Critical Empiricism: [Comment]
Critical Empiricism: [Comment]
复制标题
批判经验主义：[评论]
DOI：
10.1086/492249
复制
发表时间：
1989
影响因子：
1.6
通讯作者：
W. Whitford
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
W. Whitford
传统上被描述为“经验主义”的研究有一个基本的悖论。“这项研究的表面目的是通过观察来学习一些东西。然而，正如Trubek和Esser强调的那样，观察不可能是客观的或价值自由的。有两个相关的问题使所有的观察内在地充满价值。对社会世界的描述要求我们将离散的现象归为我们相信或被训练相信的类别，描述重要的社会事件。在我们的语言中，我们用一个词来描述这些范畴，并把它们看作一个单一的现象，而不是把本来可以用其他方式分组的离散现象分组。因此，我们谈论纠纷，我们被训练成把婚姻争吵和企业抵制环保机构的命令看作是相关的社会现象。但我们不认为伊万·伦德尔或马茨·维兰德是世界上最好的网球运动员的问题是相关的，因为我们没有受过训练，可以把这描述为一个“争议”。然而，解决后一个问题的过程我们称之为“博弈”而不是“争端处理”。“我们今天使用的分类是由我们的祖先创造的，它们通常反映了社会应该如何组织的偏好，这些偏好在创造它们的文化中被广泛分享。在Trubek和Esser的术语中，今天在实证研究中使用的社会行为类别至少部分是在相关人口亚群中占主导地位的意识形态的产物。'
There is a fundamental paradox for research that is traditionally described as "empirical." The ostensible purpose of this research is to learn something by observation. Yet, as Trubek and Esser emphasize, observation cannot be objective or value free. There are two related problems that render all observation inherently value laden. Description of the social world requires that we group discrete phenomena into categories that we believe, or are trained to believe, describe significant social happenings. In our language we describe these categories with a single word, and come to think of them as a single phenomenon, rather than the grouping of discrete phenomena that could have been grouped in some other way. Thus, we talk of disputes, and we are trained to think of a marital spat and resistance by an enterprise to an environmental protection agency's order as related social phenomena. But we do not think of the question whether Ivan Lendl or Mats Wilander is the world's best tennis player as related, because we are not trained to describe this as a "dispute." Consistently, the process by which the latter question gets resolved we call a "game" rather than "disputes processing." The categories we use today were created by our forebears, and they commonly reflect preferences about how society should be organized that were widely shared in the culture in which they were created. In Trubek and Esser's terminology, the categories of social behavior in use today in empirical research are at least partly a product of ideologies that have been dominant in relevant population subgroups.'