The Philosophical Status of 'Rules' in the Social Science Winch v. Davidson

Abstract

In this essay, I'll try to deal with the philosophical analysis of the status and role of 'rules' in the framework of social life, and show what the foundations of a rule-based social science are. Thus, first, I'll reconstruct Winch's classical discussion about 'meaningful actions', and show how Winch, through the analysis of 'the rule-governed social life', builds up a certain type of 'interpretive sociology'. Then, I'll turn to three basic criticisms of the appeal to rules as some source of sociological explanations, which seems Winch's philosophical apparatus can't handle them. In the last section, this claim will be put forward that these criticisms are mainly due to the lack of some 'agency theory' in Winch's 'Wittgensteinian structuralist theory', and so, one can, by devising an adequate theory of agency, resolve the problems involved. For this purpose, Davidoson's ideas will be presented as a worthwhile, well-grounded source to obtain a clear, distinct understanding of the relationship between the social rules and agents.