tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post7242091999321056341..comments2024-02-20T12:26:24.682-05:00Comments on language goes on holiday: Winch's 1990 prefaceDuncan Richterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-69756604309967055342014-03-20T11:43:43.595-04:002014-03-20T11:43:43.595-04:00Oh, I don't mean to say "So what?"
...<i>Oh, I don't mean to say "So what?" </i><br /><br />I didn't mean "so what?" in a bad way, just a kind of "OK, let's call it social studies rather than social science if you prefer" way. But anyway...<br /><br /><i>we might look at certain rituals or traditions performed by different sects within a larger culture and see these as different ways of doing the same thing, at a more generic level of description. Of course, such comparisons might be good or bad (strong or weak), but is that perhaps the sort of idea that Winch is resisting?</i><br /><br />I don't know how much Winch would resist something like this. I suspect he would wonder what the point was, but I don't see a reason for him to object in principle. <br /><br /><i>perhaps your point about imaginative sympathy gets at an important difference (since it may help me to get into the heads, as it were, of other humans in a way that it won't help me get into the head of an electron--was that part of the point?</i><br /><br />Yes, that's right. I think Winch sees the main goal of social studies as being to get into the heads of other people. At least this is a main goal.Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-21516558844499071932014-03-19T22:59:04.721-04:002014-03-19T22:59:04.721-04:00Oh, I don't mean to say "So what?" (...Oh, I don't mean to say "So what?" (for one, I haven't read this book, though it's been sitting on my shelf for quite some time...). Looking back at the paragraph you quote, however, I'm not sure that I understand Winch's point at the end. Is the point that one can only achieve an "insider's understanding" (e.g. of what counts as doing the same thing) if one judges based on the rules governing that activity or institution? And that, by comparison, there is no "insider's understanding" of the activities of electrons? Ok, I see that. But then I think I agree with you that, depending on what we are trying to do with our social science, we may not want to be beholden to the insider's rules for what counts as doing the same thing--especially, for example, if were were trying to make cultural comparisons or perhaps looking for structural similarities for different practices within a society that are, from within it, regarded as different or opposed. E.g. we might look at certain rituals or traditions performed by different sects within a larger culture and see these as different ways of doing the same thing, at a more generic level of description. Of course, such comparisons might be good or bad (strong or weak), but is that perhaps the sort of idea that Winch is resisting?<br /><br />You say: "In a sense one must already understand what people are doing before one studies their behavior." And that makes sense. But then couldn't one say that one must already understand certain things about electrons before one studies their behavior? (What I mean is, any hypothesis driven study is going to presuppose a background of information, e.g. gained through some purely observational study. Now, of course, I could be wrong about that, but it's a hunch.) That of course wouldn't even come close to suggesting that studying electrons is just like studying humans and human institutions, and perhaps your point about imaginative sympathy gets at an important difference (since it may help me to get into the heads, as it were, of other humans in a way that it won't help me get into the head of an electron--was that part of the point?).Matthew Pianaltohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-26882784474120729482014-03-19T18:06:55.103-04:002014-03-19T18:06:55.103-04:00Thanks, Matt.
The main thing driving the post is ...Thanks, Matt.<br /><br />The main thing driving the post is just a desire to understand (and, I suppose, evaluate) what Winch says. I have a lot of sympathy for his view, but I also feel that a lot depends on what you call science, what you call a cause, and so on. (As I'm sure he would agree.) <br /><br />The main problem in the hooliganism case, it seems to me, is that once a correlation between unemployment and hooliganism is found (assuming that it is) then what justifies us in saying that it isn't merely correlation is something that looks very much like common sense, based on a kind of imaginative sympathy with the unemployed and with hooligans. And the role of that kind of sympathy makes this kind of study, as valuable as it may be, significantly different from chemistry or physics. Gathering data and analyzing it might be quite like other sciences (though also like history, for instance), but the role of human understanding is important and distinctive. <br /><br />If you or anyone else says, "So what?" then there might not be a lot more to be said. But not everyone has responded to Winch so nonchalantly. Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-65914191007555718962014-03-19T14:19:20.533-04:002014-03-19T14:19:20.533-04:00I have no serious views about what is and isn'...I have no serious views about what is and isn't science, but a sense that there are many sciences that have different primary subject matters, different methodologies, etc. At an abstract level, they all look at data, and try to understand something based upon looking at data.<br /><br />With that all sorted out.... I wonder what worries/concerns are driving your post. Is it something like this: that if social science (is a real thing and) studies causation in the social world, then the implicit determinism creates problems for making sense of personal accountability? That seems like a worry. But what immediately struck me in the hooliganism example is that one can simply say this about the correlation between rising unemployment and increased hooliganism: that rising unemployment creates social conditions in which more people will choose to engage in hooliganism. So there's more than a mere correlation, but the TREND doesn't force any particular (unemployed) person to start knocking over dustbins in Shaftsbury. (Old Bill Hicks joke about British hooligans vs. West Coast gangs.)<br /><br />Sorry if this isn't very helpful; I imagine I'm seeing only one tree in the forest of this post...Matthew Pianaltohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-44075093317787518472014-03-19T12:47:30.871-04:002014-03-19T12:47:30.871-04:00Thanks, Reshef.
