Jim Devine recently wrote: >If I understand him correctly, Steve Cullenberg summarized the >main message for research of the Wolf/Resnick overdetermination >theory (i.e., that all entities in society determine the >character of all other entities, just as the characters of all >entities are determined by all other entities) as the >methodological principle that "what you see is what you get." >(This imples a critique of the efforts of benighted people like >myself who want to figure what's really going on. We're mere >"essentialists" and should stop.) > Actually, Jim, my use of the the phrase "what you see is what you get" was not an appeal to a straighforward empiricism, but tied to a critique of what have come to be called "depth models" of explanation in contrast, yes, to reductionist and essentialist forms of argument. The paragraph that my quote was stripped from (you sure you're not a journalist? :)) was as follows: "Another way of thinking about it is that overdetermination is a critique of "depth models" of social explanation, a critique of essentialism if you want, where one level of analysis is explained by a different level, somehow thought to be prior to and independent from the first. Classic Hegelian causality of essence and appearance is an example, neoclassical utility analysis grounded in uncaused preferences is another, or simply the urge to find out "what really is going on", is a third. Maybe a very colloquial way to describe overdetermination is to say "what you see is what you get."" You don't have to be a postmodernist to see what I mean, I think. I actaully think Lewontin and Levins (no pomos, they) are very good on this idea. In their _Not in Our Genes_, pp. 277-292, in a section where they talk about "Levels of Organization and Explanation". There they sum up much of their critique of reductionist and holistic essentialist arguments. What they argue there is that there are different levels of explanation of phsical or social events, and which is appropriate is contingent on the purpose of the explanation at hand. For example, they argue that a living organism is not first an assemblage of subatomic particles, and _then_ an assemblage of atoms, and _then_ of molecules, and _then_ tissues and organs, and _then_ a social being, and (presumably then a society). Rather, they insist that an organism (or society) is all of these things at the same time. They write on p. 278, that "This is what is meant by saying that the atoms, etc., are not ontologically prior to the larger whole that they compose." They go on to argue that a problem of science is not explanation at one level, like physics with atoms, or chemistry with molecules, or biology with organisms (or I would add, social science with society), but the "translation" from one level to another. Again, as they put it on p. 278, "This is because as one moves up a level the properties of each larger whole are given not merely by the units of which it is composed but of the organizing relations between them." They then go through a wonderful example of how one explains something so simple a thing as a frog twitching its legs (I won't reproduce it here). For them, there is no one correct explanation that can be found, but many, depending on the level of analysis in question. Near the end of this section they write: "All human phenomena are simultaneously social and biological, just as they simultaneously chemical and physical. Holistic and reductionist accounts of phenomena are not 'causes' of those phenomena but merely 'descriptions' of them in particular levels, in particular scientific languages." As they argue, we can choose then appropriate level of analysis depending on the purpose at hand. But the true explanation of why the frog twitches its leg is not to be found at the subatomic level, any more than it is to be found at the cellular level. And, as they want to make clear in their book, the truth of social behavior is not found in the end "in the genes", pace sociobiology, nor however, is it found "in culture". Society is both culture and biology, nature and nuture, individuals and structures, you see the pattern... So, my point, at least the point I wanted to make, in the context of what in part overdetermination implies (viewed as causality), was that we should be careful about translating social explanations from one level to another, from phenomenon to essence, from whole to part, from society to individual, and do, as you say "rational" (I prefer reasoned, which can certainly include overdetermined) analysis at whatever level we are working at. As with Lewontin and Levins, there is no "hierarchy of explanatory levels," no matter how much we dig. Steve Cullenberg *********************************************** Stephen Cullenberg office: (909) 787-5037, ext. 1573 Department of Economics fax: (909) 787-5685 University of California [EMAIL PROTECTED] Riverside, CA 92521
