Philosophy of Social Sciences

This chapter addresses problems and themes in the social sciences. Social sciences are understood specifically as sciences that have (or should have) the following minimal characteristics: their object of study is human behavior and they follow a certain number of methodological principles, including a marked effort towards analytical clarity; the investigation of causal explanations through the formulation of causal laws or at least causal mechanisms; and a subscription to a form of methodological individualism, if an amended one, which puts at the heart of social science the notion of choice. We discuss three principal themes. The first raises the question of the status of laws in the social sciences and, in particular, that of “consequence laws,” otherwise known as functionalist explanations. The second theme takes up methodological individualism, as compared to holistic approaches. The last theme concerns hypotheses of rationality and self-interested motivations, which increasingly figure in social scientific explanations.