(which is the only edition I have to hand), Winch says on p. 1 that his topic is a certain idea about the relation between social science, natural science, and philosophy. Basically it's the idea that the social sciences are just like the natural sciences, only younger. It is this idea that he wants to attack.On p. 43 he identifies "giving an account of the nature of social phenomena in general" as "the central problem of sociology." I think this gives some idea of what he means when he talks about social sciences wanting to be (or being wanted to be) like natural sciences: the goal is general laws or the identification of general patterns.
On p. 88 he says that "a historian or sociologist of religion must himself have some religious feeling if he is to make sense of the religious movement he is studying." This might sound controversial, but he goes on to use the example of a historian of art needing to have some aesthetic sense in order to understand "the problems confronting the artists," which seems reasonable, if perhaps a little vague, to me. Without such a sense, he says, the historian would only provide "a rather puzzling external account of certain motions which certain people have been perceived to go through." He does not deny that it is possible to give this kind of account. All he denies is that it would be a history of art.
The last passage I want to quote is on p. 93:
I am not denying that it is sometimes possible to predict decisions; only that the evidence on which such predictions are based must be different in kind from that on which scientific predictions are based.Historical trends are in part the result of intentions and decisions, he explains.
It seems to me that Winch denies that meaningful behavior can be studied simultaneously qua meaningful and in just the same way that scientists study the meaningless behavior of atoms or cells. And that seems right to me. (It also seems to me that his work might usefully be read alongside Anscombe's work on intention, but that's probably another story.)
Now, what does Lerner
say about Winch? He gathers together and discusses a range of criticisms of Winch's work, which seems valuable in itself to me. He also makes a strong case that Winch has got the Azande wrong. But what seems to me to be his key claim is, as he summarizes it on pp. 3-4, this:I criticize Winch (and Norman Malcolm) for not appreciating that a naturalistic inquiry into the human cognitive capacities that underlie rule following could serve as the subject of an explanatory science of uniquely human behavior. Furthermore, I point out that the application of a rule to substantially unfamiliar circumstances is precisely the situation in which "meaningless" causal factors are most likely to determine human behavior.This is a fair point, I think, but the study of meaningless causal factors and human cognitive capacities would not, it seems to me, count as social science as Winch understands it. That kind of thing would be natural science, which Winch has nothing against.
What about the usefulness of social science for policy-making? A friend of mine is an expert on African politics and sometimes shares his expertise with people in Washington, DC. Winch says nothing against the idea that this might be a good thing. All that I think he would deny is that this kind of expertise is scientific expertise, rightly understood. Much that goes by the name of "social science" might be very useful, as Lerner rightly points out, but I don't read Winch as meaning to deny this. So, although I'm aware that I might be chickening out of an unwelcome confrontation, I think it's possible to agree with Winch and Lerner to a large extent. Winch explains what social science cannot be, while Lerner points out what it nevertheless can be. Both are, for the most part, right.
OK, what have I missed or got wrong?
OK, what have I missed or got wrong?
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot for this. My first impression is that my misgivings mostly concern the "missed" end of the spectrum and not nearly as much the "got wrong" end. But I'll get back to this as soon as I, in turn, have read The Idea of a Social Science one more time, which you make me feel I should do.
Sounds good. I'll look forward to seeing your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteAnd so, here at last are my further thoughts on Winch. You can probably see now why it took so long.
ReplyDeleteWinch says on p. 1 that his topic is a certain idea about the relation between social science, natural science, and philosophy. Basically it's the idea that the social sciences are just like the natural sciences, only younger. It is this idea that he wants to attack.
I think that the "certain idea about the relation between social science, natural science and philosophy" that Winch wants to attack is very well worth attacking, and is indeed untenable in much the way that he himself diagnoses. But he tacitly bundles it up with a larger package deal which (he seems to imply) must be accepted as a whole if his criticism of the "certain idea" is to be accepted. And I cannot accept some of the other items in this package deal at all.
In our discussion on Nussbaum's book, you said that Winch would have not recognised it as a philosophical work because it is a work of advocacy. But The Idea of a Social Science itself appears to me as very much a work of advocacy. Probably the most quoted single short statement from the book over the years has been that "any worthwhile study of society must be philosophical in character and any worthwhile philosophy must be concerned with the nature of human society" (p. 3). Similar statements also occur later in the book. For instance, Winch writes that "social interaction can more profitably be compared to the exchange of ideas in a conversation than to the interaction of forces in a physical system" (p. 128). And you yourself write in your review of Lerner that "Winch does not say [...] that studying other cultures can only teach us wisdom. He says that he thinks this is the most important thing it will teach us" (p. 438).
