Mann, Michael. The sources of social power. A history of power from the beginning to A. Manicas, P. Merton, R. Philosophical Theory and Scientific Practice C. Danks, J. Bohn, and R. Fears A Realist Philosophy of Social Science. Explanation and Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Author : Peter T. Peter Manicas discusses the role of causality seen in the physical sciences and offers a reassessment of the problem of explanation from a realist perspective. He argues that the fundamental goal of theory in both the natural and social sciences is not, contrary to widespread opinion, prediction and control, or the explanation of events including behaviour.
Instead, theory aims to provide an understanding of the processes which, together, produce the contingent outcomes of experience. But to do this we assume, not unreasonably, that no huge mass will come flying into our solar system. If it were to do so, all our predictions would fail. The system, closed to that point, would be opened. All our calculations would be wrong. Yet these phenomena are also, in principle, describable by the same physics. We can predict the positions of planets and projectiles with considerable exactitude; we cannot do this with leaves and boulders.
Why not? The falling leaf is still subject to the laws of motion, but it might go anywhere exactly because we cannot specify the initial conditions and there are all kinds of things in the system — the erratic air mass through Theory, experiment and the metaphysics of Laplace 35 which it falls, a bicycle rider speeding by — which will affect its downward trajectory. The system remains open. We can construct an experiment, however: we can create a vacuum in a closed chamber, and so on. Getting ahead of ourselves, we can here contrast the behavior of clockwork soldiers and real people whose behavior is manifestly open-systemic.
As Bhaskar says: Clockwork soldiers and robots do not more nearly observe the laws of mechanics than real people. Rather, their peculiarity stems from the fact that if wound up and left alone their intrinsic structure ensures that for each set of antecedent conditions only one result is possible. Indeed, a good measure of the extraordinary success of the disciplines of the abstract physical sciences is due to the fact that inquirers have been able to ignore concrete complexity and, via abstraction from the real concrete, they have been able to theorize physical, chemical and bio-chemical mechanisms as if they were operating without interference.
Here not only is experiment critical but the capacity to deal with the real concrete in terms of strata — the physical, chemical and biological — has been a critical feature of the successes of the physical sciences.
To go back to our earlier example, we can think of the periodic table as abstractly summarizing the chemical possibilities for all the elements, what causal properties they have, what molecules are possible and impossible and what causal properties they must have qua chemical, even when they are functioning as they normally are, in open systems.
Similarly, one can understand mechanical outcomes in terms of the generative mechanisms of physics, and so for biology, which provides us with theories of biological mechanisms. But since in the world, they are operating open-systemically, this knowledge, powerful as it is, is not sufficient to either explain or predict any concrete outcome — even the dissolving of a particular spoonful of salt in the water glass in my hand. Pertinently, if 36 A Realist Philosophy of Social Science lacking in interest, the salt has to get into the water and the condition of the water must be appropriate.
The foregoing has enormous implication for a human science, to be considered in the chapters that follow. Here we can only notice the consequences regarding experiment in the human sciences, for not only is there no way to seek even relative closures, but intervening to make things happen which would not have happened otherwise will likely be immoral.
But there is one piece of unfinished business. Explanation and prediction are not symmetrical Of considerable pertinence to the problem of understanding and explanation in the human sciences is the idea that explanation and prediction are symmetrical. This idea must be heartily rejected. As already noted, one often encounters the idea that a good theory makes good predictions.
But where this idea is appropriate, it does not mean that some naturally occurring event is thereby predicted. Rather, it concerns the powerful idea, important to accepting a theory as true, that on the basis of the theory, we are able to test our theory and sometimes make new discoveries. There are many instances of this. An easy one to describe is the filling in of the periodic table.
We noted that lacking any knowledge of the structure of atoms and their dynamics, Mendeleev had to compile his table empirically. Still, by interpolating between known properties of neighboring elements in his table, he was able to fill in some of the gaps in that table.
Mendeleev began with 61 known elements. We now know that there are some elements. But this is very different to arguing that we can judge a theory by its ability to predict events in open systems.
