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Writer's pictureDr Alan Sanderson

The Nature of Society:How do we Explain or Understand Social Life?

Preface

 

 

The following text has the title “The Nature of Society: How do we Explain or Understand Social Life?” and it attempts to explain the perceptions that individuals adhere to that guide their values, attitudes and opinions when they approach a relational situation.

 

The text began as Chapter 2 of my PhD and was an essential part of the structure of my dissertation as it introduces four contending but equally legitimate, social reality perspectives that confront community activists and community workers when they become part of community initiatives.

 

 

I hope the analysis can form a basis for the reader to appreciate the complexity in bringing together community members in voluntary projects and the necessity to consider how contending perspectives can be ameliorated in a process of finding “common ground.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2

The Nature of Society:

How do we Explain or Understand Social Life?

 


Two fundamental theoretical dilemmas confront social science in its mission to interpret and evaluate the web of beliefs about the nature of human activity and social institutions. The first is the epistemological issue relating to the continuing debate about the concept of knowledge, which includes the limits of application that should attach to the use of scientific methods in the description and evaluation of human affairs. The second is the ontological issue concerning human action and social structure. This demands that consideration be given over whether creative human actors can control the circumstances that shape their lives. Arising from their analyses of these issues, philosophers of the social sciences offer an opportunity for critical reflection over the systems of categorisation within rival epistemological belief systems and their resultant ontological clearings.

In reaching a conclusion over their preferred ontological and epistemological marriage, individuals would choose to embrace the notion that they can explain social reality or the notion that they can understandsocial reality. This rudimentary dichotomy leads to different methodological truth claims about epistemic properties.

The truth-maker principle of explanation asserts that our social reality is objective and that a scientific method can be utilised to offer causal explanations that “makes truth true” (Psillos, 2002: 167). Therefore, this method is modelled on the natural sciences as contingent propositions are proffered as proved based on a definite deducible logical relationship existing between the initial conditions governing an event and its combination with higher-order natural laws.

The truth-maker principle of understanding asserts that our social reality is subjective and that “the social world must be understood from within rather than explained from without” (Hollis, 1994: 16). So, actions originate in culture, language, practice and experience. These various meanings derive from both individual and community interpretations and can “range from what is consciously and individually intended to what is communally and often unintendedly significant” (Hollis, 1994: 17).

Truths and Truth Propositions

The proposition is that people can know a fact only if they hold a belief that a proposition (a knowledge claim) is true, thereby making it a true belief (or genuine knowledge) held by them. This conversion of a knowledge claim into genuine knowledge requires a criterion or standard by which judgements can be made about what is and is not genuine knowledge — what is knowable. Thus, what is required to prove that something is true? The concept of truth is fundamental to our very existence, as it determines what we can know and what we can learn about the social world. However, beyond this expansive supposition, lies the uncomfortable realisation that those who have a predilection towards multifarious standards of evaluation can comfortably interpret truth. Therefore, to prevent the possibility of degeneration into mere rhetoric, at this point it becomes necessary to examine the various theories of truth and their associated truth criteria.

Theories of Truth

Answers to philosophical questions can be true or false but when that answer is given the proponent should give their reasons for their response (Scruton, 2002: 6). Such reasons might be guided by the following theories:

·      The correspondence theory of truth that proposes truth as a knowledge claim that corresponds or agrees with some elements of reality in a way that validates a proposition. Thus, “a belief is true when there is a corresponding fact and is false when there is no corresponding fact” (Russell, 1912: 129). Therefore, the substantiation of a truth occurs through the replication of reality.

·      The coherence theory of truth that proposes truth as a knowledge claim that is coherent with, and mutually supported by, other knowledge claims. Thus, a truth fits into a system or network of mutually coherent propositions however, on this basis, the perfect truth must be in accord with the whole of reality, which provides it with a status that is beyond judgement. (Bradley, [1893] 1930). Therefore, the substantiation of a truth occurs through other knowledge claims.

·      The consensus theory of truth proposes truth as something agreed upon by some specific group of experts even if it fails to describe reality. Charles Sanders Peirce (1932) developed this non-ontological theory. It maintains that a statement is true if those who have investigated it can agree to it. However, it is implicit within the notion that not all statements can be assigned a truth-value.

·      The social constructivism theory of truth proposes that truth is socially constructed and is thus contingent upon convention, human perception and social experience. In this scenario the individual rejects determinism as a factor in truth making and recognises that democratic discussion with members of their community is central to the process of ordering human activity. Thus, this paradigm makes personal and group enquiry paramount as a web of social relationships reveal the agent as embedded in a series of social systems. These systems must be thoroughly critiqued to enable a community to initiate plans for purposeful social development.

·      The pragmatism theory of truth is a variant of Peirce’s consensus theory. This approach proposes that truth be judged by the success of its practical consequences. Thus, truth becomes something that is only true if it is useful to believe. This notion is encapsulated within the observation that “No concrete test of what is really true has ever been agreed upon” (James, 1897: 15).

Truth Criteria

These theories, each of which offer equally legitimate understandings of what constitutes the truth, inform individual truth-making through the selective application of various truth criteria. These criteria act as benchmarks that personify truth claims by enabling individuals to utilise their chosen standards of judgement to evaluate whether a theoretical proposition should be designated as true or false. Moreover, these various means, which warrant the legitimacy of a claim to knowledge, can be categorised as follows:

·      Sensory experience (a posteriori[1] inductive knowledge) or reasoning (a priori[2] deductive knowledge), both of which, to varying degrees, may provide criteria that validate or inform propositions that are advanced by all the truth theories. However, both the truth doctrines of social constructivism and pragmatism compartmentalise, and critique, scientific conclusions when they begin their analysis of what constitutes a truth in order that outcomes of human subjectivity take precedence over factual objectivity.

·      Epistemological foundationalism recognises that self-justified knowledge claims, if they are raised upon robust and unambiguous foundations through a combination of experience and reason, constitute a set of beliefs that do not need further justification (Lewis, 1929, 1946). These criteria specifically accord with the consensus theory of truth, but they refute coherentism as propositions may be know without a foundation in certainties.

·      Epistemological reliabilism can be understood as an externalist approach to truth. Here the observer experiences sufficiently good reasons that are grounded in the process of direct apprehension or of reasoning, that produces a high proportion of generally reliable true beliefs. So, the subject follows a process that may be outside of their own awareness and thus, possibly unjustified (Sellars, 1975). These principles accord with the coherence theory of truth making.

·      Epistemological probabilism is the doctrine that if reasonable degrees of probability can be assigned to some area of social life, then the observer may settle for such a hypothesis based on their willingness to act in accordance with these axioms (Peirce, [1868] 1966, 36–8). These criteria can inform the consensus theory of truth making as part of a process of abduction.[3]

·      Epistemic defeasibility accepts that a knowledge claim can be made defective by additional, previously unknown evidence (Popper, 1974). Such proof of falsification would render any truths substantiated by an incorrect fact in the application of the correspondence, coherence or consensus theories of truth making as disproved. However, under the doctrine of both the social constructivism and pragmatism theories new, previously unknown evidence may be rejected as irrelevant.

·      Consensual pragmatism would exist amongst a group of experts who can reach a unanimous agreement that a knowledge claim is true on the basis that each member of the group have enough expert experience to judge it. This field of professional expertise may draw on both naturalist[4] and hermeneutic[5] epistemological knowledge (Bhaskar, 1979).

·      Instrumental pragmatism is the doctrine that almost any belief might be true provided, after all matters are considered, that it works by offering beneficial results to its believers. This notion could form part of being an active participant in a knowing situation where “knowing is itself a mode of practical action and is theway of interaction by which other natural interactions become subject to direction” (Dewey, 1929: 106–7).

These categories do not offer a precise division between criteria based on objectivity, and criteria based on subjectivity, however, whilst there appears to be no irreconcilable division between these tendencies some theories of truth are inclined to embrace the notion of explanation more than understanding and vice-versa. For instance, the correspondence, coherence and consensus theories place an emphasis on objective criteria, whilst social constructivism and pragmatism comfortably espouse subjectivity.

Thus, a subtle but discernible epistemological dichotomy about truth-making influences the standards of truth people choose to apply when endeavouring to gain knowledge about social phenomena. Of course, a fundamental issue becomes apparent — “you cannot search for X, whatever X may be, unless you are from the outset equipped with a good enough notion of what X is to provide you with criteria by which to judge whether you have found what you are looking for” (Welbourne, 2001: 14). However, this assertion presupposes that individuals would select a method of gathering knowledge that offers a suitable framework for analysis from a particular perspective of social reality. Here, it is proposed that people choose to accept information as knowledge starting from their standards of trust. Thus, when they answer the question of what constitutes legitimate knowledge this influences their explication and acceptance of forms of social phenomena.

The Epistemological Dichotomy: Naturalism or Hermeneutics

The dichotomy between naturalism and hermeneutics reflects the different understandings in the philosophy of social sciences over how people can learn about social phenomena. The dichotomy is clearly illustrated in Figure 2.1 however further sub-divisions exist in both the main categorisations.

 

 

Figure 2.1:    The Contending Epistemological Perspectives

Epistemology

Naturalism

Hermeneutics

 

Presumes an objective social world, best knowable by the application of scientific methods, and embraces, inter alia, empiricism, verificationism, logical positivism, and falsificationism.

 

 

Presumes a subjective social world, bestknowable only as it is socially constructed, and embraces, inter alia, epistemological existentialism, phenomenology and linguistic epistemology.

 

Source: Dixon and Dogan, 2003a.

 

Naturalism’s Epistemological Dichotomy: Empiricism or Rationalism?

