Chapter 3 defended naturalism primarily by defending causal explanation in the social sciences. Nonetheless, serious doubts remain about a science of society. Much social science does not trade in ordinary causal talk at all. Look, for example, at the great classical social theorists. Marx, Durkheim, Malinowski, and Parsons all relied heavily on teleological explanations – they explained social phenomena by citing their function or purpose, a function or purpose that usually no individual had in mind. However, the natural sciences became real sciences precisely when they gave up on such mystical explanations. Social scientists, on the other hand, have not dropped this pseudoscientific mode of explanation. Thus Chapter 3 defended only a small part of social science; the rest, a critic might claim, is still rotten to the core.

Answering these doubts is crucial for several reasons. First, functional or teleological explanations are part and parcel of social science as we know it and are likely to remain so. Nearly every tradition in the social sciences, from ecological anthropology to stratification theory to neoclassical economics, employs functional explanations. Moreover, such explanations are unlikely to go away. Much in the social world is the result of individuals pursuing their own interests, often while proclaiming some more selfless motivation.