‘Understanding and Explanation in Cognitive Sociology’, paper presented at Theory and Philosophy...

Paper for Theory & Philosophy Summer School, Blackwater Castle, Castletownroche, Ireland, 30 April‐4 May, 2012, presented 3 May.

Understanding and Explaining in Cognitive Sociology Piet Strydom

‘the idea of sciences that have systematically two‐sided themes, themes that combine the theory of the scientific province systematically with a theory of the cognition of that theory, has emerged only in modern times and, moreover, so obscurely that it must still contend for its peculiar sense and its legitimacy’

Edmund Husserl Introduction I have been given the title, ‘Understanding and Explaining in Cognitive Sociology’, and asked to say a few words about it. I take this request in the spirit of the philosophy of social science where ‘understanding’ (Verstehen) and ‘explanation’ have become established as key technical terms – technical in the methodological sense of the word. It should be noted that the problem of the relation between understanding and explanation has a rather long and chequered history in the social sciences, sociology in particular. It will be impossible, therefore, to say something about how these concepts figure in the methodology of cognitive sociology unless a historical detour, however brief, is taken through the social scientific controversies about their relationship. This will be the first part of my presentation. This background is meant to provide a foil against which to highlight a moment in the historical development of the social sciences which is neglected in the available literature on the philosophy and history of the social sciences, but which is absolutely crucial for grasping the uniqueness of the cognitive approach. This is particularly the case regarding the difference between the cognitive approach and the understanding or interpretative approach. The exemplary figure I’ll be referring to here, probably surprisingly so at first sight, is the phenomenologist or, more correctly, the transcendental phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl. The second part of my presentation will briefly dwell on this historical moment. I select Husserl in view of his anticipatory differentiation between the cognitive and interpretative approaches as well as his wide‐ranging, yet not always explicit, impact on cognitive sociology. Most commonly, this impact is associated with Alfred Schutz1 and the influence of his social phenomenology on US interpretative sociology, e.g. Harold Garfinkel, Aaron Cicourel and Erving Goffman. These authors are of course also cognitive sociologists. But more important still is that some leading late 20th‐century authors whose work can be regarded as representing versions of cognitive sociology, Jürgen Habermas, Niklas Luhmann and Pierre Bourdieu, are in strategic respects dependent on Husserl’s radical departure.

Once this classical root of the cognitive approach has been made visible, it will be possible to focus

1 Regarding the relation between Husserl and Schutz, there is some confusion about the interpretative and cognitive dimensions in the latter as well as in the subsequent sociological development. This is largely due to non‐observance of the difference between Husserl’s earlier ‘descriptive phenomenology’ and later ‘transcendental phenomenology’, and of Schutz’s (1967) shift to social phenomenology and the theory of action with the effect of de‐emphasising the situation‐ or context‐transcendent moment. What got lost was Husserl’s implicit grasp of what may be called the basic cognitive problematic: that something belonging to the world is nevertheless able to distinguish itself from the world and to gain a perspective on and relation to the world. In Husserl it appears as the nexus of meaning and world, which implies that he grasped the double status of the world as simultaneously containing and transcending itself (see e.g. Luhmann 1995: 69).

1


on understanding or, rather, reconstruction (which is characteristic of the cognitive approach) and explanation in cognitive sociology. This will be the main part of my presentation. It will not be possible in the present context to offer an historical‐theoretical overview of cognitive sociology (see Strydom 2007). In keeping with the specified topic, the focus will be exclusively methodological. What needs to be said, however, is that by ‘cognitive sociology’ I have in mind specifically the new kind of cognitive sociological approach that I have been working toward making visible and plausible over a long period, particularly the past decade or so (e.g. Strydom 2000, 2002, 2007, 2009a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012). I Historical controversies about explanation and understanding in sociology: The dualistic view of methodology The mainstream conception of the methodological history of the social sciences, sociology in particular, follows the narrative of the historical tension and competition between explanation and understanding or, differently, between positivism and interpretativism. According to the narrative, this historical path is marked by three related discipline‐shaping controversies about the relation between explanation and understanding (Apel 1979; Habermas 1984: 108‐9; Delanty and Strydom 2003; Strydom 2008). From the naturalistic or positivistic perspective of so‐called ‘unified science’, the assertion of a tension between explanation and understanding is tantamount to a misleading distraction, since only explanation has scientific status, with understanding being no better that a pre‐scientific crutch like a stimulating cup of coffee. From the interpretative perspective, by contrast, the existence of understanding over and above explanation compels the recognition of an unavoidable so‐called ‘methodological dualism’ in the social sciences, sociology in particular – whether in the older terms of Wilhelm Dilthey and the neo‐Kantians, or in the newer Wittgensteinian terms of Peter Winch and the ‘interpretative turn’. First explanation‐understanding controversy The first methodological controversy in the social sciences that played explanation and understanding off against one another occurred between 1858 and 1914, enjoying its highpoint in the 1890s. Stimulated by the Haym‐Twesten debate, the controversy was initially opened by Johann Gustav Droysen in the late 1850s and early 1860s (Riedel 1971) but had to await amplification in 1883 by Dilthey (1973). To positivism he opposed hermeneutics, or the art of interpretation, as the methodological foundation of the so‐called Geisteswissenschaften, thus establishing the methodological dualism between the human, historical or cultural sciences and the natural sciences. By the 1890s, it had bloomed into what is famously known as the Methodenstreit in which the neo‐Kantians Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert defended methodological rather than ontological versions of the dualistic position as did Dilthey, while Max Weber (1976) in his so‐called verstehende Soziologie eventually searched for a way to mediate between understanding and explanation.2 Due

