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The Idea of a Social Science
... The propositions are as follows: 4 A statement of his conception of reason can be found in Sections II, III and IV of Hume (2007). 5 Winch (2003), 54. 6 For Ryle's deployment of this term in relation to 'Ryle's regress' which I will be discussing here, see Ryle (2000), 28-32. 7 Carroll (1895) However, the Tortoise supposes that he accepts (A) and (B) while denying (Z) and asks Achilles to demonstrate to him why he should accept (Z). ...
... 11 Taylor (1989), 34. 12 Taylor (1985b), 22. 13 This idea can be found in Anscombe (2000). 14 See chapter 2 of Winch (2003). ...
... However, paradigms are not complete systems. The concepts involved in the paradigm required fur-50 Winch (2003), 53. 51 Ibid., 64. ...
This chapter brings together the epistemological conclusions I have reached with my earlier concerns about the individual’s ability to freely develop himself. This chapter is the culmination of everything argued so far and offers an account of the individual as being partially constituted by the self-descriptions he forms of himself, where those descriptions are subject to socially grounded objective standards while also allowing the subject to have a degree of creativity in choosing which descriptions to endorse. I also briefly discuss the possibility of critically developing those social frameworks within which we are participants as a way of opening up to ourselves new possibilities of self-description. In this way the development of both the individual and the social world can still be understood on the basis of a critical interaction between the two, where each contains conflicts and tensions that can only be resolved by the mutual development of each. A second important strand of argument in this chapter aims to show that certain essential features of the human identity—certain forms of emotional response or evaluative orientation—depend on the world of meanings opened up to us by social practice.
... In the tradition of critical realism, social ontology is often viewed as forging a middle path between empiricism (or positivism) and methodologically dualist versions of hermeneutic interpretivism (e.g. Winch 1959) and anti-realist versions of social constructionism (e.g. Burr 1995), described by critical realists as providing inadequate epistemological and ontological foundations for conducting social scientific research. ...
Social ontological inquiry has been pursued in analytic philosophy as well as in the social scientific tradition of critical realism. These traditions have remained largely separate despite partly overlapping concerns and similar underlying strategies of argumentation. They have also both been the subject of similar criticisms based on naturalistic approaches to the philosophy of science, which have addressed their apparent reliance on a transcendental mode of reasoning, their seeming distance from social scientific practice, and their (erroneous?) tendency to advocate global solutions to local and pragmatic problems. Two approaches aiming to naturalize these two traditions of social ontology have been proposed in recent years: one drawing on a Gierean, model-based approach to scientific practice, the other drawing on inference to the best explanation. In our paper, we compare and contrast these naturalistic approaches to social ontology in terms of their capacity to respond to the aforementioned challenges. We also defend a form of methodological pluralism, according to which there are multiple different naturalistically acceptable approaches to social ontology, which emphasize contrasting procedural continuities between social scientific research and philosophical practice.
... A significant part of Philosophy of Science has to do with what makes it possible to build knowledge from nature and the social world, and whether the latter can be 'science' as much as the former. In the course of its development, some philosophers have argued that it was not adequate to investigate the social world through the same methods as the natural sciences, because of the kind of co-relations of the former and because social things would only exist as part of the concepts that social agents possess of them (Winch, 1959, cited in Bhaskar, 1989. What is assumed in this contrast is a view of ontology that rests on the idea that only material objects are real and are appropriate to be scientifically investigated, conceding to positivism the authority over the conditions that make the natural sciences possible. ...
Literacy Discourses in Two Socioeconomically Differentiated Neighbourhoods in Brazil is an ethnographic study concerned with people's use and representations of literacy in two residential quarters in Distrito Federal, the federation district within which is the capital city of Brazil. It is a detailed description of situated literacies in particular domains such as home and community, and it involves knowing literacy practices at both individual and social level. Besides, it is an explanation of how these literacies relate to other domains such as work and school. Informal ways of learning literacy are also given attention as part of the everyday use. In doing so, I explore the categories of vernacular and dominant literacies within the New Literacy Studies. Use of literacy is combined in this work with the notion of language in use-discourse-in a theoretical framework of discourse as both activity and representation, cf. Critical Discourse Analysis, following a particular strand of research into literacy in Lancaster University. This integration between the New Literacy Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis allows for the study of literacy as discourse in the link between local settings and global practices. As a main proposition, these situated literacies are classified as lifeworld and systemic literacies, derived from Habermas's social theory of lifeworld and system. This classification is meant to show the advantage of providing ways to understand relationships between vernacular and dominant literacies, which do not figure as discrete elements but exist in hybrid practices. Finally, a critique of dominant discourses of literacy is made through the explanatory framework of CDA, as in Chouliaraki & Fairclough (1999), in order to show how dominant uses and representations of literacy function in the broader social context. These dominant discourses of literacy are contrasted with critical uses and knowledge of literacy, pointing to new possibilities of using and conceiving literacy in everyday life, which could be applied in educational settings.
