INTENTIONALITY

The simple claim that social sciences study humans and that natural sciences study nature (nonhumans) has deeper implications that are more interesting and help to define presumed natural sciences like biology and medicine (which also study humans) more clearly as natural sciences. The study of social science, more specifically, is directed at human action. Such action includes eating habits; responses to danger; bad habits (smoking, excessive drinking); good habits (exercise, healthy eating); and social action (practices, rites, etc., attributable to groups of people). What is left out of this list is what can be called mere behavior. “Human action” is human behavior that is (presumably) under our control. Mere behavior includes reflexes and involuntary biological functions. Such behavior is not the focus of social science; human action is. As human action presumes some degree of volition, it also presumes what philosophers call “intentionality.” Here we do not mean the colloquial sense of the term that an action is “intentional” if it is goal directed. “Intentional” in the philosophical sense is related to human minds. There is a difference between saying “Humans and apes evolved from common ancestors” and saying “I believe humans and apes evolved from common ancestors.” The first is not an intentional statement. Its reference or predicate is a state of the external (natural, physical) world. The second is an intentional statement. Its reference or predicate is not a state of the external world but a state of mind (the internal world, you might want to call it). Intentional statements then refer to the content of minds. The difference is more than just one of sentence form. Intentionality is a property of human consciousness, which is, philosophically and scientifically, still a supremely mysterious realm, seemingly utterly distinct from the physical realm—yet mysteriously related.

Consider this further example. The ancients identified two distinct bodies in the sky referred to as the “morning star” and the “evening star.” The appellations are self-explanatory. However, these were not distinct bodies. They were in fact the same body appearing once in the morning and once again in the evening. In fact, the body was not a star at all but the planet Venus—but that is less important to us at the moment. When someone said, “I see the morning star,”¹ this was an intentional statement referring to a mental/perceptual condition: seeing the “morning star.” When that same person said 12 hours later, “I see the evening star,” it was a distinct intentional statement referring to a distinct mental event. The objects of their perceptions were also distinct: the concept of the morning star and the concept of the evening star. Thus, if this person were to say in the morning, “I see the evening star,” she would be confused. Perhaps a bout of sleeplessness led her to confuse morning for evening. If the morning star and the evening star are really the same object (Venus), then in a nonintentional sense, we could use any one of those three terms at any point in time to refer to that one object. Thus, the seemingly counterintuitive statement, “The morning star is the evening star,” can make sense, for nonintentionally they both refer to the same thing: Venus.

What does all this mean for social science and its possible distinction from natural science? Human action is intentional action. It is supported by mental states (most notably, beliefs and desires) that are integral to its essence and meaning. According to many social scientists, we cannot understand human action without reference to these mental states. The natural world, as commonly accepted, is composed of nonintentional phenomena—phenomena which are simply there regardless of specific mental states. Venus simply is the morning star and the evening star regardless of what anyone believes. As a statement of astronomical science, one could substitute the terms morning star or evening star for the term Venus in a true statement (or false statement) about Venus (e.g., “Venus’s orbit is within that of the Earth’s”) and a true statement (or false statement) would result—in formal logic this property is referred to as logical equivalence. Such substitution may not work from an intentional perspective because of the influence of intentional states like belief and desire. Intentionally speaking then, predicating the same properties of “Venus,” “the morning star,” and “the evening star” may not result in logically equivalent statements. Because intentional states seem central to social science, it appears to many social scientists and philosophers of social science that the element of consciousness—of mental states like beliefs and desires—is unavoidable, whereas such concerns may be irrelevant in the natural sciences. What this means further is that if intentionality is central to social science, then social sciences are interpretive sciences, because the inclusion of intentional states like beliefs and desires brings an unavoidable need for interpretation.

HERMENEUTIC SCIENCE

Social sciences then are, in philosopher Charles Taylor’s term, hermeneutic sciences (1971/1994). Hermeneutic, though, is an equivocal term. At its most basic it simply refers to interpretation. On this level, any act of interpretation can be referred to as a hermeneutic act, and any practice or study that has an essential interpretive element would be a hermeneutic practice or study. Originally, this term referred to the study of biblical interpretation but has been broadened in use over the years. At the same time, it has narrowed in use, as it is used also to refer to specific schools of philosophy and of social science that emphasize the interpretive aspect of human existence and the use of interpretation to understand humans and human existence. We explore that use of the term in the next chapter. Right now, we are using the term in a relatively broad sense. In this sense, human actions are what Taylor (1971/1994) calls “text-analogues” (p. 181). In the most literal sense, when we use the term interpret we mean it in reference to a text—a written document. Until a human reads the document, it is but marks on paper (or a computer screen). Once it is read, it must be interpreted in order to be meaningful. Thus, as a matter of intention, it becomes more than marks on paper. However, even before then it is more than marks on paper, because a human placed those specific marks due to intentional states of mind. Therefore, the marks themselves are intentional in their essence. Otherwise, they are nothing more than marks on paper. Analogously, human actions are like texts. They cannot be understood separate from the intentional states behind them. It is the difference between one’s arm raising and raising one’s arm. To say, “one’s arm is raising” (note the use of passive voice) describes a mere movement (behavior). There is no meaning to it. We really do not understand it. To say, “raising one’s arm” implies intentionality: a conscious mind behind the action that has a reason for acting. This reason (itself implying beliefs and desires) affects the essence of the action, and we can only fully understand the action once we understand (interpret) the intentional states (reasons, beliefs, desires) behind the action. One might raise his hand because he is in class and knows the answer to a question posed by the teacher. One might raise his hand in salute to a leader. One might raise his hand to hail a cab. Each of these provides different descriptions for the same behavior and implies not only a background of individual beliefs in the actor but a complex matrix of social rules and practices that help guide the action and give it meaning. The student understands the customs and mores of the classroom setting that gives raising one’s hand the meaning he intends. The action implies the proper respect due teachers, and it signals the belief of the student that he has the knowledge being sought. Outside the classroom, this movement would not generally have this meaning. The subject who salutes the leader understands that in his society, this motion is a sign of respect and one that is expected of certain persons toward certain other persons. The pedestrian seeking a taxi understands that the gesture he is making is one accepted on the streets as one that taxi drivers respond to. It means “I want a taxi.” That is its interpretation. That is the interpretation a taxi driver will likely have of his action. The taxi driver will likely not interpret his action as saying, “I have the answer” or “I salute you.” Intentionality, then, can make the same apparent behavior have different meanings. Moreover, without these meanings human action may not be properly understood.