2 The following are the principal contributors, dates and issues of the first controversy: Rudolph Haym‐Karl Twesten, late 1850s: imagination vs observation Johann Gustav Droysen, 1858‐1863: understanding/interpretative vs explanatory history Wilhelm Dilthey, 1883: hermeneutics as methodology of the Geisteswissenschaften vs positivism Methodenstreit: Georg Simmel, 1892: understanding as methodology of the historical sciences Wilhelm Windelband, 1894: ‘idiographic’ cultural sciences vs ‘nomothetic’ natural sciences Heinrich Rickert, 1896: ‘individualising’ cultural science vs ‘generalising’ natural sciences Max Weber, 1922: verstehende Soziologie – social science as understanding cultural science with generalising intent

2


to ambiguous formulations, however, his work tended to reinforce the methodological dualism rather than overturn it. Second explanation‐understanding controversy The second explanation‐understanding controversy took place between the 1940s and 1960s, with epigonic echoes still heard as late as the early 1970s (e.g. Leat 1972). The core of this controversy was borne by the exchanges between the social phenomenologist Alfred Schutz and the neo‐positivists or logical‐empiricists Carl Hempel and Ernst Nagel. In the 1940s Hempel formalised the positivist conception of ‘deductive nomological’ explanation, enabling Theodore Abel to offer his infamous positivistic cup of coffee theory of Verstehen. But it was presentations by Hempel and Nagel in 1952 that particularly annoyed Schutz. In the early 1930s already, he (Schutz 1967) had drawn on Husserlian phenomenology to provide Weber’s verstehende Soziologie with a solid foundation. And from the resulting perspective of phenomenological interpretative sociology, he (Schutz 1954) then attacked Hempel’s and Nagel’s unified science view that there is only one scientific method, namely the natural scientific method. Neither Nagel (1961) nor Hempel (1965), on whose shoulders fell the mantle of the leading proponent of explanation in the philosophy of science, was in the mood to meet Schutz halfway, and therefore launched a determined counter‐attack, albeit without mentioning him by name.3

Yet it is Schutz’s contribution that would gain significance in the context of the next controversy which spearheaded the so‐called ‘interpretative turn’ in the social sciences. Third explanation‐understanding controversy The third explanation‐understanding controversy of the 1950s to the 1980s, generally speaking built on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s (1953) late language philosophy, Charles Morris’s (1946) Peircean pragmatics, and Hans‐Georg Gadamer’s (1975) philosophical hermeneutics. Peter Winch’s (1958) Wittgensteinian linguistic approach, however, proved catalytic. More specifically sociologically, not only Schutz’s phenomenological interpretative sociology figured strongly, but also George Herbert Mead’s pragmatist symbolic interactionism played its part, while the cognitive revolution of the late 1950s contributed a few traces to the debate. One outcome of this controversy was a new formulation of the traditional methodological dualism established and confirmed in the first and second explanation‐understanding controversies. Due to Winch’s contribution, it became known as the ‘neo‐Wittgensteinian dualism’ according to which the natural and social sciences are two different language games operating with distinct languages. Another outcome was Gadamer’s influential attempt to undercut the dualism by rejecting method and hence science in favour of following Heidegger by stressing the fundamental and all‐pervasive hermeneutic process of understanding represented by the continuous stream of tradition. It is the

3 The following are the principal contributors, dates and issues of the second controversy: Alfred Schutz, 1932: phenomenological interpretative sociology Carl Hempel, 1942: general laws in history Carl Hempel and Paul Oppenheim, 1948: ‘deductive‐nomological explanation’ Theodore Abel, 1948: positivist cup of coffee theory of Verstehen Carl Hempel: ‘unified science’ vs methodological dualism Ernst Nagel, 1952: ‘unified science’ vs methodological dualism Alfred Schutz, 1954: phenomenological interpretative sociology vs Hempel and Nagel Ernst Nagel, 1961: defence of unified science Carl Hempel, 1965: defence of unified science

3


confluence of these Anglo‐American and Continental approaches, reinforced by the contributions of Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, Mary Hesse, Charles Taylor and others that, by the 1980s, gave rise to the so‐called ‘interpretative turn’ in the social sciences. As a result, Hempel (1969) himself had to admit that his long‐hegemonic positivistic ‘deductive‐nomological’ concept of explanation suffered a fatal blow due to indeterminacy rendering the notion of general law baseless. This by no means implies, however, that explanation as such has been shown to be expendable and illegitimate, as many an interpretativist even today still fancies. In fact, the contributions of Kuhn (1962), Willard v O Quine (1970) and Saul Kripke (1982) simultaneously pulled the rug from under the interpretativists: the assumption of there being a determinate object of understanding, a stable set of meanings about the social world, is an equally baseless metaphysical assumption (Roth 2011). In the final analysis, this controversy suggested that neither the scientistic nor the interpretative approach is capable of prevailing, but rather that both the long‐accepted conceptions of explanation and understanding are in need of being relativized in favour of the acknowledgement that the only possibility left for the social sciences is methodological pluralism. Accordingly, every possible methodological approach depends, on the one hand, on a particular mode of engagement with reality and, on the other, on the ends pursued through a systematic process of research (e.g. Habermas 1972; Apel 1971, 1979; Bernstein 1976; see also Strydom 2008 and Roth 2011).4 In sociology, not untypical for the social sciences, there is however relatively little reflection on the proper sense of this requirement. II Neglected historical moment vital to grasping cognitive sociology: The tripartite view of methodology Now, the widely repeated narrative of the co‐existence – whether uneasy or not – of explanation and understanding in the social sciences, sociology in particular (also reflected in the title I was given for this presentation), does not adequately capture, to be sure, the full diversity of the strands constituting social‐scientific methodology. For one, this methodology does not have two, but in fact three historical sources: namely, the 16th, 17th and 18th‐century Reformation, Great Instauration of science, and Enlightenment respectively (Strydom 2008).5 Then, more importantly for present

