The naturalistic approach to social science follows very much in the tradition of logical positivism and its application in the natural sciences. It asserts that a scientific account of social facts must be in terms of purposeless mechanism and reduction, non-teleological laws and publicly observable data. Matters such as meaning, purpose or interpretation are entirely antithetical to the scientific endeavor by such a view, for it was by ridding itself of such things that science made so much progress in the natural sciences. Inasmuch as a school of thought appeals to such entities, it is not a science at all. Consequently, it is argued, social science should isolate itself from such matters.
According to the interpretationalist, however, any account of social facts which does not include meaning, interpretation and purpose will inevitably fall short of describing the essential features which characterize social facts. Such social facts are inevitably constituted, at least in part, by beliefs and desires, and there simply seems to be no way that a naturalistic approach could ever capture or explain such intentional content; such matters can only be approached by way of interpretation. Thus, the very things which naturalism attempts to avoid in explaining social facts are the very things which constitute social facts. As such, I will argue that a naturalistic account of social facts cannot ever be adequate short of the highly unlikely reduction of intentional content to physical fact.
In order to better illustrate the difference between these two approaches let us consider the example of two or more parties agreeing to a contract or covenant. The interpretationalist approach to explaining this fact would include an appeal to the beliefs and desires of all parties which are entering into the agreement. For example, the interpretationalist would want to understand by way of interpretation what each party wants and how they believe they can achieve their goals by way of entering into the agreement in question. The naturalist approach, however, cannot make any such appeals to beliefs, desires or even the meaning of the contract itself. Instead, they are left to behavioristic accounts (i.e. stimulus response) and neurophysiology, neither of which seems plausible or adequate as an explanation of the event in question.
The question may be asked why the naturalist cannot simply read the text of the contract (be this text in written form or not) or ask each of the parties what they are doing and why? After all, each of these is an appeal to publicly available information. There are two problems with such an approach. First, the actual beliefs and desires which are involved in such scenarios may not be transparent to the people involved. Second, and more fundamental, what information is public in each of these cases is not the information which is central to explaining or understanding the matter at hand. Mere behavior cannot be interpreted as meaningful action without taking into account the constitutive beliefs and desires; and such mental events are inevitably private. Indeed, the social scientist cannot even get the essential information by asking the involved parties what they believe and desire, for the response which they will receive by way of noise coming from their mouth is simply another example of mere behavior. There is, even in principle, no way for the social scientist to understand the actions of others without projecting his/her own interpretation upon the situation in question.
What about the naturalist’s accusation that inasmuch as social science involves interpretation, meaning and purpose it ceases to be a science altogether? There is much merit in such an accusation so long as one takes “science” to mean something analogous to the natural sciences as inherited from the logical positivist tradition. What is not at all clear, however, is that all quests for knowledge and understanding, or even all sciences should strive for such a status. While naturalism may be the surest path to predictive abilities and control of a physical system, this should not be confused with understanding that system. In fact, one can argue that not only does the interpretationalist approach to social facts give a deeper understanding of such facts, but for the time being it also gives greater predictive abilities and control over such facts as well.
Indeed, just as the natural sciences advocate a form of methodological naturalism in order to avoid criticism from some quarters, a move which is justified by its pragmatic value (prediction and control), one can similarly argue for a methodological anti-naturalism in the case of the social sciences, a move which is also justified by its pragmatic value (understanding, prediction and control). Thus, the social scientist need not actually be committed to the metaphysical existence of non-reducible and non-mechanistic entities such as beliefs, desires, freewill, etc. Instead, he/she can simply assume the existence of such entities due to their methodological benefits. Until the naturalists do find a way to reduce such entities, however, some form of interpretationalism should be the preferred approach in social science, at least in terms of methodology.