For Taylor and others, then, a clear distinction can be made between natural and social science as the former is not hermeneutic, whereas the latter is. However, recalling the post-positivist critiques we surveyed in earlier chapters (Hanson, Quine, Feyerabend, postmodernists, feminists, and especially Kuhn), the nonhermeneutic quality of natural science may not be so clear. Even in natural science, perceptions are more than (or less than?) brute data. Scientific observations, judgments, and testing all imply background knowledge and assumptions—not all of which can be tested. In other words, it is impossible to escape interpretation in even the natural sciences. In Kuhnian terms, any scientific investigation (natural or social) exists within and is defined and limited by a paradigm. This paradigm provides a background of beliefs, values, and practices through which facts, justifications, and methodologies must be interpreted. Even admitting this, however, one can still identify a principled difference between natural and social science. The natural sciences are hermeneutic in the sense that the objects of study and even the study itself are open to some degree of interpretability. The social sciences are also hermeneutic in this sense. However, the social sciences are hermeneutic in a second sense: that which is being interpreted (human action) is a product of interpretation for the actor. The interpretation of an observation in the natural sciences—for example, markings on photosensitive paper—is not a product of interpretation by the subatomic particles that leave those traces. But the man who raises his arm to hail a taxi does so as an intentional act—as an interpretation of his own that this gesture means, “I want a taxi.” As Kuhn explains it, “The natural sciences … though they may require … a hermeneutic base, are not themselves hermeneutic enterprises. The human sciences, on the other hand, often are, and they may have no alternative” (Kuhn, 1998, p. 133). While the natural sciences require a hermeneutic base, social sciences might be described as “doubly hermeneutic” (Giddens, 1993). They not only have a hermeneutic base but also have as their object of study phenomena that are hermeneutic in themselves—meaning they exist only as interpreted phenomena, whereas stars, rocks, and matter in general presumably have an independent existence external to human minds.

This recognition of the interpretive (doubly hermeneutic) aspect of social science leads us to a general methodological split regarding social science. Interpretivists, as the name suggests, focus on the centrality and inevitability of interpretation in social science. They follow the general line of argument laid out earlier that humans are in essence self-interpreting beings and this self-interpretation informs how science aims at humans as intentional beings should be done. Naturalists—also called “correlators” by Taylor (1985a), “empiricists” and “positivists” by others—take natural science as their model for how social science should be done. Naturalists, then, attempt to explain away or set aside intentionality in order to achieve a degree of epistemic objectivity and certainty similar to that of natural science. The double-hermeneutic seems to place serious limitations (beyond the “hermeneutic base” of natural science) on the attainment of objectivity—or even intersubjectivity—in scientific study. So, for naturalists data and results must be understood to be as free of interpretation as the data and results of the natural sciences. Along with that rejection of the double-hermeneutic comes a neglect of mental states as mental states, due to a focus on physical realities known through empirical evidence. The only scientifically relevant data is that which can be empirically perceived. Interpretivists refer too much to nonempirical mental states for the comfort of naturalists. Human actions informed by intentional states are acts done for a purpose: to achieve a desire, to conform to a value or custom. This understanding is a form of teleological thinking, meaning that phenomena are understood through their purposes. Naturalists criticize this type of thinking as premodern and unscientific. Premodern science understood the natural world as a meaningful, purposeful world. Events occurred in relation to some future purpose. Physical objects fall to the earth in order to be with the earth. Rain falls in order to nourish plants and animals. Modern science overturned this view of the world and replaced it with a causal/mechanistic view. In this causal/mechanistic view, purposes do not fit. A future purpose cannot be a mechanical cause, as causes must precede their effects. In the 19th century, Darwin replaced the last vestige of teleological thinking in natural science (biology) by theorizing a mechanistic process to explain the variety and change of species. This left social science as the only area of science that accepted teleological thought. For the naturalists, this teleological commitment is an obstacle to progress in social science. According to naturalists, in order for social science to progress to the same degree as natural science, social science must give up this commitment and adopt the purely empirical, mechanistic views and methodologies of natural science.

Interpretivists, on the other hand, find the naturalist approach too reductive. It appears to equate humans with mere natural phenomena: stars, rocks, and chemical bonds. However, humans are much more than any of these. Humans, interpretivists would say, cannot be understood in their full richness from a purely empirical approach. For social scientists to adequately understand human (or social) action, the inner life (intentionality) must be taken into account. It can be tempting, however, to overstate this division. Most social scientists employ some mixture of the two approaches. However, most schools of study tend toward one or the other and philosophical analyses of social science are often predicated on this distinction.

THEORY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

Theories (or the construction of theories) in social science face problems not found in theory construction in the natural sciences. Once again, many of these problems stem from the intentionality of human actions. The social sciences are largely seen as focused on providing understanding of particular actions, which is at odds with the orientation toward the general and universal in natural science and natural scientific theories. The intentionality of human actions creates practical and theoretical obstacles to forming laws in social science. Explaining social action also faces the problem of relating these social explanations back to intentional states of individual actors. A more detailed analysis is possible if we look at some of the specific purposes of theory we identified in natural science: prediction, description, and explanation.

Prediction

Prediction has been a highly controversial topic in social science. In natural science, it appears as perhaps the least controversial function of theories—most of the limited criticism there has been coming from feminist philosophers. The main reason, though, that prediction has been such a controversial issue in social science is that social science has not fared well in this regard—especially as compared to the natural sciences. The ability to predict phenomena has been one of natural science’s great successes, allowing for important technological advances in engineering, aeronautics, medical science—even in just making daily life easier. Social sciences have not had comparable success in prediction. Psychologists and psychiatrists take great risks in judging which of their patients are dangers to themselves or others. The uncertainty of such judgments comprise a serious criticism of what is known as the Tarasoff rule, which holds that a therapist may break confidentiality to warn a specific third party of a mortal threat from a patient. The ability to predict whether a patient is truly a threat to another is so questionable that it would be ill advised and maybe unfair to hold a therapist responsible for such predictions. Economists are legendary in their failed predictions—as the many unforeseen recessions and depressions throughout modern history are testament to. For many, this inability to consistently predict phenomena is a sign of the inferiority of the social sciences. Naturalists hope to improve this inadequacy, while interpretivists view this “inadequacy” as a sign that prediction is not the appropriate function of social science. It may be appropriate for the natural sciences but, due to the interpretive nature of human intentionality, it is not appropriate for the social sciences.

Several reasons are given for this apparent failure of social science to achieve the predictive powers of the natural sciences. One reason sometimes given is that the social sciences are younger than the natural sciences. Thus, in criticizing the social sciences for not achieving the same predictive successes of the natural sciences, we are not being fair to the social sciences. They have not had the opportunity to develop the mature methodology that natural science has. The problem with this claim is that determining the comparative ages of natural and social sciences is extremely complex. Such a determination depends on when we mark the beginning of natural science and of social science. Natural science may be said to begin with the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century. Or, it may date to the work of Aristotle, or to the time of the pre-Socratic philosophers of the 5th and even 6th century BCE. The question of social science’s beginnings is even more difficult. One might point to the 19th-century work of Emile Durkheim or Auguste Comte (who coined the term sociology), which were possibly the first instances of social scientific study expressly identified as such. One might go back further to the 17th-century work of Thomas Hobbes who used (possibly introduced) the central concepts of what would later be called rational choice theory in the social sciences (especially economics). Or one might go as far back as ancient Greece to the historical studies of Thucydides (460–395 BCE) or Herodotus (484–425 BCE), or the political science of Plato and Aristotle. Without a clear, unequivocal agreement on the beginning of natural science and, especially, of social science, it is difficult to evaluate, to confirm, or to deny this claim as a reason for the lack of predictive success in the social sciences.

