Stephen Turner and the Philosophy of the Social

Abstract

Stephen Turner, scholar that he is of the history of the social sciences, deeply appreciates how the history of social science stands littered with failed theories, ones that aspired to formulate a science of the social. But why? A key insight guiding his work from early to late has been a keen appreciation of a need to clarify what such a science is a science of. That is, Turner almost alone among the leading social theorists of the last several decades understood that resolving prospects for a science of the social required first achieving clarity regarding the constituent elements of any such explanation. His guiding question is: Just what is it for something to be both social and yet sufficiently thing-like so there can be something for some science to explain? In tracking how his concerns refocus and evolve in the several decades that span the time from his first book to his most recent with respect to the question of what makes explananda social, one achieves a synoptic view of how debate regarding the idea of a social science reshapes as it moves into the 21st century.

Full text

LEIDEN | BOSTON
Stephen Turner and the
Philosophy of theSocial
Editedby
Christopher Adair- Totef
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

Contents
Notes on Contributors
Stephen Turner and the Philosophy of the Social
An Introduction1
Christopher Adair- Totef

Overviews
On What There is, Maybe
Turner versus Turner on “the Social”11
Paul A.Roth
Rationality and Interpretive Methodology
Transformations in the Apparent Irrationality Debate30
Mark Risjord
Practical Normativity
Stephen Turner’s Contribution to the Philosophy of the Social49
Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski

Practices and Beliefs
What Is in an Account of Practices?71
Theodore R. Schatzki
Yes Virginia, Folk Psychological Understanding Really is Explanatory
Towards a Realist Conception of the “Verstehen Bubble”90
Karsten R. Stueber
Individualistic and Holistic Models of Collective Beliefs and the Role of
Rhetoric and Argumentation
The Example of Religious and Political Beliefs110
Alban Bouvier
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

 

Intentions and Norms
What Does Normativity “Explain”?133
PeterOlen
Norms
You Can’t Always Get What You Want … but You Can Get What You
Need150
David Henderson and TerenceHorgan

Social Science
Cognitive Theories and Economic Science177
Sam Whimster
Interpretivism and Qualitative Research202
JulieZahle
Sociology, Expertise and Civility221
John Holmwood
Response
Normativity, Practices, and the Substrate243
StephenTurner
Index267
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

On What There Is,Maybe
Turner versus Turner on “the Social”
Paul A.Roth
Abstract
Stephen Turner, scholar that he is of the history of the social sciences, deeply appre-
ciates how the history of social science stands littered with failed theories, ones that
aspired to formulate a science of the social. But why? Akey insight guiding his work
from early to late has been a keen appreciation of a need to clarify what such a sci-
ence is a science of. That is, Turner almost alone among the leading social theorists
of the last several decades understood that resolving prospects for a science of the
social required rst achieving clarity regarding the constituent elements of any such
explanation. His guiding question is:Just what is it for something to be both social
and yet suciently thing- like so there can be something for some science to explain?
In tracking how his concerns refocus and evolve in the several decades that span the
time from his rst book to his most recent with respect to the question of what makes
explananda social, one achieves a synoptic view of how debate regarding the idea of a
social science reshapes as it moves into the twenty- rst century.
Keywords
Cognitive science – explanation – folk psychology – social ontology – social
science– Verstehenbubble
“A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It
can be put in three Anglo- Saxon monosyllables:‘What is there?’ It
can be answered, moreover, in a word— ‘Everything’— and every-
one will accept this answer as true. However, this is merely to say
that there is what there is. There remains room for disagreement
over cases; and so the issue has stayed alive down the centuries.”
W.V. O.Quine, “On What ThereIs”

© ., |:./_
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

 
A striking feature about problems of social ontology— the existence of the
state, culture, classes, joint intentions, etc.— is their simplicity:“Do they exist?”
Summarizing answers requires only a word— “Maybe.” That is, the answer
depends on whom you ask. Everyone acknowledges this. By why such disagree-
ment? Failure to seriously pursue this last question helps account for why the
problem continues to persist.
Stephen Turner, scholar that he is of the history of the social sciences, deeply
appreciates how that history stands littered with failed theories, ones that aspired
to formulate a science of the social. This sorry judgment results primarily not from
some prior notion of science applied to candidate social scientic theories, but
from the fact that no social theory actually yields results commensurate with
expectations for a science under almost any denition of that term. And so while
social sciences remain established areas of research, social science remains to be
achieved.
But why? Turner in numerous publications over the course of his extraordi-
narily productive career repeatedly addresses this very question. In tracking how
his concerns refocus and evolve in the several decades that span the time from his
rst book to his most recent with respect to the question of what makes expla-
nanda social, one achieves a synoptic view of how debate regarding the idea of a
social science reshapes as it moves into the twenty- rst century.
A key insight guiding his work from early to late has been a keen appreci-
ation of a need to clarify what such a science is a science of. That is, Turner
almost alone among the leading social theorists of the last several decades
understood that resolving prospects for a science of the social required rst
achieving clarity regarding the constituent elements of any such explanation.
His guiding question, that is, is not what makes for a social science, but rather
what makes a science one of the social. His work can thus be read as persistent
attempts to think through how to formulate what the objects of social inquiry
are. Just what is it for something to be both social and yet suciently thing- like
so there can be something for some science to explain?
Rereading Turner’s rst book, Sociological Explanation as Translation,
40years on from its initial publication from this perspective, the wisdom of
hindsight reveals that what troubles him there is the putative ontology of sociol-
ogy, the status of objects of “folk sociology.” For from the opening chapter of
that book— “the object of sociological explanation”— Turner frames the prob-
lem of sociological explanation as one of contrasting a “prescientic under-
standing” (, 1) of human action and a “properly” scientic one. Of course,
 Turner 1980 is referenced in the body of the paper as ; Turner 1994 is ; Turner 2010 is
; Turner 2018 is.
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

