James Bohman has succeeded in reinvigorating the old debate over explanation and understanding by situating it within contemporary discussions about sociological indeterminacy and complexity. I argue that Bohman's preference for a paradigm based on Habermas's theory of communicative action is justifiable given the explanatory deficiencies of ethnomethodological, rational choice, rule-based, and functionalist methodologies. Yet I do not share his belief that the paradigm is preferable to less formalized models of interpretation.

I began this essay by advancing three claims with respect to conducting ethnographic research: the analyst should be disposed to engage Other in a genuinely dialogic fashion so as to produce shared understanding; provision should be made for the analyst to disengage from the dialogue for purposes of self-reflection; and there should be some justificatory grounds for ideology critique. At the same time, I noted the problematic status of these claims on conceptual and methodological grounds and pointed to a need (...) for taking account of the analyst as a subject whose being in the world impinges upon the analysis at each stage of research. This awareness, it seems to me, calls for an ethnography which is phenomenologically instigated. This is to say that the ethnographer needs to be no less sensitive to his or her own subjectivity than to the meanings of Other.In order to get clearer as to what might be involved in making the above claims, I discussed critically Gadamer's phenomenological hermeneutics. Although Gadamer is to be commended for his philosophical inquiry into the bases of self-understanding, we saw that his phenomenological hermeneutics suffered a number of limitations, all of which being linked to his inability to adequately free the subject from the limits of self-understanding. Thus, Gadamer's subject-as-analyst is restricted as a participant in dialogue with Other; engages in self-reflection without a firm footing; and is unable thus to mount a justifiable critique either of Other or the subject's own tradition/culture.This critique of Gadamer suggests that once the phenomenological turn is taken, it then requires an additional turn which joins the subject with Other in shared understanding. In this regard I suggested the possible directions that some conceptual emendations of Gadamer's thesis might take us, and gave special reference to the ways in which such emendations might be implemented in ethnographic work. Both my critique and emendation were meant to underscore the need for a joining of subject and Other not merely as this might represent an occasion for understanding Other, nor merely for the understanding of self, but for a shared understanding that opens up a newly formed terrain upon which self-reflection and ideology critique may find suitable and just intersubjective grounding. (shrink)

It is well understood that Wittgenstein defends religious faith against positivistic criticisms on the grounds of its logical independence. But exactly how are we to understand the nature of that independence? Most scholars take Wittgenstein to equate language-games with belief-systems, and thus to assert that religions are logical schemes founded on their own basic beliefs and principles of inference. By contrast, I argue that on Wittgenstein’s view, to have religious faith is to hold fast to a certain picture of the (...) world according to which one orients one’s actions and attitudes, possibly even in dogmatic defiance of contrary evidence. Commitment to such a picture is grounded in passion, not intellection, and systematic coherence is largely irrelevant. (shrink)

This article explores Peter Winch’s account of the relationship between language and reality. It defends Winch against some common misunderstandings of his views but identifies two problematic areas. The first concerns the internal coherence of his account of philosophy. The second relates to the issue of rejecting particular ways of life or cultural practices as erroneous or illusory. One source of these problems is a tension between Winch’s official conception of philosophy and his own commitment to ‘defending’ the plurality of (...) diverse ways of life. (shrink)

(1985). Underlying Theoretical Assumptions and the Evaluation of Management Motivation in Higher Education. Educational Studies: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 159-166.

Summary A survey of recent work in the philosophy of science in Finland, with a bibliography. The main sources of influence emphasized are Eino Kaila (1890–1958) and G. H. von Wright (b. 1916). The main topics covered are: induction and probability; information and explanation; the acceptance and application of theories; the role of auxiliary (theoretical) terms; measurement; general methodology of social and behavioral sciences; finalistic explanation; methodology of sociology and history.