... There's no doubt that Wittgenstein is a central figure in 20ᵗʰ-century philosophy, even though his place and role in contemporary analytic philosophy has considerably declined in the last decades (Hacker 1996;Tripodi 2009). Moreover, qua social scientists, we are interested in Wittgenstein's work because we consider it to be relevant for the social sciences (think for example of the cases of sociology and anthropology) (Winch 1959;Saran 1965;Giddens 1976;Porpora 1983;Bloor 1997;Das 1998;Pleasants 2002;Rawls 2008). Currently, the influence of LW is also visible in social theory and, in particular, in the sociology of scientific knowledge, ethnomethodology, and practice theory (Bloor 1973(Bloor , 1983Phillips 1977;Coulter 1979;Lynch 1992Lynch , 1993Schusterman 1998;Schatzki et al. 2001;Stern 2002;Kusch 2004;Bernasconi-Kohn 2007;Sharrock, Hughes, and Anderson 2013). ...
Sharing the “historicist challenge to analytic philosophy” (Glock 2006) we investigate the philosophical production (and, to a lesser extent, some non-philosophical works as well) on Ludwig Wittgenstein from a distant reading perspective. First, we provide a description of the “Wittgensteinian field” by analyzing several data provided by the Philosopher’s Index, an electronic bibliographic database especially devoted to philosophy. Then we analyze these data by using statistical tools (such as for example topic modeling) and we interpret the results historically and sociologically, along the lines of Bourdieu (1988) on Heidegger, Lamont (1992) on Derrida, Gross (2006) on Rorty, and Collins (1999) on the whole philosophical tradition.
... 7 . Cf. Giddens (1976Giddens ( , 1984; Winch (1958) 8 . Cf. Bourdieu (1990Bourdieu ( , 2000 9 . ...
La pregunta sobre el orden social y su transformación han estado en la base de parte importante de la discusión teórica en sociología, incluso llegando a pensar como oposición. A partir de la idea práctica social como unidad básica de la vida social se muestra que el mismo proceso que genera dichas prácticas es el que las transforma, y que dicho proceso es, a su vez, intrínseco a la vida social. En otras palabras, es inevitable construir orden social y es inevitable su transformación: éste siempre se está construyendo.
... In saying what any competent wideawake adult knows, it is evidently the case that we are now in the business of giving reasons that account for and justify one's decision to stop and the decisions of others not to stop at the signal if it is red. Reasons justify decisions in the social world (Winch, 1958), not causes. GDPR seeks to make automated decision-making an explainable feature of the social world and thus accountable to data controllers, data subjects, regulators, lawyers, judges, law-makers, etc. ...
Lay and professional reasoning has it that newly introduced data protection regulation in Europe-GDPR-mandates a 'right to an explanation'. This has been read as requiring that the machine learning (ML) community build 'explainable machines' to enable legal compliance. In reviewing relevant accountability requirements of GDPR and measures developed within the ML community to enable human interpretation of ML models, we argue that this reading should be considered harmful as it creates unrealistic expectations for the ML community and society at large. GDPR does not require that machines provide explanations, but that data controllers-i.e., human beings-do. We consider the implications of this requirement for the 'explainable machines' agenda.
... This is because the implicit definition of science has always been that of science]. Given that the philosophy and soci-'It should be noted that the question of the extent and nature of the differences between the natural and social sciences remains a highly contentious issue (Bhaskar 1979, Keat andUrry 1975;Mill 1959, Papineau 1978, Rosenberg 1980, Thomas 1979, Winch 1958 ology of science can no longer support the veridical status of science, how might we justify the quest for science-? ...
It is argued that the long debate concerning the scientific credentials of marketing has been couched in terms of an idealized notion of science as the ultimate source of objectively certified knowledge. A review of contemporary literature in the philosophy, sociology, and history of science reveals that this canonical conception of science cannot be supported. The implications of this literature for the marketing–as–science debate are developed, and practical measures for the enhancement of scientific practice in marketing are discussed.
... He observed that, by analogy to the triad of totality, selfregulation, and transformation, which Piaget (1968) established as the basis for his structuralist epistemology, the science of complex systems has for its own corresponding building-blocks, the categories of coherence, autopoiesis, and emergence. Structuralists typically use any two terms from the former triad in order to study the third (Winch 1958). By contrast, "emergent autopoietic coherence" (EAC) expresses the distinct complex-scientific epistemology which embeds the framework, identifying the dynamic of the emergent coherence itself. ...
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to set out an evolutionary schema for organizational resilience using the established emergent autopoiesis coherence (EAC) framework, with empirical reference to the European Parliament’s development of institutional capacities since its foundation in 1952 as the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community (CA-ECSC).
Design/methodology/approach
The logic is categorical-synthetic and second-order cybernetic, implicitly underlain by a correspondence theory of truth united with a coherentism based in the epistemology of complex systems.