Worthwhile, profitably, important. This is the language of value judgements, which according to Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy fall entirely outside the scope of philosophy. It's relevant here, I think, that we certainly won't find Wittgenstein himself using this same language in his own writings. Wittgenstein never says that it's worthwhile to do what he would like (say) to get his interlocutor in the PI to do. He only says that if the interlocutor really wants to go where he says he wants to go, it needs explaining why he does not then take the route Wittgenstein suggests.
The word "worthwhile" occurs only once in all of Wittgenstein's philosophical works published in English - and even that is a seni-personal Culture and Value remark where he criticises himself for seeing as worthwhile something that isn't. (It also appears once in the preface to his spelling dictionary for schools and once in a personal religious remark in the Koder diaries.) It strikes me as a very odd and unexpected word to use in an avowedly Wittgensteinian book and especially in the one sentence widely taken to crystallise the book's whole message.
I don't think there is any one type of "worthwhile study of society", but many equally worthwhile ones - and nevertheless at least as many others that are equally worthless. And among the former I count certain types (though by no means all) which Winch would place without compunction in the latter class. "Worthwhile study of society" is a family-resemblance concept. To the extent that the type of study of society to which Winch refers as "philosophical in character" has been one-sidedly passed over in the practice of social science in favour of others, The Idea of a Social Science is truly important, perceptive, groundbreaking, and so on. But there's more to the book than that, and I don't like the sound of much of the rest of it.
It seems to me that Winch denies that meaningful behavior can be studied simultaneously qua meaningful and in just the same way that scientists study the meaningless behavior of atoms or cells. And that seems right to me.
ReplyDeleteTo me, on the contrary, it sounds obviously false. Don't the writings of any philosopher who has written on meaningful behaviour but whose views on will and intentionality are the same as, say, Spinoza's or Schopenhauer's, "study meaningful behaviour simultaneously qua meaningful and in just the same way that scientists study the meaningless behaviour of atoms or cells"? Indeed, that immediately struck me as a very good description about exactly the thing I most like about the writings of such philosophers.
And aren't there great works of fiction whose very greatness consists in their ability to examine at a distance the blind forces at play in the lives of humans who cannot help but appear to the reader as little more than atoms or cells, but whose lives are nevertheless indubitably meaningful?
Indeed, Winch is aware of this himself, being already very aware this early in his career about the philosophical import of fiction. He writes (p. 77): "[W]ould it be intelligent to try to explain how Romeo's love for Juliet enters into his behaviour in the same terms as we might want to apply to the rat whose sexual excitement makes him run across an electrically charged grid to reach his mate? Does not Shakespeare do this much better?"
To this my reply is that there are many, many situations and contexts where the "Romeo and Juliet" kind of account is precisely what we want, but that there are nevertheless others where we want something that is more like the "rat" kind of account. (I know this directly from my own personal experience, as there are contexts where it is what I want myself.) Different people have different knowledge-interests, to use this fancy Habermasian term, and the same people can have different knowledge-interests in different situations.
This was perhaps the one key point which Lerner made against Winch in the short passage near the beginning of his book to which I drew your attention. It came to me as a new point when I read Lerner. And it has perceptibly eaten - so far seemingly irrevocably - into my earlier admiration for The Idea of a Social Science, which I had thought of as fairly well-established.
This is very closely related to my point above on the presence of clear value judgements in Winch's book. Some of these value judgements seem to be that it is simply bad, unfortunate, etc., for people to have certain knowledge-interests - the kinds which these people view a "rat" account as satisfying - and good or at least value-neutral to have others - the kinds which they view a "Romeo and Juliet" account as satisfying. Again, anyone is free to hold these value judgements personally, but they cannot be underwritten by philosophy.
This is a fair point, I think, but the study of meaningless causal factors and human cognitive capacities would not, it seems to me, count as social science as Winch understands it. That kind of thing would be natural science, which Winch has nothing against.
ReplyDeleteWe already spoke a bit about this elsewhere. And it is already a theme that runs all the way through your original review of Lerner. But the problem I have here is roughly this. Winch prefaces his book with a quotation from Lessing: "[...] it is unjust to give any action a different name from that which it used to bear in its own times and amongst its own people." But this cuts both ways. The phenomenon to which Winch himself wants very much to deny the name of "social science" is something that bears precisely that name and no other "among its own people" - among social scientists, that is.
