El hipotético-deductivismo en la explicación de las ciencias sociales

La explicación es una tarea medular en la construcción teórica de cualquier sistema de ciencia. Carl Hempel para efectos de las ciencias sociales propone la explicación estadística que como reconocemos en el presente escrito tiene sus limitaciones de acuerdo a la definición propuesta por el mismo Hempel según el cual toda explicación involucra una teoría. En cuanto al hipotético-deductivismo, llamaremos hipotético-deductivismo sofisticado al desarrollado por el popperiano Imri Lakatos y es el tipo de hipotético-deductivismo que sugerimos se ajusta a las explicaciones dentro de las ciencias sociales, debido a que permiten postular hipótesis ad hoc.

La propuesta operacionalista de Carl Hempel en los albores del DSM

En este trabajo se examina el operacionalismo y su influencia en la versión número tres del Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, a partir de la conferencia del filósofo alemán Carl Hempel expuesta ante la American Psychopathological Association en 1959. Particularmente, desde el operacionalismo del físico norteamericano Percy W. Bridgman, que aboga por un reduccionismo semántico de los conceptos de la ciencia, Hempel esgrime su propuesta de descripción y sistematización conceptual para la taxonomía de las enfermedades mentales. Para finalizar, se mencionan algunas objeciones al operacionalismo fundamentadas en la crítica a la noción de observación desprovista de teoría.

Scientific Explanation

The modern search for an adequate general theory of explanation is an outgrowth of the logical positivist’s agenda: to lay the groundwork for a general unified theory of science. Carl Hempel and Paul Oppenheim’s “Studies in the Logic of Explanation” (Hempel and Oppenheim 1948, cited under the Deductive-Nomological Model of Explanation) was the first major attempt to put forth an account that met the positivist’s criteria. It initiated a lively debate that has continued up to the present. But as the attention of the philosophers of science became increasingly focused on the individual sciences, it quickly became clear that one general theory of explanation would not do since the particulars of the various sciences called for different accounts of what constituted an adequate explanation in physics and biology as well as chemistry, etc. This article attempts to capture the flavor of the debates and the nature of the shifting targets over the years. It does not profess to be complete, being largely restricted to work published in English, but it is a start. While the modern debates surrounding explanation can be said to begin with Hempel and Oppenheim, the history of philosophical accounts of explanation can be traced at least to Aristotle, whose metaphysics set the logical framework for explanations until Galileo urged that appeals to metaphysical categories be replaced by mathematics and measurement. For the most part, Galileo was not interested in appealing to causes or occult forces. The account of how things behaved was to be expressed in the language of mathematics. Descartes tried to capitalize on that insight with his resurrection of medieval discussions of causation relying on Aristotle’s framework framed in a mathematical physics, only to be countered by Newton, who introduced non-Aristotelian causal explanation grounded in mathematical physics. Finally John Stuart Mill begins the long march to contemporary accounts of causal explanation in both the physical and the social sciences, again relying on certain key assumptions about human nature. So the history of explanation is long and intertwined with a variety of metaphysical frameworks. The Positivists of the 20th century unsuccessfully eschewed metaphysics and sought to create an account of causal explanation that somehow aimed to stick strictly to the dictates of science, only to be thwarted by the metaphysical assumptions in the sciences themselves.

Dalla superficie alla profonditŕ. Un equivoco epistemologico circa fenomenologia e psicoanalisi