    “ ” 
what fullls the description of a “properly scientic” account of human actions
has itself occasioned much ongoing disagreement even among the cognoscenti.
But this debate endures Turner realizes not because of disagreement over the
status of results, but due to a lack of results about which to disagree.
From early on, Turner asks why those who aspired to a properly scientic
sociology, whatever form that may take, failed to achieve their stated goal. The
nub of the problem, as Turner conceives of it circa 1980, is ultimately ontolog-
ical. “This problem about modes of explanation turns on a more fundamental
one, the problem of the object of sociological explanation” (, 2; emphasis
mine). He distinguishes in this regard between more and less radical diagnoses
of the nature and import of this ontological problem. The less radical diagnosis
sees no issue with regard to the objects of sociological explanation. Like doting
parents, those in that camp counsel time and patience with still immature sci-
ences. The more radical diagnosis “denies that there is anything that demands
any special sort of ‘sociological’ explanation” (, 2). The radical view denies
a core tenet on which folk sociology insists— that human action has some spe-
cial characteristic, something that intrinsically distinguishes action from mere
behavior. The radical diagnosis acknowledges no ontology of the social consti-
tuted in this way. Thus the social appears irremediably part of a scientically
dispensable manifestimage.
Young Turner proposes a via media that would assimilate the “folk socio-
logical” manifest image as an object of explanation even while acknowledging
that this “object of explanation arises through ordinary discourse and does not
purport to ‘replace’ the prescientic understanding.” (, 2)That is, the cru-
cial move in , one for which Turner would later profess atonement, takes
the manifest objects as perfectly good ones for purposes of sociological expla-
nation. “In this work, Iidentify one class of explanatory objects and a pattern
of sociological explanation that can reasonably claim to include the crucial
concerns of sociology” (, 2). Here Turner follows the radical diagnosis of
why sociology has failed to ourish as a science by claiming that “these explan-
atory objects are misconceived as facts that ‘general theories’ of sociology can
explain” (, 2). Rather, by identifying a distinctive pattern of sociological
explanation he hopes to establish that the “explanatory object” emerges by
seeing how it functions within this particular account of explanation, one that
more closely resembles translation. Replacing ontological concerns with those
of puzzle solving neatly sidesteps questions of whether or not sociology has a
special ontology— social stuf. He thus ofers, Turner there insists, “a defense
of sociology as having a legitimate and intelligible explanatory interest apart
from these pretensions [those of models of scientic rationality or conceptual
analysis]” (, 5). Key to this defense is how the pattern “makes sense” of the
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

 
social phenomena without having to inscribe it on the inventory of the furni-
ture of the universe.
This explanatory pattern Turner analogizes to puzzle solving. “The expla-
nations that constitute the solutions to these puzzles … are akin to another,
familiar, kind of explanation of a game ‘by describing one as a variation of
another— by describing them and emphasizing their diferences and analo-
gies.’ The diferent practices in a social group or social context that raises the
puzzle is explained in the way that a diferent rule of a game is explained” (,
97). Turner should not be mistaken here as plumping for a purely hermeneutic
account. For he neither places prior constraints on what can serve to solve the
sorts of puzzles that prove of interest to sociologists, nor does he insist that
successful explanations be couched in intentional terms. Rather, he maintains
that the “tactics of both [‘interpretive’ and ‘statistical’ sociologies] play iden-
tiable parts in the process of setting and solving these comparative puzzles”
(, 99). In this respect, Turner nowhere seeks to generally explicate ‘explain,’
or otherwise pronounce on what the form of explanation mustbe.
Nor need he. For these very attempts to specify “a one size ts all” account
of explanation were part and parcel of his survey of the recurring failed eforts
at methodological hegemony with which Turner begins that book. “[I] t must
be acknowledged that ‘rule governed’ is a very weak sense of explanation if you
are thinking ‘determined by’ à la classical mechanics. … If these do not square
with some ideal of explanation, imported from other contexts, and there are no
other reasons for denying them the status of ‘explanation,’ so much the worse
for the ideal and its importation” (, 83). Early Turner proves undaunted
by challenges to either the ontological or the causal factors implicated in his
favored pattern of sociological explanations. The ontology of folk sociology
can be accommodated because the sorts of metaphysical issues implicit in
ontological commitment, e.g., causal ecacy and identity conditions, do not
impact the use made there of sociological objects in explanation.
Turner of course has much more to say than just noted regarding what
makes for a satisfactory puzzle solution. My concern is exclusively with how
Turner frames the problem of sociological explanation, and the constraints
such as they may be placed on factors proper to the explananda and explanan-
tia in such cases. Turner positions his eforts there explicitly as a defense of the
integrity of at least certain types of sociological explanation. As he character-
izes his goal, he ofers “a defense of sociology as having a legitimate and intel-
ligible explanatory interest apart from these [philosophical or natural scien-
tic] pretensions” (, 5). Important to note is that Turner at this point insists
on separating and distinguishing what makes for a “legitimate and intelligible
explanatory interest” in sociology from what he dismisses as the hegemonic
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