Descartes concluded that individuals could accept that they should only concern themselves with knowledge achieved by their rational intellects ([1628] 1961: 149) where reason triumphs over instinctive passions. However, whilst passions may have been transcended the question remained as to the value that could be placed on an analytical statement where the predicate is established within the concept of the subject, for example “all sisters are female”. This resulted in Kant ([1781-7] 1956) agreeing with the empiricists that knowledge should be a posteriori or empirically based on evidence from sensory experience. However, Kant also agreed with the rationalist’s assertion that synthetic a priori propositions, where denial would not imply a logical contradiction, may be truths for another reason. Following this logic, and from a contemporary perspective, Nozick is wary of placing too much faith in the supremacy of rationality and suggests that we should “track the truth” (1981: 172–8) and reach a conditional analysis of knowledge


Knowledge from Experience. Positivism, in a general sense, can be understood as a rejection of the theoretical philosophy of being and knowing known as metaphysics. The positivist adheres to the belief that observation and measurement, employed in a framework of scientific method, can reveal laws about cause and effect that can determine the limits of peoples’ truth in relation to phenomena. In drawing its sharp distinction between the realms of fact and value the movement embraces several differing shades of opinion so, in this section, British Empiricism will be compared to the contemporary British Logical Positivist, or Analytical, tradition. Subsequently the basis of rationalist thinking is critically analysed. This process leads to some important contentions in theoretical reasoning that effect the possible reconciliation of the two schools of thought through a synthesised ratio-empiricism.

Locke, Berkeley and Hume are the principal philosophers associated with British Empiricism. All three contributed to the establishment of an eighteenth-century movement which refuted innate cognition, or the theory that the source of knowledge is inborn in humans, with our innate meanings deriving from intuitiveness developed by reason (Shand, 2002: 67–70). Therefore, the human intellect, in Locke’s critique of innate ideas, when confronted with the challenge of explaining the relation between mind and object, is a tabula rasa awaiting inscription from aspects of experience. In this process, he maintains that” No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience” (Locke, [1690] 2004: Bk.2, Ch.1, Sect.19)

Locke classifies experiences as being of two kinds. External sensations, which awake sensible qualities in our minds, exist in external objects. These sensations are divided into primary objective qualities, such as size, movement and shape, and secondary subjective qualities such as colour, taste, sound and so on. Internal sensations can be termed reflection and are responsible for the ideas produced because of sensation data. In a similar manner, ideas are subdivided into simple and complex with the latter being compounds of a simple notion that cannot be reduced further, for instance, the idea of the colour green. Furthermore, an idea is understood as representing an epistemological relationship between two entities as it expresses the conception that the knower has of an object (Locke, [1690] 2004; see also Shand, 2002: 111–3). In this relationship,” All men are liable to error, and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it” (Locke, [1690] 2004: Bk. 4, Ch. 20, Sect. 17).

However, Berkeley, in maintaining his opposition to materialism, rejects the notion of primary and secondary qualities in external objects and maintains that all ideas are of a subjective nature. Thus, he observes that “They are neither finite quantities, or quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the ghosts of departed quantities?” (Berkeley, [1734] 2004: Sect. 35). Therefore, Berkeley is committed to the notion that people’s intelligible thought must refer to what they have comprehended through their personal experience. However, in this scenario, scepticism about the existence of God is dismissed as an affront to common sense as only those ideas, which we perceive through our senses, can have any meaning. This subjective standpoint becomes extreme subjectivism in Hume’s work, where the mind is not a tabula rasa, but is predisposed to instincts, which shape knowledge. So he concludes that ”reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them” ([1739] 2004: Bk. 2, Pt. 3, Sect. 3, Para. 4). Furthermore, ideas or copies of sensory impressions are thought able to agglomerate amongst individuals leading to the association of ideas that produces a level of commonality in human perceptions (Scruton, 2002: 126).

Evolving from eighteenth century theorising three fundamental suppositions are discernible, which together define contemporary empiricism (Scruton, 2002: 125–6):

·      Propositions that are advanced after scientific enquiry are only true by virtue of their inherent ideas. Reason is, therefore, nothing but the relationship between different notions.

·      The only available framework of knowledge, other than observations, is matters of fact. However, they are unable to generate further necessary truths as they can only offer a summary of what is known to be true and, by implication, what is not true.

·      There cannot be a priori proof for any matter of fact as knowledge is contingent upon experience. Thus, the principle of induction, which proceeds from inference from, known events to the probability of the occurrence of the next event, is the only source of a factual proposition. Therefore, if observation results in the perception that "all swans are white" this supposition remains a fact until a black swan appears.

Hume, in developing empiricism to its preordained conclusions, denies the objective value of the concept of causation arguing that an assertion, explaining one event in terms of another, is based on confused logic. Thus, two events, which exist at separate times, are discrete within human thought and one event can be imagined without the other. On this basis, any proposition maintaining that it is a necessary truth that one event must automatically follow another is, no matter how clever, based on a fallacious argument (Hume, [1748] 1975: Sect. 12, Pt. 3). However, it is through a process of “habits of the mind” that people are influenced by previous observations into making connections between events independent of consistent external perception thus, ”custom, then, is the great guide of human life” (Hume, [1748] 1975: Sect. 5, Pt.1). Therefore, it is axiomatic “how use doth breed a habit in a man!” (Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona).

The problem that dominates British Empiricism is whether an objective metaphysics is achievable through the explanation and modification of our sensory perceptions. Logical positivism, a school of thought pursued during the early part of the twentieth century in the work of the Vienna Circle of philosophers, mathematicians and natural scientists, aimed to connect positivism with empiricism. This task was to be carried out by “their making the impossibility of metaphysics depend not upon the nature of what could be known but upon the nature of what could be said” (Ayer, 1959: 11). Thus, synthetic a priori knowledge does not exist. Therefore, apart from analytic statements of logic, which includes mathematics and geometry, knowledge is restricted to empiricist experiences, which includes psychology, physics and biology, and is capable of building into scientific theories, which can become the basis of hypotheses that extend beyond human experience. Thus, a precise distinction between the analytic and the synthetic resolves the tension within Hume’s philosophy, which regards a priori propositions as “matters of fact” and the stuff of real existence. So, logical positivists can designate Hume’s statement that ”It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger” ([1739] 2004: Bk. 2, Pt. 3) to triviality that precludes knowledge of the actual, or the contingent, from pure logical reasoning.

Having established a separation between analytic and synthetic propositions logical positivism, in attempting to offer a general set of methodological rules that would be the same for natural and social sciences, found that it was axiomatic that “all metaphysical, ethical and theological doctrines are meaningless. This conclusion was inevitable, not because of any defect of logical thought, but because these strands of thought were unverifiable” (Scruton, 2002: 288). Therefore, all significant propositions that are not necessarily true, such as a tautology, must be observationally verifiable (Gordon, 1991: 594). This assertion, which has its origins in the thinking of Wittgenstein, leads to the necessity of distinguishing between observational and theoretical non-analytic statements. To resolve this dilemma Ayer (1959) proposed to limit the concept of verification to “verification in principle” and “weak or probabilistic verification”. Thus, both the trap of denying the meaningful premises in empirical propositions, that cannot be verified due to the existing limits of experience, and the danger of conclusive verification or falsification when observation can only reach a conclusion which “is more or less probable” is avoided. Therefore, Ayer’s thinking logically takes him to the conclusion that “all empirical observations are hypotheses because there is no way of absolutely confirming or refuting such propositions (Shand, 2002: 248). However, this prescriptive rule returns logical positivism to the contradiction that is central to the uncertainties of induction as ”if an induction is worth making, it may be wrong” (Russell, 1927: 83). Whilst knowledge is recognised as an explanation of observations which lead to scientific laws that state universal truths nevertheless, as these generalisations are only ratified through a positive experience how can their truth be guaranteed? (Scruton, 2002: 128). For this reason, logical positivism adopted a deductive system of analysis that was informed by Popper’s arguments (1974) about the proper growth of human knowledge.

Popper (1974) characterised scientists as problem solvers who propose theories that go beyond existing knowledge, which are immersed in information and are exposed to falsification. In a deductive procedure first the consistency of the proposed theoretical system is established before, as a second stage, the analytical and synthetic elements are distinguished. Subsequently the new theory is compared to other theories to ensure that it advances existing knowledge, before, as the final element in Popper’s falsificationalism, the new theory is subject to rigorous testing. If the new theory survives attempts to falsify it, and as it can explain all the content of the existing theory or theories, it is adopted as highly corroborated. However, this result not in the discovery of the truth but of the best-unfalsified theory offered. Therefore, Popper is a metaphysical realist in a regulatory sense although he acknowledges that theories can only be tested in the idiom of our current critical awareness of reality (Popper, [1934] 1977).

Empiricism has the weakness of being unable to judge the truth or falsehood of analytical principles that are not grounded in observation. However, logical positivism’s embrace of Popper’s methods of scientific enquiry, to unify empiricism and positivism, offers a means of reconsidering the contribution empiricism can make to the theory of knowledge.

The fundamental tenets of rationalism will now be analysed. This examination reveals how philosophers, in the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza, have regarded the notion of explaining reality as fundamentally a product of human reason.

Knowledge from the Intellect. Rationalism can be understood through the axiom “placing trust in reason” (Bunge, 1996: 306). Like empiricism, in its search for the truth about this world, it acknowledges that humans cannot be direct recipients of knowledge but instead, must interpret phenomena. As already discussed, empiricists base their epistemology on observations made by the senses whilst rationalists place a reliance on the resources of logic and intellect. However, within the discipline of philosophy, rationalism appears in two strengths, moderate and radical. The former is an adaptable doctrine that can be combined with other epistemologies as, while it accepts that reason is necessary, nevertheless it acknowledges that, relational situations, different individuals may interpret rationality in different ways to fully comprehend phenomena. Alternatively, radical rationalists considered here as primarily supporters of the thinking of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, are apriorists, which, by implication, leads to their discomfort with both empirical data and positivism (Bunge, 1996: 306).