So if your account of what Winch's book is up to is correct, the book would seem to be engaged in something which its own epigraph characterises as "unjust".
I thought that one reply of this could be that Wittgenstein too seems to give stipulative definitions of some terms without nevertheless thinking that this violates his conception of philosophy. For instance, his statement that "philosophy leaves everything as it is" has been contested as being, in some sense, simply empirically false if taken as anything other than a merely stipulative definition of philosophy. After all, certain causal chains that have changed the world are fairly uncontroversially taken to have passed at some point through philosophy. But the point of that remark, I take it, is to point out that whenever philosophy seems not to leave everything as it is, the things about it that enable it not to leave everything as it is are things that are as widely found outside philosophy as within it.
Whenever philosophy has changed the world, it might just as well have been changed in the same way by something that is not philosophy. But when social science has changed the world the change has been, at least part of the time, something that could only have originated in social science. For instance, when the exposure of politically embarrassing empirical data has resulted in political change, and the data has been something that it could only have been possible to collect using the quantitative methods of social science. Philosophy has no data in the same sense, and therefore it is not needed to collect the data of which there is none. That is the difference between the two cases, for me.
I think it's possible to agree with Winch and Lerner to a large extent. Winch explains what social science cannot be, while Lerner points out what it nevertheless can be. Both are, for the most part, right.
This I already agree with, but the precise extent and depth of my agreement will depend on what your replies are to the considerations I present above. I await them with the greatest interest!
OK, here's my initial reply, which won't be as interesting as you might have hoped.
ReplyDeleteWith your first long comment above I very largely agree. Winch does engage in advocacy. The only point here that I think I might disagree with is this: he tacitly bundles it up with a larger package deal which (he seems to imply) must be accepted as a whole if his criticism of the "certain idea" is to be accepted. And I cannot accept some of the other items in this package deal at all. I'm just not sure (because I don't remember well enough) whether I think he seems to imply such a thing or not. He might. And I might be more prepared than you are to accept some of the things in this package, but it depends what they are (of course).
As for your second comment, I'm not sure that I understand it yet. Let's take this passage from Winch: "[W]ould it be intelligent to try to explain how Romeo's love for Juliet enters into his behaviour in the same terms as we might want to apply to the rat whose sexual excitement makes him run across an electrically charged grid to reach his mate? Does not Shakespeare do this much better?"
I can understand wanting to investigate what human beings have in common with rats and what romantic love has in common with sexual desire (or how love relates to lust) and similar questions. I see nothing wrong with that kind of investigation or that kind of curiosity. It's the "in the same terms" part that seems to me to raise problems. The investigation into rat lust (and this is probably the wrong word to use, being rather anthropomorphic and non-clinical) seems to be conceived in mechanical terms. Would it be intelligent to try to explain Romeo's behavior as mechanically caused by love? Only, it seems to me, if we have already reduced love to something like an electro-chemical occurrence in the brain. But then we aren't talking about love in the normal sense any more. "I love you" does not mean "I want to have sex with you." Nor is it a report on the state of one's brain. In the ordinary sense of the word, love is not part of a causal mechanism. So it would not be intelligent to talk about it as if it were. This is not to deny that we might well intelligently talk about people as something like cogs in a machine, but then terms such as 'love' will be misleading or simply out of place. This is what I take Winch to be saying, and it still sounds right to me.
And on your third point I think I can only say that maybe Winch chose his epigraph badly.
No, no - this is perfectly interesting for me, and was indeed roughly the sort of thing I expected beforehand. (And I'm certainly not saying this in any "hah, just what I expected" sense, but purely descriptively!)
ReplyDelete(1). Not much to add here at all. I'm sure myself that what you speak of is in part a personal temperamental difference between different readers of Winch, such as you and I. But it's hard to judge with any accuracy the precise extent to which this holds.
(2). "Would it be intelligent to try to explain Romeo's behavior as mechanically caused by love?" Well, I think it would. Although I strongly suspect that the association chains triggered within each of us by the notion of "mechanical explanation" may point in very different directions.
