Download 方法論讀書心得四 : The Nature of Meaningful Behavior (Chap 2) and

方法論讀書心得四 : The Nature of Meaningful Behavior (Chap 2) and
The Social Studies as Science (Chap 3),
in The Idea of Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy,
PETER WINCH.
姓名：杜曼笛/98451506
本週讀物所關注
的主要問題為
何？此一問題有
何新意？誰是它
的稻草人？從這
個角度提問，有
何意義和價值？
As the title of Winch’s essay uncover, his main point is to relocate adequately
the social science and its goals or inquiries which are to him mostly
epistemological (“to understand the nature of social phenomena in general, to
elucidate, that is, the concept of a ‘form of life’”, p42), in regards to philosophy
itself, that is, philosophy when its nature or its possibility to investigate reality is
not misconceived or when sociological problem are not misconstructed as
scientific kinds of inquiry. Simply put, to him social science is more akin to
philosophy than to natural science in that its inquiries are on reality per se and
not on what reality of what, that is, to him, the questions of social science are
conceptual and not empirical (chap 3: objection to Mill’s views). To Winch
indeed, the central problem of sociology, that of giving an account of the nature
of social phenomena in general, belong itself to philosophy (p43). Indeed,
following Winch’s point of view, there should be a relocation of focus not on
methods but on attention put on the real matter of social science: meaningful
human action.
Briefly, Winch’s idea is not that there is not an idea of social science, but that the
term ‘science’ should be thought with cautious, or at least regarded different
from the natural science term or experimental science. Winch doesn’t deny the
rigor of scientific methods that should be of course at the core of each research;
however, he rejects the positivism of generalizations drawn form scientific
experimental methods. To him, there is no place for a scientific social science,
and so he objects all positivists, at least those, like Durkheim who propose to
treat social facts as things or as physical objects, on which things it is almost
possible to give scientific description or having almost an universal realm. For a
long part of this essay, Winch constructed his point of view by rejecting Mill’s
view that from mechanical explanation of a natural phenomenon to a social
phenomenon there is only a difference of degree of complexity and that there is
no species of causal explanations or relations for motives. To Winch indeed,
more than just a degree matter, it is a difference of nature, that is difference
between physical and conceptual.
To me, the second main point I degage from this reading is Winch’s (following
Wittgenstein) idea that each society has its own system which is drawn form
interne references and which would be impossible to understand from outside,
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rather, to understand them one should obligatory enter this system, so, human
action could become understandable from the inside, from within the context
and by understanding the relation the agent of the action has with this system. To
him, human action have doubtlessly a social dimension that is impossible to
grasp from the outside unless to grasp misunderstandings, and that, following
his view of a conceptualized mind, one should rather focus on language –game
rather that on one’s own pre-conceived ideas (point on which Winch has similar
ideas with Kuhn, and on which he follows Wittgenstein’s idea that language is
social and so that sociology investigation should inquiry on that domain).
Similarly to ethnographic methods, I feel, Winch argues that to understand a
human action, one should try to understand the meaning the agent makes of it
and the motives behind it, “To discover the motives of a puzzling action is to
increase our understanding of that action; that is what ‘understanding’ means as
applied to human behavior”(p78). Following these statements, Winch repeat
then his conception of social science as a confused idea and that sociological
inquiries and studies are in fact more philosophical than one would think
scientific.
What I believe is the value of this essay, agreeing with Winch or not, is the fact
of reconsidering the appellation of social science and to reconsider its
characteristic and goals so as to maybe consider different approaches, different
methods, and not being focused on scientific ways to face problems. Moreover,
by this discussion on social science, Winch focuses on the object of it, that is
human action or behavior and not physical or biological facts, so it seems
actually quite logical that social science instead of being attached to scientific
methods should rather indeed turn to philosophical kinds of inquiries and
methods.
作者如何導出和
發展此一問題？
他/她論辯
(argument)的結構
和策略為何？請
具體說明其論辯
起承轉合之處？
在那些轉折點上
不同於妳的想
法？在那些轉折
點上展現不同於
前人的思考路
徑？(例：他/她如
何反駁前人之看
法)？參考了哪些
After having stated his argument that sociology is philosophical rather than
scientific in the nature of its problem to solve, Winch first argues about the use of
language, which led him to develop his idea of the concepts that hides behind
one’s use of language. Furthermore, Winch argues about the closeness of the
system of concept sharing within one group or one society, system from which
human actually depend. Indeed, to him “ it is only by virtue of their possession of
concepts that they are able to make generalizations at all” (p44).