The dogmatic assumption of radical rationalism — that there can be only one perception of reality that accords with reason — is readily apparent. However, this prescribed critique leaves as self-evident the opportunity for moderate rationalism to become a player in a synthesis of doctrines that may advance the positivist’s cause. Such a possibility of synergy is an asset in addressing the need, from a human perspective, of allowing our own theoretical powers to identify from experience the effects, if any, of social structures on our social arrangements. We are then able to subject these observations to reasoned reflection through application of our chosen criterion of verifiability (Ayer, [1936] 1975).

Descartes‘ philosophy attempts to allow explanations of nature to be free from a scepticism that leads to confusion and conflict. Human ideas can be determined through sensation, rooted in fractious and self-important notions, or, as in the idea of God, be innate and thus, sealed with validity. In this typology of theodicy, the individual is the ultimate arbitrator as each person reaches their own decisions about the validity of truths and knowledge (Descartes, [1641] 1964).

Thus, whilst the human senses are not ignored, they are regarded as inferior to explanations derived from reason. These explanations would, through a process of deductive reasoning, assert that their conclusions necessarily follow from the truth of their premises. On this basis deductive reasoning appears to produce contingent truths reliant on the validity of firstly, the a priori knowledge available from previously established premises and secondly ceteris paribus where “truths” or “laws” emerge in a closed system. However, despite this qualification, rationalism maintains that truths about the “really existing intelligible world that underlies the appearance of changing particulars that we experience” (Shand, 2002: 69) can be discovered through the methodical application and findings from deductive reasoning. Ultimate reality becomes explainable through the Cartesian separation of the mind and the senses, with the former capable of indifference to sensory sensations, as it comprehends the natural order of reality. This dualist vision is rooted in Descartes’ observation “ that it is only the things that I conceive clearly and distinctly which have the power to convince me completely” ([1641] 1964: 123). Thus, clarity of mind, divorced from the body, can perceive objects with certainty and truth.

The world, from a rationalist perspective, is of necessity logical. As Spinoza observes this condition reflects the nature of God, so denial of the theorem that is derived from the accepted axioms is an illogical contradiction implying God’s imperfection ([1675] 1989; see also Shand, 2002: 87). Leibniz refined this principle to the acceptance of theorems after the application of sufficient reason by acknowledging that truths might be contingent because God is under no compulsion to actualise all truths. Accordingly, it is enough for every fact to find its justification in a previous fact to justify the necessary and logically rational process of causality. Thus, it is acknowledged that although the world is perceived through a variety of perspectives humanity can still obtain “as much perfection as possible” (Leibniz, [1714] 1973: 187–8).

Therefore, rationalism addresses an imperative for both the natural and social sciences; cause and effect become explainable concepts offering declarations of greater value than a process of observation that is unable to move beyond mere correlation. Nevertheless, strong rationalism still seems insufficient to fully explain the world, whilst theories are the product of reason, they still demand subsequent empirical observation for their validation. Similarly, the design of empirical research is informed by the content of theories making an irrefutable argument for the interdependence of both scientific methods.

Examination of Popper’s theoretical maxim of falsificationism has revealed a doctrine that contributed to the proponents of logical positivism rejecting the inductive approach. However, an alternative means of unifying rationalism and empiricism had been proposed by Kant in the late eighteenth century. Kant had found grounds to agree with empiricist thought noting that “intuitions are without exception sensuous, and therefore, no speculative knowledge is possible which reaches further than possible experience” ([1781–7] 1956: 46). Furthermore, Kant also maintained that a priori knowledge of objects is of importance but “is of only practical application, since it has not the slightest effect in enlarging theoretical knowledge of these objects as insight into their nature by pure reason” ([1781–7] 1956: 58). Thus, explanation through a priori knowledge is limited to immediate appearances resulting in Kant concluding, “the highest good is a synthesis of concepts” ([1781–7] 1956: 117) where perception and experience can be united into a single consciousness. Therefore, synthetic a priori propositions that cannot be refuted after experience present transcendental deductions that can lead to a priori truths. Furthermore, Kant, in his conclusion to the Critique of Pure Reason, recommends self-reflection over the effects of both rationalism and empiricism “on common sense” to “avoid the error of a crude and unpractised judgement” ([1781–7] 1956: 167). Nevertheless, this assertion still leaves the dilemma that first principles, or a priori knowledge, cannot be proven and synthetic propositions can always be denied without contradiction making Kant's attempt to create a method of ratio-empiricism through synergy inconclusive.

However, there is an alternative foundationalist theory of knowledge that can offer a secure underpinning for factual explanations of what we can aspire to know about the real world. This strand of thought was, largely, the work of perhaps the most seminal figure in nineteenth century American Pragmatism, Charles Peirce. His theorising offers an opportunity to re-appraise the notion of explaining the social world within a different theoretical framework. However, before we explore this theoretical re-framing, it is appropriate to examine the schools of thought that place an emphasis on the subjective understanding of the social reality.

Hermeneutics: Social Constructivism, Phenomenology and Existentialism

The epistemological techniques that rely on a process of explanation emphasise the notion of prediction. These are made on the assumption that a situation is free from any influence other than that of the factors under consideration. However, in an alternative narrative, the word understanding replaces the notion of explanation and the complex variant of human subjectivity, although present in the broader interpretation of positivist thought, assumes a dominant role compared to the objective goals of “scientific” exploration.

Understanding Social Life. Hermeneutics inevitably relies on human subjectivity. Therefore, in this context, it is necessary to examine the interpretation of the word “subjective.”

Freud ([1929] 1971); Knorr-Cetina (1981) and feminists[6], such as Harding (1986; 1991) and Shepherd (1993), maintain that subjectivism cannot just be confined to recognition of the relevance of human feelings, beliefs and interests. These notions have already been incorporated into strands of empiricism, for instance, Berkeley ([1734] 2004) in taking an idealist stance, regards all objects of knowledge as mental objects or ideas. However, radical versions of subjectivism perceive the world as the creation of the knowing self, rather than existing independently from the mind. Thus, scientific facts are excluded from deliberations, the possible dichotomy between truth and reality is deemed an irrelevance and problems of objectivity do not arise (Bunge, 1996: 330).

Some feminist thought extols intuition over reason. This strategy is largely based on the imperative to further feminist values, centred on the individual’s self-identification with the outcomes from oppressive practices that have remained hidden in a framework of dominant scientific study constructed around preponderantly male norms and legislation (Harding, 1986, 1991; Shepherd, 1993). However, the feminist imperative that requires the incorporation of feminist values into the design of research programmes is no longer such a distinctive standpoint, as the majority of contemporary natural and social scientists no longer approach their work as “value free” (May, 1993: 40).

If the world is subject dependent then, by implication, one person’s truth is just as valid as another’s, and so everyone can create reality in a metaphysical domain that is incapable of being addressed by the methods of science. In this scenario, as Kant ([1781–7] 1956) reasoned, collectively we cannot know any ultimate reality. Alternatively, this assertion, with its affirmation of permanence, seems to lead us to an unacceptably restrictive position on “the scope of human reason” (Callinicos, 1999: 31). Therefore, possibly to avoid falling into a complicated predicament, moderate subjectivism restricts itself to an individualistic perspective. This constraint is reminiscent of Berkeley avoiding the challenge of explaining inter-subjective agreements by accepting the assumption “that God takes care of the uniqueness of the world” (Bunge, 1996: 332). Nevertheless, the contentions of moderate subjectivism do allow individuals to define the meaning of their subjectivity by comparing their understanding with that held by others (Schleirmacher, [c.1835–45] 1977; Dilthey [1883] 1988).

Husserl, in the twentieth century, reinterpreted notions of subjectivism that may have relied on the omnipotence of a divine authority. He constructed the method of “phenomenological reduction” or “bracketing” that aimed to exclude reflexive and speculative thought from descriptions of mental conditions and thereby isolate pure consciousness (Husserl, [1929] 1981). Subsequently, Sartre, as the primary modern exponent of existentialism was to reject both an objectivist and subjectivist philosophy in developing a position of human intentionality of consciousness (Sartre, [1960] 1976). However, before we proceed to examine both phenomenology and existentialism in more detail, the subjectivist viewpoint is combined with collectivism to produce the school of thought known as social constructivism (Bunge, 1996: 335).

The Collective Interpretation of Understanding. Popper, in opposing totalitarianism, as exemplified in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, made a linkage between political philosophy and epistemology. In this relationship, methodological individualism was both the correct method of scientific investigation and a means of maintaining liberal democracy. However, advocates for a collectivist doctrine maintain that the greatest good for individuals is to serve the political economy during the duration of their lives on a basis determined by collectively agreed social ends and purposes (Popper, 1966; see also Gordon, 1991: 658–9).

As it is understood that “science cannot attain objective, representational knowledge” (Bohman, 1991: 131), as the facts it offers are as relative and vague as any other singular elucidation, there is a reliance on communities to achieve consensus amongst their membership. However, there is a flaw in this rationale as the premises arising from scientific hypotheses may be indeterminate and the knowledge possessed by the researcher may far exceed that of other community members. Thus, Woolgar’s sceptical strategy employed against what he described as “a false objectivist epistemology” (Woolgar cited by Bohman, 1991: 131) fails to offer an adequate logical analysis that can overturn traditional claims for scientific knowledge.

Woolgar, working with the philosopher-sociologist Latour, created an actor-network theory, which, whilst maintaining a strong anti-realist stance, aimed to overcome the rigid dichotomy between the subject and the object of knowledge and unite society with nature. The theory was formulated after completion of an ethnographic study into scientific activity, which recognised that the practices of social science are deeply intertwined with scientific experimentation incorporating such matters as economies, dimensions of power and technologies into the totality of participants’ belief systems. Thus, the statistics generated in the laboratory only assume the semblance of reality through the interaction of the researcher with other scientists. This process results in alliances that lead to further political struggles that extend the creditability of creative theorising to capital, the military, religious organisations and so on. A successful conclusion to this series of negotiations has the effect of legitimising the power to define reality through the now uncontested new scientific fact or facts (Latour and Woolgar, 1979). However, this assertion raises several contentious issues. The initial status of the objects created by science is unclear. Are they embryonic explanations resulting from the application of a particular scientific method or do they possess a different status? This lack of clarity is also apparent in the relativist, non-realist, categorisation of scientific findings both during the duration of the formation of scientific and non-scientific alliances, and their transformation into the realm of realism after disputes have been resolved. So, the question about the standards of specific criteria that should be satisfied other than the viewpoints of influential individuals and groups, remains unanswered. Finally, the entire approach seems hierarchical, almost totalitarian, as it ignores wider democratic debate about scientific discoveries. Whilst this might be an accurate reflection of the opinions of part of the scientific community the analysis, as a model to unify nature and society, lacks certitude (Bohman, 1991: 206–11).

