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Comments on Professor Roger Buck's Paper “Reflexive Predictions”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Adolf Grünbaum*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh

Extract

Professor Buck has given an illuminating account of the logical status of reflexive predictions in the social sciences. He tells us that the classification of a prediction as reflexive is predicated on a tacit distinction between the “normal” and the “abnormal” or perturbed conditions under which it is made. This seems to me to be a perceptive and sound circumscription of the class of reflexive predictions as encountered in the social sciences. He goes on to show helpfully how the social scientist can cope with the pitfalls of spurious disconfirmation and spurious confirmation which are created by “self-frustrating” and “self-fulfilling” predictions respectively. And Professor Buck then offers some searching doubts concerning the adequacy of regarding self-fulfilling predictions as the pattern of racial discrimination against minority groups. Finally, he presents objections to my critique ([1], pp. 239–240) of Robert Merton's claim that self-defeating and self-fulfilling predictions are endemic to the domain of human affairs and are “not found among predictions about the world of nature.” ([2], p. 181).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1963

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References

Grünbaum, A., “Historical Determinism, Social Activism, and Predictions in the Social Sciences”, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 7 (1956).10.1093/bjps/VII.27.236CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merton, R. K., Social Theory and Social Structure, Glencoe, 1949.Google Scholar