Then, Winch mainly exposes his idea of human behavior by first explaining what
is a “meaningful behavior”: a symbolic character. Taking assets on Max Weber,
Winch argues: “we are concerned with human behavior “if and in so far as the
agent or agents associate a subjective sense with it”(p45). For Weber, ‘sense’ is
subjectively intended, and so to him ‘meaningful behaviors’ are “performed for a
reason”. Winch draws on with his first example of the electing situation. Taking
defense of Weber and objecting Freudian explanation, Winch though concede that
the category of meaningful behavior also extends to actions that have no reasons
or motives, that is some which are only ‘reflective’ (Weber), though here, Winch
argues with Parsons that ‘traditional behavior’ in Weber’s sense have a normative
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資料？如何整合
這些資料？
character (p49).
However, then, basing on Weber, and Parsons, Winch also distinguishes action
that have reason with other which have not intended motives but which still have
sense, point from where Winch asks about the criteria to decide if an action has a
sense or not, which according to Weber is linked to the commitment of its agent
in the future, which lead Winch to his explanation of the need of a rule
application to be committed, such as the rule with language, as well as within a
social context. With the ‘N’ example, Winch deploys one of his main argument,
“if words are to retain any meaning, they (people) cannot be said to be ‘voting’
unless they have some conception of the significance of what they are doing”
(p51)(…) “all behavior which is meaningful (therefore all specifically human
behavior) is ipse facto rule-governed” (p52).
Following Oakeshott, Winch indeed argues that human actions are underlined by
rules or properties that however cannot be grasped to fit in a formula (example
of the Tortoise). Winch recognizes taking mostly following steps of Wittgenstein
in the development of the rule-following thesis, and also agree with Oakeshott to
reject “‘the rationalistic’ misconception of the nature of human intelligence and
rationality”(p54). To Winch indeed, the understanding of human rationality
comes form within, and again using Oakeshott’s thesis, to him “human activity
can never be summed up in a set of explicit precepts. The activity ‘goes beyond’
the precepts.” (p55). To Oakeshott as for Winch, there is not serious divide
between habitual behavior or rule-governed behavior, however Winch disagree
with him by stating that we can see a rule in one’s behavior if habitual or rulegoverned not if “whether or not a rule is consciously applied” but “whether it
(the agent) makes sense to distinguish between a right and a wrong way of doing
things in connection with what he does”(p58). Winch later pushes his thesis
further by saying “It is only because human actions exemplify rules that we can
speak of past experience as relevant to our current behavior”(p62), which led to
his discussion on the importance of reflectiveness in ‘meaningful behavior’
(p63) and the importance of alternative of conducts, that is “Understanding
something involves understanding the contrary too (…) That is why conduct
which is the product of understanding, and only that, is conduct to which there is
an alternative.”(p65).
Simply put, in the whole second chapter this is the main idea that Winch argues:
meaningful behavior having a special motives or reasons are mostly drawn by
conceptualized ideas of the agent of the action, and to some extent every action
has an underlying reason that is impossible or almost impossible to notice from
the outside. Furthermore, Winch also agrees that even if some action do not
maybe have clear reason for happening, at least agents of these actions do make a
sense of it.
Here however, to my reading, it seems like winch doesn’t extent to the possibility
that one can also do something without knowing actually the meaning of it, and
even though he had no conceptualization of it, he is still having a behavior. (For
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example, somebody from a primitive society who has never seen a weapon could
not make sense of the action he is doing when he shoot by inadvertence, though
one can’t say this is not an action, so what kind of behavior is that?).
Broadly I agree with Winch to say that if one has to understand a human behavior,
one should positions from an insider perspective so as to grasp the most complete
understanding of it, however, the point I believe I don’t agree with Winch if I
understood his point is that it seems like to him it is impossible in fact to grasp
understanding on one other because we stand in a different society and our
conceptualized views are different. Put to the extreme, and as argued by others,
there are also limits to the understandings between two people even from the
same society or group, so following these facts, how in fact can we give a sense
to social studies? It seems to me that Winch doesn’t talk of impossibilities in these
processes, and even though he doesn’t accuse social science of having no content
or significance, he does neither explain too far his view and which though would
certainly be an interesting discussion.