    “ ” 
(with respect to what to call an explanation) pretensions of either conceptual
analysis or scientic method. And while Turner carefully attempts to circum-
scribe criteria for rational evaluation of competing explanatory translations
(see especially , ch. 4), he champions no claim that there exists some gen-
eral explication of what to count as an explanation.
In this particular respect, it would be wrong to identify Turner’s position
as anti- naturalist since he does not explicitly countenance any supra- natural
entities. Yet neither does he clearly declare allegiance to any particular sort of
naturalism.
The questions that sociologists ask were pictured as limited puzzles, with
origins in the ordinary experience of encountering social contexts where
the practices of familiar context do not t. … The cues for the practicing
sociologist came down to the suggestion that he reconstrue his own activ-
ities in accordance with the puzzle- solving pattern. The case for recon-
struing them in this is precisely that by doing so very real diculties can
be avoided— the diculties with other explanatory forms that became
evident in the course of the discussion. Moreover, they can be avoided
without thereby sacricing any of sociology’s distinctive concerns. (, 99;
emphasesmine).
Turner’s position here (and throughout, Iwould suggest) involves more a quest
for explanations where the explanantia in particular are obviously compati-
ble with whatever else passes as a science. Turner at this point can be read as
counseling a type of Wittgensteinian quietism; what informed sociological folk
accept as explanation is explanation enough.
But this conclusion does not continue to satisfy Turner himself. The
problem, as he later comes to think of it, was with those unproblematically
accepted terms of the folk sociology, the ones sociologists aimed to construct
explanations of. This animates his rueful observation some fourteen years after
. “Philosophy, as Ithink of it, is a form of atonement for past enthusiasms.
This book [The Social Theory of Practices] is the product of a long struggle with
myself over the ideas of tradition and practice, and particularly with the inade-
quacies of my own Sociological Explanation as Translation” (, ix). The issue
with which he struggles and the heresy for which he needs to atone proves illu-
minating. “Originally, Iwished to make a contribution to the tradition of con-
ceptualization of ‘tradition’. Instead, Ihave argued for its dissolution, at least
in its standard forms” (, ix). But this at least hints at and possibly implies a
repudiation of that pattern of explanation that so blithely took as “the object
of explanation” those notions that arise “through ordinary discourse” and so
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

 
“does not purport to ‘replace’ the prescientic understanding” (, 2). Indeed,
Turner was not only comfortable speaking of practices in that rst book, but
even formulated and deployed for his own purposes what he there terms the
“same practices hypothesis” (, 56). This was basic to characterizing the pat-
tern of explanation that translation represents. The objects of folk sociology
imagined as inscribed in practices now troubles the conscience of Turner the
social theorist.
For Turner comes to appreciate that the notion of practice does not answer
the question of what sociology explains, but rather actually constitutes the core
of the problem in characterizing what social theory is even about. “Practices, it
would appear, are the vanishing point of twentieth- century philosophy. … The
vanishing point, then, is in a domain traditionally belonging to social theory”
(, 1). Indeed, the rst chapter of  is nothing less than an entire recasting
of how Turner now understands the problematic of specifying what the social is.
“So the legacy of the nineteenth century is a problem about practices, a prob-
lem about their status as objects, their causal properties and their ‘collective’
character— a problem which is unresolved and casts a shadow over the pres-
ent uses of the term. The classical social theorist did not solve these problems”
(, 6). What Turner was in 1980 willing to take for granted as unproblematic
objects of sociological explanation has become exactly what he now questions
under the general rubric of practices.
Turner does wring his hands a bit regarding what this portends for practices,
understood as a general notion for whatever people share when they imbibe
what binds them socially.
It is our shared practices that enable us to be persuaded and persuade,
to be explainers, or to justify and have the justications accepted. … But
this reasoning lands us right back to the world of the classical social the-
orists and their puzzles about causality. … Each of them [various terms
that function as surrogates for a notion of social practice] is the name for
an analogical object … Are all these analogical constructions about the
same basic stuf? If so, what is it? Or is it a mistake to ask these questions
at all? … My aim in this book is to give an account of the concepts and its
uses. But it is an account that will undermine the notion of practices, and
especially in the form of the theory that practices are embedded in some
sort of social substrate. … (. 11- 12).
Clearly his attention has shifted to the purported objects invoked either in the
explanantia or explananda. Turner characteristically does not promote this or
that alterative conception of social objects in lieu of a practices account. This
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

