On Some Autonomy Arguments in Social Science Thomas Nickles University of Nevada, Reno My aim in this necessarily compact paper is to sketch a philo- sophical defense of the kind of position assumed by the later Kroeber, when he wrote: ... That which is specifically characteristic and distinctively significant of phenomena of a level [of organization] is intelligible only in terms of the other phenomena, qualities, or regularities of that same level. The most characteristic quali- ties or phenomena are never explained by what we know of another level.... This does not mean that a new entity is hypostasized [ as the unique substance of each level. Life, mind, society, and culture are not outside matter and energy, not outside space and time.... They are different organizations of matter and energy, if one will, which physicists and chemists cannot, in virtue of their physical and chemical methods, deal with fruitfully.... This is where the modern level-approach differs from the older segregation of spirit from matter, of soul from body.... The whole recognition of levels is, in one sense, an affair of scientific methodology, is wholly internal to science. It does not portend the reintroduction of vitalism, mentalism [or] spirit ([10], 120f). This position is in opposition to Kroeber's earlier views on the lisuperorganic" ( [8], [9] ) and, more generally, to the view, attractive to Durkheim and many others, that a self-respecting discipline with its own distinctive subject matter is a discipline which studies a special, ontologically irreducible domain of entities and processes-- in short, "No disciplinary identity without discipline-specific enti- ties." More recently, David Kaplan [7] has further articulated the position I wish to defend, that integrity-autonomy issues in social science (as elsewhere) normally are best construed as methodological issues concerning explanation and reduction (as well as conceptual- empirical issues concerning the existence of laws) rather than as ontological issues. My defense is most easily couched in terms of Donald Davidson's PSA 1976, Volume 1, pp. 12-24 Copyright 01976 by the Philosophy of Science Association This content downloaded from 132.174.250.16 on Thu, 02 Apr 2020 02:00:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms