situational logic

{{Short description|Formal logic of experienced situational worldviews}}

{{For|situational analysis in strategic management|Situation analysis}}

Situational logic (also situational analysis)Boumans, M. and Davis, John B. (2015), Economic Methodology: Understanding Economics as a Science, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 92. is a concept advanced by Karl Popper in his The Poverty of Historicism.Popper, Karl (2013), The Poverty of Historicism, Routledge, p. 141. 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.This use of this summary is from Boumans and Davis (2010).

: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.Koertge, N. (1975), "Popper's Metaphysical Research Program for the Human Sciences", Inquiry, 18 (1975), 437–62.