defending laws in the social sciences

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DOI: 10.1177/004839319002000104

1990 20: 56Philosophy of the Social SciencesHarold Kincaid

Defending Laws in the Social Sciences

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Defending Laws in the Social Sciences*

HAROLD KINCAID

University of Alabama at Birmingham

This article defends laws in the social sciences. Arguments against social lawsare considered and rejected based on the "open" nature of social theory, themultiple realizability of social predicates, the macro and/or teleological natureof social laws, and the inadequacies of belief-desire psychology. The more seriousproblem that social laws are usually qualified ceteris paribus is then considered.How the natural sciences handle ceteris paribus laws is discussed and it is arguedthat such procedures are possible in the social sciences. The article ends byarguing that at least some social research is roughly as well as confirmed as goodwork in evolutionary biology and ecology.

Physics has long been the paradigm of a science-both to scientistsand to philosophers. Quantitative by nature, universal in scope, andapparently indefinitely refinable, physics has set the standard forscientific practice. Measured by that paradigm, the social scienceshave generally fared poorly. Scientists (of the hard variety) and phi-losophers alike have doubted that the social sciences have producedany real explanations, with the prime complaint being that socialscientists have failed to produce any well-confirmed laws. Taking thisalleged fact at face value, philosophers have rushed to explain whythe social sciences are doomed to inexactitude. However, they havenot proceeded by carefully examining the empirical work in the socialsciences and arguing that it fails to meet standards of scientific ade-quacy. Instead, philosophers have given various more or less a priorireasons to explain why social laws were impossible all along.

Physics worship was part and parcel of the positivist tradition. Nodoubt physics occupies a special place among the sciences. But thepositivists in part misunderstood what science was about-and what

* Recewed 8-1-88

Work on this article was supported by a grant from the American Council of LearnedSocieties. George Graham, Alexander Rosenberg, Marthe Chandler, and Scott Arnoldmade helpful comments on earlier drafts.

Phtlosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol 20 No 1, March 1990 56-83@ 1990 York Uruversity, Toronto, and Contributors


57

was special about physics. If physicalism is true, then physics isindeed unique among the sciences-but there is little reason to thinkphysics shows there is a logic of confirmation, a single scientificmethod, a sharp distinction between laws and accidental generaliza-tions, or that all adequate sciences are ultimately reducible to physics.Nonetheless, while few adhere to the positivist account of science,such positivist assumptions still distort how philosophers think aboutthe social sciences. Laws in the social sciences are rejected for reasonsthat cannot stand up to any sophisticated account of science-or so Ishall argue.

Thus my main concern in this article is to defend laws-both their

possibility and their reality-in the social sciences. No doubt socialexplanation is not exhausted by subsumption under laws-just asexplanation in general involves both more and less than laws.’ None-theless, laws do play an important role in explanation. Singular causalexplanations, functional explanations, explanations via classificationand grouping (explaining &dquo;what&dquo;), and explanations in terms ofunderlying mechanisms may well presuppose or implicitly invokelaws. And even if one denies-contra what seem to me powerfularguments2-that laws are involved in or entailed by such explana-tions, there can be little doubt that laws can greatly strengthen theseexplanations. Showing that an alleged particular cause instantiates alaw, that some mechanism always underlies some macroprocess, thatsome set of classifications are related in a lawlike fashion, and so on,gives those explanations a depth they would not have otherwise.Furthermore, no explanation is completely compelling unless theexplanatory statements are well-confirmed; confirmation generallycomes from repeatable manipulation of data under controlled condi-tions, and laws both result from and help make possible that process.Laws, explanation, and confirmation go hand in hand. Thus if one isinclined to believe, as I am, that some parts of the social sciencesexplain, then it is natural and perhaps necessary to defend social laws.

Section I of this article defends social laws against three commoncriticisms: that social laws are impossible because (a) social kinds havemultiple physical realizations, (b) social theories are not &dquo;closed,&dquo; and(c) there can be no laws relating belief, desire, and action. Anotherpopular argument rejects social laws because they are often aboutsocial entities rather than individuals and/or are teleological in na-ture. Section II spells out and rejects these criticisms. More seriousproblems for social laws result from the fact that those laws are usually


58

qualified ceteris paribus. Section III argues that such qualificationsare not an inherent problem and spells out some criteria for deter-mining when ceteris paribus laws are confirmed and explanatory.Finally, Section IV makes a prima facie case for the claim that somecurrent social science has produced laws by (a) examining somewell-established work in economics and (b) arguing that at least someparts of the social sciences produce laws, evidence, and explanationsquite similar in form to those of evolutionary biology and ecology3

I

Philosophers have had no trouble finding reasons to deny thatsocial laws are possible. Some think that social scientists cannotproduce laws because the basic kinds or predicates of the socialsciences have no determinate physical definition-they are &dquo;multiplyrealizable.&dquo; Others think that the social sciences will never producereal laws because they are not &dquo;closed&dquo;-the social sciences, unlikephysics, do not describe all the causes operative in their domain.Finally, some philosophers have argued that all social laws dependon explaining human behavior in terms of belief and desire. Such folkpsychological explanations, however, cannot give us laws of behavior.So, social laws are impossible. In this section, I sketch these argumentsand show that all are unsound.

John Searle recently argued against social laws on the grounds thatsocial kinds have multiple realizations; his argument is a variant ofearlier attacks on psychological laws. According to Searle, &dquo;the defin-ing principle of ... social phenomena set no physical limits on whatcan count as the physical realization.&dquo;’ &dquo;Money,&dquo; for example, is socialin nature-its definition refers to its social function, not its physicalattributes. As a result, nearly anything can serve as money. Most orall social kinds are in the same boat: They have indefinitely manydiverse, physical realizations. How does this fact argue against sociallaws? It &dquo;means that there can’t be any systematic connections be-tween the physical and the social ... [and] therefore there can’t be anymatching ... of the sort that would be necessary to make strict lawsof the social sciences possible.&dquo;5 Similar arguments have been offeredby Churchland and Rosenberg to show that folk psychology is bereftof laws.’


59

Let us tighten up Searle’s argument a bit. He seems to be sayingsomething like this:

1. Social kinds have indefinitely many physical realizations.2. When a kind has indefinitely many physical realizations. It has no

systematic connection to the physical.3. If a kind is not systematically connected to the physical, it cannot

support genuine laws.4. Thus social kinds cannot support genuine laws.