Spinoza's Ethics, for instance, contains an account of human action and emotion - giving an exceptionally central role precisely to love - that is widely described as mechanistic, for reasons easy to see. Indeed, it goes to the extreme of even giving what can only be described as a formal definition of love. And I think that there is simply enough of a family resemblance between this kind of formalism and mechanism, and the kind of formalism and mechanism involved in laboratory experiments with rats and the interpretation of their results, for them to fall under the same umbrella when viewed from certain vantage points.
And I don't think anyone could accuse Spinoza - Shakespeare's near-contemporary - of the kind of modernistic-hubristic-scientistic pretensions that the advocacy part of Winch's book is aimed against. After all, he wrote 200 years before modernism even began. He is simply satisfying a different knowledge-interest than Shakespeare, playing a different language-game. And if we allow this to Spinoza, I don't see why it should be denied to the rat researchers. If "love" is out of place in the laboratory, it appears to me that it follows that "love" is also out of place in a philosophical work such as Ethics. Since I don't hold the latter, I find myself prevented from holding the former either.
(3). The problem is that I don't think Winch chose the epigraph badly at all. It seems to me to sum up both the spirit and the message of the book in that very particular, wonderful way a perfectly chosen epigraph often does. But as I put it, the epigraph cuts both ways. What I repeatedly found myself doing when I re-read Winch's book was to adopt the very same "understanding" method which I myself have personally learned from my earlier readings of the book, as a part of my own attempt at understanding some of the social scientists criticised in the same book, their actions and their motivations. And when I thus self-applied Winch's criticisms in his book to the book itself, I seemed to see things in the social scientists that Winch himself does not seem to see, and be more understanding of some of them that he himself seems to be. In a convoluted piece of self-referentiality, Winch's book seems to have taught a method to me - and got me to adopt a method - which undercuts some of his own criticisms of those whose failure to adopt the same method he criticises in the book.
On this third and last point: maybe I am "out-Winching" Winch in some sense here? If I am, I don't think it's necessarily a good thing at all. I think there exist such things as, say, out-Cora Diamonding Cora Diamond (some of Rupert Read comes to mind as a kind of paradigm case) or even out-Wittgensteining Wittgenstein (the philosophy of mind of some old-guard Wittgensteinians such as Hacker, Pears or Malcolm comes to mind). And in these cases, the out-X'ing is something I view as problematic in various ways - and consequently, not that "worthwhile". It struck me that maybe something similar has happened to me here. But I cannot find my way out of it - and it seems disturbingly comfortable being where I am. If it's a fly-bottle, it's one equipped with all mod cons.
ReplyDeleteLater afterthought: There is an analogy between what you said yesterday about its probably being impossible to like all good art, but its being a falling short just the same if one fails to like even part of good art. It may similarly be quite "unjust to give any action a different name from that which it used to bear [...] amongst its own people" - the Lessing quote -, but impossible just the same to refrain from doing so in all situations in which we want to use names, for various pragmatic reasons, to refer to actions that are not our own.
ReplyDelete"Would it be intelligent to try to explain Romeo's behavior as mechanically caused by love?" Well, I think it would. Although I strongly suspect that the association chains triggered within each of us by the notion of "mechanical explanation" may point in very different directions.
ReplyDeleteYes, I sense a kind of bending of language here, but that might be because of associations more or less peculiar to me. Anyway, I believe that it's OK to bend language, at least sometimes, so I can't really complain about that. If metaphor and secondary uses of words are OK, as I think they are, then words have to be allowed to be used in new, odd, or even 'wrong' ways with their usual, primary meanings. And this perhaps ought to include words such as "in the usual way," "in the same way," and "with its usual meaning." Which makes it very hard to distinguish metaphorical from literal use. But this might sound like either gibberish or an absurd over-Diamonding.
Here's what I mean: I think I know what Winch means to say, and I agree with it. But I agree with you that someone like Spinoza ought not to be subject to the same criticism, even if we think he might be guilty of a different kind of pretension or mistake. Finding a form of words that makes the good point Winch wants to make without also condemning the possibly innocent (let's say Spinoza, for instance) is hard.
in these cases, the out-X'ing is something I view as problematic in various ways
Me too.
The problem is that I don't think Winch chose the epigraph badly at all.
I don't either, really, but if he is caught in a contradiction and the main problem is the epigraph, then cutting it out is the easiest solution. I think we actually agree that Winch's core idea is right. You want to criticize some of the baggage that comes with it while I want to focus on the core. But your criticisms now seem largely right to me, as does your later afterthought, by the way.