Extreme theoretical notions have been inspired by some understandings perpetuated by the school of social constructivism, for example Fleck (cited by Bunge, 1998: 227) denied the existence of syphilis, labelling the disease as a social construct contrived by the medical community. Such an assertion, as it concerns an epidemic that has inflicted a painful death on its victims since the sixteenth century, seems somewhat absurd. However, it is rational to accept that an entire series of biological, psychological and social factors have shaped the public’s perception about this disease resulting in puritanical reactions that are still prevalent in relation to contemporary understandings of the AIDS virus. Therefore, it is acknowledged that an objective condition may be confused with a social reaction, necessitating the application of a philosophical pragmatism that can accommodate scientific facts whilst dismissing the more extreme pressures of a community-based thought collective.

The philosophical method of analysing language, rather than what language ostensibly concerns, is the focus of linguistic epistemology. It is asserted that individuals learn the rules of language that govern the social meaning associated with any action. These language rules vary both simultaneously and continuously in different cultures as they act to shape the acquisition of knowledge. So, collective inter-subjectivity, which engenders a particular understanding of social reality, is part of the expressive function of language that, in its expression of thoughts and feelings, produces an aspect of interpretation that accords with others of a shared disposition (Wittgenstein, [1953] 1958).

Collective understanding of language patterns questions the possibility of a private language through which we can express our own awareness without modelling our words on the awareness of others. For instance, the individual experience’s unique sensations but can they then use words that describe these personal metaphysical pictures or intuitions? Wittgenstein proposes that such a private language is not possible in asking the question “are my words for sensations tied up with my natural expressions of sensation? In that case, my language is not a ‘private’ one. Someone else might understand it as well as I. —But suppose I didn’t have any natural expression for the sensation, but only had the sensation? And now I simply associate names with sensations and use these names in descriptions” ([1953] 1958: §256). Therefore, the use of language requires the individual to follow the language rules of their community, a notion incompatible with a private language.

The nature of public language illustrates how the general acceptance of patterns of behaviour by a community assumes normative standards. Thus, a legal system is accepted by most citizens not because it possesses threats and sanctions but instead, that the law affirms, in its language system, that its rules should be obeyed (Hart, 1961).

Therefore, the doctrine of social constructivism might benefit from inquiry into language customs as such observations “on the natural history of human beings;…have escaped remark only because they are always before our eyes” (Wittgenstein, [1953] 1958: §415).

Consciousness Restrained by Intentionality. An individual can understand the social world by recognising that it can only be interpreted through their own construction of reality. Such a reality may be formed through social interaction where an individual’s consciousness experiences a distinct and meaningful occurrence that influences their own future patterns of behaviour (Husserl, [1929] 1981). Thus, social phenomenology investigates the relationship between the objective and subjective social realms.

Arising from this investigation the advocates of phenomenology understand their social world as possessing a spiritual, rather than a material, dimension that offers meanings that can become part of a system of interpretation rather than provide a descriptive framework for social systems. For instance, the doctrine’s affirmation of the value of abstract reasoning as a purposive outcome may offer a means of improving our understanding about the ways in which individual consciousness relates to social life. Furthermore, phenomenological concerns extend to the process of reciprocal interaction, whereby shared human awareness can determine our agency, the way social life can become “structured” and the resultant, and sometimes negative, implications from these processes for the construction of reality.

The empirical psychologist Bretano, working in the late nineteenth century, rejected all premises of idealism by maintaining that the human mind could only be understood from the viewpoint of the first person. Knowledge is provided by conscious perceptions, but these impressions are mediated by intentionality, which draws a distinction between material and intentional objects, or propositions and ideas about indeterminate and determinate phenomena, which means that knowledge may not correspond to material reality (Bretano [1874] 1973). Bretano’s pupil, Husserl, developed phenomenology with the aim, like that of Descartes, of “establishing a unified certain foundation for all knowledge” (Shand, 2002: 218). Initially he pursued this goal by studying logic, which leads him to reject positivist explanations as they relied on the mechanical application of reasons to logical consequences. Therefore, instead of universal naturalistic analysis, restricted to the appearance of phenomena, Husserl advocated that we should focus on the understanding of “essences” through conceptualisation and self-reflection (Husserl, [1929] 1981; see also Gordon, 1991: 612).

The heart of phenomenology is in its method of reduction. Therefore, Husserl can support the Cartesian position by maintaining a separation between the intrinsic elements of our mental states from extraneous encumbrances (Husserl, [1929] 1981). The presuppositions people possess concerning the designation of mental phenomena are to be bracketed off or suspended from their belief or judgement to allow them to deliberate on pure phenomena. Such an enhanced reflective awareness, which is facilitated by their own intuitive intellectual vision, excludes existing theories and assumptions to achieve a phenomenological attitude that can comprehend the essence of the reduced objects of consciousness (Shand, 2002: 223–4). Therefore, there is an assertion that all human behaviour can derive from individual intentionality, so the individual is free to search for their own identity by following a process where they must struggle to achieve an authentic way of life.

Freedom and Living an “Authentic” Life. The philosophical movement known as existentialism achieved popularity from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century although contemporary proponents such as Wilson (1956), an English existentialist, still advocate and develop its principles. However, a concise definition of the doctrine is problematic. For instance, two of the movement’s notable philosophers, Heidegger and Sartre, considered that the question of existence is a matter for solitary meditation that should not become the subject of discourse (Wahl, 1949: 2). Nevertheless, amongst exponents of existentialism there are certain broad concerns and assumptions that symbolise this philosophy of life such as the emphasis on individual existence, that precedes the fundamental nature or inherent characteristics of the self, and which consequently values subjectivity, individual freedom and choice. Therefore, existence precedes essence in a process that recognises men and women as having jurisdiction over their own awareness of the purposeful possibilities of their actuality.

Whilst this section primarily features the work of Sartre, from his rejection of some of Husserl’s conclusions to the formulation of the notions of “bad faith” and authenticity, it will also mention some other eminent figures beginning with Kierkegaard. This Danish thinker is considered the “father of existentialism” in his mission to contradict the notion of totality or the progression of understanding that proceeds from the self to the entire human species and finally to the “absolute idea” (Wahl, 1949: 3). However, his insistence on the uniqueness of individuals, his complete adherence to subjectivity and the removal of all structure leaves human beings contemplating the absurdity of a life of no reason where the self is just a contingent fact engulfed by the infinite. This bleak outlook was mitigated for Kierkegaard by his struggle to become a Christian, which the cynic may find a convenient means of avoiding the darker elements in his philosophy. In fact, a fatalistic pessimism pervades much of subsequent existentialist thought particularly in the gloominess of Sartre and Camus. So, the question arises, is the belief that life consists of unending tragedies justified? Certainly Wilson (1956) does not think so, believing that the doctrine should inspire a sense of detached reality with the possibilities it holds, in a rigorous grounding of logic, for the realisation of human potential. He maintains that if individuals are free then they are free to choose the cast of their minds in a setting devoid of unreality (1956: 30). In this scenario, triviality can be designated to its proper place thus permitting people to experience a sense of unencumbered self-realisation in a state of total awareness (Coniam, 2001: 20).

The task of analysing the problem of self-knowledge arises from Heidegger conceiving the self in the everyday world as an entity, unconscious of its own existence, and inhabiting the “domain of Everyman” ([1927] 1996). Thus, it is only through a sense of anguish, or the dread of the “background of Nothingness” that being “detaches itself as a sort of rupture” (Wahl, 1949: 12–13). Those who exist, having experienced this forceful dislocation, must contemplate “being for death” (Wahl, 1949: 14) when all possibilities become possible. Again, a gloomy prognosis, mollified by the probability of redemption, and reflected in Heidegger’s ontological understanding that maintains “that there are no principles that govern the social realm as a whole” with the social representing either “a clearing of being and intelligibility or inherently tied to one “(Schatzki, 2002: 141).

Sartre can identify with the immediacy of stripping away the sentimental metaphysical and scientific speculations used to derive objective descriptions of a world dependent on necessary truths substantiated by disciplines such as mathematics and logic. Whilst existentialist thought does not reject scientific and abstract contingencies nevertheless the doctrine’s conviction is that true or false descriptions can only be based on human projects and not founded based on a detached viewpoint. Thus, Sartre rejects both objective and subjective speculation as his existentialism propounds the belief that only a reality divested of its various descriptions is accessible. In this space being is indefinable, unknowable and unattainable thereby making metaphysical speculation misleading in our quest for genuine human engagement (Shand, 2002: 230–1).

Sartre’s goal is to study the voluntary purposeful activity in the praxis that arises from the projects of human organisation. In this frame of reference, the satisfaction of human needs, brought about through scarcity, constitutes “praxis, as the praxis of an organisation which reproduces its life by reorganising the environment is man — man making himself in remaking himself” (Sartre, [1960] 1976: 329). This notion is contextualised through the assertion that “the whole of human development, at least up to now, has been a bitter struggle against scarcity” (Sartre, [1960] 1976: 123). This conflict has produced a pervading social atmosphere, which has encouraged individuals to construct institutions, and to enter disagreements with each other, over a relationship originally rooted in nature but which is now the product of the relations of capital. Therefore, it is axiomatic that Husserl’s creation, the transcendental ego, cannot form part of Sartre’s philosophy as the subjectivism within the doctrine of intentionality suggests that objects can be moved into a passive and pure realm of consciousness and in existentialist thought this realm cannot exist. Thus, Sartre considers that consciousness is not a thing at all but just an awareness that can accommodate human perceptions about objects, which, by implication cannot be modes of consciousness in themselves (Shand, 2002: 232).