This premise seems to be Searle’s argument. How does it fare?This argument is, so far as I can see, either invalid or unsound,

depending on how we read &dquo;systematic connection.&dquo; If we take

systematic connection to refer to a lawlike relation between social andphysical predicates, then Premise 3 makes a highly implausible claim:that the social sciences cannot produce laws unless they are reducibleto physics. That claim is implausible because, among other things, itthreatens to rule out laws in the natural sciences as well. For example,the fundamental predicate in population genetics and evolutionarytheory-that is, fitness-seems clearly to have no determinate physi-cal definition. Fitness supervenes on physical properties but is notreducible to them.’ Similarly, program states of computers can bebrought about by indefinitely many machine states-and thus are atmost supervenient on them. Even molecular biology faces such prob-lems : Essential predicates like &dquo;antibody,&dquo; &dquo;signals,&dquo; &dquo;receptors,&dquo; andso on all have open-ended physical realizations.’ So, if we read &dquo;sys-tematic connection&dquo; as type-type connectability, then lawlike state-ments in biology, computer science, and elsewhere are ruled out. I as-sume this result is unacceptable.We can, of course, read systematic connection as the looser relation

described by supervenience (which means in this case, &dquo;once all thephysical facts are set, so are the social facts&dquo;). But then Premise 2 isclearly false-for supervenience does not rule out multiple realiza-tions. Thus this argument either has a false premise-Premise 2 or 3depending on how you read &dquo;systematic connection&dquo;-or is invalid.In the end, Searle makes an unwarranted reductionist assumption-that no physical definition means no definition at all.A second common argument against laws in the social sciences

turns on the fact that the social realm is not &dquo;closed.&dquo;’ Laws by naturemust be universal. But if the social constitutes an open realm subject


60

to outside forces-physical or biological events, for example-thensocial theory will remain forever incomplete and forever without truelaws. Laws seem precluded.

This argument can be taken in two ways: as arguing (a) from a factabout social systems as objects in the world, or (b) from an alleged factabout social theories: they are not closed in the sense that they do notcover all the forces or causes effective in their domain. Neither ren-

dering produces a sound argument.Social systems-a given institution, society, or even world system-

are obviously not closed systems. They depend in important ways onboth physical and biological factors. This fact alone cannot entail thatsocial laws are impossible-unless we are prepared to grant that evenphysics produces no laws. Every physical system short of the entireuniverse is influenced by outside causes. So merely describing opensystems cannot preclude laws. If it does, then the only laws of physicsare those that describe the totality of the universe, an unacceptableconclusion, I assume.

Perhaps the crucial issue concerns not the open or closed nature ofactual systems but rather a theory’s ability to handle those outsidefactors. A closed theory is complete: It can describe and explain in itsown terms all the forces acting in its domain. So, the argument runs,forces affecting open physical systems can be fully handled withinphysics itself. In the social sciences, however, outside factors are notsocial in nature-and thus cannot be handled by social theory. Con-sequently, alleged social laws are bound to be incomplete and thusnot laws.

This argument fails for several reasons. On some reasonable as-sumptions, this argument proves too much-that is, that no physicallaws are possible, either. We know that biological, psychological, andsocial events influence the physical universe. If, however, our biolog-ical, psychological, and social theories are even in part irreducible,then there is little prospect that exceptions to physical laws can behandled in physical terms.

Biological factors, for example, will interfere in physical processes,thus creating apparent exceptions to physical laws. Although suchfactors are in the end composed of physical entities, that does not solvethe problem. For merely listing all known biological factors undertheir particular physical description will not show physical lawscompletely refinable in their own terms. Assuming that biologicalkinds are not captured in physics-and this is what irreducibility


61

means-then physics will have no systematic way to identify andincorporate biological factors. Physics will be in a certain sense incom-plete as well-and thus without laws. I again assume that this conclu-sion is unacceptable.

The open nature of social science carries little weight for anotherreason. Why does a real or strict law have to invoke language onlyfrom one theory? The above argument assumes that it must, but thatassumption seems quite unwarranted. Cellular biology invokeschemical facts, and evolutionary theory does the same with physicalfacts about the environment. Why should that undercut laws if thelaw identifies kinds and relates them in whatever manner laws re-

quire ? This problem becomes particularly acute when we realize thatindividual laws in physics may invoke only a subset of the totalphysical language. When other physical forces interfere, that subsetobviously will not have the vocabulary to handle this more compli-cated situation. Are those laws only apparent because they are notrefinable in their own terms? Here it just seems silly to make lawful-ness turn on some prior notion of the &dquo;right&dquo; vocabulary. The realissue is whether potential exceptions can be handled in a systematicway-not whether their descriptions fall into one vocabulary oranother. Thus there might well be social laws even if they are notrefinable in a purely social vocabulary.A final argument which I want to briefly discuss in this section rests

on the alleged nature of psychological explanation. Davidson arguedthat there can be no laws relating mental states like belief, desire, andbehavior, at least when those states are described in mentalistic terms.

Philosophers-for example, Rosenberg-as well as social scientists-for example, Porpora’°-have seen Davidson’s conclusion as a pow-erful argument against social laws (and as an explanation of why lawsare so scarce in the social sciences). Since the social sciences seemwedded to belief-desire explanations, social laws seem ruled out bythe nature of the mental.

While the difficulties of folk psychological concepts may partiallyhelp explain why the social sciences progress slowly, those difficultiesare little reason to think that social laws in general are impossible orunlikely for several reasons:

1. Belief-desire psychological theories are not the last word in behavioraltheory: Variants of behaviorism, cognitive psychology, and so on mightserve to better explain human behavior while avoiding the belief-desire


62

framework altogether-so alleged obstacles to belief-desire theories isa shaky basis for ruling on what the social sciences can and cannot do.

2. It has been persuasively argued by Horgan and Woodward,&dquo; amongothers, that attacks on the folk psychological explanation often pick onthe weakest version of belief-desire psychology, that they rely onunwarranted reductionist assumptions about intertheoretic relations,and that suitably refined and improved folk concepts may be part ofwell-confirmed psychological explanations. Furthermore, objections tofolk psychology often turn on either the open nature of the psycholog-ical theory or their use of ceteris paribus escape clauses. The formerobstacle has already been answered here; the latter problem, I shallargue in Section III, is no inherent obstacle to successful explanation.

3. Most important, much social science proceeds at the macro-level,describing large-scale social behavior and structure based on aggregatedata. As such, it is unaffected by the failure of specific theories ofindividual behavior.

Thus this last argument for the impossibility of social laws fares nobetter than its predecessors. Nonetheless, these arguments were inpart motivated by a concern I have yet to address: the desire to explainthe noticeable lack of progress in the social sciences. That concern willbe taken up indirectly in Section III and directly in Section IV. Beforethat, however, it is necessary to defend a controversial assumptionused in my previous arguments, that is, that purely macro-level sociallaws can be adequate.

II

Led by Jon Elster, an increasing number of social scientists arerejecting macro laws in the social sciences on grounds other than thosediscussed earlier. Elster is representative: He holds that macro-levellaws are inadequate so long as we have not specified the underlyingmechanism that makes them possible.’2 That mechanism, he holds,must be specified in terms of individual behavior. Purely macro-levellaws are thus inadequate.

In what sense are such laws inadequate unless the underlyingmechanisms are specified? Sometimes, critics talk as if purely sociallaws are simply nonexplanatory: Explanation is had only when therelevant mechanism is identified. Sometimes, the question seems tobe whether macro-level laws without mechanisms can really be con-firmed. Let me consider first the claim that purely macro-level lawscannot explain.