    “ ” 
is what makes his concerns resonate in a very particular way with the issues
canvassed in Sociological Explanation as Translation. For while the rst book
sought to vindicate sociological explanation as a particular type of explanatory
endeavor, one rooted in a notion of the social that he was there content to treat
as undened— folk sociology, Turner now doubts that there exists an object of
explanation in the sense that he previously took for granted. His doubts arise
not from the standpoint of some alternative theories of objects, but from his
inability to satisfactorily answer rudimentary questions regarding how social
stuf can possibly function as objects, full ontological stop. No objects, no
science.
As Turner ponders in  the manifold shortcomings he nds in various
accounts of social practice, these coalesce into what he terms the “transmis-
sion problem.” “However one conceives practices, one must conceive them in
a way which is consistent with at least the possibility of transmission, and the
ways in which one conceives the possibility of transmission necessarily limits
the kinds of conception of practice one may consistently adopt” (, 44). The
transmission problem, of course, points back to the ontological question of
what can be attributed causal ecacy. Social facts may not be analogizable to
Hume’s billiard balls, but one owes Turner realizes some story as to how social
stuf moves about in the world— a social physics. Practices cannot be the ghost
in the machine. In this respect, any solution to the transmission problem has
clear ontological implications, for both the stuf being transmitted and the
manner of its reception would requires a type of social physics— how social
stuf interacts with other bodies. Otherwise, how can one explain that social
things become part of a causalorder?
In a glum tone, Turner concludes that “the case for practices, or practice,
understood as a hidden collective object, is faced with such serious diculties
with respect to the means of transmission and acquisition of these objects that
it cannot be accepted, and that appeals to ‘practice’ used in this sense, either
in philosophy or social theory, are therefore appeals to nothing” (, 100; see
also 115). Ex nihilo nihil t. Turner thus concludes  on this somber note.
“My point is that practices cannot be both causal and shared; when we tried
to conceive of them as both causal and shared we failed” (, 123). So much
the worse, then, for the objects of folk sociology as usable posits for purposes
of explanation.
 Turner does in  irt with an alternative behavioristic explanation of what accounts for
even the appearance of same behavior. But this alternative is no social ersatz, but resolutely
individualist as Turner there conceives of it. As such, it ofers no alternative basis for a folk
sociology. It simply underscores the emptiness of folk sociology.
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

 
But as dicult as it may be to imagine, the problems for social theory as
Turner understands it only get worse. In Turner’s mind, the sins against ontol-
ogy committed in  were ones for which he had yet to fully atone (See
especially the “Introduction” to ). In no small part, Turner worried that
folk sociological notions, including (or even particularly) appeal to practices,
invoked normative elements that he believes fall prey to the issues canvassed
in  connected to the transmission problem.
Normativity for Turner turns out to be just practice talk by another name.
“The normative is a special realm of fact that validates, justies, makes possible
and regulates normative talk, as well as rules, meanings, the symbolic and rea-
soning. These facts are special in that they are empirically inaccessible and not
part of the ordinary stream of explanation” (, 1). Turner does not believe in
magic. Magic, in this case, would be the presence in this world of two distinct
causal orders, one consisting of the stuf accessible to natural science, and the
other the stuf that exists only in a diferent space, that dened by social phys-
ics. One may be tempted to use both to explain how things move in this world,
but each would a causal system unto itself.
In this regard, the problems Turner nds with sociological explanation
difer from those who contemplate a space of reasons. There is no accepted
analog in the sociological case to deliberation or practical reasoning. It is not
that the sociological somehow coincides with the space of reason; rather it
denes its own causal space. It requires some of the distinctive vocabulary of
the intentional idiom and so the space of reasons, but its mechanics belong to
its own special social physics. And once again, Turner puzzles over the thought
regarding how non- natural entities exert such inuence and so merit explan-
atory credibility. As he observes, “The long history of secularization … has
largely consisted of desupernaturalizing explanation. Claims about ‘normativ-
ity’ seem to imply that this project can never be completed, that the project of
desupranaturalization will always be defeated” (, 3). Turner doubts that the
project of desupranaturalization will be thwarted, even though he recognizes
that resistance to it will not be quieted by mere argument.
As he drily observes regarding Brandom, “Brandom proposes to re- enchant
the world by reinstating the belief in normative powers, which is to say, pow-
ers in some sense outside and distinct from forces known to science” (,
4). Turner is skeptical. “So present normativism, as Iwill call it, is a more or
less self- conscious efort to take back ground lost to social- science explana-
tion” (, 5). But, contrary to the stance taken in , this does not imply that
social science has as its object those countenanced by folk sociology. Rather,
this remark must be read in light of what Turner argues in . Regularities
can be observed; it is their explanation that is at issue. Can certain regularities
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

    “ ” 
be explained by adverting to social stuf?  seemingly raises an insuperable
problem to an invocation of social stuf as what explains, viz. the transmis-
sion problem. For in light of this how could there be a specication either of
items with the needed stuf- like properties to be transmitted or a capacity to
receive just “the same” stuf? But what now regarding the social as an object of
explanation?
Put another way, what Turner perceives happening is that given the failed
eforts to specify in sociological terms what sort of stuf gets transmitted,
the philosophical move is to deny that the stuf is sociologically natural.
“The mere sociological fact that people believe a given practice to be oblig-
atory does not make it so. It is the extra thing that does make it so that
needs to be explained” (, 5). This ability to interact in substance- like
ways, including causal, makes normative notions ontologically sui generis.
“Science, the normativist would say is a normative concept, not a sociolog-
ical one, and distinguishing science from voodoo requires the normative
sense of science” (, 8). This touches on the basis of Turner’s unhappi-
ness. The normative, as he construes it, does what folk sociology was sup-
posed to do, i.e., give an account of what binds and acts on people over and
above mundane appeals to socialization and the like. In this context, “these
new normative facts constitute a rupture in the world of ordinary fact” (,
9)But what now is the “world of ordinary fact”? Turner, as previously noted,
does not seek to champion any particular avor of naturalism, materialism,
etc. Neither does he endorses any particular account of explanation. His
strategy, rather, is to ask what would license appeal to a special realm of
fact, and so justify an account of explanation that brooked the boundar-
ies recognized by empirical science (See , 12 for a concise statement of
this issue). In sum, “The case for normativity rests very heavily on the idea
that only the normative can account for the normative” (, 25). But his
cagey maneuver turns on insistently asking what would license adversion
to a realm of “normative” explanations. If the normative requires its own
special physics, then one should proceed with theoretical caution before
embracing any such account.
This underscores just how sharply later Turner breaks with the Turner of
. For the Turner of , the terms of folk sociology could be taken at face
value for ontological and explanatory purposes. The puzzle solving pattern
early Turner attributes to sociological explanations did not need to break free
from the terms in which the folk had set the issues, keeping in mind that the
folks in question could all be professional social scientists.
But by the publication of Explaining the Normative, later Turner will have
no truck with the promiscuous ontologizing of his youth. This impatience
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

