A new epitheoretical analysis of social theories

a reconstruction of their background knowledge including a model of statistical decision theory

Werner Leinfellner

pp. 3-43

in: Werner Leinfellner, Eckehart Köhler (eds), Developments in the methodology of social science, Berlin, Springer, 1974

Abstract

The concept of a metatheoretical analysis of scientific theories is rejected since this deals only with the cognitive (predictive) and syntactic function of theories. Instead a new method of epitheoretical analysis of social theories including a complete reconstruction of their background knowledge is proposed. This analysis replaces the older schematical theory construction by an epitheoretical complementation of the different complex functions of social theories. The syntactic axiomatic view and the cognitive schematical view of theories are only partial aspects which exclude the modal aspect (outline of possible worlds), the normative, the deontic, the ideological-political and the paradigmatic aspect of social theories. This method is especially designed to explain the complexity of social theories. A standard theory of social sciences, the statistical decision theory (under uncertainty and risk), is epitheoretically analyzed and step by step the reconstruction of the background knowledge performed. The syntactic axiomatic, the semantic possible and the semantic descriptive aspect, together with the normative deontic and the paradigmatic aspect, is formalized and/or analyzed. This method may be considered as a hermeneutic epitheory containing the necessary background knowledge on which a specific social theory is dependent. This method has the advantage that the reconstruction of the different aspect of a theory may be done by many specialists, by the scientists, the formal philosophers of science, the historians, the political scientists, to mention a few.