63

This version of the argument is prima facie quite unreasonable. Oneither of the two most influential accounts of explanation-the cov-ering law model of Hempel and the question model of van Fraassenand others’3-well-confirmed macro-level laws seem to explain.Hempel’s hypothetical deductive account does not restrict expla-nation to laws at some given level. Events subsumed under well-confirmed laws are thereby explained. If there are confirmed lawsrelating macro-level variables, then they would serve to explain.Similarly, if I ask why the output of a given industry has expandedand request an answer citing known causal regularities, then sociallaws also explain on the van Fraassen model. Social laws answerquestions and thus explain.A more promising tack would be to question whether any purely

social laws can be confirmed in the first place. Rather than makingmechanisms necessary for explanation, critics might argue, as doesElster,14 that no macro-level law is confirmed until the mechanismbringing it about is identified. Mechanisms are thus identified withintermediate causes. Successful confirmation requires that we controlfor spurious correlations, and we can do that only when we haveidentified the immediate cause-so the argument runs.

If successful, this argument has ramifications that reach far beyonda debate about social laws. Similar issues come up in public policydebates. Acid rain, for example, is thought by many to destroy forestsand lakes. To fend off costly laws mandating pollution controls, thepower industry and its friends (some quite respectable) argue that theconnection between acid rain and biological destruction is not wellestablished. The reason given is that biologists have not identified therelevant mechanism. At issue is a general question of some import.

To evaluate this attack on social laws, it will be helpful to subdi-vide our question. Social science often appeals to teleological causes:Some social practice or institution exists because of its usefulness.Since laws of this sort may present special difficulties, I shall firstconsider the above argument as it applies to ordinary, nonteleologicallaws in the social sciences. Teleological laws will then be consideredin turn.

The claim under scrutiny is that macro-level social laws are uncon-firmed so long as no mechanism involving individuals is identified.This is so because no alleged causal law is confirmed until we controlfor all other possible causal factors. Mechanisms are intermediatecauses and may show the alleged connection to be spurious, that is, a


64

mere by-product of the true cause. Thus we must identify mechanismsbefore we can confirm social laws.

As an argument against all macro-level social laws, this reasoningfails for three reasons:

1. The argument appeals to certain alleged facts about confirming causallaws. However, causal laws do not exhaust explanation in the socialsciences. Many suggested laws of social behavior are functional laws-they describe changes in one variable as the function of another. Ofcourse, this procedure is not peculiar to the social sciences; it is partand parcel of explanation in physics. However, when social lawsdescribe functional relations between variables, spurious causation isno threat since no causal claim is being made. Thus the above argumentleaves many purported social laws untouched.

2. The argument under consideration assumes that the relevant mecha-nism is an intervening causal variable. That is not always the case.Sometimes, a law might describe how one social whole causes another.In that instance, the relevant mechanism-what makes the connection

possible-is the relations between individuals that constitute thewholes in question. Take, for example, this purported law of Marxisttheory: In every class society, the oppressed class overthrows the rulingclass or both classes are destroyed. The causal connection between theoppressed and the ruling class would not be some intermediate causalfactor between them. Rather what brings this law about are the actionsof individuals-those constituting the oppressed class. When onewhole acts on another, so do its collected parts. It makes no sense todescribe the latter as an intervening variable.

3. Causes, I assume, must begin before or simultaneous with their effects.In some cases, this fact allows us to rule out spurious causes even with-out knowing the precise intervening mechanism. If we can (a) identify thelist of possible intermediate causes and (b) know the moment of theironset, we can avoid the problem of spurious causation. Possible inter-mediate causes that begin after the purported initial cause cannot bethe cause of the latter-thus spurious causation is not a threat. Forexample, imagine that our causal law asserts that a rise in the rate ofprofit in an industry causes an increase in output. The standard mech-anism for such a law would be an increase in new investors-an eventwhich could occur after the rise in profits. Thus, while it may often bethat intermediate causes are simultaneous with the relevant initial

cause, I see no reason to think that that is always the case. Intermediatecauses do not show that no social law is confirmed until we identifythe precise intermediate cause.

Apparently, we do not need to identify the relevant mechanism toconfirm all social laws. Nonetheless, the argument of Elster and othersmight hold for a significant range of cases. Many social laws are causal


65

laws. Many involve mechanisms whose onset is for all practicalpurposes simultaneous with the onset of the initial cause. And manysocial laws are brought about by mechanisms that really are interme-diate causes. Are laws in these cases unconfirmed so long as we cannotidentify the relevant mechanism?

I think not. While there are, of course, notorious difficulties in

analyzing the notions of causes, laws, and confirmation, in practice,we have a fairly good idea of how to make causal inferences: We lookfor the appropriate correlations among variables after controlling forother possible causal factors. As simple-minded as this observation is,it nonetheless shows why identifying mechanisms is not essential toconfirmation. Let me explain how.

To confirm that A causes C, I must find a significant correlationbetween them while controlling for factors B1, ... , Bn which might bethe real cause of C and/ or of the correlation between A and C. If I

suspect that there is an intermediate cause between A and C, it mustbe controlled for. However, nothing requires me to identify the precisemechanism. Rather, I need only decide, based on my backgroundtheory, on a list of possible mechanisms. So long as I control for themall, the causal law can be confirmed without knowledge of the specificmechanism. In fact, I need not even list the possible mechanisms. If Ican cite some general feature, which any mechanism must have, thenthat feature can be controlled for-thus allowing confirmation evenwithout precise knowledge of the possible mechanisms.

Consider the following example from biology that illustrates theabove point. Evidence for the theory of evolution goes far beyondanecdotes about moths adapting due to pollution or mosquitoes androaches to DDT. Biologists have developed a variety of methods totest a fundamental evolutionary tenet: that natural selection causeschanges in trait or gene frequencies.&dquo; For example, field studies canestablish that certain traits are correlated with certain environments.If the other relevant factors are controlled for (e.g., variation due toage differences, variability in phenotypic expression, and so on), thensuch information provides good evidence for a causal claim. None-theless, these results are silent on the actual mechanism. Environmen-tal factors may cause changes in trait frequencies in at least two ways:by directly picking out the trait in question or by picking out someother associated trait. To use Sober’s terminology, we can establish thecausal relation between selection and the existence of a trait without

knowing whether selection of or selection for was the relevant mech-


66

anism.’6 Furthermore, even when we know that the trait in questionwas specifically chosen by selection, we still frequently do not knowthe genetic mechanism involved-and may not know for the indefinitefuture. Yet so long as we know that the underlying mechanism isgenetic in nature, we can use standard methods to show that a traitwas selected for.&dquo; In short, we can have good evidence for causalclaims without knowing the intervening mechanism.

Of course, precisely identifying the actual mechanism does confirma causal law. But while this method may be sufficient, it is not

necessary-at least when it comes to imperfect knowers such asourselves. In fact, if we insisted that mechanisms always be cited, wemight never confirm any causal law. For most mechanisms B thatconnect A and C, we can always ask what allows B to play its causalrole. If certain individual behavior brings about some social law, thatbehavior is not the final mechanism. Deeper accounts can be given interms of neurophysiology and then chemistry and then particle phys-ics. So identifying the mechanism is an open-ended process thatadmits of degrees. Demanding a complete specification would notonly rule out social laws, it would eliminate much of current science.

