what in the world does social science actually study? (a clarification of a previous blog entry's definition of social science and social scientists)

social science faces a number of hurdles other than its major fundamental flaw. first of all, science attempts to establish universal truths given a certain set of conditions, and once that has been determined, then the limits on the set of conditions to which the universal truth is applicable can be determined. by not having true causality in social science and using correlation instead, social science encounters a problem -- particularly for non-lab based research like for anthropology and sociology -- since it cannot perfectly recreate situations, and thus it cannot know how much of an experiment's error and/or lack of correlation is due to an inherent lack of causality within the experiment if it were to be theoretically conducted again and again under the same conditions and how much of an experiment's error and/or lack of correlation is due to not being able to recreate the experiment under identical circumstances to its initial ones. this leads me to my second point, which is that due to these varying circumstances, experiments are rarely carried out using exactly the same methodology, and because of this, one cannot know how much of an experiment's error and/or lack of correlation is due to methodological problems and how much is due to an inherent lack of causality within the originally conducted and conceived experiment. for example, consider an experiment in chemistry in which two chemicals are mixed to form a new compound. now, imagine that the methodology is approximated by each scientist, but that the actual time of mixing the two chemicals varies from 5-10 minutes. so within that time frame, one is guaranteed a universal truth (assuming there such things exist, and for the sake of this argument, let's assume that they do, at least practically speaking) established through mixing two chemicals and turning them into a new compound. now consider a social science experiment in which the experimenter is attempting to determine a correlation between the amount of time subjects spend watching tv and their grades in school. imagine that the experimenter conducts the study similarly by testing group A over two weeks and group B over three weeks and arrives at two different results, correlations of .5 and .45. is the difference in outcome due to differences in circumstances for group A vs group B (e.g. watching different tv shows, taking different classes, etc.), or is it due to the extra week that elapsed during group B's trial? when science establishes true causality, it can then establish a range of circumstances in which that result holds true. however, because social science never yields true causality, for the experiment's predictive power to maintain intact, it must entail both perfectly recreated situations and perfectly recreated methodologies, and ultimately, both are interdependent and create a situation in which no social science experiment's predictive power truly retains its integrity from its initial conception and conduction. as such, these experiments are merely "snapshots" of the state of a given system at a certain place and time, and fit the definition of "informed descriptions" better than "established result".

i would also like to clear up some nagging issues regarding social science, both having to do with the deductive method. first of all, i want to establish that my definition of true science in previous blog entries was deductive, which is in part why i deemed social science to be unscientific. now, excepting social science's major fundamental flaw, social science can be conducted as science via the inductive method. as such, it does not need its theoretical frameworks to be scientific, so schools of thought like marxism, etc. are fine for fields like anthropology and sociology. second, i want to vindicate psychology of certain attacks leveled against all social sciences. people attack social science in practice due to its lack of sufficient establishment of causality, as demonstrated in the two points in the preceding paragraph. however, while psychology -- the example i want to use here is the school of thought known as behaviorism -- and more holistic social sciences like anthropology and sociology both lack predictive power, their underlying reasons for doing so are completely different. anthropology and sociology work from an inductive foundation, which is inherent unfalsifiable even in theory; the other issues i mentioned in the preceding paragraph exacerbate finding a lack of true causality in practice. however, behaviorism works from a deductive foundation, which should be falsifiable in theory. however, in practice, it is unable to fulfill this because there is not an established causality between input and output in subjects; behavior does not at face value represent everything in a subject's mind at a given time.

now, onto the burning question of the day: what in the world does social science actually study? i previously stated that social science studies epistemology manifested through metaphysical means, and due to the scientific approaches employed that this made social scientists in essence applied metaphysicists. but what exactly does this mean? truly applied metaphysicists are cognitive scientists, who attempt to directly address metaphysical problems using scientific approaches. however, other social scientists are not interested in trying to address metaphysical problems using scientific approaches, but in effect study metaphysical problems translated back into physical reality; whereas cognitive scientists might try to make in-roads into the mind-body problem by studying the brain, social scientists simply study the behaviors of people -- behaviors that are metaphysically-rooted (consciousness), but expressed physically -- and their interactions with their surrounding physical environment. when studying a group of people, problems with free will and the mind-body are simply ignored or assumed to cancel each other out -- this as opposed to studying an individual, in which free will and the mind-body problem can only be ignored, not assumed to cancel out.

