Conclusion: Plea for a real epistemic pluralism

Abstract

In their symposium article, Daigneault & Jacob (2012) remind us of the classical triangle of conceptual analysis: Term/Meaning/Empirical-referent. The general understanding of this triangle is that a term, the concept, is related, on the one hand, to a meaning -or a conception -through some sort of conceptual definition and, on the other hand, to the empirical world through an operational definition that ensues from the conceptual definition. Thus the triad is closed, and if we were only to be serious about defining our concepts, we would come to agree on the conceptions on which they are based and on the empirical referents to which they refer. But things are more complex than they appear. The complexity of social relations gives rise to more than one approach to conceptualizing.Here I would like to make the argument that the strategies for a sound conceptual analysis vary according to the intelligibility scheme -or the explanatory position -that one adopts. This argument is based on a remarkable book by the French sociologist, Jean-Michel Berthelot, L'Intelligence du Social (1990). 1 In this conclusion I proceed in two steps: first I describe the six intelligibility schemes presented by Berthelot; and second I show how these schemes give rise to four conceptualization strategies, which I use to compare the contributions to this symposium. Six intelligibility schemesWe have been accustomed to consider that empirical research in social sciences is molded by both theory and methodology. We know that our conclusions draw heavily, on the one hand, on our choice of the relevant phenomena to be included in an explanation and the relationships among those phenomena, our theory, and, on the other hand, on the way we actually proceed to an empirical observation and treat the information we have gathered, our method. And our collective experience over the last century of social research has taught us that theoretical and methodological pluralism is preferable to any dogmatism that would want to impose a single social theory or methodology as the supreme path to knowledge. We know from experience that the age-old search for a unified theory of

Taking Explanation Seriously in Political Science

“…There is a limited number of ways in which an explanandum can be related to an explanans . (Imbeau, , p. 302; see also Hempel and Oppenheim, ; Little, )…”

“…Although the concept of explanation has attracted some attention in social science, and in political science in particular (e.g. Berthelot, 1990;Brady and Collier, 2004;Eun, 2012;George and Bennett, 2004, Chapter 7;Gerring, 2012;Imbeau, 2005Imbeau, , 2012Little, 1991;Van Evera, 1997), more work is needed to 'mainstream' it.…”