Situational logic (also situational analysis)[1] is a concept advanced by Karl Popper in his The Poverty of Historicism.[2] Situational logic is a process by which a social scientist tries to reconstruct the problem situation confronting an agent in order to understand that agent's choice.
Noretta Koertge (1975) provides a helpful clarificatory summary.[note 1]
- First provide a description of the situation:
- ''Agent A was in a situation of type C''.
- This situation is then analysed
- ''In a situation of type C, the appropriate thing to do is X.''
- The rationality principle may then be called upon:
- ''agents always act appropriately to their situation''
- Finally we have the explanadum:
- ''(therefore) A did X.''[3]
- ^ Boumans, M. and Davis, John B. (2015), Economic Methodology: Understanding Economics as a Science, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 92.
- ^ Popper, Karl (2013), The Poverty of Historicism, Routledge, p. 141.
- ^ Koertge, N. (1975), "Popper's Metaphysical Research Program for the Human Sciences", Inquiry, 18 (1975), 437–62.
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