In the third chapter, The Social Studies as Science, Winch illustrates his positions
of rejecting natural science methods to study social science by objecting Mill’s
conception of no logic in ‘moral sciences’ and his view of empirical laws of
society. Apart from rejecting the scientific methods, Winch also rejects Mill’s
conception of social sciences as empirical. To Winch, “(…) the notion of a human
society involves a scheme of concepts which is logically incompatible with the
kinds of explanation offered in the natural sciences.” (p72). Furthermore, Winch
objects Mill’s conception of a causal relations or explanations for motives, since
to Winch there would then be “ a danger of reducing motive explanations”(p80),
and so, to him, a statement about an agent’s motives “is better understood as
analogous to a setting out of the agent’s reasons for acting thus”(p81). Later on,
Winch also object Ryle’s conception of motives as “law-like proposition”, and for
Winch, the agent’s reasons should not be understood in light of an agent’s
dispositions but rather in light with “the accepted standards of reasonable
behavior current in his society” (p81). As a conclusion on those aspects, Winch
argues “Learning what a motive is belongs to learning the standards governing
life in the society in which one lives; and that again belongs to the process of
learning to live as a social beings” (p83).
Finally, Winch argues for the almost impossibility to predict historical trends,
human decisions and social developments since we cannot understand them, since
it has no sense yet because not yet achieved.
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5
本文有無以個案
或資料舉證或詮
釋？作者如何透
過個案說明其論
點？或者，作者
如何詮釋資料？
有何新意？進一
步，請從日常生
活取材，舉出類
似的個案。
To illustrate his points of action intended subjectively by its agent, Winch takes
example on the ‘N’ person voting for labor party and gives possible underlying
reasons for N’s choice and the underlying process leading to it as well as the
processes leading another person O to predict N’ votes. (N must live in a society).
As for illustrate the notion of rule, Winch gives the example of he anarchist and
the monk: to use the word and the notion rule with care: in the case here, they
both follow diverse kinds of rule. He exemplified more this notion of rule taking
example on learning English writing and grammatical rules.
There are also numerous other examples for ‘meaningful behavior’ and its
contrary, but to me the main example is the one drawn from Lewis Carroll’ s
paper What the Tortoise Said to Achilles, and illustrates Winch’s view that while
human action, language, and thoughts are essentially conceptualized and
governed by rule, the demand for formulae of understandings on these actions or
thoughts would lead in the social science realm to endless and unneeded
discussions. To him indeed, “the process of drawing an inference, which is after
all at the heart of logic, is something which cannot be represented as a logical
formula” (p57).
From daily life, to illustrate Winch’s main ideas in his essay, I would take the
example of the situation of crying. Taken from the outside, most of people view
this action as an expression of sadness, however, for some people, it is the
contrary in certain case of extreme joy, and for some other it is linked in fact to
physical pain. Without knowing for sure the reasons why somebody is crying, we
cannot figure out the meaning of this action.
As a second example maybe more akin to Winch’s idea that one has to inquiry a
special human action from within the context of a society or group, it is true that
one could certainly not make sense of many daily actions that we operate for
different reasons through the world and in different contexts, such as running.
Indeed, taken from the outside, running in its scientific description is the same
action for everybody, that is of moving oneself on one’s legs with varying pace
though faster that just walking. However, from a social science kinds of inquiry,
one will not grasp the underlying meaning or reason of one’s run if one doesn’t
observe it from within the context, that is, is it a hunt? Is it a sportive race? Is it
because one is late? Is it just for a sportive activity? Is it because one is
purchased? Is it because one want s to give back something that has fallen from
somebody’s purse? Is it to play? If all these cases are different from a social
science view of their underlying reasons and motives, which makes sense of
them, from a natural science approach, this action is the same. Furthermore, from
a social science perspective, one should also inquiry the underlying concept of it,
so for some people maybe the notion of running is not the same.
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對你的研究問題
有何啟示？是否
揭露了原有研究
角度的侷限？對
於研究的各個步
驟(從研究問題、
資料蒐集、詮釋)
是否提供了更多
的想像？請具體
說明(例如：可以
怎麼蒐集資料？
可以考慮哪些面
向？)更進一步，
套用皮耶.巴亞德
的說法，這篇文
章在你生命中的
定位為何？它和
你的集體圖書館
中其他書的關係
為何？
請用 100 字簡要
說明本週讀物的
主旨，並列出 510 個關鍵字。
With Winch’s example from Lewis’ Tortoise and Achilles discussion, I read it
clear that while doing research extreme cautious should be put on
generalizations we might take for granted and we should rather avoid them or at
least deeply question their extent.