 
surfaces quite explicitly, inter alia, when Turner surveys the literature on cog-
nitive diversity.
What are the implications of all this diversity? … But there is a way of
distilling it, from an explanatory point of view . … All the diverse folk
notions mentioned here (and this is merely the tip of the iceberg) have
two relevant features:… They work in those social settings to enable the
participants to interact with each other, understand each other, and co-
ordinate their conduct. None of them is ‘true’ in the sense of being scien-
tically true.…
We can, for convenience, call these diverse notions ‘theories’, though
we should keep in mind that this is only a convenience, and that the
whole language of theory … we use to describe these diverse things does
not necessary match up with anything like ‘a theory in someone’s head,’
that is to say, a genuinely explanatory account of what is going on when
people use these folk notions. With that qualication, we may describe
these various folk conceptions as ‘Good Bad Theories’, meaning that they
are good theories for a particular, unspecied set of purposes in a particu-
lar setting, but bad theories if we are thinking of them as adequate explana-
tions of anything, or as proto- explanations that can be turned into genuine
explanations with a little empirical vetting and some minor revision (,
42- 3; emphasismine).
The italicized remark represents a wholesale rejection of the explanatory proj-
ect endorsed in . The key resides in understanding what Turner implies by
“None of them [folk theories] is ‘true’ in the sense of being scientically true.”
Again, this judgment does not reect Turner’s imposition of some favored
denition of science. Rather, he only asks how to make ontological sense of
whatever has been ascribed reality and causal ecacy. Sociological theories
do not provide a social physics in any tolerably precise way, and he can locate
no science in the vicinity that provides aid and succor to beliefs in objects so
imagined. ....
Turner’s use of the phrase “scientically true” that is must be treated
descriptively and not as endorsing some prior theoretical position. Turner here
(and throughout his post-  beratings of his earlier self ) notes just as a mat-
ter of fact that no established natural science endorses the ontology of folk
theories or anything like it. This discrepancy between theoretically tolerated
items establishes the basic tension between the explanatory projects of the
social versus the natural science. This shows that the question animating 
remains, alas, alive and well, viz., what is the relation between the social world
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

    “ ” 
and the natural?  tried to set to rest that question. Turner sees that initial
attempt on his part as failing because he did not take seriously enough the
question of the putative objects invoked for purposes of explanation.
Once the objects are problematized as he argues in , the explana-
tory pattern assuming those objects can no longer be granted a prima facie
legitimacy— the strategy of .  relentlessly asks if a “special” explanatory
pattern for folk normativity can be justied, and nds no such extenuating
rationale (See, e.g., his discussion of “causal- normative dualism” at , 44– 5).
Apossible caveat here concerns, of course, cognitive science. To this topic we
shall return. But note for now that Turner’s strategy post-  is never to say
yea or nay regarding folk talk. He remains resolutely agnostic, i.e., unconvinced
that the natural sciences can explain the social, but skeptical that this legiti-
mates re- enchanting the social world. Restoring his early faith in the social
now requires some plausible solution to the transmission problem.
One can distinguish in this regard between “Turnerized” v.“non- Turnerized”
explanations in the following way. Turnerized accounts consist of just those
explanation of things social about which no special philosophical assump-
tions regarding norms or normativity need be made. Put another way, Turner’s
repeated complaint is that normative explanations consistently presuppose
the legitimacy of what they claim to prove, viz., the need for normative facts.
“The normative- natural distinction used in this way is a normative distinction,
depending on the denition of norms, or the normative theory, that supplies
the normative elements that are supposed to be separated out and used to
reconstruct the phenomenon free from naturalistic or causal considerations.
It is not an explanatory distinction found in nature or social reality. It is vis-
ible only to those constructing a normative lens” (, 148). In short, Turner’s
position is not that normative accounts are demonstrably false, but that he
remains unconvinced that normative “facts” can be part of a scientic explana-
tion. The explananda in view, e.g., why people take certain actions to be legit-
imate, simply do not require anything more than mundane facts about social
life and socialization (See, e.g., , 168,184).
In the closing pages of , however, Turner appears to waver on this key
point. His uncertainty about the prospects of re- enchantment emanates
from his considerations of empathy and its role in constituting the social.
“Empathy is important as an addition to this discussion because it goes
beyond the traditional Humean inputs and means of learning. To the extent
that we have, and actually employ in ordinary interaction, a primitive capac-
ity for following the thought of another … we have a surrogate for the kinds of
a priori content that Kant thought Hume was lacking, a surrogate without the
mysteries of transcendental philosophy” (, 204). As always, Turner delights
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