Is there something special about the social sciences that make themdifferent in this regard? Is there something unique to the social sci-ences that makes an exact identification of the intervening mecha-nisms an absolute requirement for confirmation? The difference can-not simply be the macro-level nature of social laws-the gas laws, thelaws of population genetics, ecology, and so on are likewise macro innature. Is it perhaps that the relevant difference is the teleologicalnature of (many) social laws?We thus should consider next whether citing mechanisms is essen-

tial for confirming teleological laws. I think the points made earlierconcerning ordinary causal laws hold equally for the confirmation ofteleological laws. Before I can argue for that claim, it is necessary tolook at just what such laws assert.Much of the current debate over these issues has focused on

teleological or functional laws as defended by G. A. Cohen.18 Cohenhas sought to clarify Marxist statements such as &dquo;the relations of

production exist because they develop the forces of production.&dquo; So&dquo;teleological laws&dquo; in this context assert that some entity exists be-cause of its beneficial or useful effect. Claims of this sort are rife in thesocial sciences. According to Cohen, such explanations are confirmedwhen we confirm the appropriate &dquo;consequence law&dquo; of the form &dquo;if


67

X would be useful, then X comes to exist.&dquo; Cohen believes such lawscan be confirmed without knowing the relevant mechanisms. Elsterand others disagree.

Unfortunately, the debate has been somewhat obscured, I think, byCohen’s account. Consequence laws are not sufficient for teleolog-ical laws.&dquo; They are not sufficient because we could have a well-confirmed consequence law and yet know that the relevant teleolog-ical law was false. The consequence law only requires a correlationbetween usefulness and occurrence. Such correlations, however, donot establish a causal connection-the correlation could be the resultof some third factor. Until we rule out a third factor, the consequencelaw is no guarantee. Biologists, for example, who inferred selectionfor a trait from its usefulness would be doing poor science. Forexample, pleiotropy and gene linkage make correlations betweenusefulness and existence weak evidence for causal connections.What then is involved in confirming a teleological claim? Nothing

more is required, I think, than the usual procedures for establish-ing causal claims. To show that X exists because it is useful we must(a) specify the relevant causal effect of X that constitutes its useful-ness, and (b) show that effect plays a positive causal role in X’scontinued or expanded existence. Establishing the latter requires thatwe test the relation between X’s usefulness and its existence while

controlling for other possible causes. For example, we identify a wide-spread social practice that may exist because of its usefulness. Afterestablishing precisely what positive effect it has, we then try to showthat the practice persists or spreads because of those effects. Is thepractice correlated with some other fact that might be the real causalfactor? Does the practice sometimes arise with the same effects andyet does not persist? Does the practice sometimes exist without beinguseful and yet persist? If so, then its usefulness is probably not thecause of its persistence.

Given that teleological laws are confirmed much like ordinarycausal laws, we have no reason to think that they cause specialproblems. Just as citing precise mechanisms is unnecessary for con-firming causal laws, the same applies for teleological laws. In bothcases, we can control for spurious causation without specifying theprecise mechanism or even identifying all possible mechanisms. Ourconfidence is, of course, increased by more precisely specifying therelevant mechanisms. But in both cases, the macro law can be rela-

tively well-confirmed without doing so.


68

III

So far, I have defended the possibility of social laws. Skeptics,however, are still probably not convinced. After all, merely showingthat social laws are possible is a small achievement. It certainly doesnot show that there really are social laws or that there ever will be.And a close look at the social sciences, so the skeptical reply runs,reveals that what social scientists take to be laws are nothing of thesort. The accepted wisdom seems to be that the social sciences obvi-ously have not produced real laws. The real puzzle is why they haveso obviously failed (cf. Rosenberg2O).

Skeptics cite three facts to explain their insistence that currentsocial science has not produced laws: (a) the alleged laws in the socialsciences lack the requisite generality, (b) alleged laws in the socialsciences are really only accidental generalizations, not laws (Rosenberg,for example, makes both these criticisms21 ), and (c) the purported lawsare either deduced from obviously false assumptions or have unspec-ified (and/or unspecifiable) ceteris paribus clauses. What social sci-entists call laws do not meet the necessary requirements, requirementsthat the laws of physics do pass.

In my defense of social laws against these criticisms, I must firstsketch a reply to the generality objection and to the claim that sociallaws are only accidental generalizations. In my view, these objectionswere shown to be misguided long ago by Goodman, among others.&dquo;Nonetheless, these objections are worth discussing briefly, if onlybecause philosophers continue to think that reference to particularsand being a mere generalization are sufficient grounds for rejectingsocial laws. My main concern, however, is the problems raised byceteris paribus clauses; this difficulty is potentially much more seri-ous. Against this objection, I argue that (a) ceteris paribus qualifica-tions are not in principle an obstacle to laws, as a look at physics willreveal; (b) there are some relatively straightforward criteria to deter-mine when ceteris paribus laws are confirmed and explanatory,, and(c) there are laws in the social sciences that meet those criteria. Ceterisparibus clauses are neither principled nor insurmountable practicalobstacles to social laws.

Of course, social scientists have produced few if any completelygeneral laws. The results of neoclassical economics hold only formarket economies. Macroeconomic generalizations obviously do notapply to primitive societies. Claims about bureaucracy do not hold


69

for just any hierarchical organization. But is this really a difficulty?I do not think so. Being appropriately general is a matter of degree,not an all-or-nothing property. Newton’s laws do not apply to num-bers, temperature is determined by mean kinetic energy only in gases,and so on. Furthermore, appeal to logical form alone will not separatethe really universal from the rest, for we can always transform refer-ences to specific individuals into a universally quantified statement.While some laws are intuitively more universal than others, completeuniversality is an elusive goal-even for the physical sciences.Kepler’s laws, for example, refer to a particular: our solar system.

Does this mean that the universality requirement ought to be givenup? Not necessarily. Relative to disciplines and theories, we canperhaps distinguish those statements that are universal from thosethat are not. The fundamental processes described by molecular biol-ogy-translation, transcription, protein synthesis, and the like-onlyhold for entities governed by DNA. Nonetheless, these accounts areuniversal once we set molecular biology as our domain of reference-unlike any statement that refers to specific species or cell kinds indescribing basic processes. So, while social laws may be specific tovarious domains, that still leaves room for universality, properlyunderstood.

A second complaint against social laws is that they are merelygeneralizations and thus lack the &dquo;nomic force&dquo; necessary for reallaws. Such a complaint presupposes that there is some sharp distinc-tion between &dquo;real laws&dquo; and those law-like statements that are

merely accidental generalizations. While we can no doubt describeclear instances of necessary laws and accidental correlations, it isdoubtful that the difference is one of kind rather than of degree.Goodman argued 30 years ago that the distinction between laws andaccidental generalizations was best captured by their degree of en-trenchment and projectability; those are, of course, not all-or-nothingcriteria. Similarly, Skyrms recently analyzed lawfulness in terms ofwhat he called &dquo;resilience&dquo; (defined roughly in terms of statisticalinvariance)-once again a notion that makes the law / accidental gen-eralization distinction a relative one.23What does this mean then for social laws? It implies that criticizing

social laws as mere accidental generalizations is misguided. All lawsare accidental generalizations after a fashion. To show that social lawsare really inadequate, one would have to establish case by case thatalleged social laws are so low on the entrenchment or resilience scale


70

that they really should not be called scientific laws at all. Needless tosay, that arduous task has not been undertaken by critics of the socialsciences.24 (And I will present below some evidence to suggest thatthat task could not be carried out.)