how do social science theories arrive at these new metaphysical inferences in the first place, i.e., the jump from physics to metaphysics? well, linguistically, certain terms have emerged over the years -- e.g. culture, belief systems, etc. -- as well as theories, namely saussre's structuralism, which were then applied to the social sciences. however, i have never been convinced about the idea of the signifier and the signified, which to my mind equates to nothing more than thinking (signifier) about thinking (signified), and cannot have a finite amount of thinking greater than one; either thinking is an all-encompassing, self-sufficient system (thinking), or is ryle's regress (thinking about thinking about thinking...ad infinitum). in any case, over the past century or so, social science theory has predominantly been derived from structuralism and working its way out of it (post-structuralism), and thus this form of metaphysical inquiry has been concerned largely with areas of direct interest to social science, not the underlying traditional metaphysical problems beneath. however, has there ever been any proof that structuralism as a system is better than traditional metaphysics? well, structuralism and its successors certainly can be employed more effectively using its own terminology at describing people; traditional metaphysics would probably amount to a lot of reducing and translation in order to describe the same things. however, within these new structures, have any attempts ever been made to address the underlying metaphysical issues? not to the best of my knowledge. instead, metaphysics has been turned into a subjective arena in social science wherein any theorist can introduce or attach himself/herself to an ontology that attempts to explain social and political phenomena through holistic definitions -- not just social and political, but psychological, cultural, artistic, etc. -- and best suits their own beliefs and agendas rather than attempting to discover any sort of external, objective truth. philosopher john searle has argued against this new paradigm embraced by much of the far left in academia:

An immediate difficulty with denials of metaphysical realism is that they remove the rational constraints that are supposed to shape discourse, when that discourse aims at something beyond itself. To paraphrase Dostoevsky, without metaphysical realism, anything is permissible.

accordingly, social science theory has proponents from all angles, none of which can ever be fully or even partially substantiated as correct. so, to put in succinctly, there are three types of metaphysicists:

1) traditional metaphysicists, otherwise known as philosophers

2) philosophically-minded scientists, who are trying to convert parts of what are now still metaphysics into physics, otherwise known as cognitive scientists

3) specialized metaphysicists, people who advocate metaphysical opinions and substantiate them within specialized metaphysical discourse (structuralist/post-structuralist/marxist, etc.), otherwise known as social scientists/political theorists

in closing, it should be noted that specialized metaphysicists only attempt to substantiate their claims by engaging in their own forms of discourse; social scientists rarely, if ever, subject their opinions and theories to the rigors of traditional metaphysics before they are propagated to the masses. and this is precisely the reason why i am still highly skeptic of all-encompassing theories, particularly ones that deal directly with masses of people, society, and/or political systems. even if these theories were subjected to the rigors of traditional metaphysics, there would be no precise system for proving or disproving aspects of each ontology. this is the reason why traditional metaphysics addresses fundamental issues that have remained unanswered for thousands of years, because espousing certain formal social and political ontologies oversteps the boundaries within which metaphysics operates at an acceptable level; any discipline in which by definition one must vouch for more than one can substantiate should be used as a means to an end of strict pontification, not an end of concrete answers, especially those used to assist one for political purposes. cognitive scientists, on the other hand, keep the metaphysical realm (metaphysical "opinions") where it should be -- strictly in metaphysics -- and allow physics to dictate the method of inquiry and discourse, guiding metaphysics along in the process. social scientists only use physics as a point of observation (a "snapshot" as opposed to an "established result"), then overextend metaphysics outside of its realm to guide the physics since the physics on its own cannot substantiate anything meaningful without metaphysics acting as both a foundation and catalyst (ideally, as in cognitive science, physics on its own possesses both a physical foundation and is its own catalyst).