Furthermore, concerning Winch’s idea of social science, I believe that in
nowadays social science researches and methods, there is probably not anymore
such danger of being more attracted to natural science than to social facts in
themselves. However, Winch’s essay makes it revived that one, even and mostly
when choosing a research question or when being deep in it, one should never
forget to question the other possible underlying concepts or reasons so as not
carrying misleading interpretations. Furthermore, according to Winch, some
crucial aspects of natural science methods such as rigor or experiments still
should be considered when pertinent.
Finally, I believe that indeed one has to inquiry a fact or phenomenon from
within a context, however, I also tend to see no harm to also inquiry it from the
outside to a certain extent so as maybe to grasp new approaches or analogies that
could be maybe relevant to some point.
In my library, this essay of Winch will probably rest next by Kuhn because of its
general approach of how we consider a problem and how we should maybe rethink or inquiry more often our beliefs or ways of seeing. Certainly, it will also
not be far from other philosophers or writers on cognitive sciences’ and
anthropology books.
As for in my life, I believe this essay will certainly have a similar influence to
the one of Kuhn’s in that it proposes a shift in thinking, at least some grounds
(methodologically or epistemologically) to broaden the way we apprehend
reality and the understanding we make of it. So, once more, I believe this essay
will also be read again so as to grasp more understanding of it as well as to
inquiry differently maybe its positions in light with future researches.
Simply put, Winch denies the positivist characteristics of social sciences since
they are focused on human behavior and social phenomena, which in turns
means that social sciences’ nature is more akin to philosophy when not
misconceived. Following Wittgenstein’s thesis, Winch goes further saying than
since each society is carrying a set of intern rules underlying each persons’
thoughts, language, actions, it is indeed impossible to observe these process
from a natural science or empirical perspective, rather one should make an
internal and conceptual experimentation of them from within the society or
group to be studied.
Keywords: Philosophy; epistemology; concept; social phenomena; human
behavior；meaningful behavior; rule-governed behavior; conceptual
misunderstandings; motives;
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如果妳/你要寫這
篇文章的續篇，
會如何寫？還可
以問哪些問題？
有哪些可以繼續
探索的議題或疑
點？
Because Winch’s essay is a half-century-old, I would describe the following
changes or shift that had happened in social sciences, since it is obvious that a
shift have been made from natural science kinds of inquiry and methods to a
more “social” focus.
Furthermore, because according to my reading of Winch, there is almost no way
in his view that one could grasp some cross-cultural understandings, so with the
evolutions that happened since 1958, I would try to understand how and with
what methods following social sciences experts have contoured Winch’s idea in
order to grasp some understanding, in domains such as anthropology or
cognitive science for example. Also, if one has to position from within a society
or group to gain understandings, and if in fact if it is impossible to understand
behavior totally because of one’s rules, then how are we to inquiry crosssocieties relations, communication?
Through this reading, even though Winch explains his view of a “meaningful
behavior”, that is one underlined by some reason or motives, or at least one on
which the agent make sense, and even though he puts the problem of the limits
to which there is space for not getting the “real” reason because of agents maybe
lie or have no clear idea of them, I am still confused with this concept of
“meaningful behavior”, and then behavior which would not fall into his
conception would be not meaningful behavior or just “blind habit” or “mere
response to stimuli” ? How do others inquiry what to him would seem like a not
meaningful actions and what sense would they make of them?
Furthermore, following Winch, if human behavior are rule-governed and
conceptual, human relations should also be so then, so if I was to continue this
essay, I would oppose to Winch that there are certainly cases in which this thesis
is maybe applicable, whereas in most of cases I believe not. Indeed, I don’t
believe that all of our behaviors are concretization of concept or ideas, and that if
we don’t have them then it is not possible that we act them, so I would push his
thesis to the limits of its applicability so as not to generalize his thesis even
though himself is cautious about generalizations!
Finally, according to Winch’s thesis, the reasons underlying his conceptions,
thoughts and language use and writings in this essay are also rule-governed, and
so are certainly not to be grasped by others from outside of the context or society
in which it had happened, so then what could Winch say about the relevance of
this essay for others in the world? How should we read it? Indeed, if each
society is somehow closed within its sets of conceptualization, the view Winch
has on society and the understanding of social phenomena is then certainly not
similar even not applicable to other societies? Then on, somehow different
methods should be used to understand different societies’ phenomena?
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