A FUNDAMENTALISTIC REJOINDER.

The article presents the reply of the author to the criticism of his paper "Causation and Theory Construction," published in the March 1972 issue of the journal "Social Science Quarterly." According to the author, researchers Herbert L. Costner and Hubert M. Blalock, invoke an empirical criterion to judge logical validity; but logic has nothing to do with the empirical truth of propositions, and that point bears directly on their rules for relating symbols. Had Blalock and Costner not confused utility and logical validity, there would be no argument. At one point Blalock and Costner indicate that a theorist need only assume close relations to justify the sign rule, but elsewhere they say "if those conditions are met." If so, the criterion ignores the point that the empirical validity of the premises may be unknowable directly. At one point Blalock and Costner undertake to describe the "mathematical form of causal models and how this form corresponds to one common notion of a causal relation." But the "mathematical form" of causal models requires no further explication; rather, the issue is correspondence between that form and a conception of causation.