A distinction is necessary between what denotes reality within the familiar forms that make up our everyday perceptions, such as furniture, buildings and people, and another level of reality that refers to the real within the metaphysical domain. Predominately entry to the latter, which consists of two modes of existence: in-itself (l’en-soi) and for-itself (le pour-soi), can only occur from the former. Being-in-itself applies to the being that has no consciousness of existence and so possesses the characteristics of non-human inert objects. Alternatively, being-for-itself is the type of conscious existence that leads to the making of choices involving values and meanings, these selective outcomes arising from the constant movement of intentional awareness. Sartre also identifies a third ontological category to complete his types of being: being-for-others (le pour-autrui) which involves the process of inter-subjective relations that provide individuals with fundamental understandings about their social reality (Sartre, [1943] 1958).

Individuals would experience Sartre’s reality of familiar forms, as structured in accordance with human meanings, but these perceptions are not part of the metaphysical real. Being in the metaphysical realm is the result of the relation, not the fusion, between the in-itself and the for-itself with the for-itself possessing the status of the imaginary, which can sustain a kind of reality (Perna, 2001: 16). Thus, “consciousness arises as a self-awareness of being not-the-objects-of-awareness” (Shand, 2002: 238) and an appreciation that we need not be absorbed into these objects. However, in the creation of our own essence the real would be mixed-up with the imaginary necessitating philosophical reflection to act as a guide to action (Perna, 2001: 16).

Sartre, in articulating his desire to liberate us from a false view of the world, differentiates between imagination and creativity. This dichotomy encapsulates the advent of the notion of "bad faith" through which “a person seeks to escape the responsible freedom of being-for-itself” (Sartre, [1943] 1958: 629). An individual would apply a synthetic unity between the transcendental and facticity, or the for-itself’s connection with the in-itself, which allows a person to proclaim that the for-itself exists (Sartre, [1943] 1958: 631).

The person who can validate their credibility through bad faith would conform to a serialised lifestyle typified in Sartre’s example of the group of people in the Place Saint-Germain waiting for a bus in front of the Church. These people, ostensibly differentiated by age, sex, status and so on, “in general, they do not look at one another; they exist side by side alongside a bus stop. At this level, it is worth noting that their isolation is not an inert statute (or the simple reciprocal exteriority of organisms); rather it is lived in everyone’s project as its negative structure” (Sartre, [1960] 1976: 256). Thus, the arrangement is not disorganised but instead, there is a serial reality that demands a rigid prefabricated order or association of isolation. This is a united social ensemble, meeting outside of a Church that extols the virtue of individual responsibility. However, the arrival of the bus and the issue of bus tickets are the dominant inert foundation for a group rooted in isolation by adherence to the custom of not talking to strangers. Those in the bus queue are a collective but they react to each other through a pseudo reciprocity that is at the core of the thoughts and feelings of serial behaviour through which “the individual achieves practical and theoretical participation in common being” (Sartre, [1960] 1976: 266). The instrumental practice involved in the creation of an inert reality may be thought of as an ideology that “imposes itself as an exigency and destroys all opposition” (Sartre, [1960] 1976: 261). This dialectic relationship of association can become a philosophy for living as, where scarcity is at its most virulent the “struggle for life” (Sartre, [1960] 1976: 815) may produce antagonistic urges that suggest that it is impossible for two individuals with different serialised lifestyles to co-exist. Therefore, seriality can produce an isolation and impotence that assists in the exploitation of individuals through their internalisation of dominant values and attitudes.

The dominant norms of behaviour that are forced into an individual’s consciousness would constitute the facticity that can be questioned by a person striving to live an authentic life. This process does not imply that humanity can be divided between those who have transcended to a higher level of consciousness and those who are confined to being-in-itself, as, instead, it recognises that every human being is incomplete. As the for-itself “is in no way an autonomous substance“(Sartre, [1943] 1958: 618) but an act of denying within the in-itself, such consciousness becomes possible through a revealing intuition that allows individuals to use the power to be free and make choices about their lives. People can then avoid suffering the imposition of adopting externally imposed identities. However, if people’s awareness of their individual existence is to be meaningful, they must work, until death, to overcome the pretence of seeing themselves as objects and denying that they can choose their characters.

In being-for-others Sartre recognises that people cannot deny the existence of others as it would abandon the significance of their facticity. Therefore, Sartre describes the relations individuals have with others as a struggle to absorb each other’s freedom. So “conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others” (Sartre, [1943] 1958: 364) as people begin their relationships with a look that determines others as identifiable objects.

The existentialist understanding of the world offered by Sartre provides a useful frame of reference to interpret and evaluate the situation of the individual in relation to contemporary events. For instance, it facilitates an understanding of how the exploration of the potential of pure thought has been neglected, thus rendering human consciousness a product of an unconscious mind. Alternatively, the rationalist approach has tended to ignore matters that cannot be comfortably accommodated by mathematical logic or empirical observation that are attributed with the capacity to control and shapes our lives. However, as was found through examining social constructivism and phenomenology, social knowledge that is the outcome of efforts to “understand” social life seems to suffer from an exclusive focus on humanism and a reliance on non-deterministic accounts of free will. Thus, changes in our established patterns of thought that can inspire a self-perpetuating optimism requires a more demanding process of critical self-reflexivity, to accommodate an individual’s pure will and its relationship with power, meaning and purpose (Nietzsche, [1883] 1967).

Truth and Reality Re-appraised

In his philosophy the American Pragmatist Charles Peirce made a distinction between truth, or the condition the world must meet if a particular statement is to be generally accepted as true, and reality (Peirce, 1932; see also Mounce 1997: 42). Whilst it is recognised that people’s sensory perceptions are essential to explain their meanings of the world, habits and dispositions are also created through socialisation with others that can re-enforce or amend the individual’s rational patterns of behaviour (Williams and May, 1996: 102). In such a scenario, a definite “subject-object dichotomy” can be rejected along with “an epistemology based solely on reason, or solely on experience” (Williams and May 1996: 102). As Foucault observes, nearly a century after Peirce, the notion of governmentality has facets. Thus, the individual would tend to adopt, in the construction of their own self-identity, not only the way they identify themselves but also the way that they are identified by others (Foucault, 1991). So, knowledge should be understood as inherently fragmented and tenuous in a social world that is constantly subject to change.

However, Peirce (1932) did not advocate the total separation of truth and reality as such an overly deterministic approach would, as Williams and May note “open up the whole question of the relationship between values and scientific practice” (1996: 105). The pragmatic alternative was to adopt a position that recognises individuals and groups as reaching common understandings of truth whilst also being part of reality and reality being part of them. Such a proposal avoids the paradox within relativism, or the idea that beliefs or judgements do not need to meet independent standards, by maintaining that, through the assiduous and continuous testing of theories, truth can gradually evolve towards reality.

American Pragmatism proposes that, within the human conceptualisation of truth and reality, there can be an epistemology with more than a single source of knowledge and various scientific methods of enquiry. However, whilst the pursuit of scientific research might then become a form of free association or creative thinking, this approach should not be confused with Feyerabend’s contemporary assertion that the limitations of all methodologies only lead to the one rule “anything goes” (1978). Instead, it is maintained that a complementary use of inductive and deductive techniques can lead to innovation and creativity within scientific enquiry, and further the cause of utilising both explanation and understanding in a flexible research paradigm. This aim can be purposefully pursued through placing an emphasis on the production of new imaginative theories beginning with a process of abduction, where inference contributes towards the construction of a provisional explanatory hypothesis. Subsequently, a deductive process leads to information about anticipated observations that can corroborate the explanatory hypothesis whilst the inductive technique has now assumed the role of fundamentally underpinning the entire systematic framework. Whilst this process necessitates fallibilism it also encourages creativity in contrast to the reliance on the sterility of attempting to just disprove hypotheses or researching the objective observation of phenomena.

Whilst Peircean philosophy assists in reconciling the dichotomy between objective reality and subjective observations of phenomena it is maintained that inductive strategies remain unable to provide new ideas as the sensory data available can only result in superficial conclusions. However, as Hempel (cited by Blaikie, 1993: 142) notes “the transition from data to theory requires creative imagination…hypotheses and theories are not derived from observed facts.” In this context, Peirce does confront the charge of superficiality as his epistemological position provides a basis to address the possible weaknesses in the progression of the inductive approach. Moreover, the fragility of progression from specific instances to a generalised law, and the matter of the strategy’s apparent imprecision concerning the need for numerous observations over what might be an indefinite period are both matters that demand clarification. So, in response, Peirce argues that a process cannot commence with complete doubt, just because there are many uncertainties the scientist can still know something (Mounce, 1997: 15). This assertion is not an encouragement to cease enquiries but rather an appreciation that knowledge can be gained about reality through the interplay of doubts and beliefs (Mounce, 1997: 16). In this nexus, the individual develops a feeling of self-consciousness. This feeling is defined as ”a knowledge of ourselves. Not a mere feeling of subjective conditions of consciousness, but of our personal selves. Pure apperception is the self-assertion of the ego; the self-consciousness here meant is the recognition of my private self. I know that I (not merely the I) exist” (Peirce, 1932: 5.225). Thus, placing reliance on inductive observations in the research process is elevated to the expression of the human attribute of informed intuition.

The hypothetico-deductive[7] strategy, like the inductive method of reasoning, is criticised for failing to produce new concepts or ideas. Popper defends this accusation by maintaining that the key to scientific progress is the falsification process that facilitates learning by mistakes (Popper, [1934] 1977; 1979). However, Peirce’s insight questions the importance of the allegation that deductivism provides no rational basis for choosing between un-falsified theories to make a practical prediction. In stressing the continuity of knowledge Peirce does not consider that it emerges from pure logic but is instead an historical and social product where ”testimony gives the first dawning of self-consciousness” (Peirce, 1932: 5.233).

