On the Logic of the Social Sciences

Jürgen Habermas, Shierry Weber Nicholsen, Jerry A. Stark

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780745694139
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Social Philosophy

In this wide-ranging work, now available in paperback, Habermas presents his views on the nature of the social sciences and their distinctive methodology and concerns. He examines, among other things, the traditional division between the natural sciences and the social sciences; the characteristics of social action and the implications of theories of language for social enquiry; and the nature, tasks and limitations of hermeneutics. Habermas' analysis of these and other themes is, as always, rigorous, perceptive and constructive.
This brilliant study succeeds in highlighting the distinctive characteristics of the social sciences and in outlining the nature of, and prospects for, critical theory today.

III

On the Problem of Understanding Meaning in the Empirical-Analytic Sciences of Action

The understanding of meaning (Sinnverstehen) becomes a methodological problem when the appropriation of traditional meanings is involved: the “meaning” to be explicated has the status of a fact, something encountered empirically. The understanding of symbolic contexts that we produce ourselves is unproblematic. Thus, formalized statements such as mathematical propositions or rigorous theories do not impose tasks of hermeneutic interpretation on us as do traditional texts or documents. For metalinguistic rules of constitution are part of formalized languages, and with their help we can reconstruct given statements, that is, produce them again ourselves. In this respect, analytic thinking is justly contrasted with hermeneutic discussion.¹

Nor does the problematic of understanding meaning arise in the social sciences as long as they proceed in a normative-analytic manner. Behavioral maxims (or, in systems research, the values of the goal state) are introduced analytically. The theory preestablishes the “meaning” of social action (or of the behavior of the parts of a system). It is defined on the theoretical level and does not need to be grasped and explicated on the level of data. Insofar as the social sciences proceed in an empirical-analytic manner, the understanding of meaning cannot be formalized in this way. If they follow the model of the behavioral sciences, the problem of understanding meaning is simplified by limiting the data to observable events. Behaviorism does not, as we have shown, achieve a complete suspension of meaning and its understanding; but because of its radical restriction of the linguistic horizon to a few elementary and well operationalized meanings (satisfaction of needs, punishment and reward), the preunderstanding that it assumes does not need to be thematized. To the extent that the empirical-analytic sciences of action do not accept behavioristic restrictions on their object domains, their theories have reference to objectively meaningful contexts of subjectively meaningful action. The result is the functionalist approach to theory construction. In that framework the problematic of understanding meaning cannot be eliminated although it can be reduced to the level of an unreflected point of departure. Parsons’s thesis of value universalism is an example of that.

Since Dilthey, we have been accustomed to thinking of the distinguishing feature of the Geisteswissenschaften as the relationship within them of the epistemological subject to an object domain that itself shares the structures of subjectivity. In the idealist tradition, this particular position of subject and object can be interpreted as spirit encountering itself in its objectivations. Collingwood still adopts this view. Historians and philologists are concerned not with an objective context of events but with the symbolic context of a spirit that expresses itself in them. Reflection on what the hermeneutic sciences do must thus first clarify how the formative process in which spirit objectivates itself is to be understood, and how, complementarily, the act of understanding that translates what has been objectivated back into something inward is to be understood. In this tradition, methodological considerations, in the narrower sense, of the logical structure of theories and the relationship of theories to experience were superseded by epistemological investigations of the transcendental-logical structure of the world of possible subjects and the conditions of the intersubjectivity of understanding. The phenomenology of understanding meaning then took the place of the psychology of understanding expressions that was grounded in Lebensphilosophie. This problematic was then linked with linguistic communication and developed, on the one hand, by linguistic philosophy via the indirect route of positivist linguistic analysis and, on the other hand, by philosophical hermeneutics, following Husserl and Heidegger.

These discussions, which are certainly not less articulate or conducted on a lower level than those of analytic philosophy of science, have nevertheless failed to have an impact on recent work in the logic of the social sciences. This is due in part to the idealist presuppositions that, especially in Germany, have been borrowed from the philosophy of reflection [Reflexionsphilosophie, i.e., German Idealism—translator] almost as a matter of course. Among these is the model of a spirit that understands itself in its objectivations. In part the reception of these discussions has been inhibited by the fact that the relevant phenomenological, linguistic, and hermeneutic studies have not been conducted in the only dimension that positivism considers appropriate for methodology. Whereas positivism, with the direct attitude characteristic of the sciences, discusses methological rules for the construction and verification of theories as if it were a question of the logical connection between symbols, phenomenological, linguistic, and hermeneutic analyses, with the indirect attitude characteristic of reflection, are directed to the epistemologica! context in which methodological rules are considered to be rules of synthesis and conceived in terms of the constitution of possible experience.

