Part II timetable

Paper 10
History and Philosophy of Social and Psychological Sciences

Paper managers: Anna Alexandrova, John Forrester (Lent & Easter Terms)

This paper explores historical and philosophical aspects of the social and psychological sciences, including the character of their subject matters and their methodologies. Amongst the disciplines covered will be psychology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, economics, political science, anthropology, sociology and history. Topics may include historical development of concepts and methods in these sciences, principally in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the cultural impact of these sciences; the supposed differences between these sciences and the natural sciences; their connection to values; the nature of explanation; the reality of objects; the possibility of objectivity; their relation to evidence-based policy.

Primary source

John Stuart Mill, The System of Logic, Book VI: 'On The Logic of the Moral Sciences'
Anna Alexandrova (4 seminars, Michaelmas Term)

Published in 1843, Mill's System of Logic remained the main text in logic and scientific method throughout the nineteenth century. Its Book VI contains the first systematic discussion of the methods of the social and historical sciences. Mill proposes that induction is not feasible in these sciences as the underlying conditions that produce social phenomena continue to change; nor is the experimental method applicable. Instead he proposes that social sciences be deduced from basic laws of human nature and laws of mind, a proposal that proved particularly influential in economics. Mill also discusses the distinct methods of historical sciences and the relation between social sciences, morality and policy.

Lectures

Mind and Matter
Arif Ahmed (4 lectures, Michaelmas Term)

The course introduces the central problem in the philosophy of mind: the existence of conscious mental life. Lectures 1 and 2 consider arguments for thinking that the mind and body are really distinct and some insuperable problems for this view, most notably that arising from psychophysical causation. Lectures 3 and 4 consider the physicalist alternatives: central state materialism, behaviourism, functionalism, and (if time) anomalous monism. But all of these views are incredible too. So by the end of the course you should be much more perplexed and anxious than you were when you started.

Models, Rationality and Idealization
Anna Alexandrova (4 lectures, Michaelmas Term)

Rational choice models are the principal vehicle for theorizing and explanation in large parts of contemporary economics and political science, even as psychologists call into question its assumptions about human decision making. This course explores the nature and the role of rationality assumptions in social sciences, the logic of idealized models and their role in explanation and policy making.

Sciences of Sexuality
Leon Rocha (4 lectures, Michaelmas Term)

The course considers the history of scientific and medical investigations into human sexuality in Europe and America. Using the ideas of Michel Foucault, Ian Hacking and Arnold Davidson as a starting point, the lectures analyses how sex came to be an object of scientific knowledge. The first lecture will discuss the inauguration of sexology in the nineteenth century, along with forensic science and psychiatry, which aimed to classify 'normal' and 'deviant' behaviours and bodies. Subsequent lectures trace some of the major developments in the twentieth century, including the work of Alfred Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, psychological theories of gender identity and sexual orientation, as well as transsexualism and gender reassignment surgery.

Freud, Psychoanalysis and the Twentieth Century
John Forrester (8 lectures, Lent Term)

This course considers the historical origins and theoretical and therapeutic specificities of psychoanalysis in the work of Sigmund Freud and its impact on twentieth-century culture. The first part addresses the emergence of the talking cure out of hypnotic suggestion, the theory of sexuality, dream interpretation, the psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious, and theories of society and religion. The second part considers later important developments of psychoanalytic theory (Klein, Winnicott, Lacan et al.) and practice. The relations between psychoanalysis and other disciplines, in particular medicine, is considered, as well as criticisms and defences of psychoanalysis. In a third part, the place of psychoanalysis within more general twentieth-century culture is discussed, including literature, film and politics.

Causes, Explanation and Understanding
Anna Alexandrova (4 lectures, Lent Term)

One major debate in philosophy of social science is between the hermeneutic tradition, which emphasizes understanding and the uniqueness of social and historical phenomena, and the tradition of causal and law-based explanation, which takes the social sciences to be more akin to the natural sciences than the humanities. We will explore arguments on each side, whether the two approaches are incompatible, what sort of causal knowledge we should hope to achieve in social sciences and how it can be achieved.

Preliminary reading

• Crane, T, The Mechanical Mind: A Philosophical Introduction to Minds, Machine and Mental Representation (Routledge, 2003)
• Danziger, K, Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research (Cambridge, 1990)
• Davidson, Arnold I, The Emergence of Sexuality: Historical Epistemology and the Formation of Concepts (Harvard, 2001)
• Foucault, Michel, History of Sexuality Volume 1: The Will to Knowledge (Penguin, 1978)
• Freud, S, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis [1916-17]. In James Strachey (ed) The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Hogarth Press, 1953–74) vols 15 & 16. Numerous Penguin editions available; electronic version on PEP-Web.
• Guala, F and D Steel (eds), The Philosophy of Social Science Reader (Routledge, 2010)
• Hacking, Ian, Historical Ontology (Harvard, 2000) [especially 'Making Up People']
• Hausman, D, The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics (Cambridge, 1992)
• Rosenberg, A, Philosophy of Social Science, 3rd edn (Westview, 2007)

Further resources are available on CamTools