Situational logic

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]

Notes
  1. This use of this summary is from Boumans and Davis (2010).
gollark: I assume that forklift certification requires you to be able to drive a forklift.
gollark: Don't you need to spend some time actually doing training?
gollark: I buy boxes of 50 identical pens periodically to keep them stocked.
gollark: This is obviously a much more important business priority for Samsung's semiconductor people than fixing their 3nm process and the yields on all their other recent ones.
gollark: That's not much of an explanation.

References
  1. Boumans, M. and Davis, John B. (2015), Economic Methodology: Understanding Economics as a Science, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 92.
  2. Popper, Karl (2013), The Poverty of Historicism, Routledge, p. 141.
  3. Koertge, N. (1975), "Popper's Metaphysical Research Program for the Human Sciences", Inquiry, 18 (1975), 437–62.
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