Findings
The European Parliament has constructed itself as a resilient organization, but the process has entailed over-learning of past lessons, creating behavioral syndromes of dysfunction in the face of new challenges.
Research limitations/implications
The work contrasts antifragility with resilience and suggests a new approach to it.
Practical implications
The analytical framework and conclusions hold value for the practical design of resilient organizations.
Social implications
The groundwork of the EAC’s conceptual framework is laid, and the basis for applying it to human and other naturally occurring societies is established.
Originality/value
K.W. Deutsch’s mid-twentieth century work on cybernetic-based learning in political systems is reconstructed, updated and applied to twenty-first century political phenomena. The insights are validated, and the analytical framework’s robustness is demonstrated.
... Instead, what speakers say is treated as a version of events, which is constructed in their narrative to portray themselves and others in a particular light. The view of language as performing a social action through its very construction (e.g., word choices) is not new, as it can be traced back to linguistics philosophers including Wittgenstein (1958) and Winch (1967). For example, a simple statement such as "The china dog I ordered online was broken when it arrived" could be heard as a statement of fact or it could be heard as a complaint. ...
In this article, we present discursive psychology (DP), a qualitative approach that focuses on the study of conversational and textual materials, including everyday interactions. Although DP is well-established methodologically and theoretically, and is used widely in Europe and in the Commonwealth countries, it is relatively unknown in counseling psychology in the United States. As such, the purpose of this article is to provide a general overview of DP and offer guidance for researchers who may be interested in studying and using DP. We thus discuss practical considerations for utilizing DP, including the development of research questions, carrying out data collection, and conducting DP-informed analyses. We also provide a general overview of the history of DP and key resources for those interested in studying it further, while noting the usefulness of DP for counseling psychology.
... To think nonlinearly, one must distinguish between regularized patterns in human behavior that appear predictable and the capacity of the variables to intentionally change. 91 Kiel writes: ...
Complexity, Organizational Blinders, and the SOCOM Design Way
(SDW) takes on the monumental task of explaining why the com- plex world is so difficult to comprehend and provides a way for navigating through it. The authors accomplish this utilizing U.S. Special Operations Command design techniques. This mono- graph is not just for the Special Operator or the Operational Plan- ner. It is useful for anyone who is seeking out a better way to address problems that seem to have no solution. Dr. David Ellis and Mr. Charles Black provide the tools necessary to define the problem and develop an approach. The SDW needs to be seri- ously considered and put into practice if the community desires to make progress in complex and wicked problems.
... Social science is hermeneutical and can be compared to interpreting texts. Amongst philosophers, Peter Winch argues for this kind of position by adapting the later work of Wittgenstein; we shall be examining his arguments below ( Winch, 1958 andTaylor, 1985). ...
Are explanations in the social sciences fundamentally (logically or structurally) different from explanations in the natural sciences? Many philosophers think that they are, and I call such philosophers ‘difference theorists’. Many difference theorists locate that difference in the alleged fact that only in the natural sciences does explanation essentially include laws.
In recent years, historicist understandings of science have come to prominence in philosophy of science and philosophy of social science. These approaches have been credited with putting forward a persuasive case that social scientific theories, like societies, are themselves historical entities. (Laudan 1979, p. 43; McMullin 1979, p. 57). Historicist studies have forced a re-evaluation of a number of important issues, among them the question of how methodologies are to be evaluated, and questions about how the relation of theory to observation is to be understood. (Laudan 1979, pp. 47-48).
Despite their successes, however, historicist approaches fail in two important ways: 1) they are unable to solve the problems posed by methodological relativism, and 2) they fail to go beyond treating theories as personages to the important questions of how these theories arise from particular social structures.
For a long time anthropology was defined by the exoticism of its subject matter and also by the distance (mostly cultural than geographic) separating the researcher from the researched group. However, after the coming of the new Millennium many things have been changed radically and many anthropologists imply their old professional ethnographic techniques to study their own cultures using terms as otherness instead of exoticism and reflexivity instead of objectivity. The term of cosmopolitanism also has been too much applied instead of multiculturalism, charged with political connotations of what could be ‘politically correct’ under the western values. In the same time, anthropology is exercised now also by the representatives of these ‘ different cultures’ who exercise by their original ways the inverse influence to the western values. Cultural difference has acquired its most complex meaning nowadays and the scope of this paper is to present through the example of tourism some cases of intercultural meetings under a paradigmatic assumption entailing not only anthropological self-criticism but also the consideration that this self-criticism anthropology prescribes is also morally and originally pointed. Social change has to be analysed objectively and in the same time from all points of view and this consists the challenge of anthropology in our era.
The article resituates critical realism within critical theory and proposes a tripartite articulation of British critical realism, German critical theory and French anti-utilitarianism. It suggests that the critique of positivism has to be enhanced with a critique of utilitarianism and makes the case that both critiques have to be grounded in a hermeneutic approach to social life. By taking the symbolic constitution of the world seriously, critical realist hermeneutics offers a via media between naturalism and anti-naturalism, explanation and interpretation, universalism and relativism, materialism and idealism, realism and constructivism.