And this question can be answered only by seeing whether the theory works, which means whether or not it yields sufficiently accurate predictions. Friedman, Again, if prediction means that given our knowledge of chemical mechanisms, there should be an unknown element between two already identified elements, then proof of its existence is a powerful test of the theory.
Theory, experiment and the metaphysics of Laplace 37 But if it means that theory will allow us to predict any and all chemical outcomes in the world, then while theory gives us an understanding of powerful constraints on what can happen, there are nonetheless limitless possibilities regarding what will happen. The salt in my hand may never dissolve, or be a party to the rusting of the can, to the seasoning of my steak, and so on.
We noted earlier that to explain that a particular quantity of salt dissolves in water, we need to understand that salt is water-soluble but we need not understand the mechanism which explains this and non-trivially we need to know that it was put in water. That is, we often can and do offer conditional predictions: if X, then Y will occur. These are, indeed, the bread and butter of ordinary life, and as long as we are speaking of the countless generalizations available to us — all known independently of the discoveries of science — we are generally not disappointed.
But not only is this hardly the prediction and control so often taken to be the test of scientific theory, but as noted, we are also very often disappointed, either because in an open-systemic world, the conditions of the antecedent were not satisfied, or they did not constitute a set of sufficient conditions. Were it otherwise, of course, we would all get rich on the stock market and there would be no divorces. The world is not Laplacean Pierre Simon Laplace — was a brilliant mathematician who left us with the powerful idea that a theory of n-variables with n-equations would make all science computational.
Indeed, we can think of the universe as one gigantic closed system. But if what happens in the universe is the product of the particular conjunction of initiated generative mechanisms, and the configurations of these changes with time, there will be no such description — and there will be contingency and plenty of it. This means that after something has happened, we are often able to explain it — it was caused, but we could not have predicted it — sometimes without even a modest measure of probability.
This is typical of many of the events which interest us most: a war; the 38 A Realist Philosophy of Social Science fall of the Berlin Wall; a powerful upswing in the economy; an extended drought; an earthquake; a hotel fire; a fatal stroke; the emergence of a new virus.
The assumption of regularity determinism encourages two counterproductive regressions. There is no rational limit to how far one might go. In the first, perhaps more typical case, the system continues to include variables until it includes everything. In the second case, since there are no conditions intrinsic to the system, the reduction proceeds until it includes nothing.
The aspirations of Wilfredo Pareto, economist-cum-sociologist, illustrate this beautifully. For him: In order thoroughly to grasp the form of a society in every detail, it would be necessary first to know what all the very numerous elements are, and then to know how they function — and that in quantitative terms. The number of equations would have to be equal to the number of unknowns and would determine them exclusively.
We would have to solve a system of 70, equations. General equilibrium theory is a perfect example; see chapter 6. He programmed these and ran the sequence. On another run, he stopped the sequence mid-point, but rather than go back to the start, he typed the mid-point values into the computer and ran the sequence from there. The two sequences diverged, at first by a small amount, then increasingly. The computer stored six digits, but the printout only three.
When he began the sequence from the midpoint, there was a very small difference in the input values of the variable and these were amplified as the sequence ran.
See the discussion of meteorology, below. Theory, experiment and the metaphysics of Laplace 39 meaning of the concept of a closed system in this sense is to consider the example of a system of simultaneous equations. Such a system is determinate, i. But, as noted, the world is not Laplacean and celestial mechanics is a poor model for science. It is clear why we can often explain when we could not have predicted: time makes the difference.
Since the universe is not a closed system, what happens has consequences regarding what will happen next. These ideas are best illustrated, perhaps, by considering two historical sciences: evolutionary biology and meteorology. Darwin gives us a notion of a science radically unlike the ideal bequeathed mistakenly by classical physics. The key difference is this: Darwin showed us that, at least with respect to living things, history matters a great deal Manicas, c; Rosenberg, Darwin thus showed that there was absolutely no requirement for us to impute some form of design or intrinsic purpose or meaning to what exists nor, as importantly, that there was any sort of necessity or inevitability about which species have perished and which have come to exist.