Now, let us look at the ceteris paribus objection. Certainly, sociallaws are generally implicitly qualified, often in unspecified and un-specifiable ways. However, there is no principled difference herebetween the social and physical sciences. As Cartwright and othershave persuasively argued,&dquo; most theoretical laws of physics are eitherfalse or implicitly qualified with ceteris paribus (or, more accurately,ceteris absentus) clauses. They describe relations between variablesthat would hold if no other factors intervened. The force between two

bodies, for example, varies inversely with the square of their distanceonly if magnetic forces and so on are not present. Real events typicallyinvolve multiple laws and the factors they describe. Getting an expla-nation of the individual event in all its particularity requires some wayto compose the joint factors, some way of tying the counterfactual lawto reality. Typically, however, physics provides no automatic andprecise way to deal with such messy complexity. Rather, we have atbest numerous rules of thumb and somewhat ad hoc and piecemealprinciples for conjoining multiple ceteris paribus laws with reality.Ceteris paribus clauses are prevalent and uneliminable in physics.

Cartwright often makes this picture sound paradoxical: Theoreticallaws explain only when they are false and cannot explain when theyare true. But her point is a perfectly coherent one about models andreality. Theoretical laws hold only ceteris paribus-they describe theway things would be if certain simplified conditions held. By describ-ing the counterfactual situation, theoretical laws isolate basic pro-cesses, forces, and so on. Counteracting and complicating factors areremoved; the basic nature of the force in question is then revealed.

Thus physics essentially involves ceteris paribus laws-both withunspecified and unactualized qualifications. Unless we are preparedto jettison large parts of physics, we cannot reject social laws simplybecause they hold only ceteris paribus. Nonetheless, this &dquo;physicsdoes it, too&dquo; response would be much more compelling if we couldsay exactly how it is that ceteris paribus laws explain, and are con-firmed, and show that those conditions are met by at least somealleged social laws. I thus turn to these tasks.

Ceteris paribus laws present puzzles and complexities. They de-scribe connections that hold under conditions that may never ob-


71

tain-they describe what things would be like if certain conditionsheld. Sometimes, we cannot even fully specify those conditions. So,how can we ever confirm ceteris paribus laws? That is one questionwe need to answer.

Answering that question is only a first step. Even if we have goodevidence for a ceteris paribus law, we still need to say how and whena law about a counter-factual situation explains the real world. Ceterisparibus laws describe what would be the case. How can they thenexplain what is the case? And once we say how that is possible, westill need some criteria for judging when ceteris paribus laws explaina given event and when they do not. Since many qualified ldwsgenerally do not strictly apply to the facts to be explained-otherwise,they would not be ceteris paribus laws-how do we tell genuinelyexplanatory laws from irrelevant ones?

These are important problems, for they point to inadequacies in theaccount of laws and explanation employed here. Without some wayto say how and when ceteris paribus laws explain, Cartwright’saccount remains incomplete and threatens to make explanation aquite subjective affair. So, resolving these puzzles is important bothto the project of this article and to defending the general approach toexplanation and laws that it presupposes.

Let us consider first how it is that ceteris paribus laws can explain.Imagine that we have a well-confirmed law about what would happenif the ceteris paribus clause did hold (so there is no paradox aboutexplaining with false laws as the problem is sometimes put*). Howcan we explain an actual state of affairs using such a law? We cannotreally subsume the event to be explained under the ceteris paribuslaw for the conditions described by the law do not strictly hold. Sohow can the law explain?

One reasonable answer goes something like this: Ceteris paribuslaws generally describe forces, relations, and so on as they wouldoperate in isolation. When things are not ceteris paribus, the laws inquestion still apply. But they now describe tendencies-partial ele-ments of a complex situation. Tendency statements describe anelement-call it a force, process, or whatever-which would producea certain result in the presence of some larger set of conditions. Whenthose conditions are not met, the element in question is only a ten-dency. Thus ceteris paribus laws and tendencies go hand in hand-and that seems reasonable enough. The law of gravitation is implicitlyqualified with a ceteris paribus clause. While the law itself holds only


72

counter-factually, it nonetheless says something about reality. Attrac-tion in proportion to squared distance is a tendency for any twobodies. Citing the law explains because it identifies that tendency-even if the conditions cited by the law in fact never strictly obtain.

So, we can see how laws about what does not obtain can nonethe-less explain what does obtain-they cite factors, aspects, and tenden-cies of a complex situation. Given that we can at least make sense ofhow ceteris paribus laws explain, we must next (a) say how we canconfirm ceteris paribus laws in the first place-since they are oftenabout conditions that do not exist-and (b) give criteria for tellingwhen a particular ceteris paribus law explains a particular event andwhen it is irrelevant. The two questions are intimately related, I think,and answering one goes hand in hand with answering the other.Standard scientific methods do help confirm ceteris paribus laws andthey tell us when those laws explain. While I cannot defend theseclaims in detail here, I can sketch a variety of testing practices thatlend credence to ceteris paribus laws2’:

1. We can sometimes show that in some narrow range of cases the ceteris

paribus are satisfied. Rational economic man is an idealization, butsometime consumers do act on well-ordered preferences and maxi-mize. We can then confirm the law directly.

2. We can sometimes show that although other things are not equal, itmakes little difference: The law holds for the large part.

3. When a ceteris paribus law fails to hold for reality, we can nonethelessexplain away its failure. Sometimes, the counteracting factors can becited and relevant laws invoked, giving us at least an approximateprediction of their combined effect. Other times, the interfering factorsmay be unique and fall under no law, yet we can reasonably explainaway their influence.

4. Sometimes, we can provide inductive evidence for a ceteris paribus lawby showing that as conditions approach those required by the ceterisparibus clause, the law becomes more predictively accurate.

5. Unspecified ceteris paribus laws may nonetheless predict striking ornovel facts. Even if we do not know counteracting factors, the law maymake some predictions which are borne out and which are unexplainedby alternative hypotheses.

6. A ceteris paribus law may provide a single explanation for some set ofdiverse phenomena, even though we cannot fully specify the ceterisparibus clause or explain away all counteracting factors.

All the above methods provide evidence for the claim that if otherthings were equal, the law would hold. Methods 2 through 6 also giveus reason to believe that the alleged law applies to or explains real


73

phenomena even though it makes false assumptions. Finally, thesemethods are at least part of what is required to show that a law-likestatement is entrenched or resilient (i.e., to show that, relatively speak-ing, it is not an accidental generalization).

Obviously, there is no fixed algorithm for using these procedures.Nonetheless, they have proven to be powerful methods for establish-ing laws and showing that those laws describe tendencies whichexplain the data at issue. Of course, exactly when ceteris paribus lawsare supported and explanatory is a judgment call. But that is thenature of science.

Let me emphasize one important factor involved in making suchjudgments. Laws in the social sciences, I have been arguing, naturallyinvolve abstractions from real world complexity, abstractions whichserve to isolate important forces or tendencies. However, which forcesare important or need to be explained is in part a reflection of ourexplanatory interests. The explanatory power of any ceteris paribuslaw will thus depend on what we are trying to explain. Purportedlaws that abstract from the very features of interest obviously farepoorly in explaining the real world.

