Download Three Interpretations of Weber`s Aporia

北京师范大学
教育研究方法讲座系列
教育研究中的
比较―历史方法
Comparative-Historical Method
in Educational Research
曾榮光
Tsang, Wing Kwong
[email protected]
北京师范大学
教育研究方法讲座系列
Lecture 1
The Essence of
Comparative-Historical Studies:
Bridging Quantitative and Qualitative Methods
in Educational Research
Max Weber’s Aporia for Researchers of
the Social Sciences
"Sociology is a science concerning itself with
interpretive understanding of social action in order
thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its
course and consequence. We shall speak of 'action'
insofar as the acting individual attaches a subjective
meaning to his behavior. …Action is 'social' insofar
as its subjective meaning takes account of the
behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its
course." (Weber, 1978, p. 4)
Max Weber’s Aporia for Researchers of the
Social Sciences
Statements of the problem:
Problem of interpretive sociology: Weber stipulates that
sociology should endeavor to provide "interpretive
understanding" of the "subjective meaning" underlying
social action.
Problem of positive sociology: Weber at the same time
stipulates that sociology should strive to render "causal
explanation of course and consequences of social action.
Problem of micro- and macro-sociology: How can
reciprocity of subjective meanings of different individuals
participating in social interaction be possible?
1824-1920
Juxtaposing Quantitative and Qualitative
Methods in Educational Research
Objects of Inquiry
Aims of Inquiry
Quantitative Method
Natural phenomena;
Natural world;
Pre-existing & given reality;
Natural facts
Regularities;
Universal and exhaustive laws
of causal explanation
Orientations of
Inquiry
Objectivity;
Value-neutrality
Methodological
Approach
Method of Inquiry
Logical-positivism;
Empiricism
Scientific experiments;
Social survey
Mode of
Explanation
Causal explanation in:
Nomological-induction model;
Probabilistic-deductive model
Qualitative Method
Cultural phenomena;
Lifeworld;
Man-made & constructed
reality; Artifacts
Meanings & significances;
Subjective meanings;
Social meanings;
Cultural meanings
Subjectivity;
Value-laden & culturally
significant
Empathetic understanding;
Interpretive approach
Ethnography;
Hermeneutics;
Psycho-analysis
Intentional explanation in:
Rational-choice model;
Interpretive-purposive mode
Three Interpretations of Weber’s Aporia
 Alfred Schutz in begins his major scholarly work The
Phenomenology of the Social World (1932/1967) the chapter
entitled “The Statement of Our Problem: Max Weber’s Basic
Methodological Concepts.”
(1899-1959)
9
Three Interpretations of Weber’s Aporia
 … He defines “Max Weber’s initial statement of the goal of
interpretive sociology ” as “to study social behavior by
interpreting its subjective meaning found in the intentions of
individual individuals. The aim, then, is to interpret the actions
of individuals in the social world and the ways in which
individuals give meaning to social phenomena. But to attain this
aim, it does not suffice either to observe the behavior of a single
individual or to collect statistics about the behavior of groups of
individuals, as a crude empiricism would have us to believe.
Rather, the special aim of sociology demands a special method in
order to select the materials relevant to the particular questions it
raise.” (Schutz, 1967, Pp.6-7)
Three Interpretations of Weber’s Aporia
 Jurgen Habermas in his book On the Logic of the Social
Sciences (1988/1967) also starts with Weber’s aporia.
Three Interpretations of Weber’s Aporia
 …. Habermas underlines that “The definition of sociology that
Weber gives in the first paragraphs of Economy and Society
applies to method: ‘Sociology is a science concerning itself with
interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to
arrive at a causal explanation of its course and consequence’ We
may consider this sentence as an answer to the question, How
are general theories of social action possible? General theories
allow use to derive assumptions about empirical regularities in
the form of hypotheses that serve the purpose of explanation. At
the same time, and in contradistinction to natural processes,
regularities of social action have the property of being
understandable. Social action belongs to the class of intentional
actions, which we grasp by reconstructing their meaning.”
(Habermas, 1988/1967, Pp. 10-11)
Three Interpretations of Weber’s Aporia
 Georg H. von Wright in his book Explanation and
Understanding (1971) indicates that there are two prominent
traditions of explanation prevailing in the methodology of the
social sciences , namely causal/nointentional and intentional
explanation. But he underlines, “It is … misleading to say that
understanding versus explanation marks the difference
between two types of scientific intelligibility. But one could say
that the intentional or nonintentional character of their objects
marks the difference between two types of understanding and
of explanation.” (von Wright, 1971, p.135) Instead he
distinguishes two traditions of explanation prevailing in the
methodology of history and social sciences, namely
causal/nointentional and intentional explanation:
(1916-2003)
Three Interpretations of Weber’s Aporia
 Georg H. von Wright …causal/nointentional and intentional
explanation:
Causal explanation: It refers to the mode of explanation, which attempt
to seek the sufficient and/or necessary conditions (i.e. explanans) which
antecede the phenomenon to be explained (i.e. explanandum). Causal
explanations normally point to the past. ‘This happened, because that
had occurred’ is the typical form in language.” (von Wright, 1971, p. 83)
It seeks to verify the antecedental conditions for an observed natural
phenomenon.
Teleological explanation: It refers to the mode of explanation, which
attempt to reveal the goals and/or intentions, which generate or motivate
the explanadum (usually an action to be explained) to take place.