I would like to discuss the problematic of understanding meaning not so much directly in terms of this transcendental-logical framework, but rather on a methodological level that even positivist prejudices cannot eliminate. Kaplan’s recent methodology of the sciences of action,² which takes the viewpoints of instrumentalism into consideration, offers a point of departure. This tradition, which goes back to Dewey and Peirce, has the advantage of being closely linked to a logical analysis of inquiry without assuming the positivist restriction of methodology to linguistic analysis. Pragmatism has always conceived methodological rules as norms for the practice of inquiry. The frame of reference for the philosophy of science is therefore the communicative context and the scientific community of researchers, thus a network of interactions and operations based on linguistically secured intersubjectivity. Thus Kaplan makes a distinction from the outset between logic-in-use and reconstructed logic. The task of methodology is to reflect on the rules of research practice in terms of the intentions of that practice rather than, conversely, making research practice fit the abstract principles that are valid for the deductive structure of formalized languages.³

Not only does the pragmatist logic of science emphasize the descriptive moment in contrast to the constructive; it also avoids the positivist prejudice concerning the status of the rules that govern research practice. It does not conceive them as grammatical rules from the outset, but rather knows that in another respect they are also equivalent to rules of social action. In other words, it does not preclude a transcendental analysis. Yet in doing so it does not succumb to the prejudice of subjective idealism according to which the rules of synthesis are part of the makeup of an invariant consciousness that transcends experienceable reality. This approach is so liberal that it allows the problematic of the understanding of meaning to become visible. But even within this frame of reference, the full implications of the problematic are not understood. Thus, unfortunately, this thematic complex has retained something of the appearance of a European speciality that belongs to the unassimilated residue of traditional philosophy and can make no serious claim to a place in the corpus of the philosophy of science. But the problematic can be thoroughly expounded on the level of methodology in the strict sense. It is the doorway through which methodology must pass if reflection, which positivism has immobilized, is to be revived.

6 The Phenomenological Approach

6.1

The object domain of the sciences of action consists of symbols and modes of behavior that cannot be conceived as actions independently of symbols. Here access to data is constituted not solely through the observation of events but at the same time through the understanding of contexts of meaning. In this sense we can distinguish sensory from communicative experience. Naturally, all sensory experiences are interpreted; to that extent they are not independent of prior communication. And conversely, understanding is not possible without observation of signs. But communicative experience is directed not to matters of fact, as observation is, but rather to pre-interpreted matters of fact. It is not merely the perception of facts that is symbolically structured, but rather the facts as such. Unless we artificially privilege one of the two modes of behavior and largely ignore the other one, as the behavioral sciences do, difficulties arise that “are not diminished by assertions of the universal applicability of the scientific method.”⁴ A broadened experiential basis for the sciences of action allows for the intersubjectivity of experience. In confirming strictly empirical theories, only standardized, not arbitrary, observations are allowed; the conventional rules for operations of measurement suffice as standards. Can the intersubjectivity of communicative experience be sufficiently guaranteed by standards of measurement in the same way?

As the name indicates, communicative experience originates in an interactive context in which at least two subjects are linked within the framework of a linguistically produced intersubjectivity of agreement on meanings that remain constant. In that framework the “observer” is just as much a participant as the “observed.” The situation of “participant observation” attests to that just as clearly as does the technique of questioning. The relationship between observing subject and object (Gegenstand) is certainly extremely complex and is rendered unproblematic only by the assumptions of correspondence made by epistemological realism. The relationship between subject and partner (Gegenspieler) that replaces it is even more complex. Here experience is mediated by the interaction of the two partners. Its objectivity is threatened from both sides: by the influence of the “observer,” whose instruments distort the answers, just as much as by the reactions of the partner, which make the participant observer self-conscious. By describing the threats to objectivity in this way, we have, it is true, already adopted a perspective that is suggested by the familiar preconditions of controlled observation. It seems as though communicative experience can be purged of subjective distortions only by a countervailing suspension of the claims that entangle the observer in the interaction. But the role of a disengaged observer may be a false model for the experiential domain of communication; perhaps the role of the reflective participant is more appropriate. This is the reason why psychoanalysis defines the role of the therapist in dialogue with the patient as that of the reflective participant. Transference and countertransference are mechanisms that cannot be excluded from the experiential basis of clinical work as sources of error but instead are derived from the theory itself as constitutive elements of the experimental design. Transference phenomena come under control by being systematically produced and interpreted. The communicative situation is not made to approximate the seemingly more reliable model of controlled observation through restrictive measures; rather the theory addresses the conditions of intersubjectivity of experience that arise from communication itself.