The internal/external distinctio...Thanks, Reshef. <br /><br />The internal/external distinction is helpful. I'm not sure what Winch would say, especially the 1990 Winch who doesn't say a lot. But I think that he does have an ideal of internality, yes, which relates to his ideas about what is interesting. I don't share that ideal, but I have some doubts about just how interesting suggestive findings of correlations might turn out to be. <br /><br />I think the answers to the questions you pose in your final paragraph are Yes and Yes. And this is very important. Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-89240086337457943932014-03-19T11:06:18.732-04:002014-03-19T11:06:18.732-04:00Tell me if you think this is right: We have two wa...Tell me if you think this is right: We have two ways of describing human behavior—internal and external. And if I understand that last sentence in your quotation from Winch, there is an ideal implicit in Winch of description of human behavior, namely that it all be internal. Do you agree that he has this ideal? Would you agree that he is making internality here a criterion for adequacy for description of behavior? And if so, would you say that this ideal is unrealistic or even a fantasy? – I know you hate using such words. I mean only this: Do you think we can or even should get rid completely of external forms of description of human behavior? Do you think for instance that we can or should get rid of words like “hooliganism” and “administration” and “working class,” which have their home in external modes of descriptions of human behavior?<br /><br />The fact that you say things like: “correlations like this could be found and might be quite suggestive” seem to indicate that you don’t think external forms of description are inherently problematic. Is that right? – If so, why do you think Winch thought they were (if you do)? – I can think of two (internally related) sorts of argument. <br /><br />(A) Moral argument: There is something morally wrong about external description because they disregard the humans behind the phenomena they describe. (Arendt makes a similar argument, I think, when she says that in the social sciences people are treated “functionally”: a person for the social scientist is never the full human being, but always only its function in a certain social structure.) This, it might be said, may even lead, as I think you hint, to the disappearance of morality altogether—of notions like responsibility and guilt. <br /><br />Even if we would want to reject this criticism, there are milder forms of it. For instance, the claim might be that the social scientists are typically unaware that something important is lost in external descriptions, and they are not in the habit of taking it into account, or of warning their audience, that the external angle from which they approach the phenomena might be morally skewed.<br /><br />(B) Logical argument: The external forms of description are unintelligible. Much of what you say goes against this conclusion. But might there be something in this still? What if Winch said something like: “Look, intelligibility is a function of what we need. And what we get from external, or functionalist, descriptions are is never ALL that we need. Such descriptions can never be fully satisfying, because (as you mention, and this is connected to the McManus criticism too) what motivates such research in the first place is an interest in humanity. So, for instance, then claim might be that hooliganism as such is not of interest to us, but only as it can be connected for us to the behavior of individuals—shed light on motivations and states of minds of real people.”<br /><br />Now, it is possible that this is false, and that this is not the real motivation for social scientific research. But if so, can Winch argue against the social scientist that they have never fully clarified to themselves what it is that they expect, and what it is that motivates their discussion, and that they hover undecidedly between a reductionist and a non-reductionist understanding of their own research? Would he be able to say that the social sciences often relapse into claiming they achieve much more than they really do, and perhaps that the only thing that keeps those research platforms alive is this illusion that they achieve more than they actually do?Reshefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01350527262158734622noreply@blogger.com