for the fusion of social/antro/historical/linguistic- and literary/artistic/film-theory and criticism. Even in a post-structuralist atmosphere, Lukaucs and the Frankfurt school was alive and well, and Foucault was in vogue, Derrida falling just a few steps behind. Queer theory was there, but still not quite as prominently as I think it should be. Notice how all these theorists are applicable to both sides of the theory and criticism spectrum.

The Frankfurt School anticipated some aspects of Foucault in some ways, esp Marcuse's psychoanalytic critique of the subject etc.

While I cannot say for sure where the Social Sciences may be headed, I can say that at least psychology is probably going to become obsolete with the advent of Neuroscience (good riddance I say, after all psychology has always wanted to be a science but couldn't).

I disagree. Well, I agree that psychology has always wanted to be a 'science', which is why it is so heavily positivistic. This is holding it back as a discipline. But I don't think it will become obsolete. There are certain questions you just can not solve with neuroscience, which is why the combination of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience is becoming so important in psychology. Psychological processes are very rarely reducible to bits of brain lighting up because of the way that the architecture of the brain is set out (ie it is sometimes impossible to figure out if bits of the brain are lighting up because you think they are.) Also, the (psychological) questions which neuroscience is addressing (ie the questions about how cognitive and affective processes actually work) are only meaningful from a theoretical perspective that is necessarily psychological and not merely neuroscientific (ie do we think like this, or like this? this is not a question that comes from looking at the brain itself, but rather a question drawn from theories of behaviour and cognition that do not come from neuroscience)

 

[Jamshyd]

But see, I am not talking about neuroscience in its present state. Neuroscience is still at its infancy. No, make that embryonic phase. Give it a few centuries, and, assuming humans have not gotten themselves extinct, Neuroscience will reach a level of analysis in which emergent psychological phenomena are accounted for and explained adequately.

I take it you believe in a mind/body dichotomy?

 

[Jabberwocky]

I'm for 1, the groundings and foundation ought to be positivist

1. Conjecture
2. To experiment
3. To what we know and how can we use it

But there is a meta-science above the foundation that deals with ethics, the boundaries of what we can know, how do we integrate with fringe topics and other sciences, what are legitimate topics and presuppositions, etc. New schools and branches of science can come as much or more from changes here.

 

[satricion]

But see, I am not talking about neuroscience in its present state. Neuroscience is still at its infancy. No, make that embryonic phase. Give it a few centuries, and, assuming humans have not gotten themselves extinct, Neuroscience will reach a level of analysis in which emergent psychological phenomena are accounted for and explained adequately.

I take it you believe in a mind/body dichotomy?

On an ontological level no, I think a mind/body dichotomy is indefensible.

But on an epistemological level I don't think your view is tenable. No matter how advanced neuroscience actually gets, we are still going to need psychology (and the social sciences) to give it meaning.

Neuroscientific research is only meaningful because it is able to give a neurological basis to theories of cognition and affect. But what we mean by cognition and affect do not come from looking at the brain, but from the enormously diverse influences that make up how we think about subjectivity. Theories about the way that affect, decision making, group membership etc etc work do not come from looking at the brain, but from the way that we in our historical moment think about emotions, rationality, etc.

By your argument, neuroscience, were it sufficiently advanced, would make all human sciences obsolete, including sociology, anthropology etc.

Whilst I don't believe in a crude mind/body dualism on an ontological level (because after all, what is the ontological status of the 'mind' anyway?), I think your reduction of all psychological (and by extension social) phenomena to the body (brain) is just as crude.

 

[ebola?]

Well okay but am I missing the point of the question? I mean, the view that the purpose of science is to move beyond appearances in order to explain these appearances (with theory), and that good theories are those that allow us to see the world in new ways, is pretty much taken for granted whenever people are doing research into anything, right?

Indeed, but fleshing this out and using it as a criterion for truth value is quite novel. Basically, I am asking this to amuse myself and examine the alternatives to positivism.