It is important to be clear about this. Darwin did not explain the evolution of the species. He provided one powerful mechanism for explaining this: natural selection. Explaining the outcomes of natural selection presupposes that we have detailed information regarding organisms and the relations of organisms to their environment. If we had this information from the beginnings of life, we would have a start in reconstructing the course of evolution.
Unfortunately, such information is not and will not become available. This does not mean that biological phenomena are either wholly or partly uncaused. It means rather that, as with any concrete event, the evolution of a species, like the onslaught of a drought, is the outcome of a multiplicity of causes in a continually changing configuration. To speak of contingencies is to say only that there is 40 A Realist Philosophy of Social Science no reason to believe that the world is like the solar system as described by classical physics, a world where all the masses and their relations are accounted for and nothing new will happen.
Meteorology, like evolutionary biology, is a historical science and, like geology, it draws on non-geological laws pertaining to the mechanical and thermodynamical properties of gases, solids and liquids.
Its problems with predictions are well known, but we can now see clearly why. Weather is a wonderful example of a chaotic system. This depends upon noticing that the system is sensitive to initial conditions, which means that as a function of the accuracy of our knowledge of these conditions, even under conditions of relative closure, there will be a range of degrees of freedom as regards the subsequent states.
This is best illustrated with the example of successive tennis balls hit into a forest. Two successive balls, hit at nearly identical velocities, can hit a tree at nearly identical locations. But each time they are deflected, their trajectory changes. The very small initial difference results in a difference in all the subsequent hits.
Accordingly, the two balls may end up in two very different locations. Even putting aside the lay of the mountain, at each instance in the downward trajectory, the splintering is itself altering the conditions of future falling and splintering.
For such systems, there is in principle unpredictability. Jesse Hobbs applies the idea to weather. For example, meteorologists use parameters such as temperature, humidity, pressure, wind direction, and wind velocity to make predictions. This yields systems with five or six degrees of freedom multiplied by the number of distinct locations for which these values are measured or represented — a level of computational complexity that already demands the largest supercomputers to manage.
But suppose undaunted meteorologists take the plunge into ever greater levels of precision. The limit of precision, as with all chaotic systems, is literally infinite. Hence, while we have determinism — outcomes are causal products — there is also inprinciple unpredictability. These considerations entail that we cannot say that an event had to happen. To be sure, once something happens, we can always go back in time, identify the relevant generative mechanisms and causal contingencies and provide an account which explains the event.
This will generally take the form of a narrative which identifies the particular collocation of causes as they developed in time. Each cause is an influence exerted on some mechanism from without, and so itself produced by some other mechanism; that is, is itself an effect. The stimulus or stimuli which brought it into being are causes, and to come into existence in a world of enduring mechanisms must themselves be effects. Effects become causes of further effects, and causes are the effects of antecedent causes.
The effort to find the causes will cease when we have satisfied the demand that called for the explanation. That is, like the physicist, she can offer an account of the critical generative mechanisms at work in producing meteorological phenomena, for example, the thermodynamical properties of ocean cooling. Unfortunately, this view is promoted, in quite unintended ways, by many writers who have a mistaken view of the natural sciences. These writers suppose that: 1.
If science is to be empirical, it must be experimental. The main task of science is prediction. The successful sciences can both explain and predict events including, then, the acts of individuals. Scientific observation is theory-neutral. If we measure the social sciences on any of these grounds, they look very bad — even hopeless. But things are not as bad as they seem, since none of the foregoing propositions is true. In the previous chapters, we tried to show why. The alternative offered shows that: 1.
There are very successful non-experimental sciences. A main task of any science is description and understanding; prediction plays a minor role. Explaining concrete events is generally neither the interest, nor often within the competence, of a science. Theories are almost never deductive systems; rather, they offer a representation of causal mechanisms and processes, both observable and non-observable. We will put some of these ideas to work in the present chapter.
