Hi all! I a recent discussion with my classmates over the topic of my recent Comp exams, there was some debate in how to answer one of the Question on the Epistemology section of the exam. The question is as follows: I beleive that the profession does, and I used Thomas Kuhn's theory of knoewledge to illustrate this. How would you have answered it?
non-verbal? How would one categorize a professional activity which does not lend itself to accurate verbal description? For example, activities requiring expertise in analysis of complex sensory experiences (the creation of perfumes or fine chocolates)... It is hard to describe the work using language, so it may be difficult to codify. In spite of this, one can have a clear sense (I imagine) that such professions have made progress over the centuries, rather than just drifting as tastes change. G
I'm not a doctor or a doctoral student. (Making me probably the only Degreeinfo participant that isn't.) I'm also a layman with regards to the field of social work. But your question is interesting, so I'll take a shot at it. I might start out by questioning the words "a growing body". I think that a profession has to be successful at what it sets out to accomplish, but I'm less sure that growth or progress must be a prerequisite for professionalism. A priesthood might be an example of a profession that doesn't progress. Their success as professionals doesn't necessarily depend on their periodically rolling out new and novel sacraments. That's assuming that we accept the criterion for the purposes of argument. Personally, I don't know enough about the history of social work to intelligently comment. That's easier for me to answer because it's more abstract. I think that what's most necessary are probably some unambiguous and generally accepted standards of 'truth and falsity'. Or perhaps one might prefer to employ more pragmatic criteria such as 'success and failure', or 'works and doesn't-work'. My layman's eye view is that a great deal of the social "sciences" is actually political special pleading. A "researcher" has a political agenda, then collects "results" tailored to further that agenda. In other words, science is reduced to rhetoric and scientists to sophists. So a useful first step might be to promote greater abstraction. The further that the issues of social work research are from the questions of social policy, the more they will be decided by the discipine's own internal dynamic. Physics has a tremendous number of pratical applications and it transforms all of our lives. But questions of physics are so abstract and so removed from social policy that they are generally decided on the basis of physical evidence and physical arguments. Neutron capture cross-sections are a matter for experiment, not a question of their implications for nuclear weapons. But if the whole point of social work is practice, if the function of a social work professional is to perform a social service, then chasing the ivory-tower abstraction necessary to achieve real scientific objectivity might be antithetical to the whole purpose of the profession. Perhaps this illustrates the difference between sociology and social work. This kind of stuff suggests a related issue that Galanga has already addressed. There have to be clear decision procedures. We have to be able to know when a hypothesis succeeds and when it fails. Unfortunately, when we are dealing with human beings, we can't just pull out our spectrographs and magnetometers and take readings. What passes for measurements is often going to be interpretive and psychological. It's going to be very difficult to bracket out questions of ethics, for example, especially when ethical intuitions are a primary motivator of human action. There are issues of teleology here, of what the ideal of human flourishing really is and of what we should want for our fellows. The essence of social work extends well beyond the kind of questions that science is equipped to answer. And human beings are complex. The partial differential equations of mathematical physics are child's play compared to an adaquate mathematical model of human behavior. (Assuming that such a thing is even possible.) Physics is possible because relatively simple mathematical symmetries can be isolated in the flux of observed events. In all cases where forces, masses and accelerations intersect without outside interference, the relation F = MA is conserved. But there's nothing analogous to that in human behavior. So to kind of sum up where I'm heading, it sounds to me like this Abraham Flexner guy was proposing that social work adhere to some sort of a scientific model. I'm raising questions about whether that approach is suitable or even possible. But I agree that without something like it, arguments about social policy easily devolve into unconvincing political rhetoric. This is a problem that's still unsolved in the social "sciences", in my opinion. It's been many years since I read Kuhn. I found him rather incoherent as I recall. I think that Kuhn, now sadly deceased, was kind of a tragic figure in the philosophy of science. He pushed his idea of 'incommensurability' much harder than he should have, then was rather appalled at the social-relativistic conclusions that so many people eagerly drew from it. But the contradictions were central to his thesis and he couldn't easily back down. So he repeatedly tried to rework it, without very much success. I've heard that he became rather bitter.
Hi Gina - First I'd like to offer my congratulations. As far as I'm concerned, if, at this point in the process, you can ad lib an essay on Thomas Kuhn's Theory of Knowledge in a Comp Exam then you've got my vote for Doctorality. Beyond that I'd say that everyone who's ever been in a Social Work grad program knows two things, 1) Social Work research is way behind, and 2) the NASW is working on this REALLY hard. I've never met anyone who went into Social Work in order to do research. Many of the Social Workers I've known don't even really read the NASW journal or any of the others . Let's face it, they're too busy working 60 hours a week saving some small portion of the world to attend to such matters. A large portion of the Social Workers I know have to work two jobs just so they can actually live in the middle class. This is not a complaint, it's just perspective. Sort of a "Maslow's hierarchy of needs" kind of thing. Anyway, I know your doctoral program has not been without difficulties. Push through the research phase and finish it off. Good work, Jack
Sociology: a formal study in search of its criterion-attributes. No one asked for it. Nobody would pay their own money for it. None can state its purpose.