“Teleological explanations point to the future. ‘This happened in order
that that should occur.’” (von Wright, 1971, p. 83)
New
Institutionalism
Universality
Institutionalization
Roles
Predictability
Regular Patterns of
Social Actions
Regularity
Institutional
context
Typification
Interaction with contemporaries
Deductive-nomological explanation
&/or
Inductive-probabitistic Explanation
Reciprocity of perceptions
Objectivation
Externalization
Empiricism
Objectivity
Repeatability
Observability
Logical
Positivism
Expression
Face-to-face interaction
Verification
of
causal
Proposition
Protention—Anticipation—Fulfilment
Action
Behavior
Antecedent
Cause
Language
& cultural
context
Subsequent
Effect
Causal
Explanation
Intentional
Explanation
Meaning
context
Perception
Intentionality
Natural phenomenon
Subjectivity/Consciousness16
Debate between Methodological
Individualism & Methodological Collectivism
 The reductionism and methodological individualism
 F.A. Hayek: "There is no other way toward an understanding of social
phenomena but through our understanding of individual actions direct
toward other people and guided by their expected behavior." (quoted in
Lukes, 1994, p. 452)
 Karl R. Popper: "All social phenomena especially the functioning of
all social institutions, should always be understood as resulting from
the decisions, actions, attitudes, etc. of human individuals, and …we
should never be satisfied by an explanation in terms of so-called
collectives." (quoted in Like, 1994, p. 452)
Debate between Methodological
Individualism & Methodological Collectivism
 The reductionism and methodological individualism …
 J.W.N. Watkins: "I am an advocate of …the principle of
methodological individualism. According to this principle, the ultimate
constituents of social world are individual people who act more or less
appropriately in the light of their dispositions and understanding of
their situation. Every complex social situation or event is the result of a
particular configuration of individuals, their dispositions, situations,
beliefs and physical resources and environment. There may be
unfinished or halfway explanations of large-scale social phenomena
(say, inflation) in terms of other large-scale phenomena (say, full
employment); but we shall have not arrived at rock-bottom
explanations of such large-scale phenomena until we have deduced an
account of them from statements about the dispositions, beliefs,
resources, and interrelations of individuals." (Quoted in Luke, 1994, p.
452
Debate between Methodological
Individualism & Methodological Collectivism
 The reductionism and methodological individualism …
 Jon Elster: "By this (methodological individualism) I mean the
doctrine that all social phenomena ― their structure and their change
― are in principle explicable in ways that only involve individuals ―
their properties, their goals, their beliefs and their actions.
Methodological individualism thus conceived is a form of
reductionism. To go from social institutions and aggregate patterns of
behavior to individuals is the same kind of operation as going from
cells to molecules," (Quoted in Wright, 1992, p. 111)
Debate between Methodological
Individualism & Methodological Collectivism
 Classical sociologists’ conception of methodological
collectivism
Emile Durkheim's methodological collectivism
Sociology is "the study of social facts" (Durkheim, 1982/, p. 50)
"A social fact is any way of acting, whether fixed or not, capable of exerting
over the individual an external constraint; or which is general over the
whole of a given society whilst having an existence of its own, independent
of its individual manifestation." (1982, p.59)
Debate between Methodological
Individualism & Methodological Collectivism
 Classical sociologists’ conception of methodological
collectivism
Education as a social fact:
"This definition of a social fact can be verified by examining an experience
that is characteristic. It is sufficient to observe how children are brought up.
If one view the facts as they are and indeed as they have always been, it is
patently obvious that all education consists of a continual effort to impose
upon child ways of seeing, thinking and acting which he himself would not
have arrived at spontaneously. " (1982, p. 53)
Debate between Methodological
Individualism & Methodological Collectivism
Education as a social fact:
"Each society sets up a certain idea of man, of what he should be, as much from
the intellectual point of view as the physical and moral; that this ideal is, to a
degree, the same from all citizens, that beyond a certain point it becomes
differentiated according to the particular milieux that every society contains in
its structure. It is this ideal at the same time one and the various, that is the focus
of education. Its function, then, is to arouse in the child : (1) a certain number of
physical and mental states that the society to which he belongs considers should
not be lacking in any of its members; (2) certain physical and mental states that
the particular social group (caste, class, family, profession) considers, equally,
ought to be found among all those who make it up. Thus it is society as a whole
and each particular social milieu that determine the ideal that education realizes.
Society can survive only if there exists among its members a sufficient degree of
homogeneity; education perpetuates and reinforces this homogeneity by fixing in
the child, from the being, the essential similarities that collective life demand. But
on the other hand, without a certain diversity all co-operation would be
impossible ; education assures the persistence of this necessary diversity by being
itself diversified and specialized." (2006, p.79-80)
Debate between Methodological
Individualism & Methodological Collectivism
 Classical sociologists’ conception of methodological
collectivism…
 "Sociology can…be defined as the science of institutions, their genesis
and their functioning." (Durkheim, 1982, p. 45)
The Hermeneutical Arc: Institutionalization
of Social Interaction
 Habermas’ solution to the General Theory of Social Action:
At the beginning of his book On the Logic of the Social Sciences,
Habermas poses the fundamental problem “How are general theories of
social action possible?” (Habermas, 1988/1967, P. 11)
Subsequently, Habermas provides the following solution to the problem:
“In the terminology of Max Weber,…we can say that in a certain way
sociology presupposes the value-interpretation of the hermeneutic sciences,
but is itself concerned with cultural tradition and value-system only insofar
as they have attained normative power in the orienting of action. Sociology
is concerned only with institutionalized values. We can now formulate our
question in a more specific form: How are general theories of action in
accordance with institutionalized values (or prevailing norms) possible?”
(Habermas, 1988, p. 75)
 The institutionalists’ solutions
Comparative-Historical Method on
Institutions:
Big Structures, Large Process and Hugh Comparisons
Lecture 1
The Essence of Comparative-Historical Studies:
Bridging Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in Educational Research
END