We shall not argue, however, that there are no important differences between inquiry in the human sciences and inquiry in the natural sciences. Unfortunately, these differences are not, in general, properly understood. These misunderstandings are, usually, part of the more general misunderstanding about science generally. There are two very large differences to be considered.
Unlike the objects of study in natural science, the objects of study in social science — institutions, social structures, social relations — do not exist independently of us. They are, as we shall explain, real but concept- and activity-dependent. We begin with an account of persons.
Explaining human powers Persons are organisms, but they are also social beings. We need to see what this means, and we need to be careful here. Both in ordinary conversation and in social science, we tend to speak not of persons, but of individuals.
Understanding these capacities is a necessary first step. We can then draw what are some important conclusions bearing on explaining the actions of persons. The view of causality that we have sketched helps enormously in clarifying what is at issue and we think also to dispel an illusory problem: the bearing of biology on human action.
We can begin with the fact that excepting for identical twins no two human genotypes are the same and that from the moment of conception the developmental process is epigenetic. That is, everything that happens is a complex transactional interplay of causes and processes through time. The phenotype is the observable physical features of an organism and includes anything that is part of the observable structure, function or behavior of a living organism.
Another way to speak of epigenesis is to say that the phenotype is the nonadditive causal product of gene—gene transactions, gene—environment transactions and environment—environment transactions. As regards 44 A Realist Philosophy of Social Science phenotypical outcomes, including even most genetic disorders, nearly all are epigenetic causal products, a point of considerable importance.
Each of us begins at conception as but two cells — the genome which establishes the genotype. That is, DNA contains all the information necessary to build and sustain an organism, but it needs a living organism in an environment.
And the building and sustaining of it involves a marvelously complex causal nexus. From the point of view of biology, an organism is an ordered complex of orderly complex systems. Biochemistry starts from the level of atoms and molecules and works upward through the larger and more complex molecules to complicated systems, organelles, cells, tissues, organs, systems and finally to the organism itself. Activities within systems may have, as the outcome of their causal transactions, properties at higher levels.
These are properly termed emergent properties. For example, proteins are capable of at least eight major activities of which the amino acids from which they are polymerized are not capable. Complete information about all the atomic positions of an unknown protein does not allow us to infer even that the protein is an enzyme, still less, what in a specific system its particular causal properties or functions might be. What it does is a consequence of its relations in the system.
This holds true at every level, including the psychological. Moreover, higher level properties have bearings on lower level functions and properties. The coordinated movements of an organism are paradigmatic. The cat reaches for the ball of string. In achieving his goal, fantastic constraints are imposed in coordinating the array of systems, perceptual, muscular, anatomical and so on, which are involved.
The organism is not a closed system. That is, the effects of microprocesses at the molecular level are mediated not only at that level but 1 The following owes much to the various writings of Paul A. Weiss , , See also Hull, ; Wimsatt, a, b; Craver, Explanation and understanding in the social sciences 45 by mediations in a wider environment, an environment which, strictly speaking, extends to the far reaches of the universe.
It may be useful here to give a restricted meaning to a term used widely but vaguely and usually wrongly. To be sure, there is no characteristic human development since development is consistent with a fantastic range of very different environments. Nevertheless, the idea is clear enough. Most crucially, while we must acknowledge that humans need a human environment to realize their distinctive human capacities, we want to put aside for the moment the social and cultural differences encountered in all human development.
Given this restricted sense, there are some obvious biologically determined traits: our human anatomy and physiology is one. This makes some capacities possible and others impossible. Humans cannot fly and, lacking gills, they cannot breathe in water. Biology determines sex and manifest physical traits that mark family resemblance, such as facial features, body type and skin color.
But race is not biologically determined since on all the evidence there are no biological grounds for grouping people into distinct races. This will also provide a useful example of problems in explaining and predicting phenotypical outcomes, including here the best cases for study — the range of diseases which include sickle cell anemia, type 2 diabetes and multiple sclerosis.
