Social Science and the Problem of "Is"/"Ought"

 Dear WSN,

If any you could take a few moments and critique the following essay for me, I'd be most appreciative. I wrote it after considering many of the discussions that have appeared here on this list in the last few weeks.  Mostly, I'm looking for a basic evaluation of its ideas; however, I should inform you, it's not currently an actual article for submission anywhere.  It's merely a "think piece" designed to introduce and develop some ideas I've been coming up with regarding the whole Weberian fact/value dichotomy--"is"/'ought" distinction as a major basis of social science research & theory.  If you could tell me which of the ideas in this essay are best (and which especially need further development and/or correction, I'd certainly be greatful for it.

Also, I should mention - I'm proposing this material as an alternative to the usual social scientific discussions regarding "is"/"ought."  If any of you know of any better sorts of alternatives to this model of mine I'm developing or any better sorts of explanations/distinctions/and so forth, I'm certainly willing to hear what they are.  Thanks.

Luke Rondinaro

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Social Science and the Problem of Is/Ought

The distinction between “Is” and “Ought” is fundamentally central to social scientific endeavors.  But is the distinction a valid one? …

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Consider this:  There may indeed be one social reality in which all people live – one “IS” or seamless garment of human social existence if you will.  But does not that reality have many aspects or dimensions to it?  … Is it accurate for us as social scientists to say that the status-quo of global affairs (geo-politically and economically speaking), an “is” in its own right, is exactly the same as the “is” of World Systems Analysis and World History (that is to say, the systematic study of social structures, processes, and phenomena within a given generation and more generally over time over many generations)? … Are there some other distinctions to be had here?  Or is there but one dimension to the “Is” of human social reality; i.e., the status-quo (which in the social sciences is studied in both an empirical and systematic fashion minding both material commodities/material processes and human social dynamics)?

Questions such as these have prompted me to fashion a working model to try and explain such phenomena.  Taking my starting point from the anthropological concepts of deep structuring and surface structuring, I maintain there are actually two fundamental elements to social structures & institutions in our world.  There’s a sociological overlay to such social entities, and then there’s an underlying substrate. 

The sociological overlay is where surface phenomena occur.  This seems to be the level at which reporters gather information for news stories and where global affairs analysts focus upon in their scholarship regarding geopolitics and economic concerns.  This also is the level at which social constructs are developed, where social problems (structural or functional) are diagnosed from, and where remedies to such ills are meted out.  These social constructs in the sociological overlay are “legal entities” developed and maintained through a socio-political legal setting.  They are media driven; by their being focused upon in the media spotlight their actuality as “real social entities” is reinforced.  In lieu of being covered in the news, they have no existence per se; their structures, processes, functions, roles, status, and other characteristic phenomena are entirely synthetic, artificial, and ultimately “imaginary” (in the sense that Benedict Anderson used in his coining the term “Imagined Communities”).  They are constructed in the collective mentalities of media elites and implemented through the operative mechanisms of media outlets.  In-and-of-themselves, they have no actuality apart from coverage in the public circles of news, entertainment, and corporate media, but by virtue of their being tied into the ‘underlying substrate’ they do have an actual reality of sorts.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Apart from computer systems that keep it running, the NASDAQ is only a sociological-economic construct and a virtual reality.  True, as an index, it tracks the economic performance of stocks; its projections can have a very real effect on the investor who might either make great monetary gains or losses on a particular day.  But, still, it’s a social construct and a virtual reality.  If the media and legal community were not there to create/maintain/reinforce and imagine it into the public’s own imaginative vision, it would and could not exist.  True, over time (even if the media wasn’t around to cover it in the news – through TV, Newspapers, radio, et al), its effects [that is to say, the effects of its projections…] would still be felt by way of informational and socioeconomic drift; the financial prosperity of a company would naturally rub off on its investors (and vice versa) even if the NASDAQ or the Stock Market itself were not there as the operative means for this to happen by.  But ultimately, in this the world of our making (and of our media & legal system’s making), NASDAQ – and indeed all the companies whose stocks performance it tracks – does/do have a reality of sorts.  It’s a synthetic, imagined reality.  The public picks up on this mimetic reality through the news, and in turn reinforces its actuality by indeed perceiving that NASDAQ … and the Dow, and Microsoft, and Johnson and Johnson, etc. – really does/do exist as “financial indexes” and “corporations/organizations.”  But, again, as a reality it’s synthetic and virtual.  It’s historically conditioned to be a uniquely modern phenomenon, and without the media and legal system to establish and maintain its existence/major functions it can’t and wouldn’t exist.  How odd, then, that pragmatic social affairs models use this type of a social construct (from the ‘sociological overlay’ of our modern world) to be the basis for their own brand of social science inquiries!  How odd that they seem to project this paradigm upon all history!

