478 Explanation

Kaufmann, W. (1968). Existentialism from Dostoevsky be correlated. For example, a falling barometer to Sartre. Cleveland, OH: Meridien Books. may correlate highly with the coming of rain, but Kruks, S. (1990). Situation and human existence: the barometer’s falling has no causal connection to Freedom, subjectivity, and society. London: Unwin the rain. Merely fulfilling the D-N model, thus, Hyman. cannot be sufficient for explanation. Likewise, rea- Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception sons may count as causes, but reasons do not pro- (C. Smith, Trans.). London: Routledge. vide mechanism and typically rationalize actions Poster, M. (1975). Existential Marxism in postwar rather than explain them in the sense of making the France. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. actions a logical consequence of some antecedently Sartre, J.-P. (1966). Being and nothingness (H. E. Barnes, specified conditions. Trans.). New York: Washington Square Press. A key element involved in criticisms of logical Warnock, M. (1970). Existentialism. Oxford, UK: positivism in the social sciences concerns the place Oxford University Press. of the D-N model and its heirs as defining proper scientific explanation. While some criticisms can be understood as philosophically valid, they can also reflect an animus toward the presumed Ex p l a n a t i o n absence of any normative concerns underlying this model. There may also be doubts regarding the Three key issues drive discussion of explanation existence in the social sciences of the sorts of laws in the social sciences: First, must explanation be or robust generalizations on which application of of a certain form to be regarded as scientific? the model relies. The question that lingers, how- Second, how does explanation contrast with the ever, is how to evaluate purported explanations, notion of understanding? Third, how can expla- absent some such models. nations be evaluated? The answers interrelate in important ways. Explanation Versus Interpretation The notion of explanation has at its root philo- sophical usage a connection to the provision of In the philosophy of the social sciences, the term causes, and in particular of causal mechanisms. explanation is typically used as a contrast to that This leads by the usual logic of causal or mechanis- of interpretation. The contrast involves many dif- tic explanation to a demand for laws and predic- ferences. The most fundamental concerns whether tions. For, the thought goes, a law is just a or not the goal or purpose of social inquiry should regularity in nature. Hence, any event that can be be to reconstruct actions (i.e., purposive behavior) explained (the explanandum) by adverting to the in terms of an agent’s (individual actor’s) perspec- relevant law that identifies its cause should also be tive. An alternative view maintains that the pur- predictable, given knowledge of the presence of the pose of social inquiry should be to develop antecedent conditions (the explanatia). This is the explanations, that is, accounts that have robust essence of the deductive-nomological (D-N) model predictive value. Explanation, from this point of of explanation. A great virtue of this model (long view, is unconstrained by any need to reflect or associated with logical positivism but surviving its reconstruct the view of agents with respect to the demise) involves the fact that it provides a purely events to be explained. So, for example, economic formal or syntactic criterion by which to adjudge explanations of choice of marital partner or eco- whether an explanation exists. The D-N model logical explanations of cultural traditions employ also provides a straightforward criterion for evalu- underlying regularities to account for observed ating the soundness and not just the formal ade- behaviors but diverge from any account that might quacy of an explanation. be offered of those whose behavior is so However, at this point, matters become conten- explained. tious, for well-known counterexamples to this The aims of interpretation and explanation model exist. The counterexamples demonstrate appear prima facie incompatible. An interpreta- that law-like connections may well have no causal tive account focuses on reasons specific to an connection to the phenomenon to which they may agent, a time, and a situation. The expected result Explanation 479 would be an account that did not generalize but suffices to prove that a statement about some applied only to the people and the time studied. observed regularity expresses a law. These historicist or ethnographic approaches to However, observational data can disprove a the study of human behavior must be distin- supposed law of nature by providing just one guished from case studies because the latter but counterinstance. Thus, some hold that the purpose not the former are taken to provide a basis for of testing should be to seek disconfirming instances generalizations. of laws. Laws that survive repeated attempts to While we owe the term positivism to Auguste disconfirm them may then have claim to some Comte, logical positivism names the philosophical degree of verisimilitude. But whatever one’s view movement (also referred to as the Vienna Circle) of the evaluation of proffered explanations by that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s through the empirical test, the orthodoxy holds that proper writings of associated philosophers, scientists, and explanation requires laws and empirical informa- social scientists. Following the dispersion of these tion that allows for a logical connection between thinkers to England and the United States due to the explanans and the explanandum. Only by vir- the rise of fascism throughout central Europe, tue of the logical connection can one determine logical positivism became the dominant account of whether the observed instances follow from the what defined scientific explanation. Within the statements said to explain them, and only by vir- social sciences, the term positivism enjoys wide use tue of the logical connection can one assess as an epithet attached to all views that insist that whether the generalization appealed to in the the purpose of social science explanation requires explanation has been confirmed or survived dis- being able to apply generalizations to account for confirmation, and so has a real use for purposes of observed cases. Ideally, generalizations used to explanation. All models of scientific explanation, explain would also allow social scientists to make in short, take explanation to consist in a relation predictions. In the terminology of logical positiv- between some theory and instances that the theory ism, a statement of that which is to be explained is is a theory of. termed the explanandum (pl. explananda); explan- Absent any logical connection between explan- ans is the class of statements (pl. explanantia) that ans and explanandum, however, no rational assess- account for the explanandum. ment of an offered explanation appears possible. Because a primary goal of logical positivists This insistence on the syntactic formulation of was to help distinguish scientific from pseudo- explanation, one that provides a logical connec- scientific explanations, two key criteria were tion between explanans and explanandum, remains developed that were thought to capture the rele- an important yet largely unappreciated feature of vant differences. The first offered a syntactic for- positivist accounts of explanations. This syntactic mulation for an explanation. This requirement standard allowed a clear formal criterion by which held that good explanations had a specific form, to identify a candidate explanation. and this form allowed for the logical derivation of A recurrent criticism of positivist models of the explanandum from the explanans. This format explanation concerns the principled absence of any also required the use of an appropriate law-like or need to incorporate the perspective of those whose statistical generalization. actions are to be explained. In addition, the syntac- The second requirement concerns the need for tic structure of positivist explanation is viewed as empirical testability. Logical positivists themselves also precluding any normative evaluations of the differed with regard to the so-called logic of con- actions. Scientific explanations are typically held firmation for explanations. The basic split con- to be purely descriptive. Absent an overt inclusion cerned whether testing of hypotheses should stress of a normative premise, no normative conclusion confirmation or disconfirmation. The essence of can be derived. the controversy involved the fact that no law can For example, in explaining why people might ever be fully confirmed by observed positive cases; be co-opted to be mass murders in the case of the law makes claims about cases seen and unseen, the Holocaust, the use of generalizations that a as well as past, present, and future. Thus, no finite large majority of people simply tend to obey amount of observed evidence, however great, authority might be employed, together with other 480 Explanation information. However, this might lead to complaints experience to apparently agree with what theory that perpetrators are in fact thoughtless, that is, not implies can be accommodated in an ad hoc fashion portrayed as making a choice about how to act. To by the explanatory framework. the extent that perpetrators did not make choices, Moreover, it is important to note that even the then they might appear to be less morally culpable staunchest advocates of the positivist models of for their acts. Culpability typically involves holding testing came to holist conclusions about the theory- people responsible for the choices they make. evidence relationship. Only within the context of Alternatively, explanations in the positivist mode a prior theory do statements serve as evidence for may be thought to offend against the specifics of the or against the explanatory efficacy of the theory situation. Did the Hawaiians murder Captain Cook in question. Moreover, theories could be adjusted because he violated expectations attached to the to accommodate apparently discrepant experi- god Lono, whom Cook was thought to be? Or did ences, that is, those that at first might seem incon- they do so because the Hawaiians, as rational gruous with the way a theory says things should agents, perceived Cook for what he was—an agent be. This close relationship between how theories of an alien political power—and acted to protect characterize the world and the evidence in it came themselves from this threat? The difference between to be known as holism. The chief consequence of explanations here is just the difference between an this view is the way it clouds questions of when an emphasis on the culturally specific and a universal- explanatory hypothesis can be saved by altering izing rational agent approach to explanation. The other aspects of the theory connected to it, or former explains by reconstructing the agents’ rea- when the explanation has been refuted by evi- sons for doing what they did but yields no general- dence. Historical studies of science offer up ization. The latter explains by seeing this action as numerous cases of how theories variously adapt typifying what any rational agent (taken as a to or otherwise incorporate apparently discon- generic notion) would do in such a case. The same firming results. explanandum event is in this instance explained by A second feature of the so-called postpositivist incompatible explanantia. era involves the failure of logical positivism to suc- ceed in providing any way of characterizing the unity of science. The separate sciences, for exam- Explanation After Logical Positivism ple, biology and physics, did not, it turns out, The demise of positivism and so of the hegemony neatly fit as a group into positivist-designed mod- of positivist accounts of explanation have had els for what the form of explanation had to be for mixed impact on debates in the social sciences a discipline to be a genuine science. The individual regarding explanation. In a philosophical context, cases of scientific investigation within