For example, neoclassical economic theory seems sterile to critics,both from the left (e.g., Marxists) and the right (e.g., Austrians). Whileits detractors often point to the ceteris paribus nature of neoclassicaltheory, that is not, I suggest, the real sticking point. Rather, Marxistsand Austrians have different explanatory interests than do main-stream economists. Someone interested in explaining economiccrises, the origin of surplus or profit, or the role of class power in aneconomy-as do Marxists-is bound to find neoclassical results non-

explanatory, for they focus on equilibrium conditions where marketsclear, profits are zero, and each producer and consumer has no influ-ence over price. So, evaluating ceteris paribus laws require prioragreement over just what features in a complex situation ought to beexplained. Different goals will produce different evaluations.

Are the methods described earlier available to the social sciences?If the arguments of Sections I and II succeed, then a priori or concep-tual answers to this question are unpromising. Armchair theorizingabout what science can and cannot do must be eschewed in favor ofa close look at real empirical work in the social sciences. No doubt,some or much social science is empirically weak and does not makeconvincing use of the methods outlined earlier. Nonetheless, it is mybelief that no such blanket claim can be supported. Parts of the social


74

sciences are relatively well-confirmed; standard methods for evaluat-ing ceteris paribus laws have been successfully applied. Establishingthis judgment is a huge task which obviously cannot be undertakenhere. Section IV, however, provides some reasons to think that thistask can be carried out.

IV

In this final section, I want to make at least a prima facie case thatthe social laws are a reality: There are sections of the social sciencesthat have produced confirmed laws according to more or less stan-dard scientific procedures. My argument will take both direct andindirect routes. The more direct argument will cite two fundamentallaws in economics that are relatively well-confirmed via the processesoutlined in the last section. Proceeding more indirectly, I shall thenargue that some parts of the social sciences are roughly in the sameboat-when it comes to kinds of laws, qualifications, explanations,and level of confirmation-as is much good work in the biologicalsciences. The case for social laws should thus be strengthened by akind of &dquo;merit by association.&dquo;

Economics is arguably the most developed of the social sciences.Within economic theory, laws of market behavior are probably mostthoroughly developed. They are also a fundamental part of divergenteconomic theories: Marxists and Austrians share with defenders ofneoclassical theory, I would argue, a commitment to certain laws

relating supply and demand. Albeit qualified with ceteris paribusclauses, these laws have been steadily confirmed by the routes listedabove. They have a strong claim to scientific respectability.

Consider the following elementary laws about market behavior:

1. A rise in the price of a good will result in a decrease in the quantitydemanded.

2. A decline in the supply of a good will result in a rise in price.

These laws, I would claim, are well-confirmed.While the above laws are not explicitly qualified with a ceteris

paribus clause, clearly they must be. They hold only assuming thatother things (e.g., nuclear war, the explosion of the sun, the heat deathof the universe, and so on) do not interfere! More serious, these lawsare derived from a standard set of assumptions-perfect information,


75

transitivity of preferences, and so on-that frequently do not hold.How should we treat these assumptions? At least two approachessuggest themselves, which are commensurate with the argument ofthis article:

1. We can take the assumptions as specifying the mechanism that bringsabout these macro-level laws. The laws describe the behavior of aggre-gates ; the assumptions specify the mechanisms that realize them.Proceeding this way, these assumptions need not be established toconfirm the two laws because (a) in line with the previous argumentsof this article, the mechanism must not be identified to confirm, and(b) alternative mechanisms may be possible if these assumptions arefalse (e.g., by substituting selection mechanisms for rational preferencemechanisms to explain profit maximization).

2. On the other hand, we can take these assumptions as implicit ceterisparibus clauses. Price and quantity demanded, for example, are re-lated, assuming that preferences are transitive and so on.

Although I think both approaches are reasonable, I shall focus on thesecond in order to more clearly illustrate the claim that some ceterisparibus laws in the social sciences are confirmed.

To show that the above laws are explanatory, we need to establishthat they are confirmed-that if the designated ceteris paribus clausesheld, the laws would be true-and that they explain actual economicoperations. Both tasks are possible. Because these laws follow almost&dquo;deductively from the respective ceteris paribus clauses, there is littledoubt that they describe the way that things would be. Showing thatthey explain actual economic reality is also possible, although lessobvious. A horde of empirical evidence establishes that these lawsmeet the necessary requirements for explanation described earlier:

1. Studies based on questionnaires, controlled bargaining situations, andanimal experimentation suggest that one crucial ceteris paribus clauseis often met: Preferences are frequently transitive.29

2. There is at least some reason to believe that even when preferences arenot orderly as the ceteris paribus clauses imply, little deviation fromthe above laws will result. As the work of Becker suggests, disorderlypreferences do not necessarily undercut supply and demand theory ifthe other components of market context are fixed. 30

3. We have evidence that as the ceteris paribus clauses on these laws aremade more realistic, the laws hold with greater accuracy. For example,the standard approach takes the quantity demanded as a function ofthe preferences of households. Of course, households do not strictly havepreferences-their members do. Recent work has refined this assump-


76

tion, using models that take household preferences to be the outcomeof a bargaining situation between members. Tests against data indicatethat this refinement leads to greater empirical accuracy. 31

4. These laws have both been fruitfully applied to a diverse range ofphenomena and have made striking predictions. The literature on thesetopics is enormous, but two obvious examples are the work of Beckerusing these laws, among others, to explain various aspects of crime,education, 32 and so on, and the work of Buchanan and others in explain-ing political processes.33

So, it seems that these basic social laws are in the same boat as are

many relatively well-confirmed laws in the other special sciences.Without doubt, they apply to a certain range of phenomena. In manyother cases, however, these laws do not strictly hold, but they none-theless explain, because we have some idea of the counteractinginfluences and because they unify a diverse set of events. Of course,these laws depend on abstractions and idealizations-noneconomicinfluences, for example, are entirely ignored. Nonetheless, we remainconvinced that the connection among supply, demand, and price tellsus something about reality, despite these complications. The evidencecited earlier helps justify that belief.Two laws of supply and demand are of course not much. Are they

simply rare jewels in the morass of bad social science? A careful lookat other empirical work in the social sciences suggests not. In whatfollows I first discuss some central results in biology in order to drawa general characterization of what laws, explanation, and confirma-tion in that domain look like, and then argue that some empirical workin the social sciences proceeds in much the same way. The upshotshould be a prima facie stronger case that social laws are a reality.

Both evolutionary biology and ecology rely primarily on field data.While laboratory or field manipulation is sometimes possible, muchevidence comes from field observations of relative abundance of

species or individuals, rates of change in abiotic factors, relativesurvivor rates for one phenotype or another, and so on. Such data aremanipulated using standard statistical techniques searching for con-nections while holding other explanatory causes constant.

From such data, ecology and evolutionary biology produce somelaw-like claims. Typically, those claims describe a connection betweentwo phenomena that holds only ceteris paribus. And just as typically,we do not know all the likely intervening factors that might counter-act the law. Rather, we can identify the primary counteracting causes;sometimes, we can specify their precise influence and how they


77

interact, but sometimes we cannot. Similarly, it is often the case that&dquo;major&dquo; causes and limiting factors are all that we can describe withconfidence.

