On Reproducing Social Reality: A Reply to Harrison

摘要

That social inquirers should be careful about the intrusion of biases and questionableethnocentric presuppositions is a widely accepted and unquestionablycogent methodological dictum. Less widely accepted, and perhaps less cogent,is the view that such intrusions are best avoided by inquirers adopting theinterpretive constructs, points of view, etc., of their subjects. Debates over thislatter point have flared up repeatedly in twentieth-century philosophical andsocial-scientific literature, notably in the extensive discussions of Peter Winch’ssThe Idea of a Social Science (ISS) and ’Understanding a Primitive Society’(UPS). His contention that proper social inquiry is actually a form ofconceptual-analytic epistemology, aimed necessarily at the recovery and use bythe inquirer of certain rules and criteria operative within the source-languagecommunity in the individuation of social actions, makes Winch clearly a proponentof the latter, controversial thesis.The late Richard Rudner (’Some Essays at Objectivity’ [EO]) has challenged’ Winch, contending that his thesis rests on what Rudner calls the ’reproductivefallacy’ of assuming that the function of a social description is to reproduceaspects of what it describes. Recently, Stanley Harrison (’Rudner’s ReproductiveFallacy’ [RF]) has taken issue with Rudner’s critique, charging that itcommits a fallacy of somewhat older vintage, namely, of attacking a straw man.Rudner, he claims, by not attending with care to Winch’s important distinctionbetween reflective and unreflective understanding, and by not keeping in mindthe differences in view between himself and Winch regarding the nature ofreflective understanding, creates the confusion and inconsistency he ostensiblyfinds in Winch. However, I shall argue that Harrison has misconstrued the thrustand content of Rudner’s argument, and though this may result in part from theway Rudner formulates certain points, these can be clarified and Rudner’s tellingobjections to Winch’s and related views sustained.