Another common reason given for social science’s lack of predictive success is the comparative complexity of the subject matters of social science and natural science. The subject matter of natural science is everything nonhuman: animals, inanimate matter, and human bodies (presumed distinct from human minds). These are subject to physical forces almost exclusively. Humans (qua humans), however, are subject to physical forces and to psychological and social forces as well. This fact increases the variables an indeterminate amount. The implication here is that, following from the previous paragraph, given enough time predictability in social science should improve—possibly to a comparable level as in the natural sciences. Alternatively, this complexity is insuperable and social science will never achieve predictive success comparable to that of natural science. This latter interpretation may be better described as the distinct reason for social science’s lack of predictive success that social reality is far more changeable than natural reality, due to the self-interpretation of humans. As soon as we think we have a handle on who we are and how we will behave (a predictive theory), our self-understanding may change, changing predictability based on that theory.

A final reason also points to our intentionality. As self-interpreting beings, we can be affected by the very theories we create. Knowledge of those theories can change our view of ourselves, as well as our reactions, once again affecting the predictability of those theories. Natural objects are not affected by the theories we create about them. They are what they are regardless of our understanding of them or predictions we try to make about them.

A more general reason these other reasons may point to is the difficulty of generating laws in social science. Laws are a necessity for accurate predictions. In natural science, they are the engine for generating predictions. If social science cannot generate laws, it will likely not be able to make consistent and accurate predictions. If it is unable to do that, the status of social science as a science may be dubious in the eyes of many. It is largely held that human action follows from rules and reasons, not laws, as they are understood in natural science. Reasons are based on those intentional beliefs and desires. According to the interpretivist view, our actions are understood through an understanding of the reasons we do things. Part of the problem with describing these reasons as laws is that they seem to lack the necessary connection (causal or deductively logical) that is typically conceived as part of “law,” as we saw in Chapter 11. For any action, there can be many reasons; which reason is effective for any individual may depend on a number of particularized factors. Reasons are also seen as an influence on choice, whereas laws determine in a strong sense what event will occur. Choice adds another intentional (and controversial) element, which makes prediction of human action that much more difficult. And further, reasons, unlike natural laws, are intentional in that reasons must make sense (be meaningful) for the agents who act on them—whereas the inverse square law of gravity determines, but is not meaningful to, a ball rolling down an inclined plane. In the words of anthropologist Roy D’Andrade, the model is one of “ ’imposed’ order based on ‘meaning’ rather than on natural or physical order” (Bishop, 2007, p. 51). Suppose we ask an alcoholic why he drinks. He would likely answer in terms of reasons expressed as desires and beliefs: “I enjoy the taste.” “I enjoy the inebriating effect of alcohol.” “I am depressed.” None of these statements explicitly refers to desires and beliefs but to other intentional states that implicitly refer to desires and beliefs: “I enjoy the taste or inebriating effect of alcohol, so I want to experience that and believe drinking alcohol will provide me with that.” Or, “I am depressed but don’t want to be and believe that drinking alcohol will alleviate that state of mind.” As reasons, though, these are not determining laws or causes. They are intentional conditions that may lead one to a choice. A cause of addiction might more clearly refer to physiological processes and changes that occur in the alcoholic’s brain, which is what really drives him or her toward addictive behavior. Here, we see a further complication and illustration of the interpretability of reasons. Any one or none of these may be the alcoholic’s real reason for drinking. We have to interpret our own reasons for acting and may not always be clear about such things for ourselves. Those on the outside may similarly have to interpret our real reasons (which may or may not be an intentional reason but a physical cause)—for example, a therapist who brings the alcoholic to the realization of his addiction.

Reasons are constructed not only according to beliefs and desires but also according to the different forms of rules: accepted means of acting and achieving goals within a social group. The student who raises her hand in order to answer a question knows (has been socialized into this body of knowledge) that raising one’s hand is a proper and effective gesture for being heard in class. This is a rule in schools in our society in general and in her classroom in particular. The pedestrian who raises his hand to hail a taxi is not following a rule in the formal sense that the student is, but in a more informal sense, it is a rule in our society that such a gesture in that context is a call for a taxi. Knowing these rules and having the desire to answer the question or hire a taxi leads these agents to do what they do. However, this model, again, is distinct from the use of laws in natural science. Laws cannot be contravened. If they could be, they would not be laws. Rules, however, can be contravened. People can act contrary to social rules; for example, the student can speak out of turn, and the pedestrian can jump in front of a taxi in order to stop it.

The examples of the student and the pedestrian mentioned previously, like most examples in books of this sort, are eminently simple, mundane examples. These types of simple, mundane examples are common for their pedagogical advantage of being relatable to a broad array of readers. Their “everydayness” makes them easy to understand, thus fulfilling their purpose of making a complex or abstract concept or issue more comprehensible. However, in this case, the mundanity of these examples itself illustrates another important concept. No formal psychological or sociological theory is appealed to in identifying the reasons for these actions. What is appealed to is what philosophers and social scientists call “folk psychology.” Folk psychology is little more than a commonsense understanding of why people do what they do. Folk psychology draws on social rules and elements of human nature that people (not philosophers or social scientists specifically) know—at least implicitly. This allows everyone—not just philosophers and social scientists—a limited ability to predict the actions of others. For example, everyone knows that when an auto accident occurs, passersby in cars will turn to look. Not only can that be predicted but we can also predict that traffic will slow down, even if the accident is not blocking or physically impeding the flow of traffic, as individual drivers slow down to get a better look. This phenomenon is so common and so expected that TV and radio traffic reporters have coined the term “gaper delay” to refer to it.

Folk psychology, of course, has severe limits in regard to predicting human action. We can mostly predict in the most general of senses and situations—and cannot predict for all individuals. Naturalists believe that we can improve on folk psychology and develop it into a formal theory that will provide for more accurate predictions. In order to do this, we would have to make explicit the law or principle that connects beliefs and desires to action. Such a principle might be expressed as, “When an agent desires x and believes y will bring about x, then that agent will do y.” As a law, this principle appears to have the appropriate form as a general claim. And it does appear to connect beliefs and desires to action. And the action y seems to imply social rules that might be followed. However, there are some problems with it as understood as a law. Although it may be generally true, on the face of it, it does not seem to be necessarily true. It does not take into account multiple or competing desires and how those would be dealt with by any individual. It does not take into account multiple (and perhaps better) means of achieving x, or whether doing y might have other (undesirable) consequences than x. Thus, within this “law” there are many variables that will affect its effectiveness—especially as a means of prediction. One can suggest amending the law to provide for these exceptions. The danger with that strategy is making the law so complex or particularized that it no longer has the form of a general law. As suggested in Chapter 11, for laws in natural science, one might suggest that an implicit ceteris paribus clause be read into the law. Yet, again “all things” that need to be assumed equal may be so many and so various that the law becomes too vague to be useful for predictions.

