What Is the Philosophy of the Social Sciences?
The philosophy of social science is a group of research traditions that are intended to shed light on various aspects of the intellectual effort of understanding and explaining social phenomena.[130] In brief, it is the study of the social sciences from the point of view of the quality of knowledge they offer, the types of explanations they advance, and the important conceptual problems that are raised in the course of social science research.
Core questions include: What are the scope and limits of scientific knowledge of society? What is involved in arriving at a scientific understanding of society? What are the most appropriate standards for judging proposed social explanations? Is there such a thing as social causation? How are social theories and assertions to be empirically tested? How do social facts relate to facts about individuals?The philosophy of social science is in one sense a “meta” discipline - it reviews and analyzes the research of other, more empirical researchers. But in another sense the philosopher is a direct contributor to social science research; by discussing and reflecting upon the methods, assumptions, concepts, and theories of working sociologists, the philosopher is also contributing to the improvement of sociology research. On this perspective it is arbitrary to draw a line between the theoretical and conceptual inquiry of the applied social scientist, and the similar studies of the philosopher.
A philosophy can guide us as we construct a field of knowledge, and it can serve as a set of regulative standards as we conduct and extend that field of knowledge. Philosophy has served both intellectual functions for the social sciences in the past century and a half. Philosophical ideas about the nature of knowledge and the nature of the social world guided or influenced the founding efforts by such early sociologists as Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, or Herbert Spencer in the formulation of their highest-level assumptions about social processes and their most general assumptions about what a scientific treatment of society ought to look like. So there has been an important back-and-forth relationship between philosophy and the social sciences from the start.
John Stuart Mill and William Whewell framed many of the assumptions about the social sciences that would govern the development of many areas of the social sciences in the English-speaking world; whereas European philosophers such as Heinrich Rickert and Wilhelm Dilthey articulated a vision of the “human sciences” based on the idea of meaningful action that would have great influence on European social science development. At its best, philosophy can function as an equal collaborator with the creators and practitioners of the social sciences, helping to arrive at more durable and insightful theories and methods. At its worst, philosophical doctrines can blind social researchers to more fertile and innovative avenues of theory development and explanation.The importance of the philosophy of social science derives from two things: first, the urgency and complexity of the challenges posed by the poorly understood social processes that surround us in twenty-first-century society; and second, the unsettled status of our current understanding of the logic of social science knowledge and explanation. We need the best possible research and explanation to be conducted in the social sciences, and current social science inquiry falls short. We need a better-grounded understanding of the social, political, and behavioral phenomena that make up the modern social world. Moreover, the goals and primary characteristics of a successful social science are still only partially understood. What do we want from the social sciences? And how can we best achieve these cognitive and practical goals? There are large and unresolved philosophical questions about the logic of social science knowledge and theory on the basis of which to arrive at that understanding. And philosophy can help articulate better answers to these questions. So philosophy can play an important role in the development of the next generation of social science disciplines.
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