Social scientists may observe the way that their beliefs are determined by the communities to which they belong and the process, as individuals, through which they expand explanations of social life by building on their existing framework of familiar community dispositions. On this basis, knowledge can be self-corrective as it accumulates over periods of time. Whether this leads to the continued acceptance of un-falsified theories by reliance on inductively obtained data is dependent on the “point of view or perspective…of the observer, the absolute understanding of explanation having been replaced with a…relative conception” that is regulated by moderate rationality (Mounce, 1997: 14).

So, assisted by Peirce’s pragmatism, a fusion has been established between the methods of rationalism and empiricism. This synergy gives rise to the conclusion that, in view of the deficiencies in both the inductive and deductive scientific methods of explanation, they may be relegated to the function of suggesting scenarios that might make the researcher aware of how reality may be explored. Furthermore, freed from the belief that each approach offers the best available scientific method, it becomes possible to envisage the strategies as complementary frameworks for research design. Therefore, the qualitative and quantitative techniques of data collection can be selectively utilised to reach a pragmatic solution over the issue of truth in relation to specific phenomena.

This re-appraisal cannot replace the distinct explanatory naturalist epistemology provided by rationalism and empiricism or the epistemic hermeneutic understandings offered by social constructivism and existentialism as illustrated in Figure 2.1. Nevertheless, American Pragmatism does provide a foundation for consideration of how contending philosophical dispositions can acknowledge the fundamental legitimacy of alternative perspectives on reality.

 

The Ontological Dichotomy: Agency or Structure

The task of understanding ontological notions begins with the necessity of making a distinction between pure philosophical and applied scientific ontology. The former “is concerned with the meaning of the concept of being, with the question why there is something rather than nothing, and the modal ontological status of the actual world” (Jacquette, 2002: 3–4). This definition implies that pure philosophical ontology is a prior foundational study that proceeds towards the assertion of the existence of certain preferred theoretical entities. In contrast, the second category of applied scientific ontology achieves a scientific status in the social sciences through its aim to determine the ontological questions and answers about “specific areas of thought and discourse whose meanings require the positing of a particular choice of entities“ (Jacquette, 2002: 5). Having determined this dichotomy, the following section follows the logic of applied scientific ontology and proceeds to examine and contrast ontological commitments to agency and structure (see Figure 2.2). Thus, this analysis embraces the presumption that logic dictates that both the world and the individual exist, as substantiated by Descartes in his maxim “I am, therefore, I exist” (Descartes, [1641] 1964: 82).

Agency: The Free Individual

The term agency has, as its central proposition, that “individuals have some control over their actions, enabled by their psychological and social psychological make-up” (Parker 2000: 125). Figure 2.2 represents these empowered individuals as employing a methodological disposition that can explain their social reality through patterns of predictable, unconstrained individual self-interest. This reduces the causal state of social structures to epiphenomena: “a mere aggregate consequence of individual activities, incapable of acting back to influence individual people” (Archer, 1995: 4).  Thus, human beings would knowingly define or interpret their social reality then act to enhance their personal utility (Baert, 1998: 3). However, both in historical and contemporary thought some philosophers have adopted and advocated a more radical individualism that would either deny “the existence of social bonds and social systems or assert that these are fully reducible to individuals and their actions” (Bunge, 1996: 243).


 

Figure 2.2:    The Contending Ontological Perspectives

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ontology

 

 

Structuralism

 

 

Social structures exercise power over agency, so social reality is best explained or understood as a collective that exists independently of its members.

 

 

 

Agency

 

 

People are agents of their actions, which makes his or her social reality best explained or understood as a domain where only individuals exist

Source: Dixon and Dogan, 2003a.

 

The utilitarian thinkers Bentham ([1789] 1982), Mill ([1875] 1952) and Spencer (Peel, 1971) accept society as having a distinct existence as an aggregation of individuals but refute the notion that it has any causal capacity of its own. Thus, Spencer declares that “society exists for the benefit of its members; not its members for the benefit of society…the claims of the body politic are nothing in themselves and become something only in so far as they embody the claims of its component individuals” (cited in Peel, 1971: 187). This assertion sustains the supremacy of individual hedonism and egoism and thus can accord with Spinoza’s conclusions about the attainment of individual freedom through actions, determined by reason. What brings meaning to this endeavour is the human essence categorised as a conatus that, whilst characterising all organic life, also generates a self-conscious desire in people. Therefore, when needs are satisfied by the striving of the individual the process will benefit that person’s well being (Spinoza [1675] 1989).

Individualism is a popular philosophical standpoint,[8] which, as Bunge (1996: 244) maintains, can be explained by reference to the following factors:

·      It offers an unwavering recognition of individuals as instigators of social relations.

·      It reflects the belief that humans act in a rational self-interested manner.

·      It can be applied within all the disciplines of human science.

·      It sits comfortably within the parameters of liberal democratic capitalism.

·      It promotes the utilitarian principle of utility, the greatest happiness for the greatest number.


Consistent ontological individualism regards institutions as no more than collections of conventions agreed by individuals that provide practicable criterion for human behaviour. Therefore, arising from this perspective, structures are unable to possess causal capacity, (Bunge, 1996: 244–5). These beliefs have led Popper to designate social relations primarily to a theoretical realm dealing with ideas and problems (1974: 14), with society as being nothing more than the aggregate of the relations between its membership. This hypothesis harmonises with the medieval philosophy of William of Ockham whose nominalistic beliefs led him to accept the predication of common human natures or essences that cannot be ontologically separated from the characteristics of individuals. Thus, the notion of universality can exist in thought, but if this results in universal names for groups of individuals then such a commonality can only reflect the characteristics within the natures or features of those individuals (Ockham, [c1300–1347] 1990).

However, further examination of the doctrines advanced by the advocates of agency occasionally reveals that they are not consistent in their arguments. For instance, Hayek resorts to the social construct of the market, with its causal capacity to initiate the trickle-down effect that allows the poor to improve their position because of the self-indulgence of the rich (Hayek, 1960)[9]. Additionally, Homans (1974) writes about unanalysed social structures and Popper refers to the dangers of the totalitarian State in its possession of a will that is independent of the people within its boundaries (Popper, 1966). In fact, as Bunge concludes (1996: 249), whilst the renaissance of western democratic liberalism in the latter half of the twentieth century has led to a harmonious methodological individualism (Homans, 1974; Becker, 1976 and Coleman, 1990) such a rigorous academic commitment has not been apparent in relation to ontological agency. However, despite this inattention, the following ontological positions are apparent:

Agency Grounded in Rational Self-interest. This concept is grounded in the work of Hobbes ([1651] 1996), Manderville ([1714] 1988, Machiavelli ([1513] 1999) and Smith ([1776] 1976). Here the presumption is that the person is self-determining, with the necessary hopes, beliefs and desires needed to take self-interested and self-seeking action. In this scenario, an individual will exercise their free will,[10] which permits the choice of what is best for him or her. Collective restraint will only be applied if a particular action is likely to result in harm to others. Thus, social action is explained by reference to a person’s own self-interest calculations (Rational Choice Theory—Arrow (1984)) or to his or her self-interested responses, under conditions of uncertainty, to the decisions of others (Game Theory—von Neumann and Morganstern (1944)).

Agency Grounded in the Search for Identity and an Authentic Way of Life. This concept is grounded in a person’s search for his or her ‘essence’— essential characteristics — or a sense of who he or she is, and for self-fulfilment, which is achievable by giving priority to his or her immediate personal experience of aloneness, death, and moral responsibility.  Therefore, there is an emphasis on the individual’s perception of alienation from both self and others. For example, the existential notion that individuals simply exist — “Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing — as he wills to be after that leap toward existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself” (Sartre [1946] 1974: 28). Moreover, the existence-precedes-essence process recognises a person as possessing jurisdiction over his or her own awareness of the purposeful possibilities of their actuality.

Agency Grounded in Physiological Events. This concept is premised on all mental states — including intentional ones — being identical with physical states (Armstrong 1968), making human behaviour a product of physiological events occuring in the brain. Therefore, social action can be explained by, and is constrained by, biological processes of genetics (Wilson 1975, 1978, Dawkins 1976). Some advocates are known as epiphenomenalists, and they take this proposition to extremes.  They argue that human behaviour is the product of cerebral processes in the nervous system, a biproduct of which is the human mind experiencing mental states (Caston 1997, Hyslop 1998, James 1890, Rivas, and van Dongen 2003).

Implications. Agency’s dilemma is that it can apparently explain the empirically strong correlation between individual behaviour and free choice, but it cannot explain outliers that are the product of a correlation between individual behaviour and a social cohort (Williams and May 1996)[11].

Structuralism: The Constrained Individual

The philosophical basis of holism negates all the suppositions of individualism and postulates that the study of society is impossible if it is broken down into component parts (Saussure, [1916] 1974). Thus, Figure 2.2 portrays structuralism as structures that may exercise constraint or offer specific opportunities in the shaping of agency. Therefore, in a nexus that restrains individual creativity, human behaviour becomes predictable. So, holism or collectivism can be equated with the notion of structure and its central proposition that ”the ordered social interrelationships, or the recurring patterns of social behaviour that determine the nature of human action” (Parker, 2000: 125) impose themselves and exercise power upon individuals. Thus, structure, which is difficult and perhaps impossible for an individual to change, constrains agency by determining people’s actions (Baert, 1998: 11).

Aristotle and Plato agreed that “knowledge is of invariant or unchanging universal necessary truths” and that these necessary truths must be married to “ontologically suitable objects” (Shand, 2002: 33). However, Aristotle developed the notion of real or natural kinds of groupings, which are posited by nature rather than arbitrary classifications imposed because of the subjective feelings of individuals (Aristotle, [c.335–322] 1996). This formulation was, centuries later, adopted and replicated by Comte in the tenets of the French tradition of positivism. He asserted that, apart from brief transitory periods, society reflects the order that is in nature. Thus, this same order fundamentally underpins the social laws that govern relationships between institutional and cultural forms, making society an organic whole with the individual “only comprehensible in relation to his or her social formation and existence” (Bryant, 1985: 19), which leaves the family to form the basic unit of society.