Many forms of naturalist social science fall under the heading of behaviorism. Although forms of behaviorism can be found in political science and economics, the most well-known form is found in psychology, following the work of B. F. Skinner (1904–1990). Skinner’s behaviorist theory of operant conditioning sets aside explicit concern for intentional states, like belief and desire, for a focus on behavior, as behavior is empirically observable (Skinner, 1965). The distinction between behavior and action is dissolved. From a behaviorist perspective, all human action, including cognitive processes and consciousness, is indistinguishable from mere reflex. All human action is understood as merely stimulus, response, and reinforcement. By manipulating the environment in order to positively reinforce the behavior of subjects, behavior can (theoretically) be predicted. Specific laws regarding the response of agents can (theoretically) be generated. Behaviorism, as a naturalist approach, takes prediction as a central goal in scientific investigation. Rejecting a focus on intentional states orients social science around causality rather than a (premodern) teleological view suggested by a focus on intentional states. If a social scientist can determine what causes behaviors, then those behaviors can be accurately predicted.

Description

As we saw in Chapter 10, theories in natural science can become controversial when they assert the existence of theoretical, unobservable entities, such as electrons and other subatomic particles. This problem arises in the social sciences as well. Intentional states, being states of mind, are by definition unobservable and often a source of intense controversy in both social science and philosophy. Another problem arises regarding the social science focus on social as opposed to individual human action. If action is meaningful, for whom is social action meaningful? Moreover, a related problem is the concept of “social facts”: the proposed existence of forces that operate on individuals from a social level.

The inclusion of intentional states in scientific investigation requires some appeal to introspection and a further inference (or assumption) that other people’s minds are generally similar to what we each discover through introspection. Otherwise, no general claims about these intentional states can be made. This is a species of a classic philosophical problem known as the “other minds” problem. The issue is that you may have direct access to your own mind, but you do not have such direct access to anyone else’s mind and thus do not have direct knowledge of other minds. Indeed, the argument often goes further in saying that I cannot know that any other persons have minds at all. You may be the only conscious, mind-possessing creature in a world of mindless automatons for all you know. This raises a problem if empirical evidence is held as a strong requirement for knowledge. Behaviorists resolve this issue by ignoring or redefining folk psychology references to intentional states. Embracing these archaic, nonscientific concepts is what naturalists believe keeps social science from making progress as a predictive science. Assuming the reality of these intentional states makes it difficult to develop empirical laws. Redefining intentional states like belief and desire as empirically observable behaviors in terms of operant conditioning would theoretically allow for the construction of social scientific laws that can be used to accurately predict behavior. The problem behaviorism faces, however, is that a theoretical connection is needed between behavior and the concept of reinforcement. Working just from what is directly empirically observable, all that behaviorism can say is that behaviors that are positively reinforced are more likely to occur in the future and behaviors that are punished are less likely to occur in the future. In order to make a deeper statement about how or why this occurs would require either (a) some theoretical appeal to unobserved, perhaps intentional, concepts or (b) hope that a neurological mechanism will be discovered to explain this. The first option contradicts the naturalistic, empirical commitments of behaviorism. The second option is vacuous until such a discovery is indeed made. It begins to seem unavoidable that in the scientific investigation of human action some appeal to intentional states will play a part.

Certain social sciences, like sociology and anthropology, do not study individuals and individual actions but study societies instead. But what is a society? Is there even such a thing as a “society” in the same sense that there is such a thing as an individual person? A simple definition of a society might be “an aggregate of persons.” But this is too simple. “Society,” as sociologists understand it, is more than this—that is, a society is more than the sum of its parts. This is why a distinct science of sociology is needed. If society were no more than the sum of people who comprise it, psychology would be adequate to understand social action and social institutions. However, it is believed by sociologists that life in a society in general, and in particular societies specifically, affects the behavior of the individuals who comprise societies. Yet at the same time, “society” is highly abstract and conceptual. One can orient oneself toward and point toward an individual. The same cannot be done regarding a society. One point that seems to make the existence of societies as entities that transcend the sum of its individuals is that the rules that govern behavior of the individuals of a society are rules that extend beyond any single individual and may be more effectual and helpful for society as an entity than any particular individual. Most societies, for example, have quite specific and highly regimented rules regarding marriage. And the practice of marriage, guided by social rules, can be beneficial to many individuals in a society. Yet these rules are not the rules of any individual. They extend beyond any individual, and no individual can change them on his or her own. And beyond the benefits marriage may have for any individual, it is largely accepted that marriage is good for society as a whole. It is meaningful to society. Now that is an odd locution. It makes sense to say that a rule that benefits an individual is meaningful to him. But does a society have intentional states just as individuals do? Emile Durkheim, often referred to as the father of modern sociology, referred the meaning of these rules to an “entity” he called “collective consciousness” or “collective mind” (“âme collective” in the original French). Scare quotes are used around “entity” because it is unclear how literally he took this concept to refer to an entity. He defined the concept as “the totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of the same society” (Durkheim, 1933/1964, p. 38). This definition sounds more like an abstract concept than a real entity. But even accepting the collective mind as an abstract concept is problematic within an empirical approach to science. Yet without such a concept, social rules seem to exist on their own, without relation to an identifiable subject for which it has meaning and for which it functions.

Durkheim further theorized that within societies there was what he called social facts. These are forces, structures, and regulatory concepts (like social rules) that have meaning independent of any individual but influence, guide, even cause individual action. Durkheim explains, “When I perform my duties as a brother, a husband or a citizen and carry out the commitments I have entered into, I fulfill obligations which are … external to myself and my actions” (Durkheim, 1895/1982, p. 50). These duties, commitments, and obligations draw on the individual, guide his actions, and give them meaning, but they are not of the individual’s own making. The classic argument for the existence of social facts comes from Durkheim’s books The Rules of Sociological Method (Durkheim, 1895/1982) and Suicide (Durkheim, 1897/1951). In Suicide, Durkheim wrote of his studies of the fluctuating suicide rates in 19th-century Europe. He argued that sharp changes in suicide rates could not be explained by the specific causes attributed to these suicides—that is, individual psychological causes. Rather, he pointed to social changes that correlated with the fluctuation of suicide rates. The presumed psychological causes appeared to remain constant through the changes in rates, whereas the social changes he pointed to did not. This fact made it seem more likely that the real cause behind these suicides was sociological, not psychological. In other words, the forces that appear to cause people to commit suicide are just as real, if not more real, as the psychological forces we typically attribute to such behavior. He attributed these differences to religious differences. Catholic societies tend to have lower rates of suicide than Protestant societies. He attributed this difference to a greater sense of individualism within Protestantism and a greater sense of community within Catholicism. One implication of this idea that we will explore further in a later section of this chapter is that our actions may not be due to the reasons we often attribute to them. We may think we are acting out of certain mental, psychological dispositions (i.e., intentional state of belief, desire, etc.), but our actions are largely influenced by social forces beyond us and beyond our control.