Superficie e profonditŕ indicano una dimensionalitŕ dal fuori al dentro, che richiama la topica di Freud e ha rapporti con alcune immagini derivate dalla fenomenologia di Husserl, che riguardano una concezione stratificata della psiche. I manuali diagnostici come i DSM esigono obbedienza e concedono come premio l'esattezza diagnostica, nei limiti della loro criteriologia. Essi provengono dalle concezioni di un empirista logico, Carl Hempel, e si basano sulla rinuncia alla validitŕ per accontentarsi del piů modesto criterio della affidabilitŕ tra osservatori. Se solo, perň, consultassimo un buon dizionario per esaminare i nostri termini, che, crediamo, in buona fede, neutri, ci accorgeremmo che corriamo il rischio di seppellire il nostro paziente in un nulla di parole artificiose, dal momento che il conoscere, nel nostro campo, non č solo sapere, ma ha la vibrazione del sentire. Siamo cioč costretti, in fondo, ad eleggere la soggettivitŕ a conoscenza, cercando di dare ad essa una consistenza. Karl Jaspers č partito da questo per forgiare il metodo psicopatologico della fenomenologia comprensiva, che ha per base uno strumento, la comprensione, Verstehen, vale a dire la capacitŕ dell'osservatore di mettersi al posto del paziente, grazie alle autodescrizioni, e, per empatia, cogliere i suoi vissuti, rivivendoli. Accanto a questa fenomenologia soggettiva, c'č quella oggettiva, che vuole accedere direttamente ai fenomeni psicopatologici. L'indagine fenomenologica obiettiva ha per momento iniziale la "riduzione", da intendersi come il metodo per il quale metto momentaneamente tra parentesi ogni teoria data, in modo da cercare di raggiungere una descrizione "pura" dei fenomeni. Metto tra parentesi e conservo: il metodo fenomenologico non č qui inteso come un rifiutare il sapere psichiatrico e psicoanalitico, ma come un esercizio, che permette di avvicinarsi a quella conoscenza implicita che non nega la conoscenza abituale. Si cerca quello che giŕ si sa, senza averne conoscenza esplicita e questo sapere implicito lo scopriamo in modo semplice e rigoroso, con uno sguardo attento alla descrizione di superficie. «Nel lavoro scientifico, dice Freud, č piů promettente affrontare il materiale che ci sta di fronte, per la cui indagine si apre uno spiraglio. Se lo si fa con scrupolo, senza ipotesi o aspettative preconcette, e se si ha fortuna, anche da un lavoro cosě privo di pretese puň scaturire l'appiglio allo studio dei grandi problemi, grazie al nesso che lega tutto con tutto, anche il piccolo col grande». Questo potrŕ forse dispiacere a chi ama le scorribande avventurose nello psichismo arcaico, ma forse la superficie puň dare piů interrogativi e celare piů misteri di quanto una teoretica dei primi palpiti di vita possa immaginare e permette comunque di stare col paziente nello stesso luogo in una prossimitŕ di incontro.

Functionalism Since Hempel

It is usually assumed that, as an approach to religion, or to culture in general, functionalism is passé. Functionalism has been superseded by structuralism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism. Yet the appeal of functionalism as an explanation of the existence or persistence of religion has meant the continuing appearance of functionalist works on religion, which hail mainly from the social sciences. This article focuses on the philosophical problems posed by functionalism. Some of those problems are hoary. Others, while already recognized, were presented in their classic form in 1959 by Carl Hempel. Only those social scientists with philosophical proclivities were ever affected by Hempel’s challenge. Their unanimous response has been to try to meet the challenge, and the fate of functionalism has been assumed to rest with the response to Hempel. This article presents responses by philosophers themselves to Hempel. It concentrates on the response by Robert Cummins, who defends functionalism in biology and, by implication, social science by recharacterizing it—and in turn making Hempel’s challenge irrelevant. What a functionalist approach to religion guided by Cummins’ depiction of functionalism would look like is offered.

VIRTUAL REPATRIATION: THE PITTSBURGH–KONSTANZ ARCHIVAL PARTNERSHIP

During the 1920s and 1930s, a group of German and Austrian thinkers pioneered an approach to philosophy that shaped much of the discipline's subsequent development. These thinkers were “inspired by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century revolutions in logic, mathematics and mathematical physics” and “aimed to create a similarly revolutionary scientific philosophy purged of the endless controversies”1 that had traditionally occupied philosophers. The result was a style of doing philosophy known as logical positivism. Berlin and Vienna were its main centers. The proponents of logical positivism included, among others, Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Carl Carl Hempel, and Hans Reichenbach. The logical . . .

Case Studies and the Statistical Worldview: Review of King, Keohane, and Verba's Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research

Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sydney Verba's Designing Social Inquiry exploits the metaphor of researcher-as-statistician to develop guidelines for conducting social scientific research that are allegedly applicable to all empirical investigations. Their approach has sharp and often unflattering implications for case studies and similar research strategies. Because their statistical worldview is unable to make sense of important aspects of case study research or of the importance that is sometimes attached to the findings of a single case, their argument seemingly casts doubt on the wisdom of producing or consuming such studies.I argue that the foundation of classical statistics and the epistemology of Carl Hempel and Karl Popper is an inadequate and misleading basis for a critical evaluation of case studies. I then present examples of research that are not easily accommodated within the authors' framework and sketch the elements of an alternative epistemological framework rooted in a “pattern” model of explanation. The latter is a standpoint that is much more helpful in understanding and criticizing case studies than the framework presented in Designing Social Inquiry.