Abstract
Most philosophical work on social ontology continues to be done without much connection to social scientific concerns. This special issue, however, calls for attention to a naturalized metaphysics, one based on the best science we have. It follows that a naturalized social metaphysics should begin with the best social science available. In contrast with the physical sciences, however, the best social science is not so clear. Thus, this paper acquaints professional philosophers with some of the prominent metaphysical views extant in the social sciences; the ways that more philosophically oriented social scientists engage them; and how professional philosophers might contribute.
In particular, the paper covers several arguments especially relevant to a naturalized social metaphysics. One argument suggests that folk intuitions cannot be excluded from consideration. In fact, in the social sphere, it may be that scientific concepts not only cannot always trump folk conceptions but actually must be constrained by them. The paper further introduces arguments defending not only metaphysically real levels of being but also the metaphysical reality of the categories of social science. Finally, the paper will introduce an argument that beyond culture and individual agency, social being also includes structure as a distinct category.
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Notes
Unlike sociology or anthropology, as a discipline, political science is more formally divided between political science and political theory. The political scientists tend toward empiricism and a more or less Humean approach to the discovery of statistical generalizations. When the political theorists engage in empirical work, it is typically critiques of political discourse and hence more qualitative, reflecting a mostly post-structural paradigm. Other fields, like communication, cultural studies, and management now also draw heavily on sociology and political science.
My experience as a teacher of research methods at both the graduate and undergraduate levels is that ordinary folk have great difficulty articulating even what causality means, let alone espousing any deeper metaphysical notion of it.
Certainly, many sociologists do tacitly think of action in terms of reasons as per the folk psychology articulated by Davidson. The claim here is that the articulation of such tacit knowledge rarely makes it into explicit sociological theory with the untoward consequences about to be detailed.
Some rational choice theorists, usually considered methodological individualists, do acknowledge a stronger sense of structure in the third sense above (see Tsebelis 1988). And in fact the games of game theory so often used by rational choice theorists arguably themselves constitute structures in the third sense.
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Porpora, D. The metaphysical issues in the social sciences and how social scientists debate them. Synthese 200, 501 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03978-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03978-3