All of these have made an impact on the popular imagination, too often in a misleading or downright mistaken form. First, there remains agreement that there are no gene variants present in all individuals of any demographic group and absent in individuals in any other such group. Indeed, there is considerably more genetic variation within populations as between them Bonham et al. Second, 3 4 See Hanaford, ; Voegelin, ; Henningsen, See also Jerry A.
Explanation and understanding in the social sciences 47 there is no argument that there are correlations between phenotypical outcomes and genetic variation. Third, as already insisted, the problem is not that genes are not causally critical to phenotypical outcomes, but that the explanation of these outcomes cannot, in general, be reduced to genetic mechanisms.
What then is the problem? The route to misunderstanding is easily identified. One begins by noting a statistical difference in the incidence of some disease, for example, sickle cell anemia, between African-Americans and EuropeanAmericans.
Since genes are surely causal, we conclude, mistakenly, that racial differences explain differences in phenotypical outcomes. The fallacy is plain: these are all correlations and not particularly strong ones at that.
Thus, socially constructed categories of race and ethnicity in use are reasonably correlated with ancestry,6 but given that the individuals may have membership in several bio-geographical clusters, that the borders of these are not distinct and are influenced by sampling strategies, ancestry is not race.
While it has 5 6 Some further critical terms may be introduced here: an allele is a form of a gene which codes for one possible outcome of a phenotype. For example, Mendel found that there were two forms of gene which determined the color of a pea pod. Accordingly, alleles are causal. SNPs single nucleotide polymorphisms are alleles whose sequence has only a single changed nucleotide. For example, all of the people who have an A rather than a G at a particular location in a chromosome can have identical genetic variants at other SNPs in the chromosomal region surrounding the A.
These regions of linked variants are called haplotypes. It is generally recognized that while convenient, there are obvious dangers in this approach, of which some are noted below.
Inferring ancestry from such data remains probabilistic. See Jorde and Woodling, — See also Cavalli-Sforza, Again, an example makes the point.
Finally, and morally critical, employing racial surrogates for SNPs not only risks reinscribing race as an explanatory biological category, but risks denying appropriate therapy to persons who could benefit.
Since the genotype is unique, a match or the absence of one may be decisive as regards the guilt or innocence of a suspect or of someone already wrongly imprisoned. Nor is sampling bias altogether overcome by having 7 8 9 This may be generous given that the standard technique examines only a few selected loci in the DNA. Thus, inferences drawn from one or two African populations will likely be different than a sample of African populations drawn from very different geographical locations.
For discussion of the BilDil case. Explanation and understanding in the social sciences 49 a universal DNA database, since if the police are not stopping white cocaine users, it does not matter if their DNA is in the database.
Chapter 1 argued that causes are not merely correlations and chapter 2 insisted that explanation and prediction are not symmetrical. Both ideas were in the background of the foregoing discussion of race and biology.
In this section we argued that while genes certainly figure in explanation, properly understood, race as a biological category does not. Phenotypical outcomes, whether they are diseases or behaviors, are causally complex products. We must resist the easy assumption that any single mechanism or event from among the ensemble of events and mechanisms, physical, chemical, biochemical, biological and social, is sufficient to explain some outcome, whether it be schizophrenia or measured competence in an IQ test.
By recognizing database problems and the limits of exploiting correlation, many researchers are now aspiring to the situation where in medical decision-making, disease-related genetic variation is directly assessed. This requires that we identify a critical emergent causal product of our speciesspecific brain and central nervous system.
It is consciousness and the capacity of mind to represent objects and situations outside itself — technically what is termed intentionality Searle, , While it is next to impossible to deny that humans have this capacity, we still lack any sort of adequate understanding of it.
The HapMap project has tended also to encourage the reification of racial categories. But until direct assessment of disease-related genetic variation becomes feasible, there remains disagreement regarding trade-offs in the use of current techniques for predictive, diagnostic and therapeutic uses.
See especially Duster, , ; Jorde and Wooding, and Rotimi, Accordingly, if humans everywhere and anytime, abstractly have these capacities, given that societies differ, they will be concretely realized in a wide variety of ways.