The conceptualisation of society as an organism deeply impressed Durkheim. He wrote that “whenever certain elements combine, and thereby produce, by the fact of their combination, new phenomena, these phenomena reside not in the original elements but in the totality formed by their union (Durkheim, [1895] 1962: xivii). Marx, too, maintained that action is determined by structure with the individual subjected to powerful economic forces (Marx and Engels, [1848] 1967: 79–94). Therefore, those who undertake social study from this ontological position would adopt a process that proceeds from the position of the macro to the micro.

By advocating this approach, some human characteristics, understood by Rand (1965) as the rational egotistical belief in self-determination that protects privileged individuals, can be set aside. Moreover, the method of explaining social reality that arises from this action need not produce a discontinuity between the human and natural sciences. Instead, as Lévi-Strauss’ anthropological studies (1968) lead him to believe, the complex constraints and diversities of human culture are, notwithstanding their disparity, part of nature itself and assume a homology with language. The human brain is recognised as a biological entity and complies with the “very same laws that govern natural objects like the brain governs human thought” (Anderson et al., 1986: 110) so these binary categories fit into the ways people observe norms of behaviour and communicate with each other. This notion is discernible in Parson’s recognition of the mechanisms of socialisation where such institutions as the family and the school would teach children to internalise certain values and attitudes. Thus, social stability is created in a functionalist conception of a society which can be explained as a system “of action-elements relative to the persistence or ordered process of change of the interactive patterns of a plurality of individual actors” (Parsons, 1951: 24).

Ontological structuralism regards society as acting on its members with the latter being left with little capacity to individually determine their lives. Therefore, the application of this principle means that social change is restricted to those times when collective agency can be mobilised with an outcome that affects the individual. Thus, society is understood as surpassing its members in its capacity to initiate emergent properties that are irreducible to its component parts.[12] However, some of these propositions are contestable by individuality as, whilst agency may appear to be constrained by structure, in fact society’s properties could be perceived as nothing more than the aggregation of individual activity thereby questioning its capacity for intentionality with respect to its members. Moreover, although social change seems to be driven by social movements nevertheless it is individuals who are responsible for the implementation of new ideological perceptions (Bunge, 1996: 261). In this scenario, people choose to collaborate to understand their social reality from the perspective of their community.

Some Neo-Marxist theories of the state use an instrumental analysis, which identifies capitalism as shaping the structural relations of individual’s everyday life. Thus, the State adapts “the ‘civilisation’ and the morality of the broadest popular masses to the necessities of the continuous development of the economic apparatus of production” (Gramsci, 1971: 242).   However, these relations are still based on conflict between an exploitative class, with its imperative for profit, and workers’ interests, which are focussed on improving their economic condition. The resultant conflict between these dispositions provides a theoretical approach that both “accommodates structure and the individual, and conflict and change” (Williams, 1989: 23) brought about by class struggle. Therefore, a higher dialectic “consists not merely in producing and apprehending the determination as an opposite and limiting factor, but in producing and apprehending the positive content and result which it contains; and it is this alone which makes it a development and immanent progression” (Hegel, [1821] 1991: 60). This analysis offers a framework that assists in the exploration of long-term historical transformation and social evaluation, which, as well as guiding work on classes and social groups can also benefit the appraisal of the notion of individual identity in collective consciousness (Hobsbawn, 1997: 83). However, some social scientists have rejected the opportunity to emulate this type of framing as critical analysis arising from this approach is restricted by the shadow of Marxist economic determinism.

The following traditions are significant as forming part of structural analysis:

Historical Materialism. The concept is premised on the primacy of material (socio-economic processes and relations) as determinant of, or at least as decisive influences on, how particular forms of society are responsible for observed social phenomena that come into existence. Thus, development and change in human societies is attributable to the way in which people as workers —the proletariat — collectively engage in work, their behaviour and available resources. As Marx ([1859] 1999: i) observed:

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. [13]

Anthropological Structuralism. This tradition focuses on structural factors that pattern cultural expressions that makes them resonate with people albeit sub-consciously. Grounded in the work of Levi-Strauss, Needham and Leach its prime proposition is that social structures mirror cognitive structures, this means that social interaction patterns are manifestations of cognitive structures (Levi-Strauss 1968). By reducing expressive objects like artwork or mythological stories to contrastive structures, an abstract picture of the social structure can be constructed. This would explain how people in a society relate to social organisations and societal structures.

Structural Functionalism. Grounded in the work of Parsons, Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski, this concept is founded on societies being coherent, bounded and fundamentally relational constructs, functioning like organisms with people in various social institutions working together to maintain and reproduce them. Thus, for Parsons (1951: 5-6), society is, as a social sytem,

a plurality of individual actors interacting with each other in a situation which has at least a physical or environmental aspect, actors who are motivated in terms of a tendency to the "optimization of gratification" and whose relation to their situations, including each other, is defined and mediated in terms of a system of culturally structured and shared symbols.

 

Therefore, he theorized that social systems overarch the integration of values-oriented individual actions.

Structural functionalism places particular emphasis on functions such as systemic adjustment, goal attainment, integration and pattern maintenance. These functions determine the interdependence, consensus, equilibrium, and evolutionary change within society. Thus, social order is the product of voluntary social co-operative action as "people act on the basis of their values…[and]…their actions are oriented and constrained by the values and norms of people around them (Knapp 1994: 191–2). Therefore, society consists of parts, each with its own functions, that work together to promote social stability.

Linguistic Structuralism. This tradition is grounded in the work of Saussaure, Boas and Bloomfield and is premised on language as a set of rules governing the combination of sounds that produce meaning. Submission to these rules is a prerequisite for any individual who wishes to speak a particular language. Moreover, as a group convention, these language rules enable a person within the group to take meaning about the social world from making sense of what others say.

The focus of linguistic structuralism is on the underlying system of language (langue), namely, semiotics(how the elements of language — pre-verbal, vocal, rythmic and sign elements — relate to each other at points in time (synchronically) rather than throughout their historical development (diachronically)); and symbolism (how language related to social and culture influences is rule-governed), and their interplay. Saussure ([1916] 1974) argued that linguistic signs comprise the sound pattern of a word — the signifier — and the meaning of the word — the signified. Language is, thus, a social activity, a systematic structure that links thought and sound, a series of arbitrary but mutually intelligible linguistic signs, which means that content-elements (meaning) cannot be identified independently of expression-elements (sounds and words).

Post-structuralism.[14] This tradition, developed in the work of Foucault, Derrida and Lacan, considers that individuals are shaped by sociological, psychological and linguistic structures.  In turn, these structures have been shaped by rule governed systems over which individuals have no control (Belsey 2002, Williams 2005). Therefore, Foucault argued that the human condition could not be explained by reference to underlying objective social structures, because no social environment can be investigated objectively, as it is impossible to step outside the discourse that gives meaning to those structures. Moreover, Derrida, influenced by Heidegger and Nietzsche, argued that any discourse has multiple interpretations, making the possibility of a final and complete interpretation impossible. For Lacan, these multiple interpretations resulted in the individual being the creation of language, which enables him or her to experience the world meaningfully (Dor 2001). Thus, a person’s understanding of his or her body and the world at large is grounded in the language he or she has acquired. This gives language a major role in the way each individual constructs meaning, and allows the Freudian unconscious, which Lacan considers to be structured like a language without grammar, to enter that understanding and dissolve essential distinctions between the subjective and the objective:

For Lacan, Freud’s central insight was not ... that the unconscious exists, but that it has structure, that this structure affects in innumerable ways what we say and do, and that in thus betraying itself it becomes accessible to analysis (Bowie 1979: 118).

 

The self is considered by post-structuralists to be incoherent, disjointed, and decentered. It is merely a site in which various cultural constructs and discursive formations are created and sustained by the power structures within a given social environment. Thus, any meaning attached to social reality is derived from self-reflexive discourses that acknowledge the inherently fragmented, diverse, tenuous, ambiguous and culture-specific nature of knowledge, which is always changing and contestable, so it can never have a finality and completeness.

            Therefore, the following ontological positions are apparent:

Structure Grounded in Economic Participation. Marx maintained the supremacy of powerful economic pressures, which determine peoples social actions (economic determinism) (Marx and Engels [1848] 1967: 79–94) because they are essentially productive beings whose interaction with the social world is focused on work. Thus, social reality can be explained by the prevailing mode of production, which is a creation of economic structures — capitalism, socialism and communisms (Cohen 1988, 2001, Dupré 1966). As Marx ([1859] 1999: i) observed: “The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.” Thus, “man is not an abstract being squatting outside the world…[instead]…the real nature of man is the totality of social relations” (Marx [1845] 1989: 66) and “individuals are…embodiments of particular class-relations and class interests” ([1867] 1993: vol.1: 10). Moreover, Marx maintained that economic pressures that shape the structural relations in everyday life determine human action.

Under capitalism, these relations are founded on the conflict between an exploitative class, with its profit imperatives, and workers’ interests that are focussed on improving their economic condition.

Structure Grounded in Social Participation. For Durkheim social structures influence a person’s cognitive structures and, by implication, their social actions. He argued that basic categories of thought — representations of the world — arise from social participation (theory of the social origin of mind) (Bergson 2004). Thus, society creates social facts about social structures and institutions. These facts result in norms and values that transcend the individual as they arise from his or her social relationships. Thus, these social facts places constraints on a person’s behaviour and regulates that person’s social action:

When I fulfil my obligations as brother, husband, or citizen, when I execute my contracts, I perform duties which are defined, externally to myself and my acts, in law and in custom. Even if they conform to my own sentiments and I feel their reality subjectively, such reality is still objective, for I did not create them; I merely inherited them through my education (Durkheim [1895] 1962: 1).