The laws produced are often functional in nature-they relatechanges in one variable as a function of another, without necessarilyciting the causal basis for that relation. Laws in ecology and evolutionare also frequently functional in the other sense: They describe thefunctions which various items have and sometimes go on to attributethese items’ existence to that function. Finally, the vast majority oflaw-like claims in these sciences are relativized to specific domains-atype of ecological community, environment, species, and so on.

Presumably, this characterization rings true for those familiar withempirical work in evolutionary theory and ecology. Let me mentionsome obvious examples that illustrate these features:

1. A standard kind of ecological law-laws describing communitysuccession-is specific to communities. Different laws of developmenthold for different kinds of communities.

2. Ecology describes laws of succession. Such laws are known to haveexceptions; among the counteracting factors are radical environmentalchange, although other unknown factors may be involved. Similarly,another prime ecological law-organisms with the same ecologiescannot coexist in the same environment-may fail to hold when theenvironment is sufficiently variable, when population sizes at equilib-rium are equal, and when selective forces are weak; the complexitiesof real competitive situations make it unlikely that these are the onlypossible counteracting factors.

3. Evolutionary theory is at its clearest in idealized situations involving afew factors of known magnitude operating within populations. How-ever, once factors such as group selection, internal constraints, andtendencies to speciate, as well as the factors making up environmentsand fitness (e.g., competition, predation, and patchiness, and costs ofmate search and territory defense, respectively) are factored in, thenthere is no mechanical way to combine these factors to answer everyrelevant question. Similarly, density dependence, time lags, competi-tion, predation, and environmental fluctuation have relatively well-understood effects in simplified situations; putting them together is apiecemeal and ad hoc process.

4. Evolutionary theory relates trait, organism, and community types as afunction of environment type. A major set of ecological laws describecommunity structure, nutrient cycling, community energetics, andlevel of homeostasis as a function of successional level.

5. Evolutionary theory is, of course, teleological in that it explains exis-tence of traits via their useful effects. Ecology likewise explains nichestructure and trophic organization as due to their adaptive value ingiven environments.


78

This general picture of laws, explanation, and confirmation alsoapplies to at least some empirical work in the social sciences. I wantto support this claim by looking at some of the best empirical work inthe social sciences: explanations of cultural evolution and ecologicaladaptation in small-scale societies.

Small-scale societies are ideal candidates for explanation for sev-eral reasons. Small-scale societies are generally less complex thanmodern social structures. They are likewise more isolated from out-side cultural factors while at the same time more directly tied to theirecological environment. So, small-scale societies present cases wherethe number of variables are relatively reduced and provide us with arich set of data for testing hypotheses.

Through both individual studies and statistical analysis of manydifferent small-scale societies, anthropologists and economists havebeen able to reach a number of relatively well-confirmed conclusionsabout cultural evolution, economic development, and environmentalinfluences which are given below.

As small-scale societies evolve in complexity, they develop greaterconcentrations of wealth, political authority becomes more concen-trated, family structure tends toward monogamy, kinship ties declinein importance, the frequency of external war increases, and so on.34Similarly, as the level of economic development increases, so does theextent of market exchange, private property, and the rental of landand capital .3’ Both sets of claims have been established by standardprocedures: Multiple independent measures of complexity and devel-opment are used without altering results, and connections betweencomplexity/development and associated changes hold after otherpotential explanatory variables have been controlled for.

Of course, the above claims must be qualified ceteris paribus, as isobvious from the fact that the relevant correlations are high but notperfect. Among the complicating causes are family structure andwomen’s role in subsistence. The extent of market exchange and alsoprivate property is in part influenced by whether monogamy orpolygyny is prevalent and by the relative level of participation ofwomen in the productive process. Once again, these connections havebeen established via standard scientific practices controlling for othervariables and for measurement errors.

As one might expect, small-scale societies tend to develop in re-sponse to the ecological situation. Ancestral rituals provide mecha-nisms that keep husbandry and agriculture within the carrying


79

capacity of the local environment.36 Matrilocal residence is some-times an adaptive response to intercommunal competition-warfare,in particular.&dquo;

This body of work exhibits much the same status and structure asthe ecological and evolutionary explanations cited earlier. Field ob-servations manipulated by standard statistical techniques are theprime source of evidence. From such evidence, law-like claims aremade, but those claims are clearly qualified. Major interfering factorsare known, although their precise composite effects often are not.Many important laws describe basic patterns or functional roles; mosthold only for specific domains. Of course, the work cited here can bechallenged. But it does present a prima facie case that some social lawsmay be relatively well-confirmed and explanatory-for at least thispart of the social sciences produces kinds of evidence and explanationclosely akin to those found in large parts of biology.

In closing, it is worth taking up one last skeptical reaction to thecase for social laws-an inductive argument based on the poor successof the social sciences. If social laws are indeed possible, why have thesocial sciences been so notoriously unsuccessful in producing any-thing like well-confirmed social theories? What explains the lacklus-ter progress of social theory? And if the social sciences are roughly inthe same boat as the biological sciences, why do we know so muchmore about biological processes than social ones?

While these questions really call for their own article-length discus-sion, generalized answers will have to suffice here.

First, the question &dquo;Why have the social sciences been so unsuc-cessful at developing well-confirmed theory?&dquo; is in part based on afalse presupposition-if the thrust of this article is correct. Critics havefailed to see progress because they looked at the social sciencesthrough a distorted conception of what science is. While the socialsciences have not produced exceptionless, completely general laws,neither have many other respectable sciences-evolutionary biologyand ecology, for example. But such laws are not required for goodscience and explanation. Thus, if the arguments of this article succeed,it is just wrong to say that the social sciences have largely failed. Nodoubt, some parts have. However, as I argued above, significantsections of social research-like economic anthropology and parts ofmicroeconomics-have produced relatively well-confirmed explana-tions. The judgment that the social sciences have been more or lessentirely unsuccessful relies on an untenable account of science.


80

The enormous complexity of social systems is often cited to explainslow progress in the social sciences. While that response is uncon-

vincing without some measure of complexity, I think it is nonethe-less on the right track. Social phenomena are more complex in thisrespect. We frequently lack the ability-either for technical or ethi-cal reasons-to use controlled experimentation to isolate single causesin complex social systems. Of course, controlled experimentation isnot the only way to confirm laws, and once again, the social sciencesare in much the same boat in this respect as are parts of ecology andevolutionary biology. In both cases, progress is slowed because wemust rely entirely on nonexperimental data. As Glymour and others38recently pointed out, statistical data can support many differentcausal interpretations. But once again, this is not a problem peculiarto the social sciences nor is it insurmountable (cf. Glymour).

Relying on purely observational data causes problems in yet an-other way. Because phenomena cannot be created at will in the labo-ratory, social scientists face a problem of limited sample size. Impor-tant social phenomena may reoccur infrequently, and in particular,they may seldom reoccur in precisely the same context. Of course,there are statistical methods for dealing with this situation-a situa-tion that is again not special to the social sciences (for example,particular kinds of ecosystems are likewise limited). Nonetheless, thisfact obviously helps to explain why progress comes faster in thelaboratory sciences, and why some parts of biology-cell biology,physiology, and so on-are indeed much more successful than thesocial sciences and why biological sciences, like ecology, look muchmore like the social sciences.