This article aims to show the importance of the pragmatic conception of language proposed by Wittgenstein in relation to his philosophy of action, as well as the possibilities it offers to political theory, by explaining the impact and influence that his theory had in some of his readers. This is particularly important for the notion of political representation, which emerges as a linguistic practice of rule-based behavior in terms of giving and asking for reasons. This idea will be reinforced by a reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s arguments applied to a social instance a work that is done by many of his readers and commentators, specifically Searle, Brandom and Mouffe. Such instance would be limited in this text, by making use of Rawls’ idea of public reason through the lens of this socially conceived Wittgenstein’s pragmatism.
Michel Le Du. Entre norme de rationalité et relativisme : comprendre une société étrangère.
La lecture de nombre de travaux en sciences sociales soulève au fond la question de savoir si nous comprenons véritablement les sociétés étrangères. La réponse à cette question réside en partie dans la reconnaissance du fait que le terme même de compréhension voit sa signification élargie lorsque l’on passe, par exemple, de la compréhension, par un européen, du réchauffement climatique, à la compréhension, par un indigène, de la consultation des oracles. Cet élargissement est l’objet du débat entre deux auteurs majeurs de la philosophie britannique, Alasdair MacIntyre et Peter Winch. L’un et l’autre puisent dans la philosophie de Wittgenstein des ressources conceptuelles permettant de distinguer l’explication des mouvements et celle des actions. Mais l’un et l’autre divergent sur la question des critères de rationalité applicables à ces mêmes actions. A travers leur débat, c’est la question de ce que pourrait être le contenu d’une notion moderne et éclairante de Verstehen qui se trouve traitée.
In the 50th anniversary edition of Population Studies, John Hobcraft commented that demographers spend too little time trying to explain the phenomena they measure and describe. A quarter of a century on, this paper looks at the state of theory and explanation in contemporary demography. I ask how demographers have approached the task of explanation since Hobcraft’s comment, grounding the discussion in the mainstream literature on low fertility in Europe. Using selected examples, I critically review macro- and micro-level approaches to explanation, highlighting some of the philosophical problems that each encounters. I argue that different conceptions of what demography is, and the explanatory language fertility researchers use, lead to differences in explanatory strategies that are rarely explicitly recognized. I also consider how critical theories challenge demographers to think in new ways. Despite the increasing attention paid to theory and explanation, I conclude that more engagement with the philosophy of social sciences is needed before fertility researchers can legitimately claim their studies do as much to explain and understand as to quantify and describe.
Ian Hacking uses the looping effect to describe how classificatory practices in the human sciences interact with the classified people. While arguably this interaction renders the affected human kinds unstable and hence different from natural kinds, realists argue that also some prototypical natural kinds are interactive and human kinds in general are stable enough to support explanations and predictions. I defend a more fine-grained realist interpretation of interactive human kinds by arguing for an explanatory domain account of the looping effect. First, I argue that knowledge of the feedback mechanisms that mediate the looping effect can supplement, and help to identify, the applicability domain over which a kind and its property variations are stably explainable. Second, by applying this account to cross-cultural case studies of psychiatric disorders, I distinguish between congruent feedback mechanisms that explain matches between classifications and kinds, and incongruent feedback mechanisms that explain mismatches. For example, congruent mechanisms maintain Western auditory experiences in schizophrenia, whereas exporting diagnostic labels inflicts incongruence by influencing local experiences. Knowledge of the mechanisms can strengthen explanatory domains, and thereby facilitate classificatory adjustments and possible interventions on psychiatric disorders.
Civilization faces the challenge of reconciling growth with biophysical limits, whilst avoiding devastating geo-political conflict. Radical demands for ‘degrowth’ are often juxtaposed with realist ‘eco-modernist’ scenarios. Elias’s theory of civilizing processes and his concept of the triad of controls provide an invaluable framework for evaluating the reality-congruence of both trajectories. An Eliasian understanding of ecological conscience formation is synthesized with insights from Ernest Gellner (on exo-education), Walter Ong (on literacy and individuation) and Owen Barfield (on the history of consciousness). Successful navigation of the politics of the Anthropocene implies societal solutions and arrangements that exist in the barely conceivable ‘adjacent possible.’ Eliasian concepts are invaluable in the exploration of such possibilities, but his rationalism and commitment to greater ‘detachment’ make him blind to the simultaneous requirement for selectively higher degrees of ‘involvement’ in the process of both ecological conscience formation and the consolidation of ‘imagined community’. Adam Seligman’s theory of ritual and sincerity provides a complement to Elias’s rationalism. Elias underplays the possibility that more detached scientific and economistic processes of model making and orientation might co-exist with patterns of conscious, creative, cognitive dissonance: modalities of ‘paradox’, enchantment and participation associated with more relational and reciprocal forms of ‘livelihood’ economy.
