Читать книгу Contemporary Sociological Theory - Группа авторов - Страница 74

Even if purposive action is accepted as the appropriate principle of individual action for social theory this does not imply the narrow specification of purpose as maximization of utility. First, I need to say that neither in the qualitative form of the theory nor in the use of this qualitative theory in research is the idea of maximization of utility explicitly introduced. The assumption of utility maximization is necessary only for the quantitative development of the theory both for mathematical modeling and for the quantitative research which makes use of those models. Nevertheless, it is useful to spell out here the two reasons why such a narrow specification is valuable for social theory.

First, by making precise what is meant by “purposive action,” such a specification provides greater power. Any teleological principle which specifies that some quantity is to be maximized or minimized is more powerful than a less specific principle. This predictive power of a minimization or maximization principle is somewhat vitiated when measurement of the quantity to be minimized or maximized is less unequivocal than it is in a physical example, as is the case for utility.

A second reason favoring the use of this narrow specification of purposive behavior lies in its simplicity. For a social theory made up of three components―a macro-to-micro component, an individual-action component, and a micro-to-macro component―it is especially important that the individual-action component remains simple. This does not imply, of course, that the specification of purposive behavior is the best one of those at the same degree of simplicity. It is true, however, that a trade-off between complexity in the other two components and complexity in this component must be made if the overall theory is to remain manageable. I have chosen to trade off as much psychological complexity as possible in order to allow introduction of greater amounts of complexity in the other two components of the theory, the “social organizational” components.

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