The position that Durkheim is developing here came to be referred to as a form of “methodological holism.” The term holism here refers to the thesis that society is more than the sum of its constituent individuals. It is an organic whole with its own facts, rules, and forces that needs to be treated and understood methodologically independent of the individual psychology of its members. Durkheim’s conclusion that the variation in suicide rates can only be explained through social facts exemplifies this view. Methodological holism then defines sociology as an autonomous science, distinct and independent of psychology. Social facts, as facts about societies, can generate sociological laws that can be used to predict social behavior. This places Durkheim and other methodological holists in the naturalist camp.

The contrary thesis to methodological holism is methodological individualism (Weber, 1956/1978), developed by another pioneer of modern sociology, Max Weber (1864–1920). According to this view, social phenomena can be traced back to the beliefs and desires of individuals (Weber, 1978). In other words, social forces can be reduced to psychological influences or individual intentional states. Weber develops a methodology that includes both interpretivist and naturalist approaches. Sociology, according to Weber, is a science of “the interpretive understanding of social action” but is also concerned “with a causal explanation of its course and consequences” (1956/1978, p. 4). He accepts that action is intentional, both individual and social, with social action being that in which “its subjective meaning takes account of the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course” (Weber, 1956/1978, p. 4). Yet this intentional action, being a social action, can also be placed within a causal nexus. What makes action social, then, according to the methodological individualist view is that it is behavior that occurs within a social context—in recognition of the intentional states of other psychologically driven beings around oneself. The intentional states of individual actors are affected by, but not independently caused by, the social situation. Social facts themselves are reducible then to psychological facts. The problem for sociology that this view raises is that if social forces and social facts are reducible to psychology, then sociology may lose the autonomy as a science that holism provides for it. Sociology would appear, at best, a derivative science, and at worst, not a real science at all. However, there is an aspect of methodological individualism that seems counterintuitive, thereby placing it into question. We commonly refer to forces of an economic, religious, or political nature. Individualism would deny, to some degree, the reality of these forces. These words would be at best shorthand descriptors for complex interactions between individuals. Yet, intuitively at least, these seem like real forces in society. To remove these—or reinterpret them as shorthand descriptors—would seem contrary to commonsense views of society.

Explanation

The interpretivist view of social science downplays the importance of prediction and is not concerned with the predictive success of social science. To be overly concerned with the predictive success of social science, interpretivists hold, is to misunderstand social science. The primary purpose of social science is not to predict human action but to understand human action, according to interpretivists. This view defines social science as separate and independent of natural science. The naturalist view defines social science as methodologically and epistemologically consistent with natural science. Indeed, the naturalist approach may even lead to a reduction of social science to natural science. The methodological individualists mentioned earlier would hold that sociology is reducible to psychology, and a broader naturalist view might also imply that social science is reducible to natural science. According to such a view, the intentional terminology of social scientists in actuality refers to physiochemical processes of the brain. A more exacting science would eliminate this intentional language in favor of more precise, more “scientific” terminology that refers to brain states rather than states of mind. In the philosophy of mind literature, these theses are called “reductive materialism” and “eliminative materialism.” Reductive materialism is the philosophy of mind thesis that all intentional states can be reduced to physiological brain states. For example, the memory of the smell of a rose is nothing more than a set of firing neurons. Eliminative materialism takes a step further: reference to immaterial, mental states needs to be eliminated in scientific language and replaced with reference wholly to material entities—entities that can be empirically observed. The problem is that neuroscientists have yet to clearly translate physiological brain states to states of intentionality. A set of firing neurons just does not seem the same as the smell of a rose. That rose-smelling experience and the beliefs and desires we have been referring to seem to transcend a mere physiological brain state.

Interpretivists, then, not willing to give up intentional states as central to social science, feel the primary role of social science is to understand human action (to provide explanations), not predict it. This further leads to a clear distinction between social and natural science. If intentional states have a reality of their own and cannot be reduced to physiological states, then social science cannot be reduced to natural science. Social science would be fundamentally and methodologically distinct from natural science and make discoveries that a natural science could not. Thus, social science has its own value, not one derivative of natural science. The goal of understanding human action means explaining human action. A successful interpretive social science will allow us to explain the individual and social action of human beings. It will bring a deeper understanding of why people act the way they do—even though it may not provide an accurate framework for predicting that action.

The obvious next question is, then, in social science, with an emphasis on interpretation, what makes a good explanation? Many of the natural science models we explored in Chapter 11 will not work with an interpretive framework, because the inclusion of laws is a bit at odds with an interpretive framework, as we have seen. The standard for a good interpretation or explanation in social science is typically put in relatively simple, even commonsense, terms. “A good interpretation,” writes Fay and Moon (1977/1998), “is one which demonstrates the coherence which an initially unintelligible act, rule, or belief has in terms of the whole of which it is a part” (p. 183). Or, in the more direct language of Charles Taylor (1971/1994), “what is strange, mystifying, puzzling, contradictory is no longer so, is accounted for” (1985b, p. 182). Put simply, we see someone acting in an initially incomprehensible manner. We then naturally ask, “Why is she doing that?” Or, in the case of social action, “Why do they do that?” Social science then takes it on itself to answer such questions. It does a good job when we are no longer puzzled, when the action referred to makes sense to us. Fay and Moon use the term coherence. This term has two related meanings. First, it suggests logical consistency. To understand something, illogic (in the form of inconsistencies and contradictions) must be accounted for—shown to be only apparent illogic or a misperception or misconception. Second, it suggests a form of unification, of all parts sticking together. The Latin root, cohaerere, means to cling, embrace, or be in harmony. Thus, this term suggests that understanding comes out of a type of logical unification. The action in question is brought under some larger interpretive principles. The incoherent does not fit; it falls outside of our understanding. The most interesting action to explain that is that which appears (appears) irrational. Here irrational may have several interpretations itself. For simplicity’s sake, we will take the view that rational action is self-regarding and self-interested action. Thus, irrational action will bring some form of harm to the actor. The social scientist will take this apparently irrational action and make sense of it, rationalize it, and bring it within the coherent whole of our picture of the world and of human action. Addictive behavior appears irrational. Most addictions harm the addict physically, socially, and emotionally, and also prevent the achievement of short-term and long-term goals that would presumably provide for a happy life. A person acting against the achievement of his or her own happiness seems irrational given the model of rationality adopted here (and adopted by many social scientists) and is probably intuitively irrational for most readers also. It seems natural to ask why someone would live his or her life in such a way. Social science aims to give us an insight, an understanding of this social phenomenon—to make it make sense to us. Once we can bring it within our general understanding of human action, it is no longer incoherent. Logical inconsistencies are resolved and such behavior is part of a larger, unified view of human and social action.