In his book, Philosophy’s Cool Place, D. Z. Phillips poses a question that I would like to address in this article. He asks: “if a philosopher gives a course on the meaning of life, can he tell his students what that meaning is?” Here I modify the question and ask: if a Wittgensteinian philosopher gives a course on the meaning of life, can she tell her students what that meaning is? The orthodox position among Wittgensteinian philosophers is that it is not a philosopher’s job to engage with such questions, that the focus should be on second-order or “grammatical” questions about life’s meaning. However, I argue that the massive literature on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion shows that these so-called grammatical investigations are not entirely grammatical and that more often than not a conception of life’s meaning emerges in these types of investigations. Further, I argue that Wittgenstein’s engagement with what he calls the “problem of life” shows itself in two distinct ways: first, in his private reflections on the nature of religious beliefs; and second, in his steady yet quiet interest in a naturalist account of life’s meaning, culminating in his last text, On Certainty.
Kirjassa kehitelty näkökulmarelativismi on tietoon liittyvän epistemologisen relativismin muoto, jossa tietoväitteet suhteutetaan näkökulmiin. Näkökulmissa tarkasteltavan asian jokin aspekti tai ominaisuus edustaa sitä subjektille. Esimerkiksi perhepolitiikkaa voidaan tarkastella naisten tasa-arvon kannalta. Asiat näyttävät hyvin erilaisilta eri näkökulmista. Näkökulmarelativismin mukaan ei ole olemassa neutraalia tapaa katsella asioita.
Kirjassa käsitellään epistemologisen relativismin koko kenttää alkaen totuuden relatiivisuudesta ja päätyen tieteen relatiivisuuteen. Keskeinen kysymys on relativismin ja realismin suhde. Relativismi asettuu vastustamaan realismia ja sen tapaa suhteuttaa tietoväitteet ihmisestä riippumattomaan todellisuuteen.
Keskustelu totuuden jälkeisestä ajasta on tehnyt relativismin erityisen ajankohtaiseksi. Kriittinen relativismi hyväksyy yhteiskunnallisen pluralismin, mutta suhtautuu kriittisesti kaikkiin näkökulmiin. Mitä tahansa ei pidä hyväksyä. Aikamme ongelma ei ole kuitenkaan pluralismi vaan fundamentalismi, yhden ”totuuden” julkistaminen.
This work is a critical examination of the place of explanation and understanding in the overall consideration of the various means employed in the acquisition of reliable knowledge both in the physical and social sciences. This inquiry is made to ascertain if the methods of explanation and understanding employed in the physical and social sciences can constitute relevant tools in African philosophy. Life is full of puzzles seeking explanation and understanding. Apart from its raising of questions, philosophy also concerns itself with providing answers or explanations to the fundamental questions of life. These explanations make what was previously unintelligible or unfamiliar to be understandable. It demystifies or, as it may be, unravels the apparent mystery beclouding it thus making it intelligible. In explanation questions raised include: how? When? Why? Where? Etc. The erklaeren-verstehen controversy (i.e. explanation-understanding controversy) is an inter disciplinary controversy which arose in sorting out the primary methodological concerns proper to the philosophy of the natural and socio-historical sciences. It raises the question of whether we can use the same methods of explanation and understanding in the physical and social sciences. This work employing the philosophical methods of critical analysis and evaluation traced the background of this controversy, examined the various methods employed by the physical and social sciences in explanation and understanding and considered the different schools of thought that championed the various methods of explanation. These methods of explanation are further examined with regard to their relevance in African philosophy which also has its ways of explanation and understanding. The work concluded by affirming the significance of this discussion in resolving some questions addressed in African Philosophy.
To nostalgia-prone anthropologists, the years between the falls of the Berlin Wall and the Twin Towers appear as the discipline's golden age as far as public influence is concerned. Through Arne Martin Klausen's and Fredrik Barth's desire and skill for public engagements, Norway had been exposed to the systematic playfulness of anthropology's comparative and cultural relativistic methodology. In the nineties, this turned out into full blossom, in a unique interaction between the discipline's lightness in spirit and the general Zeitgeist. Other worlds were obviously possible - for a new world had just revealed itself. With 9/11 entered a new form of solemnity, and people gradually turned their back on anthropology's lightheartedness. Through a combination of database searches, media examples and my own professional experience with public engagements, I show how the narrative of cultural relativism has moved from being a formative virtue to becoming synonymous with spinelessness, where the distinction between cultural relativism and moral relativism is obscured. I ask the question of whether we also have contributed to weakening the impact of culture relativism through what I call moralizing relativism, in combination with an uncritical import of cultural-specific identity theories, mainly of American origin. And what can we do to restore the critical potential of anthropology, at a time when the value of understanding is under challenge, yet remains more required than ever before?
