From: rgroff-AT-yorku.ca
Date: Sat,  8 Nov 2003 11:18:24 -0500
Subject: Re: BHA: RE: Description in social science


Hi all,

David, you wrote:

> I think the traditional distinction between the explanation and description
> is part of Humean atomistic rationality.  As far back as RTS, Bhaskar points
> out that an adequate description will be one that contains the generative
> mechanisms we know to exist (and possibly identify new ones).  So, an
> adequate description is one that includes the (causal) generative mechanisms
> occurring in a particular instance; and an adequate explanation is one that
> identifies the (causal) generative mechanisms occurring in a particular
> instance.  They are one and the same thing.

I think that a version of this is right, until you get to individuals.  Think
about it this way: the scientific essentialist claim is that things do what they
do in virtue of what they are (and/or are what they are in virtue of what they
do -- there is a fairly technical philosophical literature emerging on this
point, but I thinkit's okay for the rest of us to fudge it for the time being).
 So if you know what a thing is, you know what it can do.  

The thing that is different about individuals is that, unlike other efficient
causes, we do things for reasons.  This is not a problem for the scientific
essentialist, however, who can say that this (acting for reasons) is a thing
that we do in virtue of what we are.  

But the problem is that this only tells us something about the relationship
between action and human capacities in general.  

Here's why it gets trickier when you get to the particulars.  Actions are not
only done FOR reasons; they are alse the expression OF meanings.  The breakdown
in the description = explanation model for individual action comes because the
answer to the question "WHAT meaning am I expressing through my action?" is not
always the same as the answer to the question "WHY am I expressing this
particular meaning at this particular moment in time?"

So: I raise my hand in a classroom.  What am I doing?  Am I demonstratiing
allegience to a charismatic fascist movement (it's my right hand)?  Am I
greeting someone?  Am I signalling a service provider?  No.  It seems that I am
asking to be recognized.  Good.  We've interpreted the action.  We can now
describe it.  

But the description does not, in fact, answer the WHY question.  We still don't
know what reason is for the action that I've carried out (i.e. for the
expression of the meaning "Please recognize me"?).

One unsatisfying response to this would be so say "The description does too
contain the reason: you enacted the sign for "Please recognize me" precisely
because you wanted to be recognized."

The other unsatisfying response is to switch the unit of analysis from the
enactment of a sign to back to bodily movement.  Here you'd say "Look, what
we're trying to explain is the lifting of an arm.  The important point is that
what causes arms to be lifted are reasons."  This may be so, and it sets you in
the right direction of asking what the reason was, but notice two things: (1)
now you are asking not what the reason was for the enactment of a sign, but
rather what the reason was for the contraction of muscles; (2) given that the
reason is not given by the behavioral description "Lifting of an arm," you're no
closer to having these two coincide. 

So there are two tasks, theoretically (1) appreciate that action CANNOT be
re-described as bodily movements (not even "bodily-movements-caused-by-resons"),
and that the desription component in relation to action involves the
interpretation of meaning in a way that it does not in other cases AND (2)
undertake to give a non-vacuous causal explanation of why people enact the signs
they do enact at any given moment.

See what I mean?

 


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