 
in taking away with one hand what the other hand seems to profer. On ofer
seems to be what normativists and friends of folk sociology hungered for—
non- natural explainers. But, Turner cautions, empathy provides this “without
the mysteries of transcendental philosophy.” One can almost hear the sighs of
disappointment.
Why no mysteries, at least just yet? Here is how Turner assesses the matter
in the closing paragraphof.
Empathy does the work of explanation that hidden presuppositions did
for Brentano’s rivals. The reason empathy works to produce genuine
Evidenz is that there is a natural process underlying it:both the capac-
ity, actually employed, of emulating or following the thought of another
and the feedback generated by social interaction. These are facts of social
theory (and of neuroscience). This kind of social theory does not involve
collective facts … But it detranscendentalizes ‘reason’ just as efectively.
(,205).
Turner’s conviction at this point that even empathy, unavoidable though it
may be, requires positing no special realm of fact rests on experiments involv-
ing mirror neurons.
They [mirror neurons] enable the brain to operate on a dual- use basis, so
that the neurons used for acting are also used for what Weber would call
the direct observational experience of a meaningful action. … The brain,
in short, performs the trick Weber attributes to direct observational
understanding— of transforming behavioral cues into action- identica-
tions, which is to say into meaningful actions. And having a location in
the brain changes the status of empathy— it ceases to be an intellectual
process bound up with the error- prone folk language of intentionality,
and becomes a fact of science with a discoverable set of features located
in specic neuronal processes. Moreover, it is these processes that deal
with subjective meaning, in an [sic] recognizable sense of that term.
(,176).
Thus does Turner continue to play whack- a- mole with theories that give any
sign that there exists something irreducibly normative or social, things that
must be explained and yet can only be explained using normative or non-
natural terms. For any such candidate explanandum normative theorists sug-
gest, Turner locates a naturalistic surrogate. He does this not out a commit-
ment to naturalism so much as a part of his ongoing mea culpa, his continuing
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

    “ ” 
atonement for the misplaced faith of his youth in uncritically accepting the
ontologies of folk sociologies.
But his youthful sins and enthusiasms are not easily expiated. His restless
theoretician’s soul turns yet again to the question of whether or not mirror neu-
rons and their ilk prove up to theoretical task he contingently assigns them in
. Thus, less than a decade after having tried to bring closure yet again to the
issue of explaining the normative, one nds Turner openly worrying whether
or not things social require explanation in terms that slip a naturalist’snet.
Cognitive Science and the Social:A Primer renews Turner’s argument with
himself on just this ontological and explanatory point. As he observes at the
very outset of that work, “topics of concern to social science, such as human
action and intentionality, are also of central concern to cognitive science. Nor
can social science ignore cognitive science:‘social’ phenomena route their cau-
sality through human minds, and therefore also through brains” (, 1). The
problem is as before a variation on the transmission problem. “The way we can
describe the brain does not mesh well with the way we describe our minds and
actions” (, 2). Without that mesh, transmission remains an unsolved prob-
lem. Solutions counsel either countenancing non- natural facts or showing that
there is less to “transmit” than normativists assume.
Turner for his part remains torn. “The focus of this book, accordingly, is
on the conicts in cognitive science and the conicts between various con-
siderations central to particular approaches to cognitive neuroscience and
the larger domain of ‘the social,’ and with question of how they can be, if not
resolved, at least understood. In doing this, it should be evident the concept of
“the social” is also in play” (, 3; emphasis mine). The italicized remark signals
it appears that the condence originally excited by mirror neurons has waned.
For although Turner concludes  with a declaration that even empathy has
been naturalized, he begins  with questions on just this point. “Does their
ecacy [mirror neurons] conrm the folk theory of mind, or any theory of
mind, the ‘theory implied by our attempts to articulate our knowledge of other
minds?’ … The paradoxical downside to the recognition and neuroscientic
ground of these capacities is this:our understanding of ourselves and our own
cognitive processes is especially limited” (, 5– 6). This limitation raises for
Turner yet again the specter that forever haunts social science— how to account
for reality of social facts. “[T] he experience and social experience made possi-
ble by the Verstehen window is ‘real’. It is a fact that needs to be accounted for,
and whose causal role needs to be understood in order to account for ‘mind’
or for the social phenomena that are associated with these experiences” (,
6; cp. , 5). Having intended to lay the ghost of  in , Turner now nds
himself forced to revisit the ontological and explanatory issues that he has
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