Kirjassa kehitelty näkökulmarelativismi on epistemologisen relativismin muoto, jossa tietoväitteet suhteutetaan näkökulmiin. Näkökulmissa tarkasteltavan asian jokin aspekti edustaa sitä subjektille. Esimerkiksi perhepolitiikkaa voidaan tarkastella naisten tasa-arvon kannalta. Asiat näyttävät hyvin erilaisilta eri näkökulmista. Näkökulmarelativismin mukaan ei ole olemassa neutraalia tapaa katsella asioita.
Kirjassa käsitellään epistemologisen relativismin koko kenttää alkaen totuuden relatiivisuudesta ja päätyen tieteen relatiivisuuteen. Keskeinen kysymys on relativismin ja realismin suhde. Relativismi asettuu vastustamaan realismia ja sen tapaa suhteuttaa tietoväitteet ihmisestä riippumattomaan todellisuuteen.
Keskustelu totuuden jälkeisestä ajasta on tehnyt relativismin erityisen ajankohtaiseksi. Kriittinen relativismi hyväksyy yhteiskunnallisen pluralismin, mutta suhtautuu kriittisesti kaikkiin näkökulmiin. Mitä tahansa ei pidä hyväksyä. Aikamme ongelma ei ole kuitenkaan pluralismi vaan fundamentalismi, yhden ”totuuden” julkistaminen.
Kirjoittaja FT Antti Hautamäki on innovaatiotutkimuksen emeritusprofessori Jyväskylän yliopistossa ja teoreettisen filosofian dosentti Helsingin yliopistossa. Hän on tutkinut kirjan tematiikkaa 80-luvulta asti ja julkaissut useita artikkeleita aihepiiristä suomeksi ja englanniksi.
This article critically examines Elisabeth Anscombe's philosophy of action. Anscombe's theory of intentional action was presented in her monograph Intention (1957), which is now an acknowledged classic of analytic philosophy. Intention established the field of analytic philosophy of action, defined the main problems of the field, and largely determined its further development. However, the study of Intention is complicated by the author's methodology, her writing style, and the lack of any kind of a clear summary of the results of her inquiry. The aim of this paper is to present Anscombe's theory of intentional action in a comprehensible way without oversimplifying her genuine thought. The first part of the paper contains some brief biographical information about Anscombe's life and philosophical development, the social and philosophical context of Intention, and its place in Anscombe's philosophy in general. The second part of the paper explains the basic structure of Intention, states its general task, presents the central line of reasoning and the main arguments, highlights the particular theses and questions that significantly influenced the development of the analytical philosophy of action. The resulting interpretation demonstrates that Anscombe's theory passes between the extremes of different versions of Cartesian dualism on the one hand, and the complete negation of the significance of the mental in the theory of action, on the other.
This is an article about the history of US sociology with systematic intent. It goes back to World War II to recover a wartime narrative context through which sociologists formulated a ‘trauma’ to the discipline and ‘blamed’ qualitative and values-oriented research for damaging the scientific status of sociology. This narrative documents a discussion of the changes that sociologists said needed to be made in sociology as a science to repair its status and reputation. While debates among sociologists about theory and method had always been contentious, the wartime narrative insisted for the first time that sociology be immediately unified around quantitative approaches. The narrative of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ science that developed during the war not only undermined the efforts of social interactionists to theorize social action and social justice, but also derailed Parsons’ pre-war effort to bridge differences. The moral coding that is the legacy of the narrative stigmatized important approaches to sociology, leading to a ‘crisis’ in the 1960s that still haunts the discipline. Disciplinary history has overlooked the wartime narrative with the result that the role played by World War II in effecting this crisis has gone unrecognized.
This paper strengthens Bhaskar’s case for the possibility of naturalism. Building on Bhaskar’s A Realist Theory of Science and The Possibility of Naturalism, and on more recent contributions by Douglas Porpora, it traces the evolution of Bhaskar’s concept of 'intransitive' and follows his suggestion to treat social structure as an intransitive generative mechanism analogous to the generative mechanisms of the natural sciences. It is suggested, building on Porpora, that the constitutive rules of the market are usefully regarded as generating an intransitive 'basic social structure.' That this same intransitive object is reasonably regarded as continuing to exist and act under different descriptions is illustrated by citing how different scholars have approached it with different concepts and vocabularies. It expands on Bhaskar’s first example of an intransitive object of social science, the mass unemployment that provided a ‘motor’ for Keynes, and on Porpora’s examples of the causal powers of social structures.
Tradução do artigo publicado na Transversal, 2017, 3
RESUMO A historiografia dos estudos de ciência sofreu um forte impacto, muito pouco referido, decorrente das análises antropológicas sobre a magia em sociedades ditas primitivas. O realce trazido pelas críticas produzidas nas décadas de 1950/1960 sobre o clássico de Evans-Pritchard, Bruxaria, oráculos e magia entre os Azande, de 1937, trouxe um novo olhar sobre certezas já consolidadas no pensamento ocidental especialmente aquelas relativas às características racionais humanas e à ciência. Para a história, essas críticas foram interessantes por apresentarem a ciência como uma atividade historicamente situada, da mesma forma que a magia. Favorece-se, assim, a proximidade de historiadores tout court com a história das ciências que se ressente, ainda hoje, de suas ausências. Essa renovação ajudou a criar um cenário que possibilitaria David Bloor gestar o programa forte da sociologia do conhecimento na década de 1970. Tal programa indica o processo análogo que envolve tanto a produção social das crenças quanto a das verdades científicas.
