The Reconstruction Of Philosophical Foundation Of Social Science

This dissertation comprises of seven parts,which are introduction,special-subject discussion of five chapters and conclusion.Providing a related description of the background and writing significance for this dissertation,analyzing concretely the research trends at home and abroad,introducing briefly the core content of each topic,and especially clarifying the inherent logical relation between the chapters through the writing thought,the introduction points out the primary purpose of this dissertation,which tries to re-examine the philosophical problems in the social science by virtue of the thinking mode of "naturalistic turn",and to construct a philosophical foundation for the social science with the contemporary naturalism as the core idea through the solution of these problems.From the level of science and philosophy,the first chapter analyzes the external influences and inner motivations of naturalism in the social science research,and elaborates the basic meaning of naturalism and the naturalistic approaches and features of the social science research mainly from the transformation of research mode in philosophy of social science.To make a step further,it discusses the significance of naturalistic turn in the aspects of the research contents and mode of philosophy of social science,the defense of social knowledge,and the research fields of philosophy of social science.From the dimension of ontology,in terms of the philosophical notions of Critical Naturalism,the second chapter interprets the limits of naturalism in the social science,and differences and relations at the ontological level between social science and natural science.By doing this,it reveals the possible conditions of social science.On that basis,from the level of the scientific practice,this chapter provides a demonstration project according to the philosophical views of naturalism for naturalizing social ontology through the idea of Bunge's systemic ontology and the new development of contemporary cognitive science.From the dimension of methodology,the third chapter further elaborates the forming,character and meaning of a naturalized social science from the perspective of "naturalization".Therefore,taking the natural sciences such as evolutionary biology,cognitive science,neuroscience and so on to be the basis for the "naturalization" of the social science,this chapter analyzes concretely an internal force by which the social science could be naturalized.Through the clarification of the continuity relationship and the examination of comprehensive cognitive dimension,this chapter describes two remarkable characteristics of a naturalized social science,and then reveals the new thinking mode and idea in the aspect of construction of unification about the social sciences and defense of "scientificity" of the social science under the perspective of "naturalization".Based on epistemological dimension,the fourth chapter discusses the continuity of social science and natural science in detail,and introduces concretely the continuity construction between philosophy and science,social science and natural science under the influence of contemporary naturalistic idea,which shows the naturalistic development trend.On the basis,this chapter further demonstrates the continuity constructed between social science and natural science in a "naturalized" way,not only providing a kind of scientific psychology explanation for the human behavior theory,but also establishing a research approach based on naturalism for the explanation of cultural phenomena in the social science.Putting the dimension of practice as the starting point,from the aspects of the "model" and "experiment",the fifth chapter investigates two representative topics in philosophy of social science and scientific practices: Epidemiology of Representations and Experimental Methods in the Social Science,in order to elaborate the interaction between the specific social sciences and naturalism,such as Anthropology,Economics and so on.On the one hand,the basic ideas of contemporary naturalism are integrated in Epidemiology of Representations,constructing a naturalistic research programme for the social science research.On the other hand,a common methodology is constructed by the experimental methods between the social science and natural science,which would furnish a new idea and solution to eliminate the fundamental incompatibility existed in their research methods.The conclusion is a overview of the contents and shortcomings of this dissertation.Especially from a integrate perspective of the "normativity" of philosophy and the "description" of science scientific,it elaborates "Good Bad Theories" proposed by Stephen Turner and "Practice Theory" advocated by Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens,and thus provides a solution to the problem of normativity faced by naturalism itself,and furnishes an effective theoretical basis for the program of naturalist philosophy of social science.