Peter Winch, following Wittgenstein, was critical of the notion that philosophy could pass judgment on matters like the sense of words, the rationality of actions, or the validity of arguments. His critique had both what we might call a local strand – the insight that criteria of thought and action are not universal but vary between cultures and between practices – and a personal strand – the insight that those local criteria are ultimately given shape through the particular applications made (...) of them by individuals. These strands are prominent, for instance, in Winch’s discussion of cross-cultural understanding as well as his treatment of the distinction between valid reasoning and illicit persuasion. (shrink)

It seems that hope springs eternal for the cherished idea that norms (or normativeprinciples) explain actions or regularities in actions. But it also seems thatthere are many ways of going wrong when taking norms and normative principlesas explanatory. The author argues that neither norms nor normative principles—insofar as they are the sort of things with normative force—is explanatoryof what is done. He considers the matter using both erotetic and ontic models ofexplanation. He further considers various understandings of norms. Key Words: (...) explanation • norms • social science • rationality. (shrink)

The assumed difference and continuing estrangement between political philosophy and political science is a relatively recent development. Both fields sprang from closely entwined concerns about democracy and matters of social and political justice, and today both must still confront their practical as well as cognitive relationship to their subject matter. This issue, however, has receded into the background of these discourses. Ludwig Wittgenstein's vision of philosophy is in effect a vision of social inquiry. His work, when viewed from this perspective, (...) prompts us to reconsider the logical status of various modes of political inquiry: how can these practices, descriptively and normatively, do justice to their subject matter? How can they deal with such foundational issues as the nature of social phenomena, the concepts of representation and interpretation, the problem of knowledge of other minds and what is involved in making explanatory and evaluative judgments about the objects of inquiry? (shrink)

Despite the extensive commentary on the work of Peter Winch, there has been inadequate recognition of how his Idea of a Social Science discerned the implications of Wittgenstein’s philosophy for confronting issues regarding the nature and interpretation of social phenomena. Winch’s subsequent confrontation with anthropology can be further illuminated by examining one of the most contentious contemporary debates in this field. This case illustrates the paradoxes involved in meta-practices such as philosophy and social science seeking to make descriptive and normative (...) claims about conceptually preconstituted forms of life, and it indicates the limitations of philosophical realism as a social scientific meta-theory. (shrink)

Narrative accounts misrepresent discovery by reconstructing worlds ordered by success rather than the world as explored. Such worlds rarely contain the personal knowledge that informed actual exploration and experiment. This article describes an attempt to recover situated learning in a material environment, tracing the discovery of the first electromagnetic motor by Michael Faraday in September 1821 to show how he modeled new experience and invented procedures to communicate that novelty. The author introduces a notation to map experiment as an active (...) process in a real-world environment and to display the human agency written out of most narratives. Comparing maps of accounts shows how knowledge-construction depends on narrative reconstruction. It is argued that invention processes can be interpreted in the same way as discovery, and a study is proposed to compare packaging learned skills into demonstration devices with the innovative strategies of inventors such as Edison. If situational knowledge is as important as is claimed, computationalists need to join science studies scholars in coming to grips with nonverbal and procedural aspects of discovery and invention. (shrink)

How distinct is European philosophy of science? The first step is to characterize what is or might be considered as ‘European philosophy of science’. The second is to analyse philosophy of the social sciences as a relevant case in the European contribution to philosophy of science. ‘European perspective’ requires some clarification, which can be done from two main angles: the historical approach and the thematic view. Thus, there are several structural and dynamic things to be considered in European philosophy of (...) science and compare with other conceptions: the topics discussed; the contents proposed; and the style of thought used. The case of philosophy of the social sciences is relevant for the historical approach and for the thematic view. Historically, the Erklären–Verstehen methodological controversy arose in this continent, where the main authors and most of the influential approaches are located. Thematically, we can consider the contributions made by these European approaches... (shrink)

This paper discusses conceptual relativism. The main focus is on the contrasting ideas of Wittgenstein and Davidson, with Quine, Kuhn, Feyerabend and Hacker in supporting roles. I distinguish conceptual from alethic and ontological relativism, defend a distinction between conceptual scheme and empirical content, and reject the Davidsonian argument against the possibility of alternative conceptual schemes: there can be conceptual diversity without failure of translation, and failure of translation is not necessarily incompatible with recognizing a practice as linguistic. Conceptual relativism may (...) be untenable, but not for the hermeneutic reasons espoused by Davidson. (shrink)

This article was first published in 1982 in Educational Analysis (4, 75–91) and republished in 1998 (Hirst, P. H., & White, P. (Eds.), Philosophy of education: Major themes in the analytic tradition, Vol. 1, Philosophy and education, Part 1, pp. 61–78. London: Routledge). I was then a lecturer in philosophy of education at Sheffield University teaching the subject to Master’s students on both full- and part-time programmes. My first degree was in philosophy, read under D. W. Hamlyn and David Cooper (...) and, given their interests, inevitably emphasized the philosophy of language, in particular the work of Wittgenstein in this field. When I subsequently turned my attention to the philosophy of education it seemed obvious to me that there were serious problems with Professor Peters’ approach to language, and I had particular difficulties with his approach to criteria, meaning theory and what seemed an odd interpretation of a transcendental argument. This article thus set out to show that the then dominant form of philosophy of education seemed not to take account of developments in the philosophy of language that preceded Professor Peters’ early work by at least a decade and which cast serious doubt on the enterprise as it was then understood. As the articles in the 1998 collection indicate, I was not alone in thinking there was something amiss, although at the time I seemed to be ploughing a somewhat lonely furrow. In revisiting this early article some 30 years after it was first published I have found to my surprise that there is little I would now change, although I have been forcibly reminded of the very lively discussions Professor Peters and I had over these issues. The fact that there is little I would now add to, or subtract from, my critique is in itself a telling comment on the enduring and influential legacy of the approach to the philosophy of education that Professor Peters championed so powerfully. (shrink)

Taking its orientation from Peter Winch, this article critiques from a Wittgensteinian point of view some “theoreticist” tendencies within constructivism. At the heart of constructivism is the deeply Wittgensteinian idea that the world as we know and understand it is the product of human intelligence and interests. The usefulness of this idea can be vitiated by a failure to distinguish conceptual from empirical questions. I argue that such a failure characterises two influential constructivist theories, those of Ernst von Glasersfeld and (...) David Bloor. These are considered in turn. Both theories seek to give a general, causal account of knowledge: von Glasersfeld's in term of cognitive subjectivity, Bloor's in terms of social agreement. Ironically, given that both writers cite Wittgenstein as a source of theoretical inspiration, assumptions of both theories run counter to key Wittgensteinian arguments. To show that Wittgenstein's views offer no solace to the realist, the article closes with a brief consideration of John Searle's theory of knowledge. (shrink)

I propose a few epistemological and methodological reflexions to account for intercultural daily communication. These reflexions emerged during a sociological research in Mendoza, Argentina, with Huarpes Indigenous students at the University of Cuyo. I observed that Indigenous people became quasi ethnographers of diverse environments. To make intelligible their classmates’ behavior, and to account for their own behavior, Huarpes follow, in diverse environments and interactions, public rules of meaning. The objective of this paper is twofold: (a) to stress the methodological scope (...) of ordinary communication and ordinary reasoning in order to study understanding between people from different groups and categories, and (b) to contest a kind of pessimist standpoint in social sciences and philosophy according to which the use of ordinary language reduces possibilities for understanding. Interviews, participant observation in natural situations, and a review of literature about language and understanding are the basis of this paper. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Ken Wilber's transpersonal evolutionary theory in the context of the philosophical discourse of postmodernity. The critique focuses on Wilber's refutation of non?absolutist and non?universalist approaches to rationality, truth, and morality?such as cultural relativism, pluralism, constructivism or perspectivism?under the charges of being epistemologically self?refuting and morally pernicious. First, it is suggested that Wilber offers a faulty dichotomy between his absolutist?universalist metanarrative and a self?contradictory and pernicious vulgar relativism. Second, it is shown that Wilber's arguments for the self?refuting (...) and pernicious nature of other non?absolutist approaches are both fallacious and distorting. Finally, the problematic consequences of absolutist discourse for academic and cross?cultural dialogue are pinpointed. Taking Wilber's treatment of Nagarjuna's thinking as a paradigmatic example, it is suggested that absolutist thinking both usually leads to ?bad? hermeneutics, and potentially hinders genuine dialogue among people and traditions holding different world views. (shrink)

Drawing from literature in the social studies of science, this paper historicizes two pivotal concepts in science literacy: the definition of life and the assumption of objectivity. In this paper we suggest that an understanding of the historical, discursive production of scientific knowledge affects the meaning of scientific literacy in at least three ways. First, a discursive study of scientific knowledge has the epistemological consequence of avoiding the selective perception that occurs when facts are abstracted from the historical conditions of (...) their emergence. Second, a discursive approach to scientific knowledge can also be an example of science‐as‐exploration. Third, literacy and discourse studies contribute insights that alter assumptions about pedagogical appropriateness in science education. The paper concludes by suggesting that when science literacy includes the historical production of scientific knowledge, it can thereby extend the possibilities for what can be thought, studied and imagined in the name of science education. (shrink)

The aim of the present article is twofold. Firstly, it aims to study the problems arising from the notion of rule proposed by Peter Winch in The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy to account for all meaningful behavior. On the one hand, it will analyze the problems in the argument posed by Winch in order to state that all meaningful behavior is governed by rules. On the other hand, it will focus on the problems concerning (...) his conception of rules and rule-following, with specific emphasis on pointing out the issues that arise from the criterion posed by Winch in order to determine when a rule is being followed. Secondly, it aims to reassess Winch’s proposal and reformulate, accommodate and define his notion of rule in an intentional account of meaningful behavior, thus solving the problems presented. In addition, it will provide a criterion that allows to determine when a rule is being followed. (shrink)

The thesis of methodological individualism in social science is commonly divided into two different claims—explanatory individualism and ontological individualism. Ontological individualism is the thesis that facts about individuals exhaustively determine social facts. Initially taken to be a claim about the identity of groups with sets of individuals or their properties, ontological individualism has more recently been understood as a global supervenience claim. While explanatory individualism has remained controversial, ontological individualism thus understood is almost universally accepted. In this paper I argue (...) that ontological individualism is false. Only if the thesis is weakened to the point that it is equivalent to physicalism can it be true, but then it fails to be a thesis about the determination of social facts by facts about individual persons. Even when individualistic facts are expanded to include people’s local environments and practices, I shall argue, those still underdetermine the social facts that obtain. If true, this has implications for explanation as well as ontology. I first consider arguments against the local supervenience of social facts on facts about individuals, correcting some flaws in existing arguments and affirming that local supervenience fails for a broad set of social properties. I subsequently apply a similar approach to defeat a particularly weak form of global supervenience, and consider potential responses. Finally, I explore why it is that people have taken ontological individualism to be true. (shrink)

With few exceptions, the literature on withdrawing and withholding life-saving treatment considers the bare fact of withdrawing or withholding to lack any ethical significance. If anything, the professional guidelines on this matter are even more uniform. However, while no small degree of progress has been made toward persuading healthcare professionals to withhold treatments that are unlikely to provide significant benefit, it is clear that a certain level of ambivalence remains with regard to withdrawing treatment. Given that the absence of clinical (...) benefit means treating patients is not only ethically questionable but also taxing on resources that could meet the needs of others, this ambivalence is troubling. Equally, the enduring ambivalence of professionals might be taken to indicate that the issue warrants further attention. In this paper, we review the academic literature on the ethical equivalence of withdrawing and withholding medical treatment. While we are not in outright disagreement with the arguments presented, we suggest that asserting theoretical and decontextualized claims about the ethical equivalence of withdrawing and withholding life-saving treatment does not fully illuminate the moral questions associated with the relevant clinical realities. We argue that what is required is a broader perspective, one rooted in an understanding that withdrawing and withholding life-saving treatment are different practices, the meanings of which are fully comprehensible only through an appreciation of their place within the practice of healthcare more generally. Such an account suggests that if one is to engage with the inappropriate protraction of life-saving treatment resulting from healthcare professionals’ disinclination to withdraw it, then the differences between these practices should be taken seriously. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to give an account of Peter Winch's conception of persuasion. According to Winch, persuasive arguments are those carried out in order to let an interlocutor with a different world picture, and thus a different epistemology, see the point of our practices and beliefs. This involves convincing him of the fact that his way of thinking is neither unique nor better than other ones. Furthermore, given that there is no guarantee that one can arrive at (...) a complete understanding of alien practices, persuasion may, in some cases, aim at the impossible. (shrink)

This article argues, in opposition to a common interpretation of Wittgenstein deriving from Winch, that there is nothing especially problematic about the social sciences. Familiar Wittgensteinian theses about language, notably on the open-endedness of linguistic rules and on the importance of family resemblance concepts, have great relevance not only to the social sciences but also to much of the natural sciences. The differences between scientific and ordinary language are much less sharp than Winch, and probably Wittgenstein, supposed.