Kaplan does not conceal these difficulties; he takes them as his starting point: “Most of the problems of observation in behavioral science (and some problems of theorizing too) stem from the shared humanity of the scientist and his subject-matter, or rather from the richer and the more specific commonalities to which the abstraction ‘humanity’ points. ‘ ‘⁵

Kaplan also sees that the fact that the object domain of the social sciences is subjectively prestructured has consequences not only on the level of the data but also on the theoretical level. He makes a careful distinction between “act meaning,” the “meaning” to which the acting subject is oriented, and “action meaning,” the “meaning” that an action can have for the scientist from a theoretical point of view.⁶ To this distinction correspond two categories of explanation: the semantic explanation of the subjectively intended meaning, which grasps social facts descriptively; and the causal, or functional explanation, which represents the connection of social facts in relation to a lawlike hypothesis. The explanation of the action-orienting meaning refers to the level of data; the explanation of subjectively meaingful action refers to the theoretical level. The question arises, however, whether data and theories can be separated in the usual way when the facts themselves are symbolically mediated and preinterpreted. For if theory formation must be linked to the categorial formation of the object domain, theoretical perspectives are no longer external to social facts in the same way that hypotheses are external to the observable events through which they can be falsified. It is unclear whether under these circumstances theoretical explanations do not also take the form of an explication of contexts of meaning, or whether perhaps the semantic interpretations already perform the function reserved for causal explanations:

Many other methodological problems concerning explanations in behavioral science stem from the complex interrelations between the two sorts of interpretation—of acts and actions; it is easy to understand why they are so often confused with one another. In particular, the behavioral scientist often makes use of what might be called the circle of interpretation: act meanings are inferred from actions and are then used in the explanation of the actions, or actions are construed from the acts and then used to explain the acts. Thus Collingwood has said about the historian that “when he knows what happened he already knows why it happened.”⁷

We shall see versions of an interpretive sociology that are so taken up with the problem of an accurate description of symbolically mediated modes of behavior that explanation of social action coincides with interpretive explication.

We are faced with the alternative whether the problematic of understanding meaning remains external to the methodology of the sciences of action and in the last analysis has no fundamental bearing on the logic of research, or whether the problematic has such weight that it cannot be incorporated easily into the positivist model of a strict empirical science. If we should have to abandon the generally presumed relationship of theory and reality in the case of the sciences of action, the traditional path of epistemology, which transcends the actual methodological domain, suggests itself. In that case, a discussion of research techniques and data preparation is no more helpful than an explanation of hermeneutic statements in terms of the logic of language. The experiential basis proper to theories of action should rather first be investigated from the transcendental point of view: under what conditions are communicative experiences as such constituted? The starting point for such analyses is no longer the research situation but rather the network of interactions in which the practice of research is embedded. What is at issue here is the transcendental conditions of the inter-subjectivity of linguistically mediated systems of action as such, and thus the logical structure of the social lifeworld, which has a twofold status in research. On the one hand it is the object domain of research; in this respect a transcendental analysis yields information about structures of reality that are prior to any empirical analysis. On the other hand, however, the social lifeworld is also the very basis of research; in this respect a transcendental investigation permits a self-reflection of the methods employed. We find three approaches to analyses of this kind in the tradition. The phenomenological approach leads to an investigation of the constitution of everyday life-practice. The linguistic approach concentrates on language games that at the same time transcendentally determine forms of life. Finally, the hermeneutic approach conceives the transcendental linguistic rules of communicative action in terms of an objective context of effective tradition—and in doing so it goes beyond the transcendental-logical frame of reference.

Kaplan, who does not deny the problem of understanding meaning in the social sciences, is nevertheless of the opinion that it does not necessitate such systematic reflection. According to him, the distinction between semantic clarification and causal explanation suffices to purge theory formation of the problem. It can be confined to the level of data and trivialized if we can show that social facts, despite their being mediated by communicative experience, can be grasped operationally in the same way as observable events. For then they would have, methodologically speaking, the same status as other data. Thus the crucial question for the problem is whether and how we can measure social facts.

We can think of measurement as the essence of procedures that allow objects of experience to be symbolically ordered according to a rule. Normally this involves number systems, but counting is only one kind of possible measurement. For measurement to occur, it suffices that we coordinate objects with systematically ordered symbols so that each element of experience corresponds unambiguously and reversibly to a symbol. We should not confuse measuring with the logical act of coordination; rather, measurement includes the technical operations on the basis of which coordination is possible. In measuring we apply a standard that is a matter of convention but may not be arbitrarily chosen.⁸ Logically, measurements can never be better than allowed by the operations we use in making them. These operations often presuppose knowledge of empirical regularities; in that case, we are dealing not with elementary but with “derived” measurements. Every scale employed in the social sciences as a measuring instrument rests on theoretical assumptions. It rests on proven lawlike hypotheses and not merely on conventions; of course, the inventor’s spontaneity also enters into the construction of such measures.

Methodologically speaking, measurements fulfill two functions. Data that have been measured have the advantage of making possible a reliable simplification of controversies about the accuracy of existence claims; measurement operations that can in principle be repeated guarantee the intersubjectivity of experience. Measurements are also of interest in the construction of categories. Data that have been measured have the advanta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Introduction by Thomas McCarthy
• Translator’s Note
• Preface
• I The Dualism of the Natural and Cultural Sciences
• II On the Methodology of General Theories of Social Action
• III On the Problem of Understanding Meaning in the Empirical-Analytic Sciences of Action
• IV Sociology as Theory of the Present
• Notes
• Index