4 The following are the principal contributors, dates and issues of the third controversy: Willard v O Quine, 1951: criticism of the dogmas of positivism Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1953: publication of Philosophical Investigations Peter Winch, 1958: Wittgensteinian renewal of interpretative social science Hans‐Georg Gadamer, 1960: hermeneutics vs method/science Harold Garfinkel, 1960: everyday rationality vs scientific rationality Thomas Kuhn, 1962: historical sociology of science vs positivism Aaron Cicourel, 1964: interpretative criticism of positivist methodology Alfred Schutz, 1967: publication in English of The Phenomenology of the Social World Jürgen Habermas & Karl‐Otto Apel, 1968: methodological pluralism Carl Hempel, 1969: admission of the failure of positivism Willard v O Quine, 1970: the indeterminacy of translation Charles Taylor, 1971: defence of interpretative social science Aaron Cicourel, 1973: interpretative sociology as cognitive sociology Erving Goffman, 1974: primary frameworks Saul Kripke, 1982: showing the limits of the Wittgensteinian concept of rules 5 This implies that prior to the emergence of the philosophy of social science in the 19th century which presupposed the beginning of the founding of disciplines, there were various controversies shaping the early modern discourse about the new kind of knowledge and knowledge object – society – of the time, involving such figures as Hobbes, More, Vico, Shaftesbury, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hume, Ferguson, Condorcet and Saint‐Simon (see Strydom 2000).

4


purposes, there is a specific line of development that helps account for the emergence of the cognitive approach as distinct from positivism and interpretativism. Simplifying considerably, it is a line that runs from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz to Immanuel Kant and the Left‐Hegelians Karl Marx and Charles S Peirce, which Husserl ( 1950, 1965, 1969) took up in a somewhat discontinuous yet core respect in an innovative way in the early 20th century in the course of founding his transcendental phenomenology.6 It is on the significance of Husserl’s contribution towards the emergence of the cognitive approach that I wish to focus now – a truly pivotal historical nodal point which, strangely enough, is neglected in the philosophy and history of the social sciences. A characteristic feature of Husserl’s writings from early to late is a criticism of psychologism – meaning a rejection of empirical psychology as the basis of positivist epistemology which gives centre stage to empirical regularities drawn from psychic data. By contrast, he indeed returned to inner experience, to constitutive meaning‐generating subjectivity, but in such a way that he incorporated both intention and intentional object or cogitatum (1950: 95, 1969: 245), both actuality and potentiality: ‘the stream of mental processes can never consist of just actualities’ (1950: paragraph 35), but at the same time also embraces potentialities; actual meaning always refers to potential meaning. It was to encapsulate this insight that Husserl employed the well‐known metaphor of a continually shifting horizon within which we always find ourselves situated: ‘a horizon of determinable indeterminacy’ (1950: 101). By thus showing that meaning and world are simultaneously constituted, Husserl opened the possibility of grasping actuality in a deeply penetrating way: with reference to potentialities which, although at best being only something virtual like expectations, nevertheless are essential for there to be any actuality at all. It is on this basis that he insisted on the need for ‘continuously two‐sided research’ (Husserl 1969: 263, also 37) which through reflexivity would overcome the ‘phenomenological naiveté’ not only of positivism, but also of hermeneutics. Accordingly, the conclusion follows, the social scientist does not simply study actuality as such, but rather actuality as it is shaped by potentiality, by expectations, meta‐rules or transcendental principles making it possible. To be able to deal with these context‐transcendent conditions, Husserl devised the phenomenological method of ‘epoché’ (1950: 67), the bracketing of existing actuality, by means of which to identify the ‘eidetic’ or ‘noematic’ structures, the ‘formations of meaning’, ‘idealities’ (1969: 242, 245, 262), ‘field of unities’, ‘validity unities’ or ‘world’ (1950: 137, 70) as he variously called it. Figure 1: Husserl’s Radical Departure – Intentionality

stream of consciousness ‘actualities’ ‘potentialities’: ‘formations of meaning’ ‘idealities’ ‘field of unities’ ‘validity units’ ‘world’ epoché ‘continuously two‐sided research’

6 Husserl of course lacked a dialectical understanding which leads his translator and editor, Quentin Lauer, to write: ‘it is interesting to speculate how much more plausible Husserl might have been if he had not rejected out of hand the Hegelian dialectical development’ (Husserl 1965, p. 125, footnote 63).

