Study On The Discourse Context Model Of Social Scientific Explanation

Whether the social scientific explanation is a true scientific explanation has always been a key issue concerning the legitimacy of the social science and one of the basic issues of the philosophy of the social science.Judging the explanation of social sciences based on the criterion of natural sciences,the social scientific explanation is ultimately limited to the opposite result of a second choice: One is the social science and the natural science are only different in degree,and the social science may be reduced to a branch of the natural science;The other is that since the standard of natural sciences explanation cannot be reached,the social scientific explanation is not a true scientific explanation,so the part of the social sciences that does not have the natural sciences standard will no longer have legitimacy,and the social sciences will face the danger of fragmentation.However,the existing scientific explanation model is mostly derived from natural sciences.The "subject-world" binary relationship behind these explanation models is only suitable for the constant natural world and cannot cope with the changing social world.These explanatory models can neither cover the normative problems in social scientific explanation,nor can they really give the source of the explanatory power of social sciences,which is difficult to apply to social scientific explanation.Therefore,from the perspective of natural sciences methodology,trying to use the natural sciences explanation model as a solution to the social scientific explanation problem is not feasible.We need to find a new approach from the epistemological level for modeling social scientific explanation and explaining the source of the power of social scientific explanation.To this end,this study introduces the context dimension into the study of social scientific explanation models.Based on the fusion of contextual ontology and van Dijk's discourse and contextual relations theory,this study proposes a discourse context.It does not depend on the discourse context of subjectivity,and then transforms the "subject-world" dual relationship into a ternary relationship between discourse,discourse context,and the world.As an intermediary between discourse and the world,discourse context not only controls production and comprehension of discourse,but also reflects a normative connection with the external world,which avoids the limitation of the "subject-world" dual relationship.From this,we can re-examine the relationship between theory,phenomenon and world from a new epistemological perspective.In the discourse context,social phenomena no longer belong to the external world,but form the discourse context of social science as a discourse,just like social sciences theory.Since the discourse context has no subjectivity dependence,we can construct a discourse context model of social scientific explanation without assuming that the subject's cognition is constant or the external world is constant.This model is not only compatible with nature science explanations,but also can provide a reasonable explanation for issues such as non-repeatable social phenomena,unstable subject cognition,normativeness of social sciences,and sources of explanatory power of social sciences.This article is mainly divided into three parts:The first part consists of the introduction and chapter one.The introduction mainly discusses the background and causes of the problems of social scientific explanation.The chapter one mainly expounds the ontological status and non-subjective dependence of discourse context.Combined with van Dijk's context theory,it reconstructs the "subject-world" dual relationship: it is not the discourse that is in direct contact with the world,but the discourse context.Explanation is an important driving force for the stability and evolution of discourse context.The idea of using discourse context to control discourse illustrates the discourse context essence of observation and phenomenon,both of which are the results of the interaction between discourse context and the external world.Discourse context controls the direction and focus of observation.The second part is composed of the second,third and fourth chapters.This part mainly builds a complete discourse context model of social scientific explanation on the basis of discourse context,and explains the explanatory power of social sciences from a normative perspective.Chapter two describes the two formal conditions required to form a social scientific explanation model: the model's computable variables and the conditions for the contextualization of phenomena.The third chapter mainly completes the construction of the discourse context model of the social scientific explanation.First,the basic structure of the discourse context of social sciences is elaborated,and computable variables and social structural elements can explain the non-repeatable nature of social phenomena and observation perspectives.Secondly,the rationality of the discourse context of social sciences is demonstrated through a case study of finance.Third,it distinguishes actions and behaviors,and expounds the nature of the discourse context of action.Actions have meaning only in the discourse context,and social scientific explanation is the process of reconstructing social phenomena through the inclusion of a set of normative and computable action variables.Chapter Four discusses the relationship between experience,concept,and norm from the perspective of discourse context.Experience is manifested in discourse context.Concepts can enter the external world only under the normative guidance of discourse,there is a normative relationship between the discourse context and the external world.Social scientific explanation reflects normative rationality rather than universality.Through social scientific explanation,the discourse context of social sciences outputs normativity to the social world,which is an important source of the explanatory power of social sciences.The third part is composed of the fifth and sixth chapters.In chapter five,historical explanation is modeled by the method of discourse context.The discourse context model of historical explanation is an important case argument for the discourse context model of social sciences.The continuous discourse in historical explanation embodies the logic of historical understanding.Different from Ankersimit's narrative substance or historical entity of the central subject theory,the discourse substance in explanation model has the same function of explanation and description as the theoretical entity in nature sciences,which can be used as important evidence for the legitimacy of historical explanation.Chapter six mainly expounds the significance of discourse context model for social realism and anti-realism disputes,social and individual disputes,social sciences and nature sciences disputes,and "value-free" issues of social sciences.Finally,the influence and significance of discourse context on epistemology and methodology are explored,and the possibility of discourse contextualism with intersubjective characteristics is prospected.