 

The key to the transmission of social facts is socialisation, where social institutions, such as families and schools, teach children to internalise values and attitudes. This is a process of alignment that takes place when a person moves into social environments that have their own rules and norms, the violation of which attracts penalties. Thus, it is only by adopting collective values and attitudes that a person can integrate into any social group.

Structure Grounded in Cultural Participation. This position is ensconced in Lévi-Strauss’s belief that underlying all human behaviour are fundamental universal mental structures that are culturally specific in their contents (1968). These deep structures produce and reproduce meaning within a culture by creating a system of symbolic communication expressed in a culture’s practices, phenomena and activities such as as mythology, kinship and religious rites. Any attempt to understanding these deep structures can only succeed if the structures are reduced to their relevant constituent parts, thereby permitting the discovery of their operating principles (Lévi-Strauss 1968). This constitutes the ‘deep grammar’ of a society, which originates in the human mind of its constituent members as language and is cultural practices are learnt and operate unconsciously on them.

Structure Grounded in Linguistic Participation. Harré (1983) developed this position from the perspective that human reality has a practical (physical) and an expressive (conversational) dimension.  The latter tends to be dominant as in the assertion that “I take the array of persons as a primary human reality. I take the conversations in which those persons engage as completing the primary structure, bringing into being the social and psychological reality. Conversation is to be thought of as creating a social world just as causality generates a physical one” (Harré 1983: 65).

            Harré (1986: 42) advanced the proposition that “the private experience of a human being is shaped and ordered in learning to speak and write…That ordering is expressed in language and other intentional, norm-gathering practices.” Therefore, language is a dynamic activity that affects, and is affected by, cultural practices (Barthes 1977). This makes it a collectively derived objective cultural artefact. Thus, “one lives in a public world where one learns to use language in accordance with the prevailing social use of words. These practices instruct us in how to use terms applying to such things as tables, other people, astral bodies, and various institutions” (Stroll 2002: 119). This makes “[speech-acts or acts of communication (Austin 1962, Tsohatzidis 1994)] the primary entities in which minds become personalised, as private discourses” (Harré and Gillett 1994: 36). In addition, results in the minds of individuals become “privatised practices condensing like fog out of the public conversation into material nuclei, their bodies” (Harré 1986: 50).

Implications.  Structuralism’s dilemma is that it might be able explain the empirically strong correlation between individual behaviour and social cohort, but it cannot unambiguously explain outliers derived from acts of choice by free individuals unencumbered by social norms and practices (Williams and May 1996).

So, this brief review of the ontological classifications of agency and structure offers the following two principles:

·      That an ontological perspective based on either agency or structure could be overly deterministic.

·      That social theory does not offer an immediate alternative to the agency/structure dichotomy and further analysis and synthesis is needed to address the issue of the agency-structure problematic.

Methodological Categories within a Quadripartite Social Reality

This Chapter has provided an overview of the philosophical strands of thought that contribute to the methodological debates within the disciplines of social science.

As illustrated in Figure 2.1 people are divided by their preferences in relational situations to contending epistemological perspectives. For instance, exponents of “the scientific methods” use these procedures to explain the social world that is perceived to be objective and knowable only by the application of deductive logic or inductive inference. Alternatively, believers in the unique capacity of human beings to construct and interpret their own reality maintain that society should be understood only as a set of interpretations derived from culture, language, practice and experience.

Furthermore, as illustrated in Figure 2.2, a clear ontological dichotomy is apparent between those who dismiss structure as a false conceptualisation, as they believe that human behaviour derives from individual intention, human action is voluntary and therefore, social actions taken by individuals are intentional and instrumental. Alternatively, advocates of approaches that embrace notions of rules and norms of behaviour, which both enable and constrain the actions of agents, believe that social structures, or ordered and recurrent patterns of social behaviour, determine the nature of human action as it moulds individuals’ values, attitudes and opinions.

Therefore, it is now appropriate to encapsulate this discussion through an amalgamation of Figures 2.1 and 2.2 in Figure 2.3. This framework illustrates the four contending ontological and epistemological marriages that collectively form a quadripartite perspective on social reality. It is conducive to the association of each of the investigative methods used to explain, understand and interpret social life with the following methodological classifications:

 

·      naturalist agency: the adherents to which are self-interested (free riding) homo economicus;

·      naturalist structuralism: the adherents to which are obligation-driven homo hierarchus;

·      hermeneutic structuralism: the adherents to which are conversation-saturated homo sociologicus;

·      hermeneutic agency: the adherents to which are homo existentialis.

 

Conclusion

This thesis is founded on the conviction that professional community workers must critically examine their praxis if the notion of community is to be a viable means of implementing social policy. Therefore, they must understand that some community members may perceive their behaviour as the product of collective discussion, as derived from intentional acts of choice taken by a free individual, as derived from the influence of objective social structures (such as economic forces or the state), or as the outcome of what they believe to constitute social reality.

Therefore, this Chapter has, using deductive logic, established a taxonomy of perspectives on social reality that clearly identifies and classifies four discrete methods of describing, explaining, understanding and interpreting the social reality that might exist amongst community members.

 

 

 

Figure 2.3:    The Contending Social Reality Perspectives

 

 

Epistemology

 

 

Naturalism

Hermeneutics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ontology

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Structuralism

 

 

Naturalist Structuralism

 

Social reality is best explained as an objective domain, where a collective exists independently of its members, and behaviour in it can best be explained and understood by reference to material social practices or institutions in which people take part.

Embracing, inter alia, anthropological structuralism, functional structuralism, historical materialism, and linguistic structuralism.

 

Hermeneutic Structuralism

 

Social reality is best understood as a socially constructed domain, where a collective exists independently of its members, and behaviour in it can best be understood by reference to people’s shared interpretation of that reality.

Embracing, inter alia, hermeneutic phenomenology, post-modernism, post-structuralism, and language games

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Agency

 

 

Naturalist Agency

 

Social reality is best explained as an objective domain, where only individuals exist, and behaviour in it can best be explained by reference to what they wish, desire, believe or will.

Embraces, inter alia, rational choice theory, game theory, social phenomenology, dramaturgical analysis and ethnomethodology.

 

Hermeneutic Agency

 

Social reality is best understood as a subjective domain, where only self is known to exist, and behaviour in it can best be understood by reference to self’s subjective perceptions of it.

Embraces, inter alia, social phenomenology, symbolic interactionalism, dramaturgical analysis, and ethnomethodology.

Source: Dixon and Dogan, 2003a.

Each perspective can be associated with human attitudes[15] that manifest in personal values and behaviour.

Thus, in pursuit of the endeavour to construct a managerial model that can inform the management of community, it is necessary to consider how these attitudes are formed and their durability. Therefore, the next Chapter addresses, in the context of the four contending perceptions on social reality, the fundamental facets of human nature that underpin certain attitudes,(1) free will and determinism; (2) moral certainties and moral scepticism; (3) trust and distrust and (4) equality or inequality, which are integrated into a critical assessment over how different perceptions of community can be associated with different understandings of social reality.


[1] A proposition is knowable a posteriori if it can only be known by inductive reasoning based on experience of the specific course of events that give rise to its occurrence in the actual world.

[2] A proposition is known a priori if it can be known by deductive reasoning without experience of the specific course of events that gave rise to its occurrence in the natural world.

[3] Abduction is a creative process of using evidence to reach wider conclusions. However, some people deny that probability can inform abduction, a conclusion that is contested here.

[4] Social reality is objective and understandable only by the application of deductive logic and inductive inference.

[5] The method of interpretation of the whole social historical and psychological world. Thus, social reality is subjective, understandable only as a set of interpretations derived from culture, language, practice and experience.

[6] Feminist writers are concerned with epistemology — specifically how women learn about their reality — thus prominent commentators do not engage in the ontological debate that is explored later in this Chapter.

[7] The consequences of a hypothesis are deduced and then tested against experience. If the hypothesis is falsified, then it is discarded. However, if it is not falsified then it is subject to other tests to ascertain whether it can survive.

[8] Herbert Hoover, President of the USA 1928-1932, advocated ”The American system of rugged individualism” (campaign speech in New York, 22nd October 1928).

[9] It should be noted that neo-classical economists are of the opinion that the market is purely an aggregation of individuals with no causal capacity beyond that of the individuals conducting transactions within its parameters. This notion is disputed here.

[10] The extensive discourse about free-will is concerned with whether people are free agents who can be morally responsible for their actions. Hobbes ([1651] 1996) asserted that minds cannot exhibit free will because they operate in a deterministic manner (see also Dawkins I976; Wilson 1975, 1978). Opinions on this range from a those who argue that free will is compatible with determinism (compatibalists, such as Hume [1748] 1975), who conclude that people will always do what they are inclined and able to do in any situation; to those who argue that free will is not compatible with determinism (incompatibalists, such as Kant [1788] 1998), who conclude that, as a natural conviction, people are free and morally responsible, which means that determinism must be false, although it is acknowledged that people are not genuinely free agents, and thus cannot be truly responsible for their actions, because they are not causa sui — self-caused — and thus responsible for the way they are (Kane 1996, Strawson 1986).

[11] The problems of ontological conflation, or a bridging of the divide between agency and structure, are extensively discussed in Chapter seven.

[12] “I do that which is my duty to do. Nothing else distracts me; for it would be either something that is inanimate and irrational, or somebody who is misled and ignorant of the way” (Aurelius, [c.170-180] 2004:64).

[13] Lukács ([1923] 1971) saw Marx’s proletariat as both the subject and object of history and as embodying class-consciousness as revolutionary subjectivity.

[14] Here the term “post-structuralists” incorporates post-modernists as both reject the grand narratives of universal truth and meaning grounded in western science and philosophy.

[15] The French novelist and airman Antoine de Saint-Exupéry shrewdly observed that “The meaning of things lies not in things themselves but in our attitudes to them.”



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