However, this description of social science explanation is very formal and runs up against some serious problems. One problem concerns the question of what recourse we have when someone does not accept that our explanation for some human or social action is adequate. To make our case we can only appeal to related interpretive claims, to “a common understanding of the expressions of the ‘language’ involved” (Taylor, 1971/1994, p. 183). For an interpretive explanation of ours to be meaningful for another, we must share a language. Our explanation only makes sense within the structure of that language. Therefore, for anyone for whom we try to communicate our explanation, we must presume we share a language with them. Otherwise, we would not share an interpretive framework that would make our explanation intersubjectively meaningful. Here is where we run into our problem though. To understand any “part” of a language, such as an interpretive explanation, one has to understand the language it is expressed in as a whole. To defend our explanation as adequate, we can only refer to other expressions within the same language. If our interlocutor does not accept our interpretive framework, he will never understand our explanation. But if he does not accept our language, our interpretive framework, he will never see our explanation as adequate. We cannot defend our explanation in isolation but only as part of a larger interpretive framework. This problem is a species of what philosophers and literary theorists refer to as a hermeneutic circle. The part cannot be understood without understanding the whole, and the whole cannot be understood without understanding constituent parts. Being trapped in this circle limits the confidence and certainty of our claims. There appear to be only two not very promising strategies for breaking out of this circle (Taylor, 1971/1994). First is a Hegelian approach. Ideally, our understanding would reach an “absolute” position in which everything is coherent. Our understanding of human action would be completely logical and inclusive—everything hangs together in a logical whole. In such a state, what we know would be so clear and evident as to be undeniable. The problem is that it would seem impossible to know when we have reached this point—to know that there is nothing more that is incoherent that needs to be made coherent. Second is a more empirical approach in which we would set aside or redefine intentional states as empirical realities—as brute facts: empirical facts that are simply “there,” not ethereal phenomena open to interpretation. This again is the naturalist and reductionist approach outlined earlier. And the problem with it is that it neglects what seems so intuitively true, that we have beliefs, desires, and other intentional states that are distinct from any external, empirical descriptions of the functions of our brain, and are influential on our actions. This makes the identification of mere “brute facts” seem impossible and beside the point. Even in natural science (Chapter 9), we saw how difficult it can be to make an unproblematic appeal to brute facts.

The idea that a social science is needed to understand human and social action implies certain opacity to our actions. If our actions were to be explained simply in reference to our intentional states, each of us could simply understand our actions through an act of introspection. Social action could be understood through an act of intersubjective comparison. We would merely discuss our individual intentional states and construct a social explanation through a logical deduction of what motives are intersubjectively common. If this is all there was to understanding human and social action, complex social sciences would not be needed. The problem, though, is that, according to many social sciences, the real explanations for our actions are often opaque to us as individuals and as societies. Let us return to Durkheim and suicide. Those persons who comprised the statistical reality of suicide as a social phenomenon that he studied presumably had in their minds some understanding of why they were committing suicide. That understanding may have been consistent with the reasons attributed postmortem that Durkheim critiqued, but they were very likely not the socioreligious reasons that Durkheim hypothesized. Indeed, Durkheim’s reasons were likely not those of any other observer before his work but required formal, structured observation and a theoretical framework. Without these “scientific” models and techniques, these reasons—and thus perhaps the correct explanation—would remain opaque to all who considered the phenomenon of suicide. The broadest concept of this opacity is found in Marxian influenced approaches such as critical theory. The Marxian concept of false consciousness defines the presumed understanding of human action that must be pierced through by a presumably better positioned interpretation. According to Marx, the capitalists who own the means of material production (natural resources, factories, etc.) use the power this material wealth provides to create a state of mind among the lower classes. This is a false state of mind, a manipulation of people’s beliefs and values. The purpose of this manipulation is to keep the working classes in line, to keep them complacently working and increasing the wealth of the capitalists. The capitalists use their power to control dissemination of information (newspapers), education, and religious institutions, all to foster a state of mind in the working class that they are in the position that they belong in, that they will be happy if only they work harder, become more productive, and do not challenge the system. Social scientists have generalized and broadened this thesis to encompass the hegemonic power structure in general and any oppressed, disempowered class. Potentially, one’s whole worldview could be false, could be an artifice constructed by another in order to keep people “in their place.” A social science would be needed then to pierce through this false consciousness to the reality of human existence and action.

This opacity is manifested in sciences of individual action (psychology) as well. Freudian psychoanalysis overturned centuries of thinking about the human mind. At least since Descartes (and dating back probably to the Greeks, but in Descartes we have a clear, explicit, and unequivocal statement of this thesis), the mind had been seen as eminently transparent. To understand oneself or the workings of one’s mind, all that is needed is appropriately focused and rational introspection. All is clear. All is there to be “seen” without interpretation. This transparency allowed Descartes to theorize the working of the mind and the brain in his Meditations. Immanuel Kant also used introspection similarly but had to employ some degree of logical deduction as well. All may not have been immediately observable but what was not could be logically derived from what was. Freud, however, theorized a mind that was in need of interpretation to be understood—both generally and particularly. The tripartite structure of the human mind (id, ego, and superego) is not immediately observable. It needs to be drawn out through interpretation to understand how the human mind in general works. Individually, according to psychoanalysis, our actions are affected by desires in our subconscious—a part of our minds below awareness. This subconscious is structured by long-forgotten experiences and psychological traumas—failures to meet the demands of the id, for example. Although far below awareness, the subconscious, according to psychoanalytic theory, influences our actions and choices. It is so far below awareness that introspection is not enough to unearth the real explanations of our actions. Self-interpretation is not enough either. What is needed is an external interpreter, a therapist who can take a non-invested, scientific point of view that will allow her to pierce through the illusions and rationalizations of the conscious mind to the dark truths beneath.

However, this leads us back to the problem of the hermeneutic circle. The explanations of sociology or psychoanalysis can only be understood and evaluated from within a hermeneutic context that presupposes the theory (language) from which the explanation comes. Self-critique, then, becomes impossible for interpretive social sciences, according to Fay and Moon (1977/1998). Naturalism, as it follows the critical analysis of the natural sciences, would provide this level of self-critique that would better ensure the validity of theoretical frameworks; however, it would entirely neglect the intentional states that make this a problem to begin with. What may be needed then is a model for social science that transcends this dichotomy, bringing together the strengths of each model and eliminating the weaknesses of each.

