Beyond Causality in The Social Sciences: Reciprocity as a Model of Non-Exploitative Social Relations

Abstract

The problem to which I address myself in this paper is the construction of an adequate model of explanation in the social sciences. Causal models of explanation have been criticized as inadequate in their conception of human action. Such criticisms have been offered by, among others, Anscombe, Peters, Melden and Hamlyn in their critique of behaviorism, Winch in his critique of causal explanation in sociology, von Wright in his discussion of explanation in history and the social sciences, and of course Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre in their analyses of consciousness, Dasein and choice. In general, I am in agreement with the well-known criticisms which these philosophers have offered, but I want to go beyond them in various ways. In particular, the criticism of causal models which I shall propose in the first part of my paper will focus not only on the inadequacy of these models in their account of human action, but also on their inadequacy as accounts of interaction. However, in rejecting causal explanations of human action and interaction, I do not intend to exclude causality from the social sciences. Rather, I will claim that human agency is causal insofar as it acts on nonhuman objects. As such, causality will be seen to be a delimited but important aspect of a total explanation in the social sciences.