Many advocates of interpretive approaches to the study of politics emphasize that what is at stake is a conflict between “quantitative” versus “qualitative” methods. By contrast, we begin by suggesting that political scientists are free to use whichever method they find most useful for their research purposes. Instead of methodological reasons for making the interpretive turn, political scientists have ethical reasons for adopting this paradigm. In particular, interpretive approaches give political scientists a better account of the nature and role of values in human life, a sense for how the historical past is ethically relevant, the ability to advance politically engaged sociologies, and a deliberative critique of technocracy. Political scientists should be free to critically engage, scrutinize, and even normatively evaluate human ethical positions.
‘Hermeneutics’ — the theory of interpretation — has only recently become a familiar term to those working in the social sciences, at least in the English-speaking world. On the face of it this is an oddity, for the hermeneutic tradition stretches back at least as far as the late eighteenth century; and the term ‘hermeneutics’ derives from the Greeks. But this neglect is less odd than it appears, since the hermeneutic tradition was most firmly established in Germany, and many of the key texts remain untranslated into English. The concept of verstehen, the unifying notion of the hermeneutic tradition, became most widely known in the English-speaking world through its adoption by Max Weber. As such, it was subject to scourging attack by those associated with what I shall call the ‘orthodox consensus’.1 The controversy about verstehen in the English-speaking literature,2 however, largely by-passed some of the most significant questions raised by the hermeneutic tradition. Weber was only influenced in some part by that tradition, drawing his methodological ideas more strongly from the work of Rickert and the ‘Marburg School’.
Currently, our official rationality is still of a Cartesian kind; we are still embedded in a mechanistic order that takes it that separate, countable entities (spatial forms), related logically to each other, are the only ‘things’ that matter to us—an order clearly suited to advances in robotics. Unfortunately, it is an order that renders invisible ‘relational things’, non-objective things that exist in time, in the transitions from one state of affairs to another, things that ‘point’ toward possibilities in the future, which mean something to us. I have called such things, hermeneutical–dialogical ‘things’ as they gradually emerge in our back-and-forth, step-by-step relations to the others and otherneses in our surroundings; they consist in the ‘promissory’ things sustaining our trust in each other and in our authorities, in our social organizations and social institutions, and in our culture. Clearly, we need to understand better, not only what robots can, and cannot do, but also the long-term ethical and political implications of inserting robotic activities into our everyday ways of relating ourselves to our surroundings if we are to avoid the dystopian futures envisaged by some. Descartes’ aim of “making ourselves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature,” forgets our larger task of our making ourselves into human beings—of doing together in dialog what we cannot do apart.
Wittgenstein is sometimes said to be remarkable for the novelty of his work and for the fact that he cannot be classified with an established school of thinkers.1 This is not true. Wittgenstein was a ‘conservative thinker’ in the sense given to these words by Karl Mannheim.2 This link was made implicitly by W. H. Walsh when he drew attention to the similarities between Wittgenstein and Edmund Burke.3 The accuracy of this comparison has recently received strong support from the work of J. C. Nyiri, who has exhibited numerous affinities and links between Wittgenstein and the conservative tradition.4 My interest in this connection is not biographical or historical: rather, I want to bring out a structural feature of his thought. This will enable me to confront the ‘antipositivist’ Wittgenstein and the standard, method-oriented readings of his work that I mentioned in the first chapter.
When avowed Popperians and perennial critics of radical anthropology acknowledge, like Jarvie (1975, p. 261), that a definite crisis exists (nevertheless resisting pessimism and radicalism) or admit, as does Kaplan (1974, p. 830), that anthropology would be impoverished without a radical perspective (yet labelling its contemporary representatives narcissists and solipsists), we may be in for a meta-crisis: establishmentarians may institutionalise and legitimise critical anthropology.1
In the contemporary epistemological debate on social reality, characterized by the crisis of post-modern theories and the emergence of new forms of realism, are there any approaches not acknowledging some specific ontological character to the construction of social objects? The question is apparently rhetorical, but the implication of this problem are not obvious. In the sociological literature the opposition between reality and construction is not clearly defined. Sometimes it is considered a dichotomy, in other situations the synthesis of alternative theses in a dialectical horizon. The more systematic attempt considers reality and construction as analytical macro-dimensions where the relation between social ontology and epistemology operates. From this stance, the acknowledgement of the role of social construction in a wider realist horizon is the true overtaking of postmodern philosophy. If it is true that facts exist beyond representations, it is also true that representations themselves have a specific effect on reality, who continually re-structures itself around specific relations of emergent power. Stating that reality is socially constructed is an evident limit of postmodern theories. On the other hand, stating that only facts exist constitute an impoverishment of realism and its replacement in neo-positivism. Social phenomena are real because they are based on specific properties of the inter-subjective construction of social reality. This thesis represents the revitalization of an advanced, anti-positivistic realism and the definition of the specificity of social objects. The aim of this essay is to search for a specific place of construction within the development of realist social ontology.