It will be useful to distinguish realized capacities, e. Capacities as potentialities are biologically determined but in actual development contrary to our mind experiment , realized capacities are not. That is, social mechanisms like genetic mechanisms are necessary causes. But of course, depending upon the time and place, children acquire some very different languages. That is, in the actual world, the potential is concretely realized in differing societies.
In arguing against both Wundt and Watson, his problem was precisely to explain mind and meaning in terms consistent with Darwin. See also Gillespie, Of course, this still leaves many questions unanswered. Bickerton provides a powerful account of the origins of language which draws on evolutionary theory, biology and linguistics. As we might expect from our evolutionary history, there are important correlations between populations defined in terms of ancestry and languages.
The explanation is quite simple: two isolated populations differentiate both genetically and linguistically. Isolation, which could result from geographic, ecological, or social barriers, reduces the likelihood of marriages between populations, as a result, reciprocally, isolated populations will evolve independently and Explanation and understanding in the social sciences 51 are probably biologically grounded propensities or tendencies of other sorts, for example, toward cancer and schizophrenia and perhaps also traits of personality, for example, temperament, and musical or mathematical pre-dispositions.
Some people have a tin ear; some cannot hit the curve ball; others seem especially apt with numbers or things mechanical. Many potentialities of persons are either not realized at all or are barely realized.
There are many reasons for this. One obvious reason: other conditions necessary to realize the capacity were absent: insufficient protein; no violin; no teacher. Another obvious reason is that realizing some capacities often requires work, often at a sacrifice of other goals and interests.
From birth onward, then, in order to realize their distinct human capacities, humans need to interact with other humans. This is also a complicated epigenetic causal story requiring contributions both from the developing child who is an active participant and from the wider social environment: the immediate nurturer, family, friends, consociates, then teachers and so on. At some point — and evidently quite early on — a person with a personality — a distinct ensemble of habits, attitudes and beliefs — emerges.
Three fundamental theses would seem to follow: 1. Except for humanness, nothing is programmed. Not only is isolation a highly relative matter contact is continuous and reveals itself both linguistically and genetically , but because the microcosm recapitulates the macrocosm notes 2 and 7 above , populations, best defined on the basis of endogamous behavior a tendency to marry and reproduce within the group , are not races.
The mechanism is also identified. Drugs like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft and Celexa, which are widely effective in treating depression, work by acting on the serotonin system. The causal complexity of human development assures that, even as regards identical genotypes, concrete persons will be idiosyncratic individuals. While there remains considerable contention regarding the importance of biology in human behavior, nobody denies that both nature and nurture are inextricably involved in all development Ridley, But there is also an emerging consensus that deciding how much of either is a question that cannot be answered.
Because development is epigenetic and causes are not additive, there is no reasonable way to discriminate the causal importance of any of the countless factors, neither the enormous range of implicated mechanisms nor the probably not identifiable contingent events involved in outcomes see appendix A.
Given the complicated idiosyncratic biography of particular persons, there is no reason to believe that any science could offer much improvement over our ordinary ways of explaining the concrete behavior of a person.
Physics cannot explain or predict the final landing place of a falling leaf. Behavior is caused, but once we grasp the complexity of the causal nexus involved, it hardly seems plausible that any science should enable us to improve on our ability to explain and predict the concrete acts of individuals. We turn directly to this question. Science and the explanation of the actions of persons It is very often held that it is the task of a social science to explain behavior. The task of psychology, as of other sciences, is understanding, in particular the understanding of human powers: perception, cognition, motivation, learning, imagination, language, etc.
See Manicas and Secord, ; Margolis et al. Although developing this would call for another book, the idea is not new. If so, even if we think we have free will, our acts are determined.
It insists that even if we think that we always could have done other than what we did, we are, in fact, automata, programmed by causes to do just what we do. Our failures to explain and to predict behavior, then, are merely functions of our ignorance: if we had all the pertinent laws, and a precise description of all the initial conditions, predicting behavior would be like predicting the positions of planets. Indeed, despite the fallaciousness of this idea of science, it is usually believed that we must presuppose this if a human science is to be possible.
