Warren Schmaus

Is Durkheim the Enemy of Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychologists cite Durkheims sociology as an exemplar of an approach that takes the human mind to be largely the product of social and cultural factors with negligible contributions from biology. The author argues that on the contrary, his sociological theory of the categories is compatible with the possibility of innate cognitive capacities, taking causal cognition as his example. Whether and to what extent there are such innate capacities is a question for research in the cognitive neurosciences. The extent to which these innate capacities can then be explained by natural selection remains an open question for empirical investigation.

The Empirical Character of Methodological Rules

Critics of Laudans normative naturalism have questioned whether methodological rules can be regarded as empirical hypotheses about relations between means and ends. Drawing on Laudans defense that rules of method are contingent on assumptions about the world, I argue that even if such rules can be shown to be analytic in principle (Kaiser 1991), in practice the warrant for such rules will be empirical. Laudans naturalism, however, acquires normative force only by construing both methods and epistemic goals as instrumental to practical concerns, and issues only in context-specific and not general methodological principles.

Kant's Reception in France: Theories of the Categories in Academic Philosophy, Psychology, and Social Science

It has been said that Kants critical philosophy made it impossible to pursue either the Cartesian rationalist or the Lockean empiricist program of providing a foundation for the sciences (e.g., Guyer 1992). This claim does not hold true for much of nineteenth century French philosophy, especially the eclectic spiritualist tradition that begins with Victor Cousin (17921867) and Pierre Maine de Biran (17661824) and continues through Paul Janet (182399). This tradition assimilated Kants transcendental apperception of the unity of experience to Descartess cogito. They then took this to be the method of a philosophical psychology that reveals the active self as substance or cause and thus provides the epistemological grounding for these categories. However, to dismiss these philosophers as simply confused or mistaken would be to overlook the historical role that their interpretations of Kant played in the subsequent development of philosophy and the social sciences in France. Specifically, mile Durkheims (18581917) sociological theory of the categories was deeply influenced by the eclectic spiritualist tradition and yet at the same time developed in reaction to it, as he thought that its psychological account of the categories failed to bring out their shared or universal character and the extent to which our conceptions of the categories are cultural products.

Functionalism and the Meaning of Social Facts

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.

EXPLANATION AND ESSENCE IN THE RULES OF SOCIOLOGICAL METHOD AND THE DIVISION OF LABOR IN SOCIETY

In The Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim tried to remove the ambiguity of The Division of Labor in Society that arose from his essentialist model of explanation, in which causes and effects are both necessary and sufficient conditions of each other. The resulting confusion of effects with causes made possible the materialist interpretation of the latter work, in which increasing population density was mistaken for the cause rather than the sign of changes in the social environment associated with an increase in specialization. The Rules tried to defeat this misinterpretation through clarifying such key concepts as cause, function, and social environment Durkheims readers had failed to see that he had provided only a functional and not a causal explanation of the division of labor, which he took to be an adaptation to, not a result of, factors in the social rather than the physical environment.

Book Review: What’s So Social about Social Knowledge?

Although Longino and Solomon are interested in what social conditions will produce better science, neither philosopher has provided a sufficient analysis of the social character of science. For instance, neither considers the social character of discovery as well as that of justification, or that an individual scientist’s social status and social relations may be important for understanding her role in both processes. The contributors to Schmitt’s volume are interested in whether the terms that refer to social entities can be reduced to or eliminated in favor of terms referring to individuals. Their analyses, which proceed largely by testing their intuitions against imaginary examples, could benefit from paying more attention to actual social science and real-world social problems. Ideally, these social metaphysicians should be engaged with philosophers of science in a joint effort to investigate whether a social account of scientific knowledge can explain something that an individualist account leaves out.

Reasons, Causes, and the 'Strong Programme' in the Sociology of Knowledge

In presenting his version of the ’Strong Programme’ in the sociology of knowledge, David Bloor disallows the appeal to norms of rationality in the explanation of belief. Thus, by implication, he reads an individual’s reasons for holding some belief out of any possible causal account of that belief. This has led to unnecessary disputation. If we allow a person’s reasons for holding a belief to be included among the causes of that belief, the tenets of Bloor’s programme are rendered uncontroversial. The first tenet of Bloor’s programme is that belief states are to be given causal explanations. His second tenet is that the sociology of knowledge should be ’impartial with respect to truth and falsity, rationality or irrationality, success or failure’. The symmetry principle, his third tenet, then stipulates that the sociologist must invoke the ’same types of cause’ in explaining why someone held a particular belief, regardless of the status of this belief with respect to these dichotomies (Bloor 1976, p. 5). Larry Laudan singles out this last tenet as the most controversial aspect of Bloor’s programme, and complains that the latter fails to specify any criteria for regarding causes to be of the same type (1981, p. 185; 1982, p. 73). Although Laudan finds the first tenet to be ’innocuous’ and ’unproblematic’ (1981, pp. 181, 183), I nevertheless believe that it is this causality principle, and not the symmetry principle, which is the real source of his controversy with Bloor. In spite of the fact that both claim to accept it, there is a difference in their interpretation of this principle. That is, whereas Laudan is happy to include reasons among the causes of belief (1981, p. 187), Bloor only grudgingly allows him to call them ’by the name of &dquo;cause&dquo;’ (1981, p. 206), but in reality is uncomfortable with the notion that reasons can be causes.

Durkheim, Jamesian pragmatism and the normativity of truth

In his lectures on pragmatism presented in the academic year 1913—14 at the Sorbonne, Durkheim argued that James’s pragmatist theory of truth, due to its emphasis on individual satisfaction, was unable to account for the obligatory, necessary and impersonal character of truth. But for Durkheim to make this charge is only to raise the question whether he himself could account for the morally obligatory or normative character of truth. Although rejecting individualism may be necessary for explaining the existence of norms, it is not sufficient. I argue that Durkheim never succeeded in providing a full account of normativity. Of course, this is a problem that remains unresolved today. Nevertheless, Durkheim took an important step beyond James in recognizing the insufficiency of his individualist account of truth.

Book Reviews : Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the End of Knowledge: The Coming of Science and Technology Studies, by Steve Fuller. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993, 421 + xxii pp.

topic, and that it is also marvelously readable is proof that science need not be obscure and inaccessible. Finally, although this book sketches a Western scientific culture that is often more powerful and self-serving than it cares to admit, it also leaves you with the feeling that scientific texts can not only oppress and exclude but also empower and illuminate the realities of modem global politics.

54.00 (cloth);

Recent controversy over whether the Vienna Circle can provide a model for today’s political turn in the philosophy of science indicates the need to clarify just what is meant by the term political philosophy of science. This paper finds fourteen different meanings of the term, including both descriptive and normative usages, having to do with the roles of political values in the sciences, the political consequences and significance of the sciences and scientific modes of thought, and political processes within the sciences. These different senses are exemplified by the history of nineteenth century French philosophy of science, including Comte and Renouvier, as well as twentieth century logical positivists such as Neurath and more recent philosophers of science such as Kitcher and Longino. The paper also addresses the issue of how there could be a positivist political philosophy of science, given positivisms’ questioning of values, and considers Renouvier’s social contract approach to a political philosophy of science more promising than either Comte’s naturalism or the logical positivists’ non-cognitivism.