Rafał Paweł WIERZCHOSŁAWSKI Catholic University of Lublin, Poland

Transcription

1 Rafał Paweł WIERZCHOSŁAWSKI Catholic University of Lublin, Poland LE RAYONNEMENT DE LA PHILOSOPHIE POLONAISE AU XX SIECLE L'HÉRITAGE PHILOSOPHIQUE DE KAZIMIERZ TWARDOWSKI (colloque franco-polonais Novembre 2004 Paris) Naturalism in the Foundations of the Social Sciences: The Intellectual Rigor, Conceptual Clarity, and Respect for Human Affairs The Case of the Polish School

2 (0) The Introduction The Problem of the Foundations of the Humanities and the Social Sciences was a secondary, if not a marginal interests of the Lwów-Warsaw School s (Polish School) the first and second generation, at least as far as the number of pages devoted to the topic in question (among others) is concerned. However, conscious of that qualitative marginality himself, Jan Woleński outline the main distinctive views held by the most eminent representatives of the School in a separate chapter of his classical monograph on the Polish School to make (Woleński 1985: ). The reason for the short presentation as he claimed was the importance of those views for the comprehensive view of the School. His opinion seems to be a good recommendation to consider the above mentioned contribution of the School in the light of what has happened in the domain of the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Sociological Theory, and of Social Ontology, since then. Especially, if we want to comply with the main title of the conference and want to take the radiation aspect of the School s heritage into account. The main question which dominates and prevails in the current debates in the Foundations of the Social Sciences, and in Social Ontology in particular, might be labeled as that of naturalism vs. antinaturalism. One might question the description by asking whether nothing has changed? However the same label does not mean the same problem. So, I will proceed in following steps: (1) I will start with the proper subject matter of the social sciences (sociology), (2) claiming that the common world has some privileged position, (3) I will then discus the Naturalism-Antinaturalism controversy, (4) with a special focus on the mechanism of Naturalism redefinition, and finaly (5) I will examine the position of the Polish School in question.

3 (1) Social ontology and the proper object of sociology It will not be a very extravagant and extraordinary claim that the controversy Naturalism (N) and Antinaturalism (AN) is one of the most crucial in the current philosophical debates. It has many faces which appear in a variety of philosophical discourses. I allow myself to limit the scope of my pursuit to the N/AN controversy in the domain of the social (ontology) philosophy and the philosophy of the social sciences. Before the discussion of the N/AN controversy, in my opinion, it should be considered what is the proper subject matter of the social sciences, and sociology in particular. It will be the first step of my presentation (argument). An eminent Polish sociologist Piotr Sztompka, professor of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and a permanent visiting scholar at the UCLA, an acting President of the International Sociological Association has said in a recent interview: Sociology should be concerned with the everyday life, and ordinary people; their actions, dreams, and expectations. This is the proper subject matter of sociology, rather than sophisticated and abstract structures. It must start from and finish with man. It should be inspired by the everyday observations, such as mine, in the Old Market out of my window, and its generalizations should be translated into language understood by ordinary citizens (Sztompka 2002: 84). This statement would not be something special and extraordinary when presented by some radical anti-naturalist or anti-positivist sociological rebel. But when we take into account that it has been uttered by the beloved European disciple of late Robert King Merton, and by someone who has written several books on functional and structural explanation in sociology, this remark is certainly worthy of our consideration and reflection. Why someone who is not a rebel, but an established sociologist stresses the necessity of our referring to the common world perspective and to intentional subjects who inhabit the above mentioned prescientific social space?