This idea has historically been at the bottom of a debate which began with the philosopher Immanuel Kant. So-called naturalists take the position that we must bite the bullet and deny free will. Anti-naturalists take the common-sense position that since we could have done otherwise, we need to reject altogether the causal model of explanation. The alternative model on this view is that of the historian: thus, Collingwood : The historian need not and cannot without ceasing to be an historian emulate the scientist in searching for the causes or laws of events.
For science, the event is discovered by perceiving it, and the further search of its cause is conducted by assigning it to its class and determining the relation between that class and others. For history, the object to be discovered is not the mere event, but the thought that expressed it.
To discover that thought is already to understand it. After the historian has ascertained the facts, there is no further process of inquiring into their causes. When he knows what happened, he already knows why it happened.
Understanding Roman history requires that we understand why Brutus stabbed Caesar. We need to grasp his reasons and beliefs.
Similarly, as regards explaining why Sam robbed the convenience store. Both could have done otherwise. And surely this seems right. And because he assumes that reasons are not causes. We can predict the position of a planet because there are only two pertinent causes inertia and gravitation and three pertinent variables mass, velocity and position.
Remember that we could 54 A Realist Philosophy of Social Science not explain or predict the final pattern of splintered pieces of rock from a boulder rolling down a hill, that even in this very simple case involving nothing human, there was an inherent incalculability resulting from the fact that what happens at each instant has effects on what happens in the next instant.
Given that this is true of humans and that persons are immensely complex open systems, it is hardly surprising that we cannot predict or explain with the ease and certainty of celestial mechanics. Indeed, suppose that just as I am about to start this sentence, an errant throw of a baseball shatters the window in my office. The sentence I started to write does not get written.
Indeed, as noted in the account of prediction in the previous chapter, there is a paradox in explaining and predicting the acts of persons. We are, in fact, quite good at both explaining and predicting the acts of persons, quite independently of knowledge provided by the human sciences. Indeed, as ordinary socialized human beings we are better at explaining and predicting human acts than sophisticated science is at explaining and predicting the final outcome of falling leaf.
And, indeed, there is no reasonable hope that the human sciences could do better in explaining and predicting the acts of persons than we do in our own very pre-scientific way. Our ordinary explanations of action, of course, are not scientific. They take the form of providing reasons for what people do — just as Collingwood suggests. Although this topic remains contentious in some quarters, there is no good reason to say that reasons are not causes; and there are good reasons to say that they are.
One can assent here that my reason to do so-and-so was itself caused, but surely this hardly matters since it is my reason. Had I chosen otherwise, that too would have been my reason.
Moreover, like other sorts of causes, the possession of a reason can be a state or disposition: being honest gives one a reason to tell the truth. Being a liberal gives one a reason for voting for a Democrat. Like other causes which must be analyzed as dispositions, reasons may be possessed even when not exercised, and even when exercised they may not explain the act: in that case they would not be the reason for the action.
On the other hand, without thought, when appropriate conditions are present, we act. Indeed, the overwhelming percentage of our actions fall into this category: they do not, in general, require that we recognize, articulate or acknowledge the reasons for our action. Of course, we may be asked retrospectively to give an account, which we are generally in a position Explanation and understanding in the social sciences 55 to do.
This is, of course, a powerful insight of the ethnomethodological literature. The point is of considerable importance. As Searle has suggested, in the social science literature, there are two dominating sorts of theories which aim at explaining action.
Beginning with the idea that people have reasons for what they do, rational choice theory is an effort at spelling out what makes a decision to act rational. To be sure, this model may sometimes seem appropriate. We sometimes make a careful assessment of our situation, clarify our goals and try to assess the pluses and minuses of alternatives according to some rational ordering.
But, first, this is not generally what happens. DOI: View via Publisher. Save to Library Save. Create Alert Alert. Share This Paper. Background Citations. Methods Citations. Results Citations. Figures and Tables from this paper. Citation Type.
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