 
continually tried to put to rest. Forty years on, his philosophical conscience
clearly remains troubled by the ontological promiscuity of hisyouth.
Turner introduces early in  the neologism “Verstehen bubble” (, 11).
This should be contextualized in terms of the issues surveyed thus far. Turner
always writes with a view to the history of social science as framing the ques-
tions that concern him. He invokes basically the same historical lineage and
set of issues to begin  as he does to begin , one dating from Hobbes and
concerning questions about constituting “the social” (Cp., e.g., , ix and ,
3– 4). This ofers a perspective from which to take to heart Turner’s remark that
the import of his neologism reects “the fact that this book [] is a social
science and philosophy of social science approach to the issues” (, 12). For
seen that way questions regarding what the bubble encloses just encapsulate
Turner’s continuing worries about what there is, social speaking.
This signature concern surfaces quickly enough.
Folk psychology is, in some sense, the language we use to express our
understanding of others. Indeed, without this ability to understand oth-
ers we would be hard pressed to do neuroscience at all. … This depen-
dence on folk psychology, or something like it, is pervasive— Daniel
Dennett uses the term ‘intentional stance’, while in this book I will be
using Verstehen. … The social sciences do not merely employ these
terms incidentally, but incorporate them … into their own theories. …
This makes them diferent from normal concepts in science. (, 19; see
also21).
How diferent? Turner’s answer to that question from early to late remains the
same. These terms are implicated in constituting the objects, and the causal
relations among those objects, in sciences of the social. Without intentional
characterizations, there would be no actions, and so nothing collective or
social to explain. Without adverting to beliefs, desires, norms and their ilk,
there would be nothing social about such explanations, much less a transmis-
sion problem to solve regarding the items that move social actors to act. “It is
an open question as to what role the body, interactions with the environment,
physical and interpersonal, and physical objects play in the processes that cor-
respond to ‘mental’ terms. Worse, this plethora of concepts of the mental pre-
vents us from getting a coherent way of talking about the subject. The concepts
are not merely diverse, they often appear to conict with one another” (,
22). Plus ça change, plus c’est la mêmechose.
Indeed, as Turner worries the relation between the cognitive sciences and
the social, he ponders yet again the problem set by the realization that the
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

    “ ” 
“domain of things that ‘need’ be explained is not given as something well
dened. Indeed, as will see in later chapter, it is very dicult to distinguish “the
social” as a domain, and perhaps futile” (, 37). Moreover, a variation on the
transmission problem that gured so prominently in  reappears in Turner’s
discussion in , albeit not by that name. For in his accounts of representa-
tion in cognitive science, Turner astutely and in retrospect unsurprisingly nds
that the same problems that dogged accounts of transmission of social stuf
resurface (See, e.g., ,62– 5).
Turner devotes chapter4 of  to the topic “Explaining and Understanding
Action.” Interestingly, in the context of a discussion of Weber, Turner hints at
a way out of the ontological and causal questions that bedevil him (Turner).
Turner remarks that for Weber, “folk psychology is indispensable, but only
because it is the language of the culture in which we formulate our questions
and answers. … For him, folk psychology need not be a true theory of mind, or
even an approximation. It is simply a way of talking about the world disclosed
by understanding or Verstehen” (, 102). This is an observation with which
not only could the author of  agree, but it is the very sort of remark that
author makes (See , 21 and 80). The author of  concludes that what
Weber’s strategy yieldsis
an odd, and non- reductive, division of labor between social science and
biology … The narrow limits [of social science] are dened by the capac-
ity to empathize, particularly to identify actions … We can think of his
sociology as social science within the limits of understanding, but with a
full recognition that many relevant processes lie beyond these limits. …
He gets the full conceptual advantage of being able to use the rich lan-
guage of his own local speech community, including the language of folk
psychology, without any need to commit himself to its ‘reality,’ or corre-
spondence with the brain, or ultimate causality, for example, in the form
of the theory of free will. (,103).
That is, the Turnerian strategy for licensing talk about the social no longer
requires taking folk sociology to have any special ontological status or causal
role. Of course, it remains to be claried what “social science within the limits
of understanding” amountsto.
Turner the inveterate agnostic surveys the alternatives that the literature
ofers. Another vestige of his youth reappears— pattern recognition (See,
e.g., , 177f). Turner suggests that the virtue of this approach is that “it
does not depend on positing spooky and problematic mental entities such as
intentions” (, 120). And yet he reluctantly acknowledges this view leaves
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

 
one “still very far from traditional social science issues” (, 120). The survey
has drawn cognitive science and social science closer, but fundamental gaps
remain. The primary obstacle Turner repeatedly nds is one he himself pio-
neered in identifying, viz., the dreaded transmission problem. For whatever
surrogate he examines for accounting for the self and the social, explanation
stumbles just here. “The diculty, which cognitive science shares with social
theory generally, is not with these facts [about culture] but with explanation.
… This puts the focus on a variant of the same problem that we encountered
with Chomsky:the question of how, if there are shared cognitive structures,
they got where they need to be for the explanation to work” (, 169)What
the shared is, and how people share it, remain in Turner’s account questions
without good answers. And so as before, no objects, no science.
Although Turner continually seeks to expiate the theoretical excesses of
his youth, like St. Augustine he keeps his old ways close even while he con-
templates the move to a higher (in Turner’s case, more explanatorily inte-
grated) plane of being. Consider Turner the Older contemplating “The Self as a
Problem” (, 172). This Turner continues to eschew all appeals to normativity
as unacceptable mystery- mongering.
Each of these accounts works by taking something— culture, the body,
computational architecture, the organization of memory, narrative— as
given and unproblematic, and attempts to build an account of the coher-
ence of the self around it. One might think that it would be possible to
integrate the account into a general theory of the self. But the elements
are not only too diverse, they also appear to be incompatible. The alter-
native would be reduction to one controlling consideration, or prioritiz-
ing one kind of coherence as representing the core or true self. This does
not seem plausible either. (,172).
But does this imply for Turner that he has decided to do the full Quine and sim-
ply forgo the intentional as an object of explanation? No. For in the very next
paragraph, the voice of Turner the Younger breaks through the explanatory
gloom retailedabove.
The problem of the self is its irreducibility to either the material or spir-
itual side of the subject . … But we can replace the older language, or at
least use the cognitive science data to improve it and specify the issues;
there is the self of the Verstehen bubble … The self of the Verstehen bub-
ble is the self that is dened by our capacity to understand and distin-
guish ourselves from others and to identify them as empathic subjects …
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