4 In other words we can ask about significance of the common world for the naturalism anti-naturalism debate as going on in the realm of the social sciences, or to be more precise, in the realm of philosophical reflection on the social sciences. To quote another passage from the same interview with Piotr Sztompka: Having just retired, an eminent German sociologist, Erwin Scheuch, who had spent all his academic life on surveys, statistical analysis, tables and graphs, stated in public, with the frankness of an old and wise man, that when he wanted to learn anything about Italy, he went to trattoria or caff_, when about Germany, then he went to Bierstube (garten) or to Gaststätte (Gasthaus), when he wanted to understand the French people, then he just used to drop into le bistro (Sztompka 2002:85). We can ask why the common-or-garden experiences are to play such an important role in understanding the social world, if not in the sociological analysis itself? Does it mean that the real knowledge about the social reality we live in can be acquired not necessarily as the scientific knowledge, which is provided by a chosen group of the wise men called sociologists, who have a special access to the cogs-and-wheels of the machinery that makes the social world go round?! What is more interesting, the remarks quoted above have been formulated by a distinguished sociological theorist who is not only well acquainted with current methodological and philosophical debates, but who has also contributed to the sociological theory by writing several books on functional explanation. Since none can label him as a proponent of the sociological counter-revolution (of any kind), so his voice deserves a special attention and should be considered with careful deliberation. Does he want to betray serious scientific enterprise in favour of some dim and unclear project of getting true and sound knowledge about social reality within the framework of a local pub investigation paradigm?!

5 (3) The Significance of the Common World The second move follows from the ontological question and is focused on the epistemological question: who and by what means can cognitively grasp, understand and explain the objects in question. There are two possible attitudes (approaches) to the problem. (A) The first one deals with the level of reality to which we apply our cognitive practices in the scientific analysis; and in that context one should ask whether we take into account our ordinary grasp of the common world, or deny its significance to the sociological enterprise and reject as useless our common-or-garden world understanding. (B) The second one deals with the knowing subject who is he or she? Is she an expert who rejects the prescientific understanding, or a translator who tries to convey it on the higher level of abstraction. In my opinion worries like that are a bit exaggerated and one can provide a positive reading of the traces and footprints left by the Polish sociologist. I think that a reading like this is to be found in a juvenile book of the American sociologist and social philosopher Stephen Park Turner Sociological explanation as translation (1980). Stephen Turner refers to the observation made by Leo Strauss, an ancient scholar and a political philosopher in exile who distinguished two approaches to the social and political reality which are characteristic of the ancient and modern authors respectively (Strauss 1953: 8). The great political philosopher Leo Strauss distinguished the modern project in political philosophy from the classical political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle by pointing out that the ancients sought the perfection of the prescientific or ordinary understanding of human things in their philosophy or science, whereas the modern sciences of human things, such as sociology, seek to replace this ordinary understanding and are founded on its rejection (Turner 1980: 1) For Strauss the most principal example of modern approach was Max Weber. Since: [...] ordinary person understands and accounts for the occurrences of political life evaluatively. Weber denied the possibility of rationally evaluating action.

6 In the last analysis, he argued, there are conflicts among various positions that are irreconciliable by human reason. So, for Weber, scientific knowledge of human action must be non-evaluative (Wertfreiheit) and thus radically unlike the prescientific knowledge it replaces (1980: 1) In other words, Max Weber is an example of modern paradigm, a paradigm which suggests that any ordinary and prescientific cognition cannot lead to real knowledge, due to the latter s normative and evaluative attitude. It seems, that in the case of the Moderns, knowledge should be value free, respect the Wertfreiheit postulate, in spite of Max Weber s commitment to the value relevance thesis (Wertbeziehung) to recall his idiom. This postulate has been proposed due to our being condemned to the unavoidable dilemmas of axiological polytheism, in the bedrock of which we undertake our choices. Weber s point is that there are many values which are inconsistent, and they contradict one another in certain situations. Moreover there is no rational way to choose among them. The situation can be overcome only by acceptance of value polytheism in the value free scientific considerations. This can be reached at the expense of depositing the queen-ethics from her throne, which she has occupied till now, and placing her among various life-styles. In order to avoid sinking down into details I would like to follow Stephen Turner s remark about the Moderns. He claims that the classics of sociology have gone even further then Weber in their rejection of the prescientific understanding. One of them, Emile Durkheim, denies that ordinary explanations of actions might be any guide to the true causes of action since our comportment depends on the laws of the conscience collective. They are nothing more then Baconian Idola, and, as cognitive obstacles, should be overcome. Another of the founding fathers of modern social sciences, Vilfredo Pareto, dismisses prescientific understanding wholesale. Any action that has moral or religious purport is labeled by him as non-logical, and any attempt at such an explanation is counted by him as pseudoexplanation, as derivation. We can be saved by referring to a deeper level where we can find real causes, which are radically unlike the reasons that figure the ordinary explanations.