one or positivism fails for two fundamental reasons. The another science could be studied, but no general first concerns the holistic relationship between the model of explanation could be tailored to fit all sentences that make up a theory and statements accepted scientific practices, even within those sci- about the evidence taken to support them. ences unproblematically regarded as such. Logical positivism assumes that sentences taken From these specific shortcomings—that is, the individually can be assessed for their truth or fal- failure of logical positivism to provide a demarca- sity. This is critical to the logic of empirical testing, tion criterion by which to distinguish science and and so of the evaluation of statements deduced nonscience and to find a syntactic model of expla- from those said to explain or predict it. The inabil- nation adequate to all scientific activity, which ity to assess statements apart from the theoretical could be evaluated for explanatory adequacy by context that explains them has, as a consequence, its form alone—arise the postmodern moment an ambiguity with regard to what statements need with regard to views about explanation. It comes, revision when an explanatory theory runs afoul of that is, when philosophy of science appears to lose experience. If no single sentence has a logically its grip on what to count as a scientific explana- tight connection to specific statements in the the- tion properly so-called and on the logically and ory, on the one hand, and the recalcitrant empirically determinate criteria for assessing the experience(s) on the other, then any failure of goodness of explanations. Exploitation 481

Into this philosophical vacuum rushed post- Little, D. (1991). Varieties of social explanation: An positivist theorists. These theorists were happy to introduction to the philosophy of social science. declare the demise of any “master-narrative.” Yet, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. the problems that positivism meant to solve did Rosenberg, A. (2008). The philosophy of social science not disappear or go away. By what mark does one (3rd ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. identify an explanation as an explanation? The Salmon, W. (2006). Four decades of scientific positivists had a neat, straightforward, and seem- explanation. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh ingly rationally defensible account of what this Press. (Original work published 1989) mark should be: deducibility. Postpositivist Steinmetz, G. (Ed.). (2005). The politics of method in the accounts within philosophy have looked to less human sciences: Positivism and its epistemological others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. straightforward but still roughly quantifiable cri- Turner, S., & Roth, P. (Eds.). (2003). The Blackwell teria, for example, the ability to unify fields that guide to the philosophy of the social sciences. Malden, were previously thought to be unconnected. MA: Blackwell. Informally, such criteria hold that good explana- Zammito, J. (2004). A nice derangement of epistemes: tions contribute to understanding, and under- Post-positivism in the study of science from Quine to standing consists primarily in unifying fields of Latour. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. scientific inquiry. A shared but unfortunate feature of much that postpositivists offer as explanations concerns the fact that no visible effort goes into examining what might possibly play the role of confirming or discon- Exploitation firming any of the explanations offered. This appears to be the case whether explanations of social phe- Exploitation refers to using a resource, situation, or nomena are advanced in the name of one or another person for a purpose. In a technical, neutral sense, science—for example, evolutionary psychology, this might mean no more than making use of a decision theoretic models, sociobiology—or are tied resource for benefit, for example, when the exis- to more explicitly political or normative explana- tence of underground sources of energy is exploited tory accounts, as in cultural studies or traditional by drilling and extraction. In social theory, how- Marxist theory. Absence of predictions, or failure of ever, the term implies a normatively negative evalu- prediction, appears to leave these accounts untrou- ation of the use being made, although identifying bled. Much more so than the natural sciences, the the norm being violated is not straightforward. For social sciences suffer from the underdetermination example, some have argued that such exploitation of explanation, that is, the fact that competing is a violation of justice, but this may be identified explanatory frameworks appear capable of account- with a rights violation, a lack of reciprocity, or a ing for the known data. This fact underlines the failure of equality. Others, again, have concen- desirability of once again having clear criteria for trated on an infringement of liberty, perhaps con- strued as the consequence of coercion, or the lack explanations and ways of testing the proposed of opportunity for self-development, or autonomy. account. Yet, what constitutes the mark of explana- The relationship between the neutral and the tion remains unknown. condemnatory applications of exploitation is com- Paul A. Roth plicated by two considerations. First, in the history of social thought, the exploitation of nature was See also Historical Understanding; Interpretive Theory; contrasted with the exploitation of people by other Positivism; Postmodernism people, where this latter referred to the situation in which the direct producer was placed. Exploitation in the wage labor market, in particular, had his- Further Readings torical priority in developing the normative usage. Kincaid, H. (1996). Philosophical foundations of the But the best-known account of exploitation under social sciences: analyzing controversies in social capitalism was provided by Karl Marx. His official research. New York: Cambridge University Press. account of exploitation concerns the fate of