to formulate appropriate questions and to ensure that the results of research are expressed clearly. As Bennett and Hacker say in Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, philosophy’s task ‘is to clarify the conceptual scheme in terms of which our knowledge is articulated. Its achievements are its contribution to our reflective understanding of the logical structure of our thought and knowledge about the world. It cannot contribute to knowledge about the brain, and it should not be expected to. Philosophers are not closet scientists.’71
People like Semir Zeki, Paul Churchland, and Stephen Hawking are confused if they think that philosophy is to be blamed for failing to solve problems that science might solve, since philosophy is of a different nature to the natural sciences. We hope for increases in our knowledge and improvements in theory from science, discarding falsehoods and accumulating truths along the way. However, we cannot hope for such things from philosophy because philosophy is not a cognitive discipline. It aims at developing our understanding rather than contributing to our knowledge of the universe and the natural world. Its progress can be measured in terms of problems that have been clarified and understanding gained rather than in terms of knowledge.
As for psychology, Churchland is confused if he thinks that it can be replaced by neuroscience.72 Our ordinary psychological expressions do not constitute a theory, although various theories might be formulated employing those psychological expressions. Churchland’s position involves various paradoxes (philosophical or conceptual problems). For one thing, he cannot fault ‘folk psychology’ for failing to explain memory or the ways in which learning transforms us if he is correct in thinking that psychological expressions should be eliminated, since psychological expressions are employed in formulating the problems.73 Given that our ordinary concepts are not a theory we cannot expect theoretical progress from them, although we might expect some kind of progress from theories that employ psychological terms – from psychological theory – and it is indeed the case that empirical theories in psychology have advanced.74
Psychology cannot be reduced to neuroscience and nor is it similar to sciences like physics in the way that some psychologists have thought. For example, Wolfgang Köhler thought that psychology in the present day was like physics in its infancy. Physics had succeeded in moving from qualitative observations to quantitative measurement and psychology can hope to do the same, he thought.75 But Wittgenstein objected that ‘the confusion and barrenness of psychology is not to be explained by its being a “young science”; its state is not comparable with physics, for instance, in its beginnings […] For in psychology, there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion’.76 The ‘objects’ of psychology – mental states, events, and processes – are not hidden to others and only observable in their effects, like electrons. As Wittgenstein observed, we can see (at least sometimes) that someone is sad77 or that they are fearful78 or in pain.79 However, none of this implies that psychology is not a science at all. Psychology can be said to have an empirical subject matter, to engage in systematic gathering and accumulation of knowledge, and psychologists might engage in experiments and gather data from those experiments.
Similar things might be said about other social disciplines. Given that they are not reducible to natural sciences, that they employ different kinds of methods and different kinds of explanations, we should not expect exactly the same kind of progress from them. However, political scientists, economists, human geographers, anthropologists, and sociologists do add to our stock of knowledge; these disciplines can be said to have an empirical subject matter, to aim at truth, to gather data, and to make useful generalizations from that data.
1.6Conclusion
In the preceding sections of this chapter I have presented arguments in favour of saying that social sciences are not reducible to natural sciences, that they involve different kinds of explanations to the natural sciences (i.e. explanations of action in terms of reasons, motives, and goals), that the methodologies involved in social sciences are at least sometimes different to those employed in the natural sciences, and that the kind of progress that might be expected in social sciences differs from the kind of progress that might be expected in natural sciences (and progress in social sciences amounts to something different than progress in philosophy).
In their book There is No Such Thing as a Social Science Phil Hutchinson, Rupert Read, and Wes Sharrock argue that due to these considerations about reductionism and so on there is no such thing as a social science. In the introduction to the book they consider the possibility that the analytical rigour of social studies, the responsiveness to evidence in social studies, and the willingness to learn from other modes of enquiry found among those studying the social realm might be reasons to call social studies social sciences. However, they reject this on the grounds that neither of these considerations is sufficient for calling something a science.
In contrast to Hutchinson, Read, and Sharrock, I want to stand by the claim that social sciences are indeed scientific – that there is such a thing as a social science. Although the kinds of considerations alluded to by Hutchison, Read, and Sharrock are not, taken individually, sufficient to call something a science they might nonetheless be jointly sufficient (or it may be that together with other considerations they are jointly sufficient). One reason to claim that social studies are, or at least can be, scientific is that calling something ‘scientific’ plays a role in legitimizing that discipline. As John Dupré has recently pointed out, the term ‘unscientific’ is used as a term of criticism80 and we live in a world where social sciences and humanities come under attack from governments for being unscientific.81 The mere fact that social sciences are unlike natural sciences in various ways does not imply that they are illegitimate courses of study or that they are any less valuable than the natural sciences. Psychologists, economists, anthropologists, sociologists, and human geographers uncover truths and increase our knowledge of human society. Understanding ourselves as human beings and being able to make progress in the way that we relate to each other as economic, political, and social beings are all immensely important.
F. R. Leavis, mentioned in the introduction above, emphasized the importance of social studies. One point that he made was that the objects of study in social studies are in a sense prior to studies in the natural sciences:
There is a prior human achievement of collaborative creation, a more basic work of the mind of man (and more than the mind), one without which the triumphant erection of the scientific edifice would not have been possible: that is the creation of the human world, including language.82
Leavis thought that the study of the human world, including language, was immensely important for various reasons. Social disciplines can work in conjunction with natural sciences by helping to decide the ends which (largely instrumental) natural sciences aim at. Thinking carefully about human ends and more generally about what makes human lives significant, meaningful, happy, and rich as well as about how to bring about rich, interesting, happy human lives is the work of social sciences and the scientism of C. P. Snow, that Leavis was responding to, does not recognize the importance of this. Simply aiming at a ‘rising standard of living’, as Snow did, fails to engage with questions about what