7 As we know from the ongoing history of the social thought none of those project has been successful and they failed to live up to their proponents expectations. Since: There are neither Durkheimian laws of the collective consciousness nor Paretian laws of social equilibrium, and Weber s elaborate constructions of categories for historical causal analysis have not served to give the account of the unique character of Western society that he sought. (1980: 1). What is the lesson we can draw form that story? First of all that there is a serious problem to be solved, i.e., what relationship obtains between our common world and our cognitive equipment we apply to it in order to get reasonable and sound explanations. One positive formulation of the diagnosis amounts to a claim that the social sciences have been an attempt to apply causal explanatory methods to attain an understanding of that which is already properly understood or can be properly understood by noncausal methods, such as classical teleology and idealism. However, as Turner stresses, even such a vigorous defender of the methods of classical political philosophy as Leo Strauss concedes that the teleological conceptions of the Classics cannot be simply followed today, since after the defeat of the teleological conception of the universe, we are condemned to the essentially modern dualism between natural and social sciences, which constitutes the brake with the classics. It means that there is no easy come back to the glorious and glamorous antiquity, there is no (easy) return to the golden age. Aurea prima sata est aetas, quae vindice nullo, sponte sua, sine lege fidem rectumque colebat (Ovid, Metamorphosis, book 1, verses: 89-90). Following the diagnosis of Leo Strauss any adequate solution of the problem of natural right, or to formulate it in Brandomian idiom, of problem of pragmatic normative order, cannot be found before this basic problem has been solved (Strauss 1953: 8). In other words, it seems that the problem of modes of explanation turns into a more fundamental one, the problem of the object of sociological explanation. And in order to define the proper object the sociological enterprise is about, it is worth to consider (have in mind) our conceptual modes by means of which we refer to it. One reason for this endeavour is fact that the way

8 (modus) in which our Begriffsaparatur is applied to the social reality constitutes the reality itself, at least to some extent. This does not necessarily commit us to embrace social constructivism or any other form of anti-realism. A careful examination of a conceptual scheme can help in my opinion discriminate concepts which: fit with Strauss s notion of the perfection of the prescientific understanding, as the object of explanation arises through ordinary discourse and does not purport to replace the prescientific understanding (Turner 1980: 8). What is to be done is to consider which of the conceptual modes of our grasping the social reality are the best candidates to fit the above mentioned aim. I limit my consideration to one of the keynote controversies in the current philosophy of the social sciences and in philosophy in general as well Naturalism Antinaturalism Controversy.

9 (3) The Standard Formulation of Naturalism vs. Anti-naturalism Positions The third problem to be considered deals with the selection of the best candidate from the N/AN controversy, who would fulfil the two objectives i.e. the above mentioned ontological and epistemological requirements for the scientific elaboration of the common world as grasped by the ordinary participants, and scientific perfection of their approach. It seems intuitively that the approach of the Moderns goes along with naturalist position while those of the Ancient follows the opposite direction. Both of the opposite sides claim roughly what follows: Naturalism is the view that the social sciences are methodologically similar to natural sciences. The program of Naturalism is ambiguous and vacillates between two ideas. One can refer to these as a week or soft naturalism (SN) and strong or hard naturalism (HN). (SN) claims that it is possible to use a methodology based on natural sciences to investigate social phenomena. (HN) goes a step further and insists that it is necessary to use a methodology based on natural sciences in order to investigate social phenomena. Weak naturalism (SN) holds only that naturalistic social science is possible; strong naturalism (HN) stresses that if social inquiry is to be scientific at all, it must be a naturalistic social science. Weak naturalism (SN) is thus compatible with the view that some social inquiry is not naturalistic 1. Obviously, the strong version of naturalism is more difficult to defend (Little 1991: ). Naturalism usually tends to eliminate or reduce theses concerning individual human actions to those about actions of other, more essential entities, such as society. The proponents of this idea tend to describe and explain human conduct by means of law-like regularities (with various degrees of explanatory exactness) which are of the same kind as those applied in the natural sciences. This can imply the reductionist thesis that our commonor-garden grasp of individuals actions can be reduced to different laws and law-like 1 A good example of a naturalist mode can be found in the book of Harold Kincaid: (1) the social science can be good science by the standards of the natural sciences; (2) the social sciences can only be good sciences by meeting the standards of the natural sciences. (Kincaid 1996: 3)

