Social Dispositions and Historical Dispositions

Abstract

To exemplify social dispositions we begin in the first section by considering the use made by Levi-Strauss about Nambikwara tribes. According to this author, there is no social structure more fragile, or shorter lived than the Nambikwara tribe. If the chief is too exacting, if he allots to himself too large a share of the women, or if he cannot find enough food, discontentment follows immediately. Individuals, or families, will break away from the group. The dispositional terms ‘fragile’ and ‘fluid’ used in his account may be regarded as providing conditional predictions. The use of these terms is not metaphorical because there are close connections between their use in different contexts. Whereas in the previous example social dispositions were predicated of a social structure, in other cases it is possible to predicate a probabilistic disposition of the individuals (members of the society) when it is predicated a social property of that society; in other cases, when a social disposition is predicated of the society, there are other social dispositions predicated of the individuals: when a social structure is fluid it is possible to predicate mobility of the roles of the individual members of the society. There are other examples in which in addition of predicating properties of the society, they are also predicates of the individuals. To exemplify these latter cases, we consider the marriage rule that two Nambikwara tribes decided to establish according to which the children of a band are potentially husband and wives of the children of the other band and vice versa. In the text Levi-Strauss advanced a prediction of the evolution of two societies based on the marriage laws of the groups; he stated that by the time the next generation has grown up, the two tribes will merge.
There are instances in which social dispositions are predicated of the tendencies of the society or their groups, to exemplify them we consider Emile Durkheim classical work on suicide. An examination of the statistical data available to Durkheim shows that suicide is less frequent in Roman Catholic countries, as Italy, Spain and Portugal. It has its maximum in protestant countries, such as Russia, Saxony and Denmark. Durkheim has raised the question of what is the cause of the differences with respect to the rate of suicide. The superiority of Protestantism with respect to suicide is a result of being a less integratee church than the Catholic church. The Jewish religion is particularly immune to suicide because it has a high degree of solidarity. Suicide is inversely proportional to the degree of integration of the groups in which the individual is a member. Religion has a preventive effect over suicide. Individualism not only favors the action of the causes of suicide but it is itself its cause. The causal explanation of suicide should be regarded as a dispositional explanation because the most important concepts used as solidarity, degree of integration, individualism, etc. are dispositional concepts. The previous explanation is regarded as a DN explanation.
The previous examples do not exhaust all instances in which we predicate social dispositions. Robert Redfield consider the Papago Indians who attribute sanity and perilousity to objects to which they attribute supernatural powers: in sociology it is used the concept of cohesivity which is also dispositional.
There are extreme cases in which the application of the concepts of social dispositions are not related with the fulfillment of norms but with its violation, such as the tendency to suicide or to criminality, but these are instances in which the social order is under question, and even in those cases, the norms are the framework of social action which gives significance to them.
Our next task in the second section is to show that Methodological and Ontological Individualism may be associated with the Verificationist Theory of Meaning according to which processes and social events should be explained by deducing them from the principles which govern the behaviour of the participant individuals; the experimental evidence, according to the theory of meaning, makes sentences empirically significant. A central objection against Methodological Individualism was advanced by Mandelbaum; he said that the concepts which refer to the form of organization of society cannot be reduced to concepts which only refer to individuals without introducing social concepts again. A common element of the examples considered here is that all of them presuppose norms which only have significance in the context of society. This position will face difficulties to explain the presupposed norms. The ontological version of this view is also implausible. Before ending the argument against Individualism we argue to support Durkheim’s sociological emergence.
In section III, we consider historical dispositions. Danto noted that histories are the context in which events have historical significance. Similarly, histories are the natural context in which dispositions acquire historical significance; thus terms used in other fields will express historical dispositions. To examine the use of terms in the indicated context we consider A.J.P. Taylor’s explanation of the First War in which he expresses historical dispositions, as the German challenge to the British naval supremacy, the French desire to recover Alsace-Lorraine, Russia’s ambition to control Constantinople, which is a dispositional explanation. The explanation he advanced does not include statements of law; these authors regard natural science as the model of explanation. If we share Popper and Hempel position about them, we will conclude that no historian has provided a genuine historical explanation. Against this view, Donagan argues that in history, as well as in sociology, there is a new element characterized as a ‘logic of the situation’. Against Popper, who accepts a logic of the situation, these explanations are not based on the acceptance of general hypothesis as this author believes.
Another explanation examined is I.D. Jones explanation of Cromwell’s decisions in 1640. We have also included the explanations advanced during the XVIIth century of economic changes in terms of the general disposition to laxity of puritan divines. In the last example, taken from Cassirer, dispositions are predicated of centuries. If we disregard the last explanations, our first examples in which we predicate dispositions of States as well as those in which we predicate dispositions of individuals may be regarded as typical. The procedure employed in history in which we consider as individuals States, Nations, Countries, etc. and attribute to them dispositions normally employed in the case of individuals. History does not employ technical vocabulary but the use of this method has advantages because historians make a transposition which has similar consequences as the employment of a technical vocabulary with the additional advantage of being understood by those which are not familiar with this procedure. We end the paper by considering the analyses of the terms used to predicate historical dispositions. Danto provided another interpretation of Methodological Individualism which regards this view as a methodological interpretation. From this point of view, this position considers that the behaviours of social particulars are causally dependent on the behaviour of individuals and not vice versa. However, the previous position is not justified according to Danto and our examination support his view; we considered explanations in which historical dispositions are predicated of particulars different from the individuals, for which the previous recommendation is not adequate.