5


As his work progressed from a ‘descriptive’ to a ‘transcendental phenomenology’, Husserl thus extended his criticism to the understanding or interpretative approach. Like positivism, also hermeneutics assumes that there is something like matter‐of‐factness – i.e., focussing on actuality without taking potentiality into account. Both therefore engage in one‐dimensional intentio recta research rather than in the required reflexive two‐sided type – the former prioritising facts in the form of empirical regularities, and the latter stable circumscribed context‐bound meanings. In the case of the interpretative approach, consequently, the negative consequences are contextualism, historicism, historical septicism and relativism. Husserl (1965: 122‐23) demonstrated these limitations of hermeneutics specifically with reference to the work of Dilthey, who himself sought to move from a conception of hermeneutics based on psychology to one based on objective mind. To sum up, then, Husserl’s contribution from the present point of view is twofold. First, by demonstrating through his analysis of the problem of intentionality the significance of the distinction between intention and intentional object, he cleared the ground for grasping the cognitive nature of culture that consists of a horizon of expectations which incursively shapes intentions, actions and practices in everyday life in intricate but incisive ways. This insight allowed a form of understanding that is much more penetrating than Verstehen, understanding or interpretation in interpretative social science. Rather than being confined to the symbolic or semantic dimension, it pushes on to the cognitive structuration underpinning symbolic and semantic constructs. It is interesting to note that Habermas, Luhmann and Bourdieu appropriated this very insight to whose respective writings it is absolutely central.7 The depth of this form of understanding is plummeted methodologically, and this is where we find Husserl’s second contribution. His phenomenological method of epoché, which brackets existing reality in order to discover the transcendental principles or rules making it possible, can be regarded as a precursor of the methodology of ‘reconstruction’.8 This methodological approach – reconstruction – is to be found in both Habermas’ (e.g. 1979, 1990) and Axel Honneth’s work, but it is more generally characteristic of cognitive sociology. III Reconstruction and reconstructive explanation in cognitive sociology Methodologically, reconstruction defines the uniqueness of cognitive sociology. Instead of interpretative sociology’s method of Verstehen, cognitive sociology proceeds by way of reconstruction. And instead of positivist or empiricist ‘deductive‐nomological’ explanation, this unique methodological form provides cognitive sociology with a different type of explanation, namely ‘reconstructive explanation’ (Strydom 2011a). It plays a central role in Critical Theory, in so far as the latter has a cognitive dimension, where it enables a form of ‘reconstructive critique’ (ibid.)

7 As regards cognitive structuration, I differ from both Habermas and Luhmann. Whereas the former focuses on formal pragmatics and the latter on social systems governed by binary codes, I shift the attention to the cognitive order of society which sociologises formal pragmatics and moves a level up from social systems. Luhmann’s unsociologised concept of ‘world’, which corresponds to Husserl’s, is closer to the cognitive order of society than systems. Garfinkel’s (1974) listing of the rational properties of social activities, Goffman’s (1983) idea of the interaction order, and Bourdieu’s (1986) conception of practically effective cognitive structures or classification systems could perhaps be regarded as steps toward a sociological concept of the cognitive order of society. 8 Although it is evident from Habermas’ earlier work that he saw epoché as a method to identify ‘transcendental norms’ (1972: 304), he later presented epoché and ‘reconstruction’ as mutually exclusive alternative approaches to the disclosure of the ‘general presuppositions of communication’ (1984: 128). Reconstruction, of course, goes beyond a confinement to consciousness and pure reason toward communication and practical reason, and thus requires that what Habermas calls ‘Husserlian absolutism’ (1984: 130) be relinquished.

6


– but, for present purposes, I leave critique as distinct from understanding, reconstruction and reconstructive explanation out of account. Understanding and Reconstruction The methodological procedure of reconstruction, as indicated earlier, is characteristic of cognitive sociology. As such, it differs appreciably from Verstehen as it figures in interpretative social science. The traditional conception of Verstehen as it has been accepted and is to a large extent still accepted in interpretative social science concerns the understanding of meaning in the sense of the interpretation and grasping of the semantic content of symbolic constructs. The object domain of interpretative understanding encompasses every meaningful phenomenon – from expressions (e.g. action, speech acts, activities and practices, social relations), via crystallisations or sedimentations of expressions (e.g. texts, documents, art works, material cultural artefacts, goods, techniques), to unintentionally or indirectly generated configurations (e.g. personality structures, organisations and institutions). The understanding of the meaning of such symbolic phenomena presupposes a relevant context of meaning in which the object is embedded. For this reason, understanding is also called ‘contextual interpretation’ (Bohman 1994: 138). Many indeed insist on contextualism being the characteristic feature and strength of the interpretative approach (e.g. Michael Walzer, Richard Rorty, Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot). Understanding in this contextual sense must doubtless be regarded as a necessary moment in social‐scientific methodology. It allows access to be gained to social reality and data to be obtained from it. Such access is necessary since social reality is a symbolically pre‐structured reality. Social life itself, as Heidegger, Schutz, Gadamer and Giddens made clear, transpires in the medium of interpretation, understanding, language, communication and the generation of meaning – all of which the social scientist first needs to grasp through ordinary everyday language before being able to proceed with social scientific labour (see Cicourel 1964). Cognitive sociology, therefore, would not be able either to circumvent this necessary moment of initially gaining access to a symbolically pre‐structured social world (see Strydom 2011a on iconic problem disclosure and abductive object constitution). At this point, however, an interesting implication emerges which is important for differentiating reconstruction from understanding. The understanding of symbolic objects is significantly different from observing symbolic objects. In order to grasp social life from the inside out, as it were, the social scientist is required to take up an intersubjective relation and thus to establish a symmetrical relation with members of society. Despite this symmetry, however, and this is the important point, it is the case that the understanding of the meaning of a symbolic object nevertheless entails the treatment of its semantic content as a fact – e.g. as the intention of an actor, the motivating goal of an actor, the oral account of unemployed women, the narrative of the Celtic Tiger or of its demise, etc. Now, it is precisely here that the methodological procedure of reconstruction characteristic of cognitive sociology parts ways with and is appreciably different from interpretative understanding. Rather than dealing with meaning simply as a fact, reconstruction is specifically concerned with the cognitive underpinnings or infrastructure of meaning – i.e., the knowledge and, more importantly, the cognitive structuration supporting and carrying the meaning or semantic content. The cognitive dimension in this sense touches on the mechanisms that not only account for the production or generation of symbolic constructs and their meaning, but simultaneously also make possible their evaluation and judgement of their validity. On occasion, interpretative social scientists do indeed go beyond meaning as fact toward its evaluation, yet these are typically cases where neither the nature of the evaluation nor the basis and justification for the evaluation is accounted for. An historical example is Weber’s so‐called ‘rational interpretation’ (1973: 126) which goes beyond the context by