    “ ” 
Then there is the body self. The intractability of the problem of the self is
a result of [these] two facts [i.e., integrating intentional characterizations
of self and physical accounts of bodies]. … We can break these issues
down by considering the relation between the self of the Verstehen bub-
ble and the self or person in the causal sense. (,172).
Turner the Older cannot live explanatorily with the Verstehen bubble and yet
Turner the Younger cannot live without it, in at least two sense of ‘without’.
One sense is just the root Brentano sense of the intentional— he continues
to insist that there is no paraphrasing it away in non- intentional terms. The
other sense is that as people we cannot live outside this way of speaking, if only
because others then disappear.
But as unavoidable as encounter with mind and world as conceptualized
within the Verstehen bubble may be, no theory that Turner scouts can clear
his core explanatory hurdle, viz., “explaining how the tacit theory or ‘program’
get inserted:they can’t come from normal interaction, except through some
hitherto unknown means of transmission” (,175).
Thus after further review, Turner now sees no way to fully reclaim the opti-
mism of hisyouth.
And this leaves us with the unanswered question of the book. Can the
standard approach account for practices, social institutions, ideologies,
and the like? Are the alternative approaches adequate to the task? Or is
the problem of the social the place where the challenges became over-
whelming? … Largely taken for granted social concepts [ones within the
Verstehen bubble] … are cognitively involved. To the extent that they
depend on cognitively implausible ideas about the relevant cognitive
processes, they are strictly speaking unscientic. There may be good rea-
son for remaining outside the circle of consilience that is science. But to do
so would be to abandon the project of social science as science itself. … The
social is the great unexplained domain. Is it the place where plausibility
goes to die? (, 216; emphasismine).
This returns Turner to not quite where he began his intellectual odyssey so
many years ago. For then as now, he remains committed to the view that “foun-
dational concerns with the philosophical problems of understanding human
action remain our problems today” (, ix). But unlike the optimism that
informs that rst book, what remains of “the social” one now nds encapsu-
lated (quarantined?) in a “Verstehen bubble.” This serves to underline its prob-
lematic status as a legitimate object of explanation. Put another way, Turner’s
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

 
early willingness to accept as a working hypothesis “the existence and intellec-
tual substance of sociology” lingers on, albeit in a more attenuated form. Ditto
for his view that “the substantive problems of concern to sociology are genuine
problems” (, ix). That said, whether problems so understood permit of sci-
entic solution remains unsettled.
Early and late, Turner insists that he has no “new theory” to ofer. And that is
true. This in large part reects Turner’s rhetorical and intellectual positioning
himself as primarily an informed observer on the social theory scene. But of
course he does much more than that. Sociological Explanation as Translation
had as its implied thesis a kind of Wittgensteinian quietism about sociology.
All is in order as it is. Sociological objects— the stuf of folk sociology— could
be assumed to have both their own reality and their own explanatoryform.
What Turner concludes over time is that the objects did not have the integ-
rity he initially granted them, and so he embarks on a decades long odyssey to
return to the condent position held in his youth. To do so, he must navigate
his way over uncharted ontological and causal terrains. The challenges this
metaphysical terra incognita pose crystalize Ihave argued in his 1994 discus-
sion of the transmission problem. He must discover a way to navigate past the
transmission problem before he can reach his journey’send.
Although still unsolved, Turner remains vaguely hopeful that the transmis-
sion problem will yet prove tractable. Put another way, progress with respect
to understanding what the social is has been made in philosophy of social sci-
ence not by regimenting all explanations into a particular form, but by dis-
covering how to make its distinctive objects scientically manageable. Despite
the dour note on which Turner concludes his 2018 work, it would be remiss to
ignore the optimism he almost unwittingly expresses at its beginning. For in
his “Foreword,” he states that the book is not a critique of eforts bring work
in social theory together with that of cognitive science. Indeed, overcome it
seems by newfound enthusiasm, he there remarks “It is not too much to say
that this is the beginning of a revolution” (,xi).
Put another way, philosophy of social science as Turner well knows begins
with debates about how explanations in social science appear to diverge in
important and debilitating ways from those in the natural sciences. The orig-
inal debates also included ones about ontology, e.g., individuals and classes.
But debate about the form of explanation initially took precedence. Yet what
Turner has relentlessly and compellingly drawn to everyone’s theoretical
attention is that the root problem resides not with the form of explanation but
with the objects to be explained. Turner’s own arc of development is driven
by this fundamental insight, one that he more than any other thinker has ana-
lyzed and explored as philosophy of social science evolved and migrated into
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV

    “ ” 
the current century. He led the way in charting how any explanation of social
objects— whatever falls within the Verstehen bubble— might be conjoined
with objects of other sorts so as to nally provide explanations of how they
all interact. In doing this, Turner has also determined the route that must be
followed to make progress in an understanding of the social.
References
Turner, Stephen P. 1980. Sociological Explanation as Translation. Cambridge:Cambridge
UniversityPress.
Turner, Stephen P. 1994. The Social Theory of Practices. Chicago: The University of
ChicagoPress.
Turner, Stephen P. 2010. Explaining the Normative. Cambridge, MA:PolityPress.
Turner, Stephen P. 2018. Cognitive Science and the Social:A Primer. NewYork:Routledge.
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV