The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Science - The Department ...

Social Sciences
(Papineau, 1991; Earman and Roberts, 1999). Yet the doctrine is broad enough
that some important points remain even if one rejects the commitment to capacities
or natures. Social scientists have picked up on the idea that they are committed
to “generative mechanisms.” Here they are rejecting instrumentalist ideas
which have shaped social scientific research. Much social research proceeds by
running regressions or other statistical tests on a set of variables without any theoretical
rationale or without any theoretical account of their interrelation. The
variables and their corresponding data are often drawn from ordinary language
notions and lack any clear theory of what is being measured and how. Asking for
“generative mechanisms” is thus rejecting social science research that claims to
stick merely to the observable and to eschew theoretical commitment. In short,
this version of realism rejects traditional instrumentalism, a doctrine which underwent
withering criticism in philosophy of science some time ago. Thus the social
science realists are in this way on the mark.
Another point about the realism debates worth noting concerns the global
nature of the arguments on both sides (Kincaid, 2000). The standard version of
realism argues that the best explanation for the methodological successes of the
social sciences is that the relevant claims are at least approximately true. This argument
takes some general characteristic of social scientific practice and infers from
that trait that the science in question must be right. In this sense, it is a global
argument. Similarly, antirealist arguments go from the claim that all social science
involves persuasion, for example, to the claim that it is a social construct. Entire
domains of investigation are evaluated in one fell swoop.
This global approach to realism issues is suspect. If the best explanation of the
methodological practices of the social sciences is their approximate truth, then we
must rule out other possible explanations. But there is good empirical evidence
that other explanations cannot always be ruled out. For example, significance
testing is widely used in the social sciences to determine what is believable and
what is not. Yet there are good reasons to think that practice is quite misguided
(Cohen, 1994). Apparently, the social processes of the disciplines nonetheless
ensure that the practice continues. Similarly, careful study of research on various
“psychological disorders” shows the ways standard methods can be used to construct
– literally – syndromes (Hacking, 1995). And there are deep foundational
issues concerning the requirements for measurement in the social sciences (e.g.
additivity) that have arguably been largely ignored rather than solved (Michell,
1999).
Antirealist arguments about the social sciences are likewise implausibly global.
As I just suggested, it is plausible there that some social research superficially
employs standard scientific procedures while outcomes are really determined by
the social interests of investigators. However, showing that this can happen is far
from showing that it always does or must.
I turn next to debates over the nature of explanation in the social sciences,
beginning with the individualism–holism controversy. The individualism–holism
issue has been plagued by debates over unclear theses, and some progress can be
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