7


referring to the principle of rationality which, however, is kept within very narrow confines. By contrast, cognitive sociology has a clear conscience about this, since it systematically adopts a reflexive two‐sided context‐immanent/context‐transcendent approach instead of the context‐immanent or context‐bound approach of interpretative social science. This difference between interpretative and cognitive sociology, it should be pointed out, can of course be traced back to their distinct general cognitive interests: the interpretative approach being interested in knowledge that could contribute to improving self‐understanding, repairing the relation to tradition and overcoming misunderstanding, and the cognitive approach in knowledge that could stimulate learning, self‐transformation and especially social transformation. As a form of social‐scientific analysis, reconstruction takes up everyday understandings, interpretations and meanings, reflectively penetrates them, and then identifies and extracts their formal features, thus transcending the given context by formulating the cognitive meta‐rules counterfactually defining their potentialities. From everyday understandings, interpretations and meanings to the counterfactually operating meta‐rules, we have to do with cognitive mechanisms (see Strydom 2011a) or generative rules responsible for the production of symbolic constructs and meaning. These generative mechanisms are of different kinds, all being biologically based and socio‐culturally developed, but occupying distinct levels and covering varying scopes – from micro‐level cognitive competences and know how, through meso/macro‐level collective actor, organisational and coordinating frames or schemas, to abstract cultural meta‐rule systems constituting society by laying down the very form of the world. It is the latter that make possible the cognitive ability to exercise evaluation and judgement. Overall, the object of reconstructive analysis is the investigation of the process of the generation and structuration of social reality in terms of the generative and regulative role these different mechanisms play in the process (see e.g. Strydom 2009b, 2011b, 2012). The respective objects of interpretative and cognitive sociology can be compared and contrasted as in the following table. Table 1: Object Domains of Interpretative and Cognitive Sociology context‐immanent context‐transcendent

(actuality) (virtuality/potentiality)

MICRO MESO‐MACRO MACRO Interpretative sociology: beliefs symbolic constructs intentions meanings preferences action, speech, interaction empty orientations discourse, activities, practices motives cultural objects, goods, techniques indirectly generated configurations: personality structures, institutions ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Cognitive sociology: the form of the world cognitive competences collective actor frames cognitive order of society cognitive structures (e.g. organisational frames abstract cultural meta‐rules pragmatic presuppositions coordinating frames standards of evaluation and & expectations) judgement cognitively borne intuitive pragmatic forms rule knowledge reflexive expectations process of generation and structuration of social reality

8


The above suggests that reconstruction is a two‐sided or stereoscopic procedure which is located at the threshold between the context‐immanent symbolically structured social reality and the context‐transcendent yet immanently‐rooted reflexive forms having a shaping effect on social reality. While obtaining access to social reality through meaningful symbolic phenomena, reconstruction is employed to extract and make clear for analytical purposes the formal features making the meaningful symbolic constructs possible and generatively regulating them. Reconstruction is not accomplished once and for all, however, but requires iteration through reflection in order to recoup the reconstructive move from the actual situation to its operative possibilities and counterfactual potentialities. Accordingly, reconstruction can be represented as in the following diagram (Strydom 2011a: 136). Figure 2: The Methodological Procedure of Reconstruction reflexive stereoscopic/two‐sided perspective context‐immanent context‐transcendent (actuality) (potentiality) 2 counterfactual analysis of actual situation cognitive competences cultural meta‐rules presuppositions Reconstruction standards expectations counterfactuals intuitive rule knowledge reflexive expectations 1 reflexive extraction and specification of formal features According to the above argument, reconstruction presupposes a reflexive stance assumed when engaging in analysis of the actual situation. It involves the reconstructive extraction and analytical specification of the general context‐transcendent meta‐rules or expectations which, although virtual or counterfactual, nevertheless have a structuring effect on the actual situation due to their immanent rootedness and incursive force. On the basis of such a specification of meta‐rules, a counterfactual reconstructive analysis of the actual situation in question is then developed. The reflexive stance which is maintained throughout, the specification of meta‐rules and the subsequent analysis all enable one to offer an explanation of the actual situation – what may be called a ‘reconstructive explanation’ (Strydom 2011a: 137). Reconstructive explanation In so far as reconstruction reflexively burrows down into the depth‐level of unobservable yet determinable structuring meta‐rules and counterfactual potentialities, the kind of explanation it makes possible differs sharply from the positivist or empiricist form of explanation. The latter is content with the surface‐level where it correlates observable variables with a view to establishing regularities. By penetrating to the depth‐level of unobservable yet determinable structuration,

9


reconstruction by contrast makes available for analysis what may be called a ‘reconstructive explanatory model’ (Strydom 2011a: 140). This model admits a wide‐ranging explanatory sketch to be developed. First, both the possibilities inherent in the actual situation and the constraints limiting it can be identified. Within these parameters, second, the range of observable differences or variation in the situation and their relations can be specified. Third, the inbuilt reference to the context‐transcendent dimensions also allows the identification of possibilities and potentials beyond the status quo which project its more or less drastic transformation. In this sense, the reconstructive explanatory model thus has a disclosing potential. On the basis of accounting for the actual situation within its particular horizon of potentialities by means of this kind of reconstructive explanatory sketch, reconstructive explanation becomes possible. Explanation, generally speaking, is an account that offers directions for how to deal with reality, for instance, transforming reality. Its strategic sense, therefore, is to point toward a crucial juncture where appropriate intervention could make a difference, leading to self‐transformation and social transformation. Reconstructive explanation, proceeding as it does from a reflexive two‐sided perspective, is a type of explanation that accounts for a given phenomenon via a context‐ transcendent reference – more specifically, in terms of the formal features extracted from the actual situation as relevant to the phenomenon, the formal features of the cognitive competences and frames as well as the cognitive process that gave rise to the phenomenon. In this sense, reconstructive explanation has a cognitively‐based normative quality which becomes manifest in the evaluation and judgement of the phenomenon. The reconstructive model lays down the parameters for the reconstructive explanation. Within the parameters one could locate and identify, first, a phenomenon to be explained (explanandum) such as a problem or pathology and, second, an explanatory generative mechanism accounting for the phenomenon (explanans) in the light of the relevant formal context‐transcendent features of the situation. In turn, the results of reconstructive explanation could serve other purposes. As in the case of Critical Theory, such a normatively relevant reconstructive explanation of a problem or pathology simultaneously provides the basis and framework for what is called a ‘critical explanation’ or ‘explanatory critique’ (Strydom 2011a: 138‐9). But this type of explanation and critique is not our concern in the present context. Our more limited aim was to make clear what I have called reconstructive explanation, which is the characteristic form of explanation in cognitive sociology. But further clarity can be had by way of an example. Example of cognitive reconstructive explanation In the last subsection of the paper, I present briefly an example of reconstruction and reconstructive explanation in practice, drawn from my recent book on methodology (Strydom 2011a, chapter 8) but elaborated a little more in cognitive terms. The example is Klaus Eder’s (2001) study of environmental policy making in the EU. According to a widespread opinion, EU environmental policy is in crisis. The standard approach is to put it down to the failure of policy implementation, which then leads to the diagnosis of the North‐South divide according to which the southern European countries have to shoulder the bulk of the blame. Instead of the typical context‐bound matter‐of‐fact approach, Eder adopts a relational stereoscopic or two‐sided cognitive approach which considers the actual context‐immanent situation as being lent unity by common context‐transcendent suppositions or reflexive expectations making communication possible. He indeed gains access to the EU environmental situation through interpretative understanding which registers a high level of policy making in Brussels, popular mobilisation and protest throughout Europe, and national media attention. But he then shifts the focus to the environmental discourse in the EU public sphere. This is the step that inaugurates the reconstructive procedure.

10


Reflexively penetrating everyday understandings, interpretations and meanings, reconstruction identifies and extracts a relevant formal feature which transcends yet is rooted in the EU environmental policy‐making situation. This requires the identification of the actors and the determination of the nature of both their relations and the emergent outcome. What the reconstruction specifically brings to the fore is a new and profusely referred to yet differently used idea, namely ‘sustainability’. This idea is cognitively conceived as a context‐transcendent idea, a common expectation that comes to form part of the cognitive order of society due to the fact that all those involved in the EU environmental field, despite using it differently, are reflexively oriented toward it. It is a counterfactual idea that, although emerging from the situation, keeps virtually available a range of as yet unfulfilled possibilities and potentialities. It is a meta‐rule that defines and structures or, rather, generates and regulates the situation. For this reason, Eder calls sustainability a ‘regulative idea’ (2001: 50). It is this context‐transcendent formal feature that is the key to the reconstructive explanatory model which allows him to account comprehensively for the situation of EU environmental policy making. The reconstructive explanatory model is in general concerned with the field of environmental struggle in Europe, and it provides reconstructive clarity on a variety of features of this field. On the one hand, it accounts for the possibilities inherent in the situation. Policy making opens up a social field which attracts an increasing number of actors. National actors, both governments and media, become more self‐assertive, while opportunities for popular collective mobilisation and protest become much more favourable. Simultaneously, on the other hand, constraints are also being generated. New structures and structural arrangements emerge which stimulate new social cleavages and a correspondingly transformed version of the class structure. The new structure formation is made graphically visible particularly by the thrust across national boundaries exhibited by the interconnections among mobilising and protesting groups across Europe. Table 2: Eder’s Reconstructive Explanatory Model

EU field of environmental struggle

context‐immanent context‐transcendent Action theory: Structural theory: Cognitive order of society: opens social field opportunities & generates & regulates constraints Brussels elite: legislation cleavages ‘regulative idea’: class structures SUSTAINABILITY nation‐states: worlds of sustainability supposition of commonality monitoring thrust beyond national basis of communication boundaries counterfactual farmers, workers, emergence of EU society reflexive expectation unemployed: mobilisation orientation direction

process of: potential outcome increase in communication, competition, contestation & conflict

structure formation constitution and transformation of society

meaning codified as knowledge dependent on new cognitive structures learning & potential learning