The ambition of “scientific creationism” is to prove that science actually confirms religion. This is especially true in the case of Muslim creationism, which adopts a reasoning of a syllogistic type: divine revelation is truth; good science confirms truth; divine revelation is henceforth scientifically proven. Harun Yahya is a prominent Muslim “creationist” whose website hosts many texts and documentary films, among which “Evidence of the true faith in historical sources”. This is a small audiovisual production which, starting from some archeological (...) files, seeks to demonstrate that Qur’an truth precedes science but is equally proven by it. In this paper, we examine the organization of the scientific and religious argumentative repertoires and, in particular, what in each of them is taken as evidence and gets access to an authoritative status. It leads us to show how much this type of Muslim creationism constitutes a kind of scientism. (shrink)

In general, in our ordinary life, we manage to make the difference between “strange” behavior and error or extravagant beliefs. The question is here to know how we do so, and against what background. There are also specialized contexts for evaluating whether certain types of behavior or discourse are normal or abnormal: courts of law and psychiatric hospitals are two examples. In these contexts, judgments are formed against a background of technical or scientific knowledge, but they also result from epistemic (...) means of evaluation that are similar to habitual ones. The paper seeks to highlight this similarity with respect to recognizing mental disturbance. Starting from Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, it attempts at extending it by drawing on notions of reciprocal perspectives and of judgments of incongruity. It documents its investigation by analyzing sequences from Malek Bensmail’s documentary, Aliénations, which examines the treatment of mental suffering in contemporary Algeria. (shrink)

This paper is about rational and irrational uses of deontological words, such as “should”, “ought”, and “must”, referred to as “the shoulds”. Rationality is taken as a mutual relationship between conceptual schemes and human agency. These are expressed in what Bakhtin referred to as authoritative discourse and internally persuasive discourse respectively. When the conceptual scheme is in place and its authority transparent, and there is interplay between authoritative discourse and internally persuasive discourse, then the shoulds are perceived as rational. When (...) the interplay is disrupted or suppressed the shoulds are seen as irrational. Breakdown occurs in two main ways. First, when the effective conceptual schemes are hidden, and the origin of the shoulds obscured. We describe some instances of the latter, from philosophy, psychotherapy, and experimental studies of rationality. Second, in technology and science the mutual relationship sometimes breaks down because authoritative discourse is too powerful, and inhibits the interplay in order to maintain itself. After describing these pathologies, we turn to William James, who drew attention to a repair kit for rationality in his detection of the psychologist's fallacy. Describing the work of Dewey and Husserl as elaborations of this, we distinguished two essential aspects of rationality, disciplinary expressed in authoritative discourse, and emancipatory expressed in internally persuasive discourse. (shrink)

The mental and the social are ‘two sides of the same coin’. In other words, ‘social relations are internal relations’. In showing how this was the point of Wittgenstein’s discussion of the practice of ‘following a rule’, Peter Winch has made an important contribution to social philosophy.

This inaugural handbook documents the distinctive research field that utilizes history and philosophy in investigation of theoretical, curricular and pedagogical issues in the teaching of science and mathematics. It is contributed to by 130 researchers from 30 countries; it provides a logically structured, fully referenced guide to the ways in which science and mathematics education is, informed by the history and philosophy of these disciplines, as well as by the philosophy of education more generally. The first handbook to cover the (...) field, it lays down a much-needed marker of progress to date and provides a platform for informed and coherent future analysis and research of the subject. -/- The publication comes at a time of heightened worldwide concern over the standard of science and mathematics education, attended by fierce debate over how best to reform curricula and enliven student engagement in the subjects There is a growing recognition among educators and policy makers that the learning of science must dovetail with learning about science; this handbook is uniquely positioned as a locus for the discussion. -/- The handbook features sections on pedagogical, theoretical, national, and biographical research, setting the literature of each tradition in its historical context. Each chapter engages in an assessment of the strengths and weakness of the research addressed, and suggests potentially fruitful avenues of future research. A key element of the handbook’s broader analytical framework is its identification and examination of unnoticed philosophical assumptions in science and mathematics research. It reminds readers at a crucial juncture that there has been a long and rich tradition of historical and philosophical engagements with science and mathematics teaching, and that lessons can be learnt from these engagements for the resolution of current theoretical, curricular and pedagogical questions that face teachers and administrators. (shrink)

