Social Action, Behavior and Verstehen

Bibliographic Data

ID2275460
AuthorsCharles K Warriner (University of Kansas, corresponding author)
Year1969
Volume10
Issue4
Pages501-511
Publication date1969-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociological Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0253 • E-ISSN: 1533-8525
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1533-8525.1969.tb01310.x
OpenAlexW2126442822
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited6

EVER SINCE Watson fixed the meaning of the term behavior in a neuromuscular context, there have been reactions to its use in sociology. At times these reactions emerge as explicit disavowals of the appropriateness of the term in a sociological vocabulary, but often it is reluctantly used with a variety of proscriptive and definitional statements that make it something other than what Watson had in mind. These problems with behavior are not merely matters of terminological preference. The use of the term often involves a set of commitments that are methodological and metaphysical as well as substantive. The reactions and qualifications have to do with these orientations. The basic issue in this controversy is whether the scientific observation of human action can encompass meaning or whether all observation of action reduces to the observation of neuro-muscular movement in space and time. In this latter case meaning does not exist as a scientifically comprehensible fact or else it is an inference from or extrapolation of relations among these basic facts. This problem of the role and nature of meaning in scientific observation of human phenomena periodically reoccurs in every specialty in the social sciences. For example, in recent years the development of componential analysis in ethnology has again raised the issue in linguistics. As recently as 1962, Hill asserted that the investigation of sound is our only avenue to knowledge of the mental linguistic substances. Chafe (1965:23), quoting Hill, then says: My own view is rather at the other extreme: that meaning is in every way as important as sound in our approach to an understanding of language as a whole. The behaviorist treatment of this issue is a special case because Watson's position on meaning became confused with the more general methodological directive to pay attention to that which is observable. The emphasis upon the necessity for following scientific canons was intermingled with a much more particular prescription and judgment about what was observable. This confusion was sustained by the assumption that physical facts have a greater reality than others and by the

Action (physics) · Epistemology · Social science · Sociology · Verstehen · Linguistic research and analysis · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

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