11


The leading idea of sustainability, which holds out the potential of a sustainable Europe, generatively regulates a situation in which, structurally, three distinct ‘worlds of sustainability’ (Eder 2001: 44‐46) encounter and confront each other: the Brussels ‘transnational elite’, the ‘nation‐state’, and the ‘popular’ worlds of sustainability. The fact that they are respectively characterised by legislative, monitoring and collective mobilisation modes of operation shows that these worlds make entirely different uses of the idea of sustainability. However, the explanatory model does not shed light only on why there is the increase in communication, both social interaction and discourse, and the concomitant intensification of competition, contestation and conflict, with the resultant structure formation. It also, or rather above all, shows the orientation, direction and potential outcome of the structure‐generating communicative interrelation. In turn, the communication and relations oriented toward sustainability are but the vehicle and ingredients carrying and generating a process of the constitution and transformation of society – indeed, a cognitive process in which the meaning generated by the cognitive competences and practices of the actors is codified into knowledge which itself depends on the formation of new cognitive structures or frames at the level of the actors, of organisations and institutions, and of the cognitive order of society. Finally, then, the model allows the explanation of the complex situation in which EU environmental policy making apparently gets inextricably embroiled. The explanandum, i.e., the phenomenon requiring explanation, in other words, is the apparent or rather reputed crisis situation of EU environmental policy making, including a variety of its features. The first prominent feature which itself takes on explanatory value, i.e., as an explanans or instance by means of which the situation is explained, is EU environmental policy making – yet policy making explained not simply in a non‐contrastive manner as a property of the situation, but rather reconstructively in a counterfactual manner in terms of the regulative idea of sustainability.9 Far from simply being a matter of dealing with the environment, as is typically held, EU environmental policy making is really a micro‐level cognitive mechanism that sets in train a much broader process in the course of which various other meso‐ and macro‐level cognitive and structural mechanisms contribute to giving rise to and structuring the nascent European society. Like policy making, such mechanisms likewise take on explanatory significance. They account for a process of structure formation. Considering the mechanisms,10 the generated process is not just an associational or relational one that produces meaning relative to the environment, but it is more profoundly a process of societal structure formation involving knowledge and cognitive structuration. The structures generated on the one hand open up opportunities and possibilities for dealing with the environment as well as for transforming society. But as is evident by contrast with the idea of sustainability, the structures formed on the other hand also impose limiting constraints. Here the evaluation and judgement made possible by the reference to the context‐transcending idea enter. Among the constraints are new cleavages and a European class structure which, through contestation and conflict, add to the dynamism of the process of the emergence and formation of a European society and, simultaneously, also give rise to the question of what type of society is being constructed: one ‘made in Brussels’ or ‘a self‐organizing European society’ (Eder 2001: 26)? And this question further implies, of course, a query about which one of these alternatives, these collective cognitive structures or frames, is sustainable. Above all, then, the process of structure formation is revealed as nothing less than a collective or societal learning process. This means that the explanation points to learning as possessing central explanatory relevance – a cognitive mechanism of actual learning as well as possible and potential learning which, nevertheless, is vulnerable to deformation or disruption by macro‐cognitive mechanisms and/or structural force of some kind. The European environmental struggle is only apparently a crisis, since the competition, contestation and conflict stimulated by the 9 See Van Bouwel and Weber (2011) for a discussion of contrastive and non‐contrastive explanations. 10 On mechanisms and their role in explanation, see Strydom (2011a: 141; Delanty 2012).

12


different uses of the idea of sustainability are but the medium of a process of structure formation and, in particular, collective or societal learning which is giving rise to a transformed European society. Eder’s reconstructive explanation – i.e., an explanation with reference to the context‐transcendent regulative idea of sustainability and the related context‐immanent cognitive mechanisms – can be summarised as in the following table. Table 3: Eder’s Reconstructive Explanation of the EU Field of Environmental Struggle Explanandum: environmental competition, contestation & conflict: crisis? Explanans: micro‐, meso‐ & macro‐cognitive mechanisms: • Policy making: sets a process in train • National & popular uses of sustainability: intensify communication, competition, contestation & conflict • Generated process: ‐ not just production of meaning relative to the environment ‐ structure formation involving knowledge & cognitive structures giving rise to cleavages, class structure & a new EU society • Competition, contestation & conflict: ‐ do not constitute a crisis ‐ collective or societal learning process • Normative question: direction & prospects: ‘EU society made in Brussels’ or ‘self‐organising EU society’? • Of central explanatory relevance: ‐ learning: actual, possible potential learning, vulnerable to deformation & disruption • Explanation: ‐ offers directions for how to deal with reality ‐ points toward a crucial juncture where appropriate intervention could make a difference Over and above accounting for the EU field of environmental struggle in the above sense, the reconstructive explanation opens the way for Eder to engage further in an explanation and critique of different aspects of the European situation in the light of the central explanatory relevance of learning. Particularly important in this respect would be the partialities of the cognitive frames and discursive interrelation of the actors as well as the macro‐cognitive and structural limitations constraining the central learning process. But the task of my presentation was to offer an account of how understanding and explanation figure in cognitive sociology, not in Critical Theory.11 I hope to have done so with sufficient clarity. References Abel, Theodore (1948) ‘The Operation Called Verstehen’, American Journal of Sociology 54: 211‐18. Apel, Karl‐Otto (1971 [1968]) ‘Szientistik, Hermeneutik, Ideologiekritik: Entwurf einer Wissenschaftslehre in erkenntnisanthropologischer Sicht’, in K.‐O. Apel et al., Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, pp. 7‐44. Apel, Karl‐Otto (1979) Die Erklären‐Verstehen Kontroverse in transzendentalpragmatischer Sicht. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 11 For an analytical presentation of ‘critical explanation’ or ‘explanatory critique’ in Critical Theory, see Strydom (2011a).

