Logics of Critical Explanation – Page 5

Causal Mechanisms (Elster)

This is an excerpt

What distinguishes causal mechanisms from causal laws is the indeterminacy of the former, and the death knell this sounds for any attempt to make prediction a constitutive feature of social science explanation. More precisely, the lack of determinacy is understood as a serious epistemological obstacle to the elevation of mechanisms to the status of laws, whether this indeterminancy is linked to not knowing the identity of relevant triggering conditions, or to not knowing with sufficient precision the relative force of individual mechanisms acting simultaneously. Elster’s intervention thus decisively discredits one of the central pillars of the positivist paradigm by decoupling prediction, and thus a strict deductive-nomological form of reasoning, from social science explanation. While it may still be possible to offer predictions in social science, these predictions are understood to be constitutively precarious and, in any case, non-essential for purposes of explanation. It if for this reason that we feel justified in regarding his approach as conforming to a retroductive form of explanation in the social sciences (Glynos, Howarth, 2007 89).

… from the fact that X qua process is not reducible to the contextualized self-interpretations or intentions of subjects, it does not necessarily — or only — follow that X is independent of those contextualized self-interpretations or intentions. But this is precisely what is implied by Elster’s conception of causal mechanism. .. causal mechansims can be discussed entirely on their own, with no necessary internal connection to intentional mechanisms.

Of course, the subject-independent feature of causal mechanisms is very attractive from the perspective of a positivist programme seeking to import the causal law ideal and its correlative promise of (a certain conception of) objectivity into the social sciences. After all, one of the central ingredients of a natural science conception of causality is its subject-independence. The causal process is unaffected by what any of us think about it or do in relation to it. Take the law of gravitation for instance. At the very most, we as subjects can act in light of such causal laws, but we cannot modify, or be considered supports of, the laws themselves, whether intentionally or otherwise. The functioning of comparable processes (X) in the social sciences, however is parasitic upon human practices, in the sense that they are constitutively sustained and mediated by the discursive activity of subjects. If we insist on calling such a process a mechanism, then we must accept that, unlike laws, it has the property of fungibility, that is, it can suffer dissolution. At any point, the mechanism may find that it has lost its necessary support — intentional or otherwise — in the relevant subjects. Thus, mechanisms are not ‘proto’ laws that may one day be transofrmed into ‘proper’ causal laws. This is because the functioning of causal laws does not require the passage through the subject: the content of causal laws is not parasitic upon the subjects’ self-interpretations. This is why we prefer the term ‘logic’ to ‘mechanism’. The term logic better avoids the connotations of subject-independence that talk of causal laws and mechanisms suggest. At the same time, it allows us to maintain the central insight which promoted the turn to mechanisms in the first place, namely, that not all is reducible to the contextualized self-interpretations of subjects: logics are thus meant to capture the subject-dependent aspect of social processes, as well as aspects which are not reducible to the empirical context (Glynos, Howarth, 2007: 97).

While Elster’s theory of causal mechanisms responds to certain limitations of the causal law paradigm, he nevertheless accepts the search for laws as an ideal. And on of the reasons for this is the atomistic ontological grounding of his account, in which the world consists of discrete events, facts, and mechanisms. 103

The Logics pt2

… if naturalists offer the prospect of a causal explanation by subsuming the phenomena under universal laws or general mechanisms, and if hermeneuticists explain via the use of particular contextualized interpretations, our approach conceives of explanation in terms of a critical and articulated assemblage of logics. Our parsimonious theoretical grammar consisting of logics and dimensions thus contributes to a kind of ‘middle-range theorizing‘, which moves between empirical phenomena, consisting of self-interpretations and practices, and our underlying ontological premises. Our task is thus ‘to re-describe the ontical level in terms of distinctions brought about by [our] ontology’ (Laclau 2004 cited in Glynos et al: 164.)

Fantasmatic logic: the way the subject enjoys that covers over, conceals the radical contingency of social reality

… logics are always linked to a particular field of self-interpretations. Social logics, in particular, provide access to the practices under investigation, enabling us to grasp the point of a practice or institution, as well as the rules and structures that organize them … Social logics require therefore a ‘passage through the self-interpretations of subjects’, and they provide a bridge between description/characterization and explanation/critique 159.

In any fully-fledged critical explanation of a phenomenon, political and fantasmatic logics have to be articulated with a range of social logics together with the empirical contexts they inform and within which they function. The entire logic of explanation thus requires the passage through self-interpretations 160.

Ontological Framework: 2 key dimensions

The ontological framework that makes possible our approach has two key dimensions, which centre on the notion of subjectivity. These are what might be called the hermeneutic-structural and the poststructural dimensions. 162.

Hermeneutic-structural: centrality of self-interpretations of subjects in social science explanations. But discursive practices exhibit varying degrees of sedimentation, ranging from regimes and institutions to everyday social habits

While the social logics structuring them (discursive practices) are literally buoyed up by subjects — they do not exist except through the activity of subjects — they are not necessarily cognitively accessible to subjects, at least not immediately and without some form of intervention … logics can have significant explanatory and critical leverage independently of the consciously held self-interpretations of agents 162.

poststructural: highlights that social structures are never complete in themselves “by foregrounding the dislocatory nature of the symbolic order (the ‘real’ in Lacanian terms) and thus the possible emergence of subjectivity as such 162.

