Date: Wed, 06 Aug 1997 09:07:10 -0400
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: BHA: Non-experimental science (was "What must the ...")


Louis,
This is the part of your statement I was responding to:

>I felt agreement with the general drift but was uncomfortable with the
>role meaning was being assigned: "Although Marshal, Doug and I are in
>agreement
>on CR not being a general, a priori theory and requiring at least support in
>the various domains outside natural science, ... I disagree with [this] way
>of putting it in terms of the meanings of "science", "cause" and
>"explanation."  I don't think it is right to say that the meanings of those
>terms are fixed by a CR analysis of natural science, especially the last
>two.  On their understanding, having fixed those meanings we go on to ask
>if social studies are capable of causal explanation, and if they are,
>whether those explanations are scientific in character.  I would prefer to
>say that first we establish what natural science is in CR terms and then
>ask whether causal explanations in other domains conform to the same kind
>of depth analysis.  If the answer were to turn out negative in some domain,
>I don't know that we should declare that there are no causal explanations
>in that domain simply because they do not conform to the CR account gleaned
>from natural science." I thought we were in agreement over the legitimacy
>of extending CR to other domains but disagreed over the role of meaning.

I felt there's a critical ambiguity here.  In the sense that Blalock claims
to do causal analysis, of course there's causal analysis in his social
science. Nonetheless, it does not conform to the CR account.  So, is it
causal analysis or not?

I think it reasonable to leave the door open for causal analyses that do
not conform to the CR account.  These would have to justify themselves on
some grounds that are not subject to CR's critique of +ism.  I want to
leave the door open for some new, reasonable accounts of causality, but I
want to close the door on empiricist readings like Blalock's.  NB that his
reading is not only different from CR; it's contradictory.  For instance,
he requires constant conjunctions.  So my point is that we need to go
further than simply allowing the possibility for some non-CR accounts
outside experimental sciences.  Similarly, we must do more than just
license CR as one (of possibly several) legitimate account(s) of causality
in non-experimental science.  While not declaring apriori that any causal
explanation that does not conform to the CR account is illegitimate (a
position I never advocated), we need to find some way of criticizing and
ruling out empiricist accounts like Blalock's.  The problem with RTS is
that anyone bent on defending non-CR accounts in non-experimental science
can argue that RB's ontological inferences do not necessarily apply in the
domain with which a given non-experimental science is concerned.

In short, our discussion of MEANING gave a useful argument for applying
CR's version of causal explanation in non-experimental sciences.  It did
not, as far as I can see, give us a strong enough argument for ruling out
certain alternative accounts.  (Although we can always make ontological
conjectures that parallel CR's ontological claims in experimental realms
and, if valid, would thus rule out certain accounts of causal explanation.)
 Thus, I think your statement leaves the door a bit too open, but I don't
see how the argument in RTS helps us shut it any further.  Of course this
doesn't mean we can't find a latch somewhere else.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------
Marshall Feldman, Associate Professor		                marsh-AT-uriacc.uri.edu
Graduate Curriculum in Community Planning and Area Development	401/874-5953
The University of Rhode Island					401/874-5511 (FAX)
94 West Alumni Avenue, Suite 1; Kingston, RI 02881-0806


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