Academia for the fusion of social/antro/historical/linguistic- and literary/artistic/film-theory and criticism. Even in a post-structuralist atmosphere, Lukaucs and the Frankfurt school was alive and well, and Foucault was in vogue, Derrida falling just a few steps behind. Queer theory was there, but still not quite as prominently as I think it should be. Notice how all these theorists are applicable to both sides of the theory and criticism spectrum.

This is what I noticed too, well mostly in contexts where post-colonial theorization is admitted. Judith Butler's also at Berkeley, so she looms large for the gender people. There are also those who think it's a complete wank and we should be finding statistically trends in vast survey-data.

There seems to be a movement towards something like Guy Debourd's Society of Spectacle. (Ebola, if you haven't read this yet, you ought to - but take a good dose of speed before you do ). The idea of society as film (roughly) or illusion seems to have been emerging.

I will check it out. I'll save the speed for overly verbose essay-writing.

The Frankfurt School anticipated some aspects of Foucault in some ways, esp Marcuse's psychoanalytic critique of the subject etc.

I'm not so sure but I'd like you to elaborate. I think that Marcuse retains the Freudian psyche as prior to society (if it may be channeled and modified in various ways), while Foucault looks at this self as an effect of power as it's exercised.

But see, I am not talking about neuroscience in its present state. Neuroscience is still at its infancy. No, make that embryonic phase. Give it a few centuries, and, assuming humans have not gotten themselves extinct, Neuroscience will reach a level of analysis in which emergent psychological phenomena are accounted for and explained adequately.

I concur, but neuroscience won't give us reductive explanations (well, usually). I think that we will find that multiple patterns of signaling can effect similar 'qualia', these patterns bearing no intelligible relation to another in cellular terms. Well, I think this will be the general rule, with key exceptions.

I'm for 1, the groundings and foundation ought to be positivist
Conjecture
To experiment
To what we know and how can we use it

Please stop me if I assume to much about what you mean. I think that positivist-type hypothesis testing is not viable, as this method does not reflexively examine how prior theory will structure objects of inquiry, the set of meaningful hypotheses, and the laws being derived.

I also think that a logic other than hypothesis testing is better suited to the social sciences. Namely, theory and observation in dialogue mutually transform one another, reconstructing a more robust body of theory, to be further developed in new contexts.

Neuroscientific research is only meaningful because it is able to give a neurological basis to theories of cognition and affect. But what we mean by cognition and affect do not come from looking at the brain, but from the enormously diverse influences that make up how we think about subjectivity. Theories about the way that affect, decision making, group membership etc etc work do not come from looking at the brain, but from the way that we in our historical moment think about emotions, rationality, etc.

Wouldn't an adequate neuroscience include the social world, at least as external factors?

ebola

 

[satricion]

This is what I noticed too, well mostly in contexts where post-colonial theorization is admitted. Judith Butler's also at Berkeley, so she looms large for the gender people. There are also those who think it's a complete wank and we should be finding statistically trends in vast survey-data.

Well I mean the survey people are idiots and I doubt Judith Butler gives a shit about them.

On a more interesting note, Judith Butler has also written about how considering things like gender etc is not merely 'cultural' critique of 'cultural' issues, and about how culture and structure are mutually constitutive. I think this goes some (small) way of removing the caricature that some people use whenever they talk about post-structuralists (ie that they think the whole world really is just a text).

I'm not so sure but I'd like you to elaborate. I think that Marcuse retains the Freudian psyche as prior to society (if it may be channeled and modified in various ways), while Foucault looks at this self as an effect of power as it's exercised.

To be honest I didn't really think this remark through. I was thinking in terms of a critique of Marx's views on subjectivity (species-being etc). Marcuse was one of the first dudes to show up and say that 'human nature' is actually in some way an effect of the social world rather than some pre-existing essence. Of course I agree that he posited the Freudian subject as prior to society and Foucault would not agree on this, but I think they are in some way addressing similar issues.

