Abstract
Raymond Boudon’s main contribution to contemporary methodological debates is his definition of methodological individualism as a logic of explanation. In his opinion, social phenomena must be explained in terms of intentional and particularly unintentional consequences of the aggregation of human actions dictated by “good reasons”. Boudon’s approach can be divided into two complementary stages: the explanation of action, and the explanation of its consequences.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Boudon (2010, pp. 55ff).
- 3.
Boudon (1995, p. 102).
- 4.
Boudon (2011, pp. 33 e ss).
- 5.
Alban Bouvier has widely analyzed the heuristic utility of the argumentative approach to enhance the explanatory power of methodological individualism: Bouvier (1995, pp. 113ff).
- 6.
Boudon (1995, p. 91, our emphasis).
- 7.
Op. cit., p. 92.
- 8.
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969, p. 404). In the “Preface” to the Italian version of this work, Norberto Bobbio writes the following: “Through the distinction between argumentation and demonstration, between conviction and persuasion, between logic strictu senso and rhetoric, between demonstrative reasoning that has value independently of the persons to which it is directed and persuasive reasoning that has value only in reference to a determined audience, the theory of argumentation was presented as an attempt to bring, once again, ethics into the domain of action, even if the reason in question was practical and different from the pure or, if you prefer, as the discovery of a field that for too long has remained unexplored after the triumph of mathematical rationalism between those occupied by the invincible force of reason and, on the opposite side, by the invincible reason of force […]”. The new rhetoric by Perelman is a theory about non-demonstrative rationality, which is extremely important because, as Bobbio explains, “where values are at stake, it does not matter if sublime or vulgar, demonstrative reason, the one that refers to logic in the strict sense, is important: all that is left is their inculcation (or oppression) or finding some ‘good reasons’ to support (or to confute) them. The rhetoric of argumentation is the methodical study of the good reasons that humans use to take and to discuss choices that implicate a reference to when they have refused to impose them through violence or to strip them away with psychological coercion, i.e., through imposition or indoctrination”; N. Bobbio, Preface to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1986).
- 9.
C. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A treatise on Argumentation, cit., p. 38.
- 10.
Op. cit., p. 38.
- 11.
Op. cit., pp. 37–38. In these cases, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca contend, the secrecy of intimate deliberation seems to warrant its sincerity and value; op. cit., p. 38.
- 12.
Di Nuoscio (2004a, pp. 66ff).
- 13.
C. Perelman, L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, cit., p. 461.
- 14.
Op. cit., pp. 462ff.
- 15.
This is the case, for example, of the choice for democracy, which is founded on a value scale (the protection and the development of individuals) that can only be effective in a regime that guarantees the respect of individual freedoms. The choice of democracy can be defended by stating that the competition among free people allows the greatest economic welfare and the greatest growth of knowledge. Hans Albert argued that, although it is true that we cannot infer a value judgement from an empirical statement, it is also true that the progress of our empirical knowledge can show that certain of our value judgements are incompatible with some of our other ethical convictions; Albert (1968), Italian translation, il Mulino, Bologna, 1973, pp. 99–100.
- 16.
C. Perelman, L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, cit., p. 538, emphasis added.
- 17.
According to Perelman, like science, also philosophy, morality and law take their rationality from the system of argumentation, from the good reasons that we can advance in favour and against any thesis in question; Perelman (1982, p. 170).
- 18.
Ibid. In the Discourse on Method Descartes wrote as follows: “considering that of all those who have hitherto searched for truths in the sciences, only the mathematicians have been able to find some demonstrations, namely some certain and evident reasons, I had no doubt that I should start from the same things that they had analyzed; even if I did not hope to derive any utility from them, if not that they would accustom my mind to nourishing itself on truths and not being happy with false reasons” (p. 72, emphasis added). If the only valid reasons are those that are “certain and manifest…considering then how many different opinions on a same manifestation the scholars are able to sustain, without more than one that can be true, I believed almost false everything that was only similar to truth” (p. 62); Descartes (1998). Descartes is just one—albeit one of the most important—representatives of a long tradition in Western thought that has tried to found scientific, metaphysical, ethical and political ideas on a firm fundamentum inconcussum. Various expressions have been used to refer to this firm foundation: e.g. ‘self-evident principles’ (rationalistic tradition), sensations (empiricists), the Reason (Enlightenment thinkers), ‘facts’ (positivists), ‘economic structure’ (Marxists) and ‘verifiability principle’ (neo-positivists).
- 19.
Popper (1972, pp. 226 ff).
- 20.
von Mises (1949, p. 22).
- 21.
von Mises (2011, p. 153).
- 22.
von Mises (1976, p. 41).
- 23.
- 24.
According to Mises, praxeology and catallaxy do not deal with the motives and the ultimate ends of action, although they are means applied to achieve a given end (Human Action, cit., p 16); moreover, the principles of praxeology and economics are valid for all human actions irrespective of the motivations, causes and ends underlying them (op. cit., p. 21). “Everything that we say about action”—Mises contends—“is independent of the motives that cause it and of the goals toward which it strives in the individual case. It makes no difference whether action springs from altruistic or from egoistic motives, from a noble or from a base disposition; whether it is directed toward the attainment of materialistic or idealistic ends; whether it arises from exhaustive and painstaking deliberation or follows fleeting impulses or passions. The laws of catallactics that economics expounds are valid for every exchange regardless of whether those involved in it have acted wisely or unwisely or whether they were actuated by economic or noneconomic motives. The causes of action and the goals toward it strives are data that are needed for the theory of action: upon their concrete configuration depends the course of action taken in the individual case, but the nature of action as such is not thereby affected” (Epistemological Problem of Economics cit., p. 57). “Praxeology is a theoretical and systematic, not a historical, science. Its scope is human action as such, irrespective of all environmental, accidental, and individual circumstances of the concrete acts. Its cognition is purely formal and general without reference to the material content and the particular features of the actual case”: (Human Action, cit., p. 31).
