The first part of the paper distinguishes between a real past which has nothing to do with historical events and an historical past made up of hypothetical events introduced for the purpose of explaining historical evidence. Attention is next paid to those so-called ancillary historical disciplines which study historical evidence, and it is noted that the historical event is brought in to explain the particular constellation of different kinds of historical evidence which are judged to belong together. The problem of (...) explaining events is then taken up, and an attempt is made to defend the view that such explanation must presuppose general laws. And this is followed by a discussion, partly speculative, of social-historical laws. The final section of the paper tries to argue that the subjective intentions of individuals are irrelevant to historical explanation. (shrink)

I aim to establish in this article why Aribiah Attoe, like other determinists before him, got it wrong in arguing for the possibility of predeterminism in a materially evolving universe. I will do this by proving two things: I will first establish the inconsistency of the idea of predeterminism in an evolving universe. Then, I argue that the adirectionality presupposed by an evolutionary universe gives room for free will and negates the argument for a predeterministic universe. I aim to achieve (...) the above by exposing why the view which upholds the universe and all existents within it as lacking free will – or the possibility of adirectionality – stems from a category error on the part of the determinists. Lastly, I defend the position that for predeterminism to stand a chance against the free will of animate things-in-the-world, it must deny the possibility of an evolving/expanding universe that is adirectional and suggestive of boundlessness, and the possibility that some events are not fundamentally necessary reactions to previous states of affairs. (shrink)

Classifying is a fundamental operation in the acquisition of knowledge. Taxonomic theory can help students of cognition, evolutionary psychology, ethology, anatomy, and sociobiology to avoid serious mistakes, both practical and theoretical. More positively, it helps in generating hypotheses useful to a wide range of disciplines. Composite wholes, such as species and societies, are “individuals” in the logical sense, and should not be treated as if they were classes. A group of analogous features is a natural kind, but a group of (...) homologous features is not. Imposing hypotheses justified only on the basis of nominalist, realist, phenomenalist, or conceptualist metaphysics upon the neurophysiology of organisms or upon the causes of behavior exemplifies the “psychologist's fallacy” of William James. Levels should be distinguished from their members and from classes of levels, and the ontological status of entities ranked at levels should be made clear. It is important not to confuse such categories as substance and process with one another. Several genetical terms, such as “gene” and chromosome,” are even more equivocal than has been realized. Discussions about units of selection, behavior, and thinking suffer from the ambiguity of a “unit of” an entity. An important source of misunderstanding about natural selection is the habit of treating it as an “agent”: in an important sense, natural selection does not “act” at all. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two conflations which frequently appear within the philosophy of history and other fields concerned with action explanation. The first of these, which I call the Conflating View of Reasons, states that the reasons for which we perform actions are reasons why (those events which are) our actions occur. The second, more general conflation, which I call the Conflating View of Action Explanation, states that whatever explains why an agent performed a certain action explains why (that event (...) which was) her action occurred. Both conflations ignore the fact that there are at least two distinct objects that legitimately qualify as objects of action explanation2. As Jennifer Hornsby (1993) has previous suggested, one thing we might wish to explain is ‘why did A do what she did?’ another is, ‘why did the event of her doing it occur?’ -/- I shall argue that when these two views are combined they give rise to a futile debate about explanation in the philosophies of history and the social sciences, and to an almost identical debate in moral psychology and the philosophy of mind. In so doing, I shall also examine a proposed distinction between explaining a phenomenon, and rendering it intelligible. I conclude by distinguishing between four different objects of historical understanding, each of which is to be understood in the light of the aforementioned distinctions between event and thing done, and explanation and intelligibility. (shrink)

Leon Goldstein’s critical philosophy of history has suffered a relative lack of attention, but it is the outcome of an unusual story. He reached conclusions about the autonomy of the discipline of history similar to those of R. G. Collingwood and Michael Oakeshott, but he did so from within the Anglo-American analytic style of philosophy that had little tradition of discussing such matters. Initially, Goldstein attempted to apply a positivistic epistemology derived from Hempel’s philosophy of natural science to historical knowledge, (...) but gradually formulated an anti-realistic epistemology that firmly distinguished historical knowledge of the past not only from the scientific perspective but also from fictional and common-sense attitudes to the past. Among his achievements were theories of the distinctive nature of historical evidence and historical propositions, of the constructed character of historical events, and of the relationship between historical research and contemporary culture. Taken together, his ideas merit inclusion among the most important twentieth-century contributions to the problem of historical knowledge. (shrink)

Researchers distinguish two approaches that are paradigmatic for the cluster of social theories: positivist and interpretivist. We have outlined the problematic core that contains the main differences between positivist and interpretivist sociology. In our opinion, the opposition between positivist and interpretive sociology is indicative of social theory, and we have shown the dual nature of social reality. We refuted the classification of social theories into nominalist and realist, showing that such a division does not reveal the dual nature of social (...) reality. The difference between interpretivism and positivism is that positivist sociology focuses on the study of social systems as an independent reality, while interpretive social theory thematises social reality as a socio-cultural universe, and from this perspective raises the question of social institutions. (shrink)

This paper in its contribution argues that there is the need to understand the metaphysical and epistemological issues that undergird human behaviour and ipso facto human nature in formulating development theories. This will enhance appropriate evaluation and application of these theories for the betterment of any society. It establishes the relevance of human nature to social theories. Accordingly, social theories spur the explanation, nature, function, institutions, and prediction of social patterns of development. Since society is primarily an amalgam of people (...) in social intercourse, human nature impinges on human behaveiour. Thus, just as the nature of molecular behaviour enhances the understanding of the behaviour of gases, proper understanding of social theories and those things that spur them enhance the understanding of human societies. Thus the understanding of the coherence and workability of any social theory is therefore predicated on the perspective gained on human nature. The critical, analytical and evaluative methods of philosophy will be dominant in the work. (shrink)