DISSERTATION METAETHICS, ONTOLOGY, AND EPISTEMOLOGY IN AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY: EMILE DURKHEIM AND GILLES DELEUZE Submitted by Jim Franzen Department of Sociology In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, Colorado Spring 2012 Doctoral Committee: Advisor: Michael S. Carolan Katherine E. Browne William J. Chaloupka Kathleen A. Sherman Copyright by Jim Franzen 2012 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT METAETHICS, ONTOLOGY, AND EPISTEMOLOGY IN AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY: EMILE DURKHEIM AND GILLES DELEUZE For over one hundred years, leading sociologists have criticized their own discipline for its “moralistic identity” and its “scientistic rationale.” These markers directly reflect the first principles of the modern institutions of sociology. Metaethical commitments to moral realism, ontological commitments to transcendental forms, and epistemological commitments to a deductive-nomological logic, all first articulated by Emile Durkheim, became the foundation of American sociology. These commitments informed our answers to the intellectual, organizational, and sociocultural requirements for the institutionalization of a new academic science. Gilles Deleuze offers a different set of commitments. His metaethics suggests a new approach to our identity as interventionists. His ontology and epistemology supports an enhancement and expansion of our quantitative warrants. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... iii Chapter 1 - Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 Clarifications ....................................................................................................................................... 5 Plan of the dissertation ................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 2 - Metaphysical Commitments ....................................................................... 11 Metaphysics ...................................................................................................................................... 11 Ontology ............................................................................................................................................ 13 Metaethics ......................................................................................................................................... 22 Epistemology ................................................................................................................................... 25 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 28 Chapter 3 - The Philosophical commitments of Emile Durkheim ........................ 30 The establishment of academic disciplines ........................................................................... 30 Metaethics ......................................................................................................................................... 36 Epistemology ................................................................................................................................... 38 Ontology ............................................................................................................................................ 43 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 48 Chapter 4 – A Genealogy of American sociology ......................................................... 51 Moralistic identity .......................................................................................................................... 53 Scientistic rationale ....................................................................................................................... 54 iii Sociology as science ....................................................................................................................... 59 Conclusions ...................................................................................................................................... 65 Chapter 5 - Deleuze’s philosophical foundations ....................................................... 68 Ontology ............................................................................................................................................ 70 Assemblages ..................................................................................................................................... 77 Metaethics ......................................................................................................................................... 79 Epistemology ................................................................................................................................... 83 Conclusions ...................................................................................................................................... 86 Chapter 6 – Deleuze and Sociology .................................................................................. 88 The ontology and epistemology of complex social systems ............................................ 88 Agent-based modeling .................................................................................................................. 91 The metaethics of interventionism .......................................................................................... 99 Deleuze and interventionism ................................................................................................... 103 Chapter 7 – Summary and Conclusions ...................................................................... 108 Conclusions .................................................................................................................................... 110 What is to be done with our practice? ................................................................................... 118 Final comments ............................................................................................................................. 121 References ............................................................................................................................ 123 iv CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION For over one hundred years, leading sociologists have criticized their own discipline for what I will call its “moralistic identity” and its “scientistic rationale.” These markers directly reflect the first principles of the early institutions of sociology. Metaethical commitments to moral realism, ontological commitments to transcendental forms, and epistemological commitments to a deductive-nomological logic, all first articulated by Durkheim, became the foundation of American sociology. These commitments informed our answers to the intellectual, organizational, and sociocultural requirements for the institutionalization of a new academic science. However, these same commitments also led to a field that has never been able to shed charges of moralism and scientism. Gilles Deleuze offers a different set of commitments which, I will argue, can expand and enhance sociological theory and practice. First, Deleuze’s metaethical commitments can lead to moral interventions that are less moralistic. Second, his ontological and epistemological commitments support a methodology designed to simulate complex social systems. The combination of our traditional linear methods and the new methods of agent-based modeling offer new insights into non-linear social systems. The tradition of crisis literature in sociology There is a tradition of crisis literature in sociology; a tradition of internal criticism of scientism and/or moralism in our discipline. I begin with these problems as defined by some of the leading sociologists of the past one hundred years. My claim is that an examination of our foundational philosophical tenets reveals problems of inconsistency 1 and inaccuracy, the historical source of these problems, and their prevalence in sociology today. Sociology in the United States has a grand tradition of the letting of blood, but in our case we bleed the doctor. Sociology often calls for either the purge of some impurity or the grafting of new appendages to the body sociological. Many bemoan what they see as the splintering of sociology into subfields that become blurred with other fields, such as psychology, social work, or economics. Some might say that there is scarcely a coherent body to be found in our discipline today; we are all limbs and no trunk. A review of the major books in the “Crisis of Sociology” tradition of the last 100 years reveals two recurring concerns, one cardiometric, and the other alimentary. The first problem is that we have either too much heart or no heart at all. We have not found the Aristotelian mean of virtuous action. Instead, depending upon the observer’s standpoint, our actions are vicious because we are at one end of the continuum (amoral, apolitical, or supporters of the status quo) or the other (moralizing and ideologically self-righteous). The alimentary problem is the perception of an