13


Bernstein, Richard (1976) The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Bohman, James (1994) New Philosophy of Social Science. Cambridge: Polity. Bourdieu, Pierre (1986 [1979]) Distinction. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Cicourel, Aaron (1964) Method and Measurement in Sociology. Glencoe, Ill: Free Press. Delanty, Gerard (2012) ‘A Cosmopolitan Approach to the Explanation of Social Change’, Sociological Review 60(2). Delanty, Gerard and Strydom, Piet (2003) Philosophies of Social Sciences. Maidenhead: Open University Press/McGraw‐Hill. Dilthey, Wilhelm (1973 [1883]) Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. I. Stuttgart: Teubner. Eder, Klaus (2001) ‘Sustainability as a Discursive Device for Mobilizing European Publics’, in K. Eder and M. Kousis (eds) Environmental Politics in Southern Europe. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 25‐52. Gadamer, Hans‐Georg (1975 [1960]) Truth and Method. London: Sheed and Ward. Garfinkel, Harold (1974 [1960]) ‘The Rational Properties of Scientific and Common‐sense Activities’, in A. Giddens (ed.) Positivism and Sociology. London: Heinemann, pp. 53‐75. Goffman, Erving (1983) ‘The Interaction Order’, American Sociological Review 48: 1‐17. Habermas, Jürgen (1972 [1968]) Knowledge and Human Interests. London: Heinemann. Habermas, Jürgen (1979) ‘Universal Pragmatics’, in Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society. London: Heinemann, pp. 1‐69. Habermas, Jürgen (1984 [1981]) The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. I. London: Heinemann. Habermas, Jürgen (1990) ‘Reconstruction and Interpretation in the Social Sciences’, in Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 21‐42. Hempel, Carl (1952) ‘Problems of Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences’, in American Philosophical Association (ed.) Science, Language, and Human Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hempel, Carl (1965) Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. New York: Free Press. Husserl, Edmund (1950 [1913]) Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. The Hague: Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund (1965 [1911]) ‘ Philosophy as Rigorous Science’, in Husserl, Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, edited by Quentin Lauer. New York: Harper & Row, pp. 71‐147. Husserl, Edmund (1969 [1929]) Formal and Transcendental Logic. The Hague: Nijhoff. Kripke, Saul (1982) Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kuhn, Thomas (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Leat, Diana (1972) ‘Misunderstanding Verstehen’, Sociological Review 20: 29‐38. Luhmann, Niklas (1995) Social Systems. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Morris, Charles (1946) Signs, Language, and Behaviour. New York: Prentice‐Hall. Nagel, Ernst (1961 [1952]) ‘Problems in the Logic of Historical Inquiry’, in Nagel, The Structure of Science. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 547‐606. Nagel, Ernst (1961) The Structure of Science. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Quine, Willard v O. (1970) ‘On the Reasons for the Indeterminacy of Translation’, Journal of Philosophy 67: 178‐83. Riedel, Manfred (1971) ‘Positivismuskritik und Historismus: Über den Ursprung des Gegensatzes von Erklären und Verstehen im 19. Jahrhundert’, in J. Blühdorn and J. Ritter (eds) Positivismus im 19. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt: Klostermann, pp. 81‐104. Roth, Paul (2011) ‘The Philosophy of Social Science in the Twentieth Century: Analytic Traditions: Reflections on the Rationalitätstreit’, in I. C. Jarvie and J. Zamora‐Bonilla (eds) The Sage Handbook of The Philosophy of Social Sciences. London: Sage, pp. 103‐118. Schutz, Alfred (1976 [1932]) The Phenomenology of the Social World. London: Heinemann.

14


Schutz, Alfred (1971 [1954]) ‘Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences’, Collected Papers, Vol I. The Hague: Nijhoff, pp. 48‐66. Strydom, Piet (2008) ‘Philosophies of the Social Sciences’, in C. Crothers (ed.) Historical Developments and Theoretical Approaches in Sociology, in Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS). Developed under the auspices of UNESCO. Oxford, UK: Eolss Publishers. [http://www.eolss.net] Strydom, Piet (2000) Discourse and Knowledge. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Strydom, Piet (2002) Risk, Environment and Society. Buckingham/Philadelphia: Open University Press. Strydom, Piet (2007) ‘Introduction: A Cartography of Contemporary Cognitive Social Theory’, European Journal of Social Theory 10(3): 399‐56. Special Issue on ‘Social Theory after the Cognitive Revolution: Types of Contemporary Cognitive Sociology’. Strydom, Piet (2009a) New Horizons of Critical Theory: Collective Learning and Triple Contingency. New Delhi: Shipra Publications. Strydom, Piet (2009b) ‘In Search of Structures of Cooperation: The Discursive Construction of Morality in the Land Reform Dispute in Post‐Apartheid South Africa’, in A. K. Giri (ed.) The Modern Prince and the Modern Sage. New Delhi: Sage, pp. 299‐320. Strydom, Piet (2011a) Contemporary Critical Theory and Methodology. London: Routledge. Strydom, Piet (2011b) ‘The Cognitive and Metacognitive Dimensions of Social and Political Theory’, in G. Delanty and S. Turner (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Social and Political Theory. London: Routledge, pp. 328‐38. Strydom, Piet (2011c) ‘Towards a Cognitive Sociology for Our Time: Habermas and Honneth or Language and Recognition…and Beyond’, Special Issue ‘Key Issues in Contemporary Social Theory’, Irish Journal of Sociology 19(1), 2011, 176‐98. Strydom, Piet (2012) ‘Modernity and Cosmopolitanism: From a Critical Social Theory Perspective’, in G. Delanty (ed.) Routledge International Handbook of Cosmopolitan Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 25‐37. Van Bouwel, Jeroen and Weber, Erik (2011) ‘Explanation in the Social Sciences’, in I. C. Jarvie and J. Zamora‐Bonilla (eds) The Sage Handbook of The Philosophy of Social Sciences. London: Sage, pp. 632‐46. Weber, Max (1973 [1922]) Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre. Tubingen: Mohr. Weber, Max (1976 [1922]) Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Tubingen: Mohr. Winch, Peter (1958) The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

15

‘Understanding and Explanation in Cognitive Sociology’, paper presented at Theory and Philosophy...

Documents

Transcript of ‘Understanding and Explanation in Cognitive Sociology’, paper presented at Theory and Philosophy...