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Assessing Functional Explanations in the Social Sciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

Harold Kincaid
Harold Kincaid*
Affiliation:
University of Alabama
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Extract

Despite decades of controversy, functionalism continues to be a lively research tradition in the social sciences. Furthermore, social scientists who reject Parsonian functionalism and its variants frequently make liberal use of functional explanations. Yet, neither social scientists nor philosophers have reached any consensus on when and where functional accounts are legitimate. Critics doubt that functionalism is really explanatory or testable; advocates are unfortunately vague on their claims and the evidence for them. In what follows I try to clarify what functionalism entails, discuss some ways in which functional hypotheses can be confirmed, and evaluate criticisms. While I think much functionalism is bad science, I hope to show that the problem is not one of principle but of practice.

Social scientists use the term “functionalism” in diverse ways. At times the term refers to a specific theoretical movement in sociology and anthropology—the movement identified with Malinowski and Parsons.

Type
Part VI. Special Sciences
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1990 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1990 , 1990 , pp. 341 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1990

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