I always wondered why social scientists were so confident about the conceptions of human behaviour that underpinned their models. Typically, either the structure of whatever social system you were considering would bear the weight of explanation, so you wouldn’t need to worry too much about the internal motivations of actors; or alternatively, you would go for some abstract idea of rationality – most likely through a theory of utilitarianism or revealed preference. All these ways of looking at human nature and social interaction have some pretty serious shortcomings. To get round them, ostensibly ‘rational’ theoreticians would make all sorts of subtle reference to underlying human desires and beliefs. Trust and fear, for example, crept into even the most parsimonious neorealist accounts of strategic behaviour.
That was then. Nowadays, exciting developments are afoot in the field – particularly in relating human nature to experimental findings from psychology – both cognitive and social. Beyond that, still more radical rethinking of what it means to do ‘social science’ is looming. Our discipline has has only recently started to connect with neuroscience – a field with great potential to expand our understanding of why people think and behave the way they do. A good place to start is Antonio Damasio’s fascinating classic, Descarte’s Error. Today though, I’ve been enjoying Rose McDermott’s lively prose in her paper on ‘the case for increasing dialogue between political science and neuroscience’. Read in conjunction with Jonathan Mercer’s 2005 paper on ‘rationality and psychology in international politics’, it’s a good overview of the possibilities, and the need to grasp them.
When Hobbes, Thucydides and Machiavelli were contemplating the nature of man they did so as keen observers of human behaviour, but as naive scientists, at best. The haphazard nature of that philosophizing is one reason why Hobbes and Rousseau drew different conclusions about man in the state of nature. Or, similarly, why Thucydides can be interpreted as arch realist or social constructivist – his writing supports either interpretation.
We can do better today. Why do people co-operate? Where does trust come from? How does anger, or envy affect our decision making? Why do we stereotype? What groups are salient to us, and why? These are the sorts of questions that interest neuroscience and social science alike. To the scanner, comrades!
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Interesting as always. Your statement “When Hobbes, Thucydides and Machiavelli were contemplating the nature of man they did so as keen observers of human behaviour (sic- ;-) ), but as naive scientists, at best.” especially caught my eye. I think the way you framed it, perhaps unwittingly, demonstrates at least to this unabashed “pre-modernist” that this trend (?) to meld or integrate the ideas, both formative and formed, of individual behavioral/organic scientific disciplines with those of “social science” is going to end up a bit like a 2-legged stool.
This is so because, IMH (and as some will say superstitious, unenlightened, intellectually crippled etc.) O, any such exercise that involves the role, much less the understanding, of the “nature of man” is doomed to fail if it does not take adequate and fair (e.g., not arrogantly dismissive as is apparent in the positions of many in post-modern academe today) account of the spiritual/moral dimension of the “nature of man.”
This third leg of the analytical stool is, again IMHO, the most critical in any discussion of “human nature.” As we have seen, and unfortunately continue to see, the formulation and outcome of any public policy (waging a war, “fundamentally transforming” a government, deterring a rogue state’s quest for nuclear weapons etc.) depends largely on the premises one relies upon as to the “nature of man.” That is to say, the approach dictated by those with a Judeo-Christian, pre-modern view of this nature as inherently flawed or (with advance apologies for resort to such an unpopular term) “sinful” will be markedly different from that of post-modernist, morally relativistic and situationally ethical (if the moral or ethical are even mentioned).
C Jr – thanks for this. As it happens, my next PhD is going to be theology, but it’ll have to wait till I’ve retired. I’ll get back to you then! :D Actually, am just now enjoying some William James on the varieties of religious experience…
Of course, as I suggest to my friends here and elsewhere, we would do well to keep in mind that there is a world beyond these ivy festooned walls such that a PhD. is really not necessary to establish, as my students seem to say nowadays, one’s “creds.” This is especially so in matters “religious” as you put it, where my own experience and study persuade me that that term itself, which usually connotes and reflects all sorts of human (and by my lights always fallible due to that “sin” nature) encrustations on “faith” is a much less accurate and far more distracting term for the source of my thoughts and beliefs in this area of thought and analysis than simply “faith.”
Seriously C Jr, when you get to the Pearly Gates and they ask for your transcript, you’re going to be sorry about this :D
Hah! I don’t think so-”ticket” already in hand–prepaid by Someone much more gracious than I.
Makes more sense than management theories.
Ok, I haven’t read this in awhile so by description may be slightly off. Of interest might be Alexander Wendt’s response to critiques of his constructivist theorizing. In it, he treats phenomena of study in social science as quantum and not the ontologically independent objects posited by a Newtonian ontology. If this is true, he argues that consciousness itself might be a quantum phenomena, and that mind and matter may not even be distinct and independent objects. This is abstract as it gets, but I believe he is trying to take international relations in the direction you are describing.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.95.1282&rep=rep1&type=pdf