One more specific type of explanation found in the social sciences can also be found in the natural science of biology. This is the functional explanation in which a practice, action, or event is explained in regards to the function it serves for an individual or society. When discussing body parts, we commonly understand them in terms of function. The heart pumps blood. The liver filters contaminants. The long neck of the giraffe allows it to eat the leaves at the tops of trees. Functional definitions in biology, however, are somewhat archaic. The teleological presuppositions of such explanations have been overturned by the mechanistic views of Darwinian evolution. In the social sciences, functional explanations are still common and potentially enlightening. Although functional explanations can be found in many areas of social sciences and many theoretical approaches to social science, they also comprise the central concepts of the approach called functionalism. We cover functionalism and give functional explanations a closer look in the next chapter.

ETHICS AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

Research Ethics in Social Science

In the 1960s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram performed a series of experiments meant to test obedience to authority of ordinary people. Milgram was inspired by the defense of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann that he was merely “following orders.” Could this be a legitimate defense or even explanation for many of the horrors that occurred during World War II? The experiment included pairs of volunteers, one of whom was a “teacher” and the other a “student.” The students were actually actors in on the experiment. Milgram told the “teachers” that this was an experiment regarding learning and memory. The student and the teacher would be separated into different rooms with audio communication (or at least apparent audio communication) between the two. The teacher was to give the student pairs of words that the student was supposed to remember. When students failed to remember a pair, the teacher would press a lever that would deliver an electric shock to the student. The shocks ranged from 15 to 450 volts. In reality, though, there were no shocks. The true purpose of the study was to see how far an ordinary person would follow an authority figure (a scientist in a white coat) who was telling him to harm another person. The results varied, but 25 out of 40 subjects in the first experiment delivered shocks up to the 450-volt extreme—marked “Danger: Severe Shock” (Milgram, 2010). Some of the 25 may have demurred at points during the experiment, but with a little coaching from the white-coated investigator, they continued to the extreme.

In 1971, psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment at Stanford University in which he took a group of volunteer college students (all male), designating some prisoners and some guards, and placed them in a makeshift “prison” in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department building. The purpose of the experiment was to study “the psychology of prison life,” to answer questions such as “What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph?” (Zimbardo, 2009). The experiment was planned to run for 2 weeks but had to be halted after 6 days, as the “guards became sadistic and … prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress” (Zimbardo, 2009). One “prisoner” even had to be released after 36 hours due to signs of emotional stress. The guards quickly fell into their role as authority figures to the point of abusiveness. And the prisoners quickly became submissive and obedient.

Arguably, a greater concern for ethics exists for social science than for natural science. Certainly, ethics is not irrelevant to natural science. There are some serious ethical concerns in the study and results of natural science. Weapons research, for example, raises ethical concerns—particularly weapons of mass destruction. Robert Oppenheimer, so-called “father of the atomic bomb,” after seeing the destructive force of that weapon, resisted research into the more powerful hydrogen bomb. And similar debates and controversies have surrounded the development of chemical and biological weapons, due to their potential for massive destructive force and particularly torturous means of killing. The branch of natural science that probably raises the most ethical issues is medical research, due to the possible harmful effects on animals and people—and when it comes to people such effects include not only physical harm but moral harm in possibly violating basic rights and dignity. Like weapons research, much of the attention to the ethics of medical research can be traced to events of World War II. The atrocious actions of medical researchers within the Nazi regime are well-known. Persons (especially such persons not perceived as real or full persons by Nazis) were studied with no regard for their well-being or natural rights. The first major ethical response to these acts was the Nuremburg Code of 1946, which established two basic principles, that research subjects should provide voluntary informed consent to participate in a research protocol and that a research study must be justified by a positive benefit to risk ratio (Glannon, 2005). Other events that raised the visibility of the ethical issues of medical research in the mid to late 20th century include the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, the Holmesburg Prison dermatological studies, and the work of physician and medical ethicist Henry K. Beecher (1959, 1966). The statement of the Nuremburg Code was later developed and added to by the Declaration of Helsinki in 1964 and, in the United States, the Belmont Report in 1979 (Glannon, 2005).

Social science research raises at least as many, if not more, ethical concerns as medical research. In order for medical research to produce new, effective therapies and justified, reliable knowledge claims, humans must be involved as subjects at some point. Once humans are involved, ethical concerns are understandably inevitable. Because humans (or, more accurately, the actions of humans) are the focus of the social sciences, research will similarly involve human subjects. The two experiments outlined earlier are illustrative of some of the basic ethical problems that can arise in social science research. For each it is easy to get lost in the intriguing results, but that simply exemplifies another problem. The Milgram experiment seems to reveal an ugly side of human nature. First, ordinary people seem much more capable of horrific acts than most would assume. Indeed, Milgram notes that many of the volunteers, including students, middle-aged lay people, psychiatrists, and students of behavioral science, that he questioned before the experiment predicted that most people would not obey the experimenter (Milgram, 2010). This data may also be seen as yet more evidence against the predictive success of the social sciences. The psychiatrists and students of behavioral science apparently had no better insight into the future actions of the subjects than those with no experience in or expert knowledge of those sciences. Second, we typically think of ourselves as autonomous, as in control of our own actions. What the results of this experiment suggest is that we are more susceptible to the control of authority and recognized authority figures (such as scientists in white coats) than we think we are. Of course, the immediate reaction of most persons on hearing of this study is, “That’s awful. I would never do that!” But of course we have to consider that those subjects in the experiment would likely have said the same thing beforehand.

However, these seductively intriguing results are not our primary concern here. The research design is. First, there is a concern of deception. The real subjects of this experiment were deceived as to their role in this experiment and the purpose of the experiment. This deception means that voluntary informed consent was not actually obtained. The subjects were used as objects of scientific experimentation without respect to their rights to know truly what they were entering into. The dilemma that arises, however, is that it does not seem likely that the information obtained could have been obtained without deception. If they had been told the true purpose of the study and their true part in it, they would not have reacted as they did; their reactions would not have been sincere responses to the authority represented by “science” and the white-coated experimenter. Therefore, when deception is necessary for such knowledge, one has to deliberately weigh the value of the knowledge to be obtained against the moral harm of deception. Second, there is a concern of psychological harm to the subjects. Discovering that they are capable of inflicting such harm and unthinkingly following a recognized authority could be emotionally traumatic to some subjects. One of the subjects, after having been told the true purpose of the experiment, suggests such psychological trauma in his reflections on the experiment: “There was I. I’m a nice person, I think, hunting somebody, and caught up in what seemed a mad situation … and in the interest of science, one goes through with it” (Milgram, 2010, p. 51). And in a 1-year post-study questionnaire, this same subject wrote, “What appalled me was that I could possess the capacity for obedience and compliance to a central idea, i.e., the value of a memory experiment … at the expense of another value i.e., don’t hurt someone who is helpless and not hurting you” (Milgram, 2010, pp. 51–52).