10 regularities (generalizations). In consequence the proponents of naturalism tend to accept the idea of the unity of scientific method (under this or another reading). Antinaturalism, reacts to the eliminative claims of naturalism and defends various theses which state the autonomy of the social domain; Antinaturalist claim that there are some entities, or properties, which cannot be reduced or eliminated, as naturalism would have it, if we are to understand human beings and cultural objects they produce. (AN) declares that the social phenomena involve one or more features that are radically different from the properties of the objects of the natural sciences. The most common defense of the antinaturalist methodology in the social sciences depends on the contrast between types of explanations. The natural sciences provide causal explanations Erklären, whereas the social sciences provide meaningful interpretations Verstehen (Little 1991: 222). Each of these solutions has its pros and cons. However as we will see, standard formulation of neither naturalism nor antinaturalism are wholly persuasive. What should be mentioned is that one can distinguish ontological and methodological formulations of the N/AN positions, and it can be claimed that the ontological formulation is more present in current debates. One should also add that the controversy in question can not be considered separatim but in connection with the other debates over the fundamentals of the social sciences, such debates as: holism-individualism, realism-anti-realism, cognitivism-non-congnitivism etc. However it seems to me that the standard formulation, be it ontological or methodological, of the respective positions N/AN does not propose any plausible solution to the problem.

11 (4) The Naturalism Redefinition Mechanism Is the opposition naturalism-antinaturalism the only possibility? Or can we find any solution which preserves whatever is intuitively plausible both in naturalism and antinaturalism? Which of the positions can be helpful in resolution of the Leo Strauss dilemma? If we follow the above mentioned distinction, a kind of solution to the N/AN problem may be found. Both positions in question have different variants: hard, reductive naturalism (HN) (Durkheim, Pareto), soft-naturalism (SN), radical antinaturalism (RAN) (Hegel, Dilthey and Windelband), and a moderate version of antinaturalism (MAN) (Rickert, Weber, Simmel and Schütz) to recall the continental tradition of the Methodenstreit in der Sozialwissenschaften. It is not very probable that both radical versions of the opposing standpoints, i.e. (HN) and (RAN) can be reconciled, since none of them provides a credible basis for understanding the social sciences. Soft-naturalism (SN) as a moderate version of naturalism seems to be a middle position between the Scilla of hard, reductive naturalism (HN) and Charibdis of radical anti-naturalism (RAN). If it is true, that (RAN) is only a reaction to eliminative claims of (HN), then it seems, that the (SN) position tries to avoid the objections (at least some of them) put forward against the hard naturalist positions (HN) by the radical versions of antinaturalism (RAN). If this is right, then the (SN) position opens a new perspective in the old discussion on the status of the social sciences and seems to be a good candidate for a solution of the problem.