Some aspects of Wittgenstein’s thought are considered in the light of a remark he makes about the “apocalyptic” view of the world. The influence of Tolstoy on Wittgenstein is discussed and elaborated with reference to the idea of a “form of life” as a locus of order, and also to that of “exceptionality” in an unfolding course of events—the latter setting up a connection with the “apocalyptic” theme. This imaginative backdrop remains discernible in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, which draws upon it to perhaps unexpected effect in achieving a dialectical balance between the motifs of order and breakdown.
The dominant theory of economic development espoused today, particularly by the World Bank, is a bandaged version of neoclassicism. The neoclassical economist takes a people’s preferences, endowments and technology as given datum and then seeks to allocate the given endowments optimally to suit the given preferences subject to the constraints of technology. (On several occasions hereafter, I will refer to those who hold to these views as the primary source of their policy proposals as the ‘necons’) It has often been remarked that the whole point of development economics is to change those given preferences and that old technology. The failure of the neoclassical view is visible in its inability to understand the phenomenon of East Asia, let alone predict the “East Asian Miracle” (or the subsequent financial crisis); it is suggested by the frequent references to “Technology” as the sustainer of growth, while economists find themselves unable to say anything useful on this fundamental issue.
Die Literatur zum Thema: Soziologie und (Sozial-) Geschichte ist unübersehbar geworden. Deshalb ist eine Beschränkung geboten. Im folgenden werden die soziologischen und sozialhistorischen »Klassiker«, vor allem Karl Marx, Max Weber, Karl Mannheim und Otto Hintze, deren Werke selbst eine Synthese wissenschaftstheoretischer, soziologischer und sozialhistorischer Ansätze darstellen, nicht eigens aufgeführt. Dasselbe gilt für jene Philosophen und Historiker des 19. Jahrhunderts, wie etwa Wilhelm Dilthey und Johann Gustav Droysen, die gegenwärtig in der Diskussion erneut eine Rolle spielen. Ferner ist kein Versuch gemacht worden, die unübersehbare Fülle monographischen Materials aufzuführen. Darauf konnte um so eher verzichtet werden, als in den Fußnoten und bibliographischen Verweisen der einzelnen Beiträge dieses Sonderheftes umfängliche Literatur herangezogen wird. I. Allgemeine wissenschaftstheoretische und philosophische Grundlagen von Geschichte, Sozialgeschichte und Soziologie
The hypothesis about the relation between language and dreams, which makes dreaming dependent upon language, is consistent with Chomsky's and others' emphasis on the probable innateness of language competence - given the species specificity of language competence, which is uniquely human; the early age of language development; the relative lack of correlation between language development and intelligence; and the rapidity with which the child constructs a language system with only a brief experience with what are at best debased and fragmentary speech utterances.
Since there can be no language that is free of our moral and political values, it is difficult, if not impossible, for public administrators and those of us who study and teach them to be “ethically neutral.” However, the idea of neutrality, thought of in terms of “fairness,” or a willingness to “hear the other side,” remains a value that is worthwhile for public administrators to pursue. The implications of this argument for American constitutionalism and public administration practice and education are examined.
Epistemological1 relativism may be defined as the view that knowledge (and/or truth or justification2) is relative — to time, to place, to society, to culture, to historical epoch, to conceptual scheme or framework, or to personal training or conviction — in that what counts as knowledge (or as true or justified) depends upon the value of one or more of these variables. Knowledge is relative in this way, according to the relativist, because different cultures, societies, epochs, etc. accept different sets of background principles, criteria, and/or standards3 of evaluation for knowledge-claims, and there is no neutral way of choosing between these alternative sets of standards. So the relativist’s basic thesis is that a claim’s status as knowledge (and/or the truth or rational justifiability of such knowledge-claims) is relative to the standards used in evaluating such claims; and (further) that such alternative standards cannot themselves be neutrally evaluated in terms of some fair, encompassing meta-standard.4 (The character of such ‘neutrality’ is addressed below.)
This paper analyzes the nature and consequences of paradigms in tourism studies. It is somewhat unconventional in that its co-authors have not sought to produce a synthesized finished product. Rather, they have rendered their different perspectives visible through the structuring of the paper as a trialogue. It commences with Tribe's thesis that tourism studies is not governed by a restrictive paradigm at the field level but that at a societal level neoliberalism may be viewed as a restricting paradigm. Jamal and Dann then each deepen and extend the analysis of the term ‘paradigm' as they engage with the thesis providing sometimes confirmatory and sometimes conflicting analyses. A final round of clarifications and comment concludes the piece.
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