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Confirmation, Complexity and Social Laws

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Harold Kincaid
Harold Kincaid*
Affiliation:
University of Alabama, Birmingham
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Extract

Two attitudes largely dominate current philosophic thinking about the social sciences. One argues that the social science are not and cannot be real sciences—because the social sciences have not and probably cannot produce anything like the laws of the natural sciences. The other attitude—coming from the hermeneutic tradition—defends the social sciences, but only by arguing that laws are irrelevant to social explanation. Disparate as they are, both traditions share the assumption that laws in the social sciences are beyond reach. In this paper I argue the opposite thesis—viz. that social laws are both a possibility and actuality.

Philosophers have typically approached laws in the social sciences by an old-fashioned route—by means of relatively a priori conceptual analysis. One or several necessary conditions for laws are identified, usually by appeal to intuitions. Then it is argued that no alleged law in the social sciences could have the necessary features.

Type
Part X. Laws in the Social Sciences
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1988 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1988 , 1988 , pp. 298 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

Work on this paper was begun under a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies.

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