12 (5) The position of the Polish School in the Naturalism debate. The Intellectual Rigor, Conceptual Clarity, and the Respect for the Human Affairs seem to provide a good characteristic of the Polish School in the domain of Humanities and of Social Sciences. As I have mentioned earlier the problem of Humanities and of Social Sciences was not as crucial and fundamental subject, or at least, not as much as ontology, epistemology, logic, philosophy of science, and ethics were. The positions of some of main representatives of the Polish School, outlined below, are the children of the age and have never shaped the intellectual scene as those of Max Weber's, Emile Durkheim's etc. Neither are they very original. However, noteworthy to notice that in spite of this very fact, the marginality of the topic and the second-hand approach (at least at the first glance), might be an advantage as far as its significance for the ongoing debates. Twardowski remarks on the methodological status of Humanities in the context of distinction between psychology and humanities, since both deal with the products of psychic and psycho-physical activities. However, each of them has its owe approach to the products respectively. The humanistic products differ from those of psychology as well as those of natural sciences, by their independence from the psychic or psycho-physical origins (genetic aspect). Interpretation of the piece of arts, as an psycho-physical result (product) of the painter belongs to Humanities, but its examination as an physical object, i.e. the material it is made of, the chemical set up of painting, belongs to chemistry, technology and theory of painters technique. (Twardowski 1913: 269). Although Twardowski does not refer to any Verstehen concept, he seems to mark his affiliation the AN camp, by such a statement.. His first generation disciples, like Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz and Tadeusz Czeżowski followed his AN approach. Czeżowski (1946a) claims that the objects of humanistic interpretation have holistic (structural), and axiological (refer to values) character, as well as objective meaning. So, the world of culture (world of human [-istic] objects) has radically different features and structure from the world examined by the natural sciences. The propositions of humanities are going to provide the statements on general structure of the cultural reality. However, they are general in character, the have to refer to (relatively) defined objects, and our interpretation tends to

13 grasp similarities and differences between them, by the means of humanistic interpretation (which is descriptive in character), whose explanation does not refer to covering laws models, but to placing an object in question in the higher (totalizing) structure of (axiological) order. Humanities are therefore empirical sciences, since they are based on specific and unique experience of human affairs. So, Czeżowski might seem to be not very far form the German tradition of RAN in spirit of Dilthey, Windelband and Rickert (Woleński 1985: 273). Ajdukiewicz distinguishes humanities as applying the understanding of statements and expressions, or in more general terms, as understanding of signs. A word becomes as if transparent, and by that token, my thought refers to the designated object, without concentrating and dwelling on the word itself. (Ajdukiewicz 1934c: ). Humanistic sciences may be of different types: explanatory (like psychology), descriptive and critical (history), axiological (implying value judgements). The explanatory type has aims analogical to those of nomological natural sciences. Tadeusz Kotarbiński in his handbook (1929) distinguishes a group of historical sciences, which contains (include) humanities. Humanities are interested in the content, process, genesis, significance, and causes (motives) of human experiences (doznania) and actions, their results and products (effects), as well as, actors dispositions for those experiences and actions in given circumstances (1929: 433). As far as nomological vs. ideographic character of humanities is concerned Kotarbiński does not exclude possibility of general statements in history, however he accepts the indeterminacy or moderate determinism of historical events and processes. He tends to avoid theoretical debates, stressing at the same time the significance of research practice of the historian in action. Stanisław Ossowski, representative of the third generation and last, of Twardowski's disciples (through Kotarbinski's descent line). In his O osobliwościach nauk społecznych (1962), he presented one of the most interesting conceptions of the non-reductionist approach to the methodological status of the Social Sciences and Humanities, since he tends to overcome the traditional distinctions (gaps) between opposing positions, like nomologicalideographic, holistic-individualist etc. He distinguishes two types of sociologist: (a) the fieldsociologist, collecting data and applying sophisticated statistical methods, in order to get the causal connections of events in question, and (b) the sociologist-humanist who follows the pattern of interpretative understanding in his pursuit to grasp the social world. These two are

14 not necessarily mutually exclusive. For Ossowski both approaches are legitimate and their application might help in more fruitful and deeper understanding of the social reality. The existing differences between two approaches naturalistic and anti-naturalistic are unavoidable; however, the acceptance of these approaches and moderate formulation of respective positions are the best, and the only reasonable, solution. The defense of unique status of the social sciences is a legitimate attempt, however, it does not allow an ambiguous, obscure, and vague language, unclear concepts and not well defined problems. Intellectual rigor and clarity in thinking are fundamental requirements of any scientific pursuit, and are also necessary in anti-naturalist (MAN) or in soft-naturalist (SN) paradigms. To conclude, it seems that what we can learn form the Polish School, as far as an approach to the modern Social Sciences is concerned may be nicely expressed in the subtitle of this presentation Intellectual Rigor, Conceptual Clarity, and Respect for Human Affairs the heritage of the Polish School for the difficult times we live in.