This article aims to shed light on some core challenges of liberating social criticism. Its centerpiece is an intuitively attractive account of the nature and difficulty of critical social thought that nevertheless goes missing in many philosophical conversations about critique. This omission at bottom reflects the fact that the account presupposes a philosophically contentious conception of rationality. Yet the relevant conception of rationality does in fact inform influential philosophical treatments of social criticism, including, very prominently, a left Hegelian strand of (...) thinking within contemporary Critical Theory. Moreover, it is possible to mount a defense of the conception by reconstructing, if with various qualifications and additions, an argument from classic—i.e., mid twentieth-century—Anglo-American philosophy of the social sciences, in particular, the argument that forms the backbone of Peter Winch’s _The Idea of a Social Science_. Winch draws his guiding insights from the later philosophy of Wittgenstein, and one of the payoffs of considering Winch’s Wittgenstein-inspired work against the backdrop of Hegel-inspired work in Critical Theory is to contest the artificial professional strictures that are sometimes taken to speak against reaching across the so-called ‘Continental Divide’ in philosophy. The larger payoff is advancing, by means of this philosophically ecumenical approach, the enterprise of liberating social thought. (shrink)

This research offers a new perspective by reframing the positivist-interpretive debate as a distinction between the functional outcomes of research: explanation and understanding. Based on an older and well-established literature in philosophy, this distinction can reinvigorate important differences in research outcomes that have been lost. Understanding or “subjective meaning” is connected to the intentionality, thoughts, and motivations of the human subjects under study. From this perspective, understanding is the type of knowledge gained from determining the meanings, categories, and symbols humans (...) attach to actions, knowledge, and systems. In contrast, explanation is achieved by subsuming individual instantiations of the phenomenon under broad general laws, or identifying causal mechanisms that support antecedent-consequent pairs. Researchers can proactively use the understanding-explanation distinction as a heuristic to create new lines of research questions based on what has not been explained or understood rather than on which ontology or methodology has not been used. (shrink)

During the last decades, two major and interrelated themes have dominated the study of religion: (a) the theme claiming that the long taken-for-granted so-called secularization thesis was all wrong, and (b) the theme of the so-called “return” or “resurgence of religion”. This global revival of religion — on micro, meso and macro levels — has been chronicled in a number of important books lately. As even a quick glance in some of the many textbooks about religious studies reveal that there (...) are many various ways of studying religion — theologically, sociologically, psychologically, anthropologically, philosophically, etc. — and they can be tackled from many different ideological or theoretical “slants” or perspectives – gender, postcolonial, orientalism, postmodernism, inside/outside, hermeneutical, etc. And it seems to be a general rule within science that the more important, complex and controversial a subject area is perceived to be, the more heated the debate about theory, method and definitions of concepts seems to be within it. Comparative religion can, very broadly, be carried out from two types of data: texts or actual living human beings. During the last thirty or so years, and in tandem with the initially mentioned two themes, the latter – what many scholars now call “lived religion” (Hall, 1997; Orsi, 2005; Ammerman, 2007; Mcguire, 2008) – have more and more come to the fore in departments of religious studies. This can be seen as a “rejuvenation” of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s opinions that the only way to study religion adequately was in and through the religious beliefs and practices of actually living human beings and that the heart of religion was to be found, not in rules and regulations, hierarchies and hymnbooks, but in the individual’s experience of dependence upon a power infinitely greater than his own. The student of religion must, in other words, concentrate, not on what people might do, ought to do, or what the textbooks say they are supposed to do, but on what they actually do, and the ways in which they actually behave, and why they do what they do — their motives, reasons or inducements for doing what they do. (shrink)

This volume adds a largely redundant stratum to Searle’s effort to develop a systematic social ontology, a theory of the nature, kind or status of social entities. This has been one of Searle’s main concerns in the last two decades, and, while this thread of his work stands on the views about language and mind he developed since the 1960s, we can safely trace its origins to a paper published in 1990, “Collective Intentions and Actions” (Searle, 1990/2002). Beyond this early (...) reference, the book is a sequel to The Construction of Social Reality (Searle, 1995), and it builds on the texts written to complete that book or in response to criticism. (shrink)

In regard to the explanation of actions that are governed by institutional rules, John R. Searle introduces the notion of a mental “background” that is supposed to explain how persons can acquire the capacity of following such rules. I argue that Searle’s internalism about the mind and the resulting poverty of his conception of the background keep him from putting forward a convincing explanation of the normative features of institutional action. Drawing on competing conceptions of the background of Heidegger and (...) Wittgenstein, I propose to revise Searle’s conception. The background of institutional agency can only provide a convincing explanation if it includes the context of actions and intersubjective structures of a shared life-world. I suggest that a further development of this idea would lead to the identification of the background with a web of social recognition. (shrink)

