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Functionalism and the Meaning of Social Facts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Warren Schmaus
Warren Schmaus*
Affiliation:
Illinois Institute of Technology
*
†Lewis Department of Humanities, Illinois Institute of Technology, 3301 South Dearborn, Chicago, IL 60616.
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Abstract

This paper defends a social functionalist interpretation, modeled on psychological functionalism, of the meanings of social facts. Social functionalism provides a better explanation of the possibility of interpreting other cultures than approaches that identify the meanings of social facts with either mental states or behavior. I support this claim through a functionalist reinterpretation of sociological accounts of the categories that identify them with their collective representations. Taking the category of causality as my example, I show that if we define it instead in terms of its functional relations to moral rules, it becomes easier to recognize in other cultures.

Type
Philosophy of Social Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 66 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 1999 , 1999 , pp. S314 - S323
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I would like to thank those who attended the 1998 PSA session in which I delivered an earlier version of this paper, especially James Bohman, Douglas Jesseph, Mark Risjord, and Paul Roth, for their comments and suggestions.

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