- 25.
von Mises (1962, p. 4).
- 26.
L. von Mises, Human Action, cit., p. 15.
- 27.
Mises argued thus: if we wanted to distinguish rational action from irrational action, we would not only become judges of the value scales of our fellow men but we would also be saying that our knowledge is the only correct, objective standard of knowledge. Anyone who states that irrationality plays a role in human action simply states that his fellows behave in a way that he does consider as correct. If we do not desire to judge the ends and value scales of others, to claim our omniscience, the statement that ‘he behaves irrationally’ is meaningless because it is incompatible with the concept of action.; L. von Mises, Epistemological Problem of Economics, cit., pp. 56–57.
- 28.
Weber (2013, vol. I, p. 10).
- 29.
Popper (1985, p. 359).
- 30.
Op. cit., p. 360.
- 31.
Op. cit., p. 366.
- 32.
Ibidem.
- 33.
Op. cit., p. 362.
- 34.
Ibidem.
- 35.
Ibidem.
- 36.
Op. cit., p. 364.
- 37.
Dray (1957, p. 163).
- 38.
Robert Nozick has argued as follows: The inferences concerning some actor on the basis of Verstehen depend on the fact that you use your imagination in his/her place, that you see him/her as you see yourself. It is a form of reasoning by analogy, and to this reasoning we have always granted a certain role played by inductive logic and by the empirically backed theory. The Verstehen is a form of reasoning by specific analogy, where the thing the other is analogous in is myself. From this we infer that he/she is behaving as we would in that same situation; we have in mind a partially defined subjective situation; Nozick (1981, p. 636).
- 39.
W. DRAY, Law and Explanation in History, cit., p. 125.
- 40.
Op, cit., p. 126.
- 41.
Op. cit., p. 127.
- 42.
Ibidem.
- 43.
Ibidem.
- 44.
Op. cit., p. 132.
- 45.
Ibidem.
- 46.
Op. cit., p. 133.
- 47.
Boudon (1997, p. 385).
- 48.
W. Dray, Law and Explanation in History, cit., p. 133, our emphasis.
- 49.
Op. cit., p. 134.
- 50.
Op. cit., pp. 130–135.
- 51.
Op. cit., p. 129.
- 52.
Popper’s situational analysis is consistent with the covering law model and thus his theory of a unified method. Popper argues that causal and logical explanations are “perfectly compatible” (Popper 1957). However, he points out that the laws utilized in historical explanation “are usually devoid of interest, for the simple reason that they are, in the context, a-problematical” (Popper 1974, p. 120). Such laws, moreover, can be so trivial, so much a part of what we all know, that we do not need to specify them, and we rarely realize this. If we say that the cause of death is being burned alive, we do not need to recall the universal law that all living beings die if exposed to intense heat. But this law is implicit in our causal explanation (K. R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, cit., p. 129). According to Popper, nomological explanation is implicit in the historical explanation. In other words, meanings and motivations of actions which are of interest for the historian can be only recognized and used for the explanation because of the reference to laws. However, since these laws are so “trivial” “devoid of interest” and used in an a-problematical fashion by the historian, regarding social sciences the covering law model must be merged with a comprehensive or interpretative approach. Popper’s situational analysis is precisely an interpretative approach (which is at odds with psychologism). As stressed by Popper in his autobiography, his situational analysis tries to “generalize the method of economic theory (marginal utility theory) so as to become applicable to other theoretical social sciences. In its most recent formulations, this method consists of the construction of a model of the social situation, including, in particular, the institutional situation in which the agent acts in such a manner as to explain the rationality (the zero character) of his/her action” (K. R. Popper, Intellectual Autobiography, cit., p. 121). Also in the Poverty of Historicism Popper argued that situational analysis consists in calculating “the deviation of the real behaviour of people from model behaviour” (K. R. Popper, Poverty of Historicism, cit., p. 126), that it is from that behaviour that we must expect on the basis of a ‘pure logic of choice’, as described in economic equations (op. cit., p. 127). Popper thus proposes an approach that is very similar to Weber’s ideal-type of rational action. According to Weber, explaining actions means examining real actions as ‘deviations’ from ideal-types of action…built in a purely rational fashion with respect to purpose (M. Weber, Economy and Society, cit., p. 26). Popper and Weber agree that explaining an action means reconstructing the agent’s rational calculus, i.e. the reasons and meaning of his/her action, on the basis of situational models. Since Popper criticizes both intuitionism and psychologism and defends what he calls “objective comprehension”, his approach is not very different from Weber’s Verstehen. While, according to Dray, the relationship between reasons and actions is reconstructed through generalizations which are emphatically developed, according to Weber, it is reconstructed through “rules of experiences”. Weber also stresses that this relationship cannot be reconstructed through universal laws because, as we have seen, these rules of experience are falsified. Regarding the relationship between laws and the explanation of action and social macro-phenomena, see Di Nuoscio (2004b, cap. 5).
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Di Nuoscio, E. (2018). On the Explanation of Human Action: “Good Reasons”, Critical Rationalism and Argumentation Theory. In: Bronner, G., Di Iorio, F. (eds) The Mystery of Rationality. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94028-1_4
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