Lewis Carroll in “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles?” questioning one of the most important basis of logic and by narrating a fanciful dialog asks why we should move from premises to the conclusion. Is logic itself enough to justify the use of logic or we need something beyond logic to do that. In this article, two main approaches have been considered. First, the logical approach which Bertrand Russell is its most important member, and second, the social-internalism approach which Peter (...) Winch advocates. These two main philosophers have referred several times to Carroll’s article. According to Russell, analyzing logic is sufficient to explain why consequent will infer from premises, and on the other hand, Winch and his followers think every inference has a root in the historic understanding of life and if this understanding fails, logic will fall apart too. I will make some objections to both of these. In the end, I propose that the solution is to return to formal logic. If formal logic understood well, there won’t be any need to seek another logic to teach us how to use logic. Valid formal inferences are what logic consists of and if someone violates these inferences, he is out of the boundaries of logic. (shrink)

This thesis contextualises academic writing in EAP (English for Academic Purposes) and subjects it to an interdisciplinary (educational and philosophical) analysis in order to argue that what makes writing academic are its socio-academic practices and values, not its conventional forms. In rejecting dominant discourses that frame academic writing as a transferable skill which can be reduced to conventional forms, I show that academic writings are varied and evolve alongside changing writer agencies and textual environments. This accounts for the emergence of (...) a diverse academic writing landscape that enacts diverse socio-academic practices and that does not reduce writing to predictable static surface features. My methodology resists traditional disciplinary classifications and is in line with the reflective and interpretative approaches associated with the humanities. Rather than ‘filling a gap’ in academic writing research, I challenge writing conventions in EAP by questioning assumptions. This is because EAP is influential in shaping discourses about academic writing and, as such, it must not mislead students and practitioners about the evolving purposes, forms and possibilities for academic expression. The thesis is divided into three parts, each containing two chapters. Part 1 is concerned with explaining what academic writing is in EAP and how EAP can misrepresent it. Part 2 delves into the history of writing and literacy to tease out the ideologies shaping writing practices. Part 3 proposes a model based on philosophical theories of mind and sociology that lays the foundation for a macro theory of academic writing and a future writing pedagogy. The model re-imagines academic writing as an affordance within a non-linear, emergent and complex social open system. This system can be referred to as an organic unity and requires a shift from conceiving writing as a ‘transferable skill’. When re-imagined as an affordance, change and diversity in academic writing practices become possible. (shrink)

A themed issue on the work of Michael Oakeshott.

Here I challenge the philosophical consensus that we use folk psychology for the purposes of metarepresentation. The paper intends to show that folk psychology should not be conceived on par with fact-stating discourses in spite of what its surface semantics may suggest. I argue that folk-psychological discourse is organised in a way and has conceptual characteristics such that it cannot fulfill a fact-stating function. To support this claim I develop an open question argument for psychological interpretations, and I draw attention (...) to the central role of rationality, the conceptual connections, and the essential evaluative content inherent in folk psychological ascriptions. As a conclusion I propose that a fictionalist account of the discourse would fit its characteristics better than a factualist-realist interpretation. (shrink)

Logos, generally regarded as the basic principle of the operating world, seems to be closely tied up with development of human being. With the evolutionary history of human, logos evolves into three different dimensional expressions, namely reason, rationality, and reasonableness. In different historical periods, each expression of logos has their own glory days respectively. In the age of ancient Greek sages, reason referred to the whole range of subjects from geometry argumentation to rhetoric. Later on, there emerged a superiority on (...) theoretical abstraction and logical deduction, which was called the dictatorship of rationality. Yet it was found that the bureaucratization of learning had created as many problems as it solved. In recent decades, the years had seen a revived interest in substantial arguments in medical ethics, ecology, and other practical fields. However, we are not inclined to regard reasonableness as a way that it can cure once and for all the crisis of our times. Based on the imperfection of each variant and indeterminacy of the topic, we attempt to track back to logos in a more comprehensive perspective, corresponding to diversity of human activities and modern social production way of life. (shrink)

Associate Professor | Director and President Department of Philosophy | Molinari Institute 6080 Haley Center, Auburn University Auburn AL 36849 USA email: [email protected] URL: praxeology.net..