The hermenuetic-structural dimensions fails to exhaust our particular ontological framework. It is at this point that political and fantasmatic logics come into play, thus enabling us to generate critical accounts of the constitution and dissolution of social structures themselves. This is because they assist in the process of revealing and explaining the non-necessary character of social logics and the practices they sustain and animate. 162

Social Political Fantasmatic Logics

(T)he discernement of social logics enables us to characterize practices or regimes by setting out the rules informing the practice and the kinds of entities populating it; political logics allow us to account for their historical emergence and formation by focusing on the conflicts and contestations surrounding their constitution; and fantasmatic logics furnish us with the means to explain the way subjects are gripped or held by a practice or regime of practices. Taken together, logics are by no means reducible to the empirical phenomena for which they are designed to account though neither are they accorded a fully transcendental role and function. … 213

(with regards to our social ontology) our commitment (is) to the radical contingency of social objectivity whether in the form of structures, agents or institutions, which in our view has important ramifications for our understanding of social change, political subjectivity, and the overall structuring of social relations (215).

Social science explanation involves the mobilization of three types of logics

Social Logics: not synonymous with causal mechanisms, capture the ‘patterning’ of social practices.

Regularity in dispersion: captures both the idea of social logics as a pattern and an open-endedness [139].

… rules are not reified entities that subsume practices and discourses; instead they enable us to describe and characterize the latter,

… logic is not ‘superhard’ whose identity can survive independently of the contexts within which it is instantiated or operative [140].

But social logics are not reducible to empirical contexts either. … in sum, we could say that with social logics, we aim to capture the ‘patterning’ of social practices, where such practices are understood in this regard as a function of the contextualized self-interpretations of key subjects. Social logics of competition … describe the way that actors interact with, and understand, each other as competitors. Or social logics of ‘individualization’ might capture those patterns of discursive articulations which, in the self-understanding of actors … isolating them from each other 140.

Political Logics: provide means to explore how social practices are instituted, contested, and defended — logic of equivalence, logic of difference— to investigate the way in which the traces of radical contingency associated with the original institution of practices and regimes can in certain circumstances be reactivated by subjects, thus enabling them to construct new meanings, practices and identities. “Since the very identity and significance of a social practice depends upon its institution, as well as the subsequent forgetting of its ignoble origins, political logics assist in the characterization of a practice or regime by showing how they emerge and are sedimented (106).

Political logics are most closely associated with the political dimension of social relations

Political logics are related to the institution of the social they are also related to it possible de-institution or contestation (142).

Fantasmatic Logics: account for the grip of an existing or anticipated social practice or regime. Fantasy is understood as the frame which structures the subject’s enjoyment.

looking at how subjects are gripped in different ways by the discourses with which they identify.

With the logic of fantasy we aim to capture a particularly powerful way in which subjects are rendered complicit in concealing or covering over the radical contingency of social relations.

In sum, by invoking fantasmatic logics we suggest that one condition for subscribing to an existing or promised social practice concerns the extent to which it can tap into the subject’s existing mode of enjoyment and thus fantasmatic frame. When working in tandem with political logics, fantasmatic logics may be invoked to help explain why certain demands — or responses to demands — succeed in gripping or interpellating a particular constituency. Equally, they can be mobilized to account for the way explicit challenges to existing social structures or institutions are blocked (107).

The 3 logics are articulated together to account for a problematized phenomenon 133

.... our idea of a logic is not only set against the universalizing and necessitarian tendencies of the causal law paradigm, but it is also opposed to the particularised tendencies of the interpretivist paradigm (135)

… the logic of a practice comprises the rules or grammar of the practice, as well as the conditions which make the practice both possible and vulnerable 136.

Logic of the market

Clearly the way we conceptualize the market depends on whether it is a supermarket, a market in energy supply, a market in educational goods, and so on … the meaning of expressions such as ‘efficient allocation of resources’, ‘fair price’ or ‘supply and demand’ depends on the way we understand the key actors and terms associated with the specific market paradigm we have adopted. There is a clear relational network at stake here which the concept of a logic must try to capture and name. Crucial in this respect is the way actors themselves interpret their roles and activities 136.

In abstract terms .. a particular market comprises a particular set of rules or grammar that govern the arrangements and meanings that bring together buyers and sellers of goods and services.

Hence the logic of the market comprises:

– subject positions (buyers and sellers), objects (commodities and means of exchange), and a system of relations and meanings connecting subjects and objects, as well as certain sorts of institutional parameters (such as a well functioning legal system).

However, our concept of a logic also aims to capture the conditions that make possible the continued operation of a particular market practice, as well as its potential vulnerabilities. And this involves answering a set of connected questions: What were the conditions under which the institution of this market was made possible? What political struggles preceded its institution? What processes ensure its maintenance or question its hegemonic status? Logics must also provide the means with which to answer these sorts of questions 136-7.