Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Social Science Versus the 0 bsession of UScientism" 225
proper fields of scientific inquiry. In sum, so the "scientific" proposition
runs, the social scientist should not concern himself with
what institutions areJ but with their operation, not with what men
are J but with their behavior as members of the group.
I do not propose here to examine the position of various schools
of behaviorism on what we know about man and society and the
relevancy of their findings for the social and "policy" sciences. The
behaviorists disagree among themselves on methods of measurement
and, more important still, the meaningfulness of the insights
produced by experiment. They appear agreed, however, on the
rejection of consciousness as a means for gaining insight into psychological
phenomena and on explaining human phenomena by
the measurement of observed behavior and in terms of a causal
system in which human consciousness is. not a factor. 2 For the present
purpose it suffices that, in this country, it is via behaviorist
psychology that the methods of the natural sciences exert their
strongest influence upon the social sciences. Let uS now examine
briefly the implications of the banishm.ent of consciousness-introspection-and
the reliance on measurement of behavior as the
most important, if not the sole, means for obtaining valid insights
in social processes.
To begin with, it should be obvious that, from the point of view
of the social sciences, human consciousness-introspection-would
have to be invented if it did not exist. Thus, for example, the
operation of the market would be inconceivable without introspection.
Not only in the market place but also in the daily exchanges
of communal life we act on the assumption that other men think
as we do, and, therefore, will act as we will act. In the overwhelming
majority of instances of daily life it is introspection, and not
our observation of other men's behavior, that guides our decisions
and triggers our action. The argument that our actIons are merely
conditioned reflexes and are not engendered by the workings of
our consciousness poses an intriguing language problem; it does
not add the slightest whiff of an operable concept to our theoretical
framework. The fact is that we do assume that we know the
other fellow will behave in a manner which is given to us by introspection.
We may be wrong in this assumption. But we act on