There may be a rationale behind this model and its approach to social reality.  By focusing on social constructs in the overlay, social scientists within this camp are actually doing a number of important things.  (1) They’re still focusing on structural –operative systematic concerns (as opposed to normative matters) while maintaining their commitment to pragmatic social affairs (i.e., practical social concerns).  So by rights, they’re still in the “is” camp; they still are being empirical and objective; and most important of all (while keeping a pragmatic focus) they still are being systematic in their scholarly work.  (2) They’re being eminently practical (and, because of this, eminently ‘issues’ oriented) while at the same time focusing on specific objects in the concrete here and now of the real world; they do this by focusing not on character types and/or behavioral types in social science, but on specific structures, specific process, and so on in the social world of human communities both in the Present and in World History (i.e., companies like Microsoft and GE, Indexes like the Dow Jones Industrial Average and NASDAQ, or systematic institutions of American public life like the “education system”, “healthcare system”, etc.)  By focusing on the specific, practical structures of current events/recent history, these social scientists in their work are doing something that’s very practical  (3) They’re able to diagnose the structural problems of such units in order to better create systematic remedies/solutions for them over time.  Not only can problems be fixed, however, through such a model; better sorts of structural units can be created for the future which don’t have the same propensity for systematic-sociological problems.  Thus, with a range and scope greater than that of mere social work, social science in the pragmatic social affairs paradigm can – with both a finer palate of empirical tools and a broader, more globalized reach of theories and methodologies [macro-tools] – help to solve the structural-operative problems of our modern world’s socioeconomic system and its units like the airline industry, the automotive industry, et al.

But, of course, there’s more to social reality than the parameters of this model would suggest.  There’s more to Science and World History than this model would indicate.  Here’s where we come to the underlying substrate. 

The underlying substrate is where deep structured kinds of phenomena take place.  It’s where the actual ‘structure’ and ‘processes’ of social entities reside.  Beneath the (practical) organizational charts and pragmatically-oriented maps of systematic relationships between social structures of the world are made visible to the public eye through socio-legal definitions and through the agency of the media, beneath all of this exists the underlying substrate and its major elements.  What does the substrate consist of?  In the first order of analysis, it consists of the actual structure and operations that make up particular social entities (i.e., the types of people, activities, and relationships that exist between them).  In the second order, it consists more specifically of the behaviors, roles, and statuses of the group’s members.  Then, finally, in the third order, it consists of the ideas, values, and physical/cognitive-emotional inputs that members themselves place in the envisioned reality of the group.

The “is” of the sociological overlay and the “is” of the underlying substrate are two entirely different things.  While the “is” of the overlay is immersed in the sociopolitical/ economic context of the status-quo, the “is” of the underlying substrate is framed in the context of deep-structured social behaviors.  While the “is” of the overlay can change more readily with political and ideological changes in the social order, the “is” of the underlying substrate changes less frequently within societies over time (and usually not in tune with standard sorts of politico-ideological shifts in power).  While the “is” of the overlay is related more to the terms the media and the socio-legal system of a given society expresses it as, the “is” of the underlying substrate is ultimately reducible to and expressed in the terminology of Behavioral-Culture, Anthropology, Psychohistory, and Social Psychology.  Finally, while the “is” of the overlay is ultimately more pragmatic in its orientation, the “is” of the substrate is ultimately more natural and behavioral in orientation.  It’s even more empirical & scientific in ways that are roughly parallel to the natural sciences (like Physics, Chemistry, and Biology).  The “is” of the substrate ultimately derives from organic, evolutionary processes and not social construction.

The sociological reality of “what is” is multifaceted.  It has many dimensions; some are sociopolitical, others are socio-behavioral, and so on.  A simple distinction between “is” and “ought” cannot account for such a reality by itself.  It’s, therefore, up to us as modern social scientists to consider better models that can account for such a complex reality.

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