Philosophical Underpinnings in the Philosophy of Social Science

Abstract Philosophers of social science have long divided between those who believe that the social sciences could emulate the natural sciences and those who argue that the subjects of social scientific explanation differ fundamentally from the objects of natural scientific explanation because of the nature of human beings as sentient or “reflexive” agents. Among the latter, further questions involve divisions over the nature of knowledge and certainty, with the attendant dangers of universalism or relativism, and divisions related to the nature of structure and agency, with the attendant risks of determinism or voluntarism. This chapter offers a way out of the quandaries of knowledge and certainty by differentiating among degrees of certainty for different kinds of knowledge (building on Wittgenstein) and of structure and agency by introducing the concepts of background ideational abilities (building on Searle) and foreground discursive abilities (building on Habermas).