The Zimbardo experiment similarly resulted in seductively intriguing results. It demonstrated the degree to which our behavior and actions are influenced and even controlled by our environment. Again, seemingly ordinary individuals (this time male college students, a sample of the population with far less variety than Milgram’s study) seem to change in character. The “guards” became authoritative to the point of abusiveness, and the prisoners became obedient and compliant to the point of submissiveness. Even Zimbardo admits that he got caught up in the fantasy and confused his dual roles of investigator and warden, to the possible emotional detriment of his subjects (Zimbardo, 2009). Unlike the Milgram experiment, there was no deception in the design of Zimbardo’s study. However, deception arose as the experiment played out, particularly in relation to Zimbardo’s confused roles. The primary ethical concern here is psychological harm to the subjects. As noted earlier, that harm became so apparent and possibly serious that the 2-week study had to be aborted after only 6 days.

Again, the results of these experiments are so seductively intriguing that it is easy to get caught up in the insights into human nature and ignore the ethically questionable methodology. There is possibly much knowledge that can be attained if we neglect any concern for ethics, any concern for the rights and well-being of subjects. The trouble is that respecting such rights is somewhat at odds with traditional standards of justified objective knowledge. The concept of objectivity implies an ontological distinction between the knower and the known, the subject and the object. The object is a thing to be known, separate and distinct from the subject (the knower). This separation preserves the integrity of knowledge. Without it, the knower can be implicated in the known. Such intermingling can result in bias, a slanted, invested perspective that may reduce the quality of the knowledge obtained. This view is relatively unproblematic when that which is being studied is stars or trees or tectonic plates. But when that which is being studied is human beings, problems will arise. The problem patent from this analysis so far is that humans are not just objects, not just stars or trees or tectonic plates. They are living, feeling beings with commonly recognized rights. To treat them like objects, then, undermines this recognition of humans as persons. A deeper problem is that the knower in social science research is not ontologically distinct from the known. They are both in the category of humans, which some would argue negates the possibility of a true objective attitude. Social science is reflective. Any knowledge gained by the investigator reflects back on the investigator (clearly illustrated by Zimbardo getting caught up in his own study). Therefore, investment of the knower in the known cannot be completely removed. Thus, true objectivity, as traditionally understood, may not be obtainable.

Other Ethical Issues

Some ethical issues arise, particularly from a naturalist approach to social science. Recall that behaviorism, as a more fully developed theory, would require some deeper understanding of the mechanism that connects reward and punishment to action or behavior. One possibility would be to discover a neurological mechanism to make this connection. The existence of such a mechanism would provide a deep challenge to the concept of free will. The theory of behaviorism as it stands challenges that concept, but if some such mechanism were to be discovered, that challenge would be more serious. Even presuming the theory of behaviorism seems to, at least hypothetically, deny free will. Free will is of course a prerequisite for moral action. With free will denied, hypothetically or in fact, the predictive possibility of social science begins to look morally dangerous. If social scientists were to develop the reliable ability to predict behavior, such knowledge could be engineered toward controlling behavior, with the clear possibility of controlling behavior in a malicious or self-serving manner.

Similar and further ethical problems may arise with other attempts to reduce human and social action to physiological explanations. Attempts to provide such a reduction have been made through genetics and sociobiology. The science of genetics has been around since Gregor Mendel’s (1822–1884) work on pea plants (Bateson & Mendel, 2010). Although with a broad view of “science,” genetics may be said to far predate this period, as farmers have been hybridizing and crossbreeding plants and animals for centuries or even millennia. But, of course, Mendel brought to this practice a formal and theoretical knowledge. It was not until well into the 20th century that biologists developed an understanding of the molecular function that underlay Mendel’s observations and theories. One important development of this science was the Human Genome Project, which ran from 1990 to 2003 and mapped the human genome in order to identify the genes that make up a human being. One possible future application of genetic knowledge might be the development of pharmacogenomics to the point of designing treatments engineered toward the DNA of specific persons, which would be a monumental development of modern medicine (Borém, Santos, & Bowen, 2003). Yet, there is a dark side to all this newfound knowledge and technology. With it has come the concept of genetic reductionism, the idea that we, as humans and as individuals, can be wholly reduced to our genetic makeup. Once again, this presents a limitation on the concept of free will. We have seen in our culture the proliferation of single-gene theories for various behaviors. The presumption that there is a single gene (or indeed even combination of genes) for a trait like violence could undermine attempts to punish and control violent behavior in our society. If there is a genetic basis for violent criminal behavior, we would not morally be able to hold the criminal responsible for his behavior. The concept of a “gay gene” has also entered public consciousness. Some gay rights advocates might welcome such an idea as establishing homosexuality to be on an equal ontological footing with race or gender and thus worthy of the same principles of equality and nondiscrimination. Yet the results might not be that simple. Such a discovery could lead to recognition of a greater separation (a genetic separation) between heterosexuals and homosexuals. Also, if prenatal detection of this gene were to become possible, the abortion of potentially gay babies could result. Or, if in utero genetic manipulation were possible, the “fixing” of these gay genes could become common. Research projects intended to study valued traits like intelligence across gender or racial lines could be inspired by or reinforce pre-existing stereotypes. In 1994, psychologist Richard Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray caused a firestorm of controversy with the publication of their book, The Bell Curve, which seems to argue in part that both race and intelligence are genetically determined and correlated, with Whites being intellectually superior. Herrnstein used the information they gathered to further argue for policy changes such as the elimination of welfare that encourages women of lower socioeconomic classes to have babies they cannot financially care for. Critics charged the authors with basing their study on unproven and even false assumptions about genetics and race and ultimately perpetuating stereotypes rather than contributing to social knowledge.

The previous section alluded to a deeper problem that was developed more in the context of natural science in Chapter 12. It seems even clearer in social science that the goal of attaining a value-free or value-neutral science is not desirable or not even possible. What Longino (1989) identified as contextual values in science seem even more unavoidable in the social sciences. Given the apparent reflective and intentional nature of social science, such values would be inherent. We are studying ourselves, a subject for which we recognize intrinsic value. The choices we make in these sciences will affect us, making the social sciences ineluctably value laden. Social sciences were once named the moral sciences, possibly in recognition of this value ladenness. Everything we do with the social sciences has moral implications and should be guided by clearly understood ethical principles. Attempting to ignore the value ladenness of social sciences in order to pursue a pure, naturalist, value-neutral science may or may not leave us with immoral results but could leave us with a science unguided by values and open to the manipulation of whomever is in power.

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