INTERPRETATION & REALISMGurminder K Bhambra16th October, 2013

Positivism Interpretive critiqueLegislators InterpretersMonologue DialogueObjectivity Valid Subjectivities

Observation EmbodimentProfessionalism PartisanshipKnowledge as Truth Knowledge as PowerSingular (universal) Plural

SOCIAL INQUIRY AS INTERPRETATION Social inquiry is seen to be about

understanding rather than explanation A number of different philosophical

movements are associated with the position German hermeneutics (e.g. Gadamer), Phenomenological approaches (e.g. Schutz), Ordinary language analysis (associated with

Wittgenstein) Gadamer deepens interpretative inquiry with

his emphasis upon the historicity of understanding Focuses on prejudice and the unification of science

and hermeneutics

NATURAL SCIENCE VS. SOCIAL INQUIRY Science is concerned with generalisations and

social inquiry is concerned with particulars We do not think our inquiry is complete until we

have understood why something was done Human beings are constituted in language and

therefore, social inquiry is hermeneutic i.e. understanding society and social action as text

Issue of prediction Methodological self-alienation

Idea of human behaviour established in conventions and rule-following; the human community is the source of meaning.

GADAMER ‘Anti-foundationalism’ Knowledge as the willingness to learn, not as the will

to power Opposed to the Enlightenment’s prejudice against

prejudice He does not believe that Reason can provide its own

foundations. I think, therefore I am Thinking, I cannot not be and be for (and by) others

Science is based in a lifeworld that is not a product of Reason

Rather, what we understand as reason is a product of our lifeworld

Gadamer is not a critic of the products of science, but of its self-understanding and the misuse of that self-understanding

CRITICISMS OF GADAMER General conservatism of interpretation The model of science and methodology The problem of power. If actors could have done otherwise, how do

we know when they are doing otherwise (as an aspect of will) or merely appearing to do so as a consequence of our failures to understand the rules they are following?

What is the role of an explanatory undertaking in the social sciences?

ISSUES OF INTERPRETATION Limits of hermeneutical understanding? Systematically distorted communication and

failures of understanding Aim of critical theory is emancipation

But, who is to educate the educators?

Gadamer’s critique of science is naive, but his critique of positivism as alienation is profound

REALISM AS ALTERNATIVE TO POSITIVISM Realists argue that critiques of scientific

social inquiry are effective as critiques of positivism and empiricism But that they have relativist implications or open

up the way to anti-naturalist approaches Realism can avoid these consequences.

Issue for realists, is that anti-naturalism in social inquiry is based upon a false conception of science

REALISM Realism is a transcendental project

concerned to establish how the world must be for science as an activity to be possible

Philosophy is the self-understanding of science concerned with the conditions for the production of knowledge.

Distinction between epistemological and ontological realism

REALISM Epistemological

“A natural account of the way in which scientific theories succeed each other - say, the way in which Einstein’s Relativity succeeded Newton’s Universal Gravitation - is that a partially correct/ partially incorrect account of a theoretical object - say the gravitational field, or the metric structure of space-time, or both - is replaced by a better account of the same object or objects. But if these objects don’t really exist at all, then it is a miracle that a theory which speaks of gravitational action at a distance successfully predicts phenomena; it is a miracle that a theory which speaks of curved space-time successfully predicts phenomena.” (Putnam 1978: 19)

Ontological How must the world of physical objects be, for science to be

possible? There are ‘real objects’ outside particular theoretical statements

of them, even though we may never grasp those objects except in fallible and historically changing constructions

REALIST CRITIQUES OF POSITIVISM Empiricists, it is argued, are concerned with

the mere association of events. We want to know how the events are associated;

that is, to identify causal mechanisms that operate as real forces with the character of necessity

Realists make a distinction between the real and the actual Real effects need not be actualised

Realism as a philosophy of science is unstable between epistemological realism and more pragmatic approaches

IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE Realism is concerned to establish that scientists

act by intervening in the world and manipulating the operation of its structures to make a difference in the production of their effects.

This implies that social science is about objects which are also actors and this must distinguish social inquiry from natural science.

Realism in the social sciences offers no means of establishing the reality of social structures