Social Science and the Problem of Is/Ought Addendum to Is

WSN,

Continuing with my argument from the last essay … please do consider this … I look forward to your comments and insights on this piece.  Thanks.

 Luke R.

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Social Science and the Problem of Is/Ought – Addendum to “Is”

What do we mean by “is” ?  … Does “is” more correctly refer to the objects themselves of one’s study or to the facts about such objects?  And, in an empirical frame of reference is there a difference between the two?

Such is the problem that faces us as social scientists; but in a very real sense it’s the sort of problem that’s (sooner or later) bound to be faced by any sort of scientist in his or her work.  [This isn’t just a matter of pie-in-the-sky philosophy or glittering generalities.  There’s a fundamental principle at issue here. ]  If empirical investigation is the hallmark of scientific work (either for the natural scientist or the social scientist), then the question I just posed comes down to this:  is there a disconnect between (the object itself that one is studying), (the empirical means by which one is studying it), (and the information derived from such an empirical means)? …If the answer is “yes” then we have a problem as scientists!  Aside from improving our methods and techniques in concrete, grounded, practical ways to yield more accurate results in our investigations, we have almost no way of telling whether the information we’re gathering is correct or not (and even worse, we have no way of telling whether the way we’re interpreting the data is completely accurate either).  If there is wide gulf that’s unable to be crossed between the object and the information about the object, and there is no sure way to correctly interpret or process the data so that it gives a proper impression of the object itself, then one’s science as a field of intellectual inquiry becomes defunct.  [At some point, three fundamental axioms must be accepted:  that generally, at some basic level, the senses are reliable and that the human ability to discern information correctly is somewhat reliable also; that the human mind has the ability to correctly build principles and concepts around such basic facts; and that the mind, through logical processes, has the ability to correctly fashion conclusions upon such a base of factual content.]   Without such axioms, one’s (Science and Philosophy/one’s Epistemology and Empirical Research) falls apart.

If the question is “no”, however, there still may be a problem!  If there is no disconnect between the object itself and the data gathered concerning the object, then both can correctly be called “is.”  But is this the case?  Does this not, at some level, defy right reason and common sense?  For, if both the object and the facts are “is”, then why (logically and sensibly) can’t the knowledge but around this base of content also be considered “is?”  If one arrives at this knowledge through reasoning or through further empirical tests and/or observations, does this make the preceding argument any less valid if both the objects and facts are “is?”  This is the dilemma faced by saying there is absolutely no sort of disconnect between the “object” and the “facts.”  Properly, speaking there is only one “is” (in this particular sense) and that “is” or “what” is the object itself in our studies. 

But is this not being essentialist?  Perhaps it is … but not if it’s understood that the “is” of the object involved in not entirely an essentialist sort of “is.”  Instead it’s the manifestation of the object involved in its state of being or, better yet, in its phenomena.  That’s what I mean here by the “is” of the object itself.

What does this have to do with the scholarship of our social science? … It has nothing more to do with it, really, than just to re-focus us, again, on the object(s) of our studies and the kinds of behavior & phenomena they exhibit.

When we study the demographics of Central Asian nomads as they interwove themselves in and out of sedentary oasis communities in the Pre-Modern world, when we look at inter-cultural patterns between Eastern and Western Christianity in Medieval times, or when we look at trading patterns between East African communities and Asiatic ones (like the Arabs, the Indians and the Chinese) across the Indian Ocean, we’ve got to remember the source of our analysis.  We’ve got to remember that it’s the (semi-nomads of Central Asia/Christian peoples of Eastern, Western Europe and the Near East/peoples and societies engaged in the Indian Ocean trade) who are, properly speaking, first, the subjects of our analysis and, then, through their activities and social organizations/ processes/functions, secondly, the proper objects of our study.

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((“Seventy percent of the Afghan people are malnourished.”/  “One out of four children in Afghanistan won’t live past age five because healthcare is not available for them.”))

So going back to the First Lady’s Weekend Radio Address and the statistics she cited there, I believe we should be able to see the disconnect between the matter at hand under the lens of a pragmatic social affairs/social mechanics model Vs. the organic dynamism of the underlying substrate (along with its structures and processes).  (That is to say, we should be able to see the difference between the mechanics of such social facts and the deep-seated & habitual social behaviors to which they are connected.)  We should be able to see the difference between the “issue”/mechanics of Afghani malnourishment and the organic sets of processes and human behaviors behind such material in the overlay.  We should be able to see this difference with respect to Laura Bush’s second example as well; behind the issues of “healthcare” and “child mortality” are organic, habitual sorts of behaviors and socio-structural units that exist irrespective of interventions from the outside and the types of social constructs applied to them and over them … by (in this case) the US who is trying to remake Afghanistan –> regardless of what’s really happening there or what really happened there in the past -> into its own image. 

In terms of my model, “Yugoslavia” fell apart because it had no real tie-in to an underlying substrate in its operation as a sociological-political-economic unit; all it had was the coercive force of Soviet power to keep it together and without a strong Soviet military in the end to keep it in place, it fell apart.  In essence, there was no real “Yugoslavia.”  There was no organic social dynamism behind it; all there had been was the overlay of a social construct.  Maybe that’s all human social existence in world history “is” – a set of social constructions over time – but (even so) that begs the question –> why do some social entities systems hold up, seemingly on their own, better than others?  … Why the Chinese Empire, Why the Roman Catholic Church, etc.? … Why did these hold up and keep their essential structure as systems while others like Yugoslavia, didn’t? …Why do some hold up for some time and, then, as it seems to the casual observer, fall apart … Western Roman Empire, Eastern Byzantine Empire, Chinese Empire holding up really until 20^th century? …

To my mind, all these questions can only be best explained through reference to models that are akin to mine own … models emphasizing fluid dynamism and organic developments in human social reality …  models that look at underlying human behaviors in either a socioeconomic, anthropological, social psychological, or psycho-historical context … and which use such material as a means to understand the facts of human social existence.

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