Values play a role in social research that makes progress both moredifficult and harder to recognize when it comes. Whatever yourposition on value neutrality in social explanation, it is clear that valuesare inevitably involved in decisions about what questions to pursue.While this is true for any science, it has far greater implications in thesocial sciences. Few theoretical questions in physics or even in mostparts of biology have any direct bearing on interest groups in society.Exactly the opposite holds in the social sciences, where differentpolitical, economic, sexual, and racial allegiances entail differingviews about what questions ought to be pursued in social research.As a result, divergent research agendas are inevitable; debates areoften at cross-purposes, and the corresponding slow progress typical


81

of &dquo;preparadigm&dquo; science plagues the social sciences in ways that thephysical and biological sciences can avoid.

Finally, there are contingent, historical reasons why progress in thesocial sciences has been harder. For example, grand theorizing hasdominated the social sciences-at the expense of more narrow empir-ical work-since their inception. Furthermore, the social scienceshave typically attracted those individuals who are less mathemati-cally and quantitatively inclined. Levels of funding for social scienceresearch pale in comparison to those available for research in physicaland biological sciences. All these trends have arguably slowed empir-ical progress. Much more could be said, I believe, along these lines.

Thus the social sciences have progressed slowly-but that fact canbe explained without appealing to special, insurmountable obstaclesto a science of human society and without undervaluing the realprogress that parts of the social sciences have made.

SUMMARY

The crux of my overall argument is this: Once we give up thepositivist assumptions that there is some simple property that sepa-rates science from nonscience, laws from exceptionless generaliza-tions, and so on, then a number of consequences follow for our

thinking about laws in the social sciences. For one, the science/nonscience distinction is a continuum, and judging where some do-main stands on that continuum can seldom be done short of a full-

fledged analysis of the methods, evidence, and kinds of explanationemployed in that science. As a result, simple conceptual arguments,like those of Searle and Davidson, against a real social science arelikely to fail. Furthermore, any account of confirmation and laws willhave to, in part, generalize from real scientific practice. But once wesee what confirmation and laws in the special sciences-and physicsas well, if Cartwright is correct-look like, then at least parts of thesocial sciences will not seem significantly less scientific than impor-tant parts of biology, for example. To argue otherwise, philosopherswill have to dirty their hands with real empirical data. Gone are thedays when philosophers can declare on simple methodological orconceptual grounds that entire domains of painstaking research areunscientific.


82

NOTES

1. Cf. B. van Fraassen, The scientific image (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980),Chap. 5.

2. For example, Donald Davidson, "Causal relations," Journal of Philosophy 64 (1967):691-703.

3. I do not pretend to cover all popular objections to social laws; in particular, sometraditional criticisms flowing from the verstehen tradition concerning interpretation andobjectivity are beyond the scope of this article.

4. J. Searle, Minds, brains and behavior (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1984), 78.

5. Ibid., 79.6. P. Churchland, Scientific realism and the plasticity of mind (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1979), 113; A. Rosenberg, Sociobiology and the pre-emption of the socialsciences (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 107.

7. See A. Rosenberg, "The supervenience ofbiological concepts," Philosophy of Science45 (1978): 368-86.

8. See my "Molecular biology and the unity of science," Philosophy of Science,forthcoming.

9. Donald Davidson has argued in this fashion. See "Mental events," in Experienceand theory edited by L. Foster and J. Swanson (Amherst: University of MassachusettsPress, 1970).

10. D. Porpora, "On the prospects for a nomothetic theory of social structure," Journalfor the Theory of Social Behavior 13 (1983):243-64.

11. T. Horgan and J. Woodward, "Folk psychology is here to stay," PhilosophicalReview 94 (1985):197-226.

12. J. Elster, Making sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1985), 5-8.

13. van Fraassen, The scientific image; P. Achinstein, The nature of explanation (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1980).

14. Elster, Making sense of Marx.15. J. Endler, Natural selection in the wild (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

1986).16. Elliot Sober, The nature of selection (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), Chap. 3.17. See A. Grafen, "Natural selection, kin selection and group selection," in J. Krebs

and N. Davies, Behavioral ecology: An evolutionary approach (Sunderland: Sinauer Asso-ciates, 1984), 65.

18. G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s theory of history (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1978), Chap. IX.

19. It is not clear to me that they are, strictly speaking, necessary either. Locomotionprobably exists among organisms because of its contribution to fitness, despite the factthat the corresponding consequence law is false-trees would be better off if they couldmove to the sun, but structural factors have prevented that. So, while it is not true thatif locomotion would be good for organisms, it thus comes to exist.

20. Rosenberg, "Surveillance," and Sociobiology and the pre-emption of the socialsciences.

21. Rosenberg, "Surveillance." But to be fair, it should be noted that Rosenberg doesso as part of a larger and more subtle argument that cannot be discussed here. I should


83

also note that my views here are in fact much closer to Rosenberg’s earlier position inMicroeconomic laws (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).

22. Nelson Goodman, Fact, fiction and forecast (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965).23. Brian Skyrms, Causal necessity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980).24. It should be noted that this same point can be made even if one rejects a Humean

account of laws—for even on a realist, necessitarian account of laws, our epistemologicaljudgments about which generalizations are real laws will rely on something likeprojectability or resilience. See Fred Wilson, Laws and other worlds (Dordrecht: Reidel,1986), Chap. 2.

25. Nancy Cartwright, How the laws of physics lie (New York: Oxford University Press,1983).

26. D. Hausman, Capital, profits and prices (New York: Columbia University Press,1981), Chap. 7.

27. Criteria similar to some of those listed here are also discussed in D. Hausman,Capital, profits and prices, Chap. 7.

28. I say almost because the deduction follows only assuming that extraeconomicevents (e.g., the death of the solar system) do not intervene.

29. A. Weinstein, "Transitivity of preference," Journal of Political Economy 76(1968):307-11; R. Battalio et al. "A test of consumer demand theory using observationsof individual consumer preferences," Western Economic Journal 11 (1973):415-21.

30. G. Becker, The economic approach to human behavior (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1976).

31. M. McElroy, and M. Homey, "Nash-bargained household decisions: Toward ageneralization of the theory of demand," International Economic Review 22 (1981):333-348.

32. G. Becker, The economic approach.33. J. Buchanan, The limits of liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975).34. For a review of the data, see David Levinson and Martin Malone, Toward

explaining human culture (New Haven, CT: HRAF Press, 1980), Chap. 2.35. Frederick Pryor, The origins of the economy (New York: Academic Press, 1977).36. Roy Rappaport, Pigs for the ancestors (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,

1984).37. William Divale, "Migration, external warfare, and matrilocal residence," Behavior

Science Research 9 (1974):75-133.38. Clark Glymour, R. Scheines, P. Spirtes, and K. Kelly, Discovering causal structures

(New York: Academic Press, 1987).

Harold Kincaid is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama atBirmingham. His current research is on functional explanation in social science andconfirmation in economics. Recent publications include &dquo;Reduction, Explanation andIndividualism, &dquo; Philosophy of Science 53 (1986); &dquo;Supervenience and Explanation,

&dquo;

Synthese 77 (1988); and pieces forthcoming in PSA 1988 and Philosophy of Science.


defending laws in the social sciences

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