RR Phantom
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Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: George H. Smith: Social Laws  Tue Sep 23, 2014 10:32 pm | |
| Part 1: Smith explains methodological subjectivism and how it applies to the study of human action.
In essays posted late last year, such as “What are the Human Sciences?” “Methodology of the Human Sciences,” and “Tracking Freedom with the Human Sciences,” I discussed various aspects of those cognitive disciplines that study human action – or the human sciences, as I call them. (I recommend that readers consult the first two linked essays before tackling this series.) I shall now proceed with more detailed treatments of some traditional methodological controversies that have attended economics, sociology, and history.
My primary purpose in this series is to determine in what sense, if any, we can properly speak of social laws. When, for example, we speak of a “law” of economics, are we using the term “law” in the same sense as when we speak of a “law” of physics or a “law” of chemistry? Or, to invoke another common controversy, can we properly speak of “laws” of history?
This is obviously a complex field, so I can do no more than to offer some brief analyses and suggestions that I hope will prove useful to those readers who may wish to explore these controversies in greater detail. (It is with this possibility in mind that, contrary to my usual practice, I have provided bibliographic details for quotations.) But even my abbreviated treatments require a fair amount of background, so let’s begin with the controversy over methodological holism versus methodological dualism.
How do the human sciences differ from the physical (or “natural”) sciences? Even if we concede that the study of human action differs significantly from the study of physical (i.e., nonhuman) nature, does this necessitate a radical difference of method between the human sciences and the physical sciences? This question, which has been debated for many decades, is of fundamental importance for our understanding of the human sciences. Attempts to answer it generally fall into one of two categories: monism or dualism.
Methodological monism, which has been associated with a school of thought known as “positivism” and a cognitive ideal called “the unity of science,” maintains that the scientific method is (or should be) essentially the same in both the physical and the human sciences. Methodological dualism, in contrast, maintains that there exists (or should exist) a radical difference of method between these two fields of study. Human action, according to dualism, has a subjective meaning for the acting agent, and this unique feature, which is not exhibited by atoms, molecules, and other non-human entities, imposes upon the human sciences a distinctive method of inquiry that does not apply to the physical sciences. The human sciences are “subjective” in the sense that they must take into account the inner, or subjective, meanings of actions, as understood by the acting agents. (Throughout this series, when I use the terms “subjective” and “subjectivism,” it must be understood that I am referring to a methodological approach to the human sciences, an approach that has no necessary connection to moral, epistemological, or other kinds of subjectivism.)
http://www.libertarianism.org/columns/social-laws-part-1 |
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