Wouldn't an adequate neuroscience include the social world, at least as external factors?

ebola

Yes but that's not what neuroscience is right now. I interpreted Jamshyd's remarks as talking about what is now known as neuroscience. My point is that it is still unavoidable to talk about cognitive processes (and social processes) on a level of abstraction beyond that which neuroscience (currently conceived) can deal with. It's basically an argument against reductionism. No matter how well we know the brain, we will never make psychological and sociological theories obsolete, because as we move from one level to another we are dealing with processes that can not be explained with reference to the architecture of the brain.

 

[Jabberwocky]

I also think that a logic other than hypothesis testing is better suited to the social sciences. Namely, theory and observation in dialogue mutually transform one another, reconstructing a more robust body of theory, to be further developed in new contexts.

As more robust theories are developed, wouldn't the next step to test them for applicability and accuracy? By "theory and observation in dialogue" are you indicating that conjecture and experiment can not really be treated as discrete processes? Or that there is whole other element involved?

 

[ebola?]

As more robust theories are developed, wouldn't the next step to test them for applicability and accuracy? By "theory and observation in dialogue" are you indicating that conjecture and experiment can not really be treated as discrete processes? Or that there is whole other element involved?

I concur with your first statement...and I agree mostly with your second. It's not just our hypothetical conjecture that in-forms our experimental methods but also our whole beginning theoretical 'body', the entire human conceptual network.

BUT...I kind regard hypothesis testing as...epistemologically wrong-headed. If we acknowledge this prior theory that structures observation, I then think that use of observation to reconstruct theory makes a lot more sense than deployment of the dichotomy of disconfirming or leaving intact the hypothesis in question. Approaching the theory-empirical relationship as a mutually constitutive dialogue can speak to the otherwise ignored conceptual underpinnings of the whole process...eh...I'm wandering into a meaningless ramble.
...
heh...I pretty much just agree with satyricon, but I am pretty sure that Jamshyd was talking about the potential of future neuroscience.

ebola

 

[satricion]

My interpretation was that Jamshyd was talking about a future neuroscience that was quantitatively, rather than qualitatively, different.

Neuroscience can get better in all the ways it is still getting better now, and still not be meaningful without other theory to give it meaning.

An adequate neuroscience would involve a qualitative change, a real paradigm shift which acknowledged that neuroarchitecture does not hold all the answers to human behaviour, and that the way we think about the brain, and about behaviour, comes from theories which are ultimately social. This is not the way neuroscience is currently going, and its influence on popular culture is exactly the opposite of this.

 

[ebola?]

its influence on popular culture is exactly the opposite of this.

I don't think that this is quite fair. Most of the ills to which you point we inherited primarily from behaviorism's prior dominance in psychology. Who knows what the interaction with culture will come to be. Neuroscience is REALLY young. We don't even have the right instruments to measure the pertinent events....yet.

ebola

 

[satricion]

Because of its failure to appreciate the social basis of the way we in this historical moment think about subjectivity, neuroscience shares with psychology a tendency to 'scientifically' enshrine essentialised ideas about 'human nature.' This is nothing new of course.

The point I'm making is that this is happening for theoretical reasons (or perhaps, more properly theoretical and political reasons). Ie, the individualistic paradigm that neuroscience and psychology both hold to.

So as far as its influence on popular culture goes, neuroscientific arguments have become the new gloss over which evolutionary and behaviourist ideas, legitimised by the cultural context they gain meaning from (ie the individualism inherent to capitalism), justify the current status quo.

So instead of 'women are evolved to be A, men are evolved to be B, people who are good in business have evolved to be C' we get 'neuroscientists from X university have found that the brains of women are structured in a way to make them A, men in a way to make them B, and businesspeople in a way to make them C, and this is because of evolution. Now here's an add for a new antidepressant.'

Without an enormous paradigm shift in neuroscience, and in psychology (the discipline with which it is most closely related right now) I don't see this changing.

 

[ebola?]

But I think that there are people making this kind of shift...particularly feminist psychologists and neuroscientists who correspond with current philosophers of mind.