This article discusses two central methodological postulates (adequacy and subjective meaning) pertaining to the social sciences brought forward by Alfred Schütz, and as presented by Lester Embree’s ‘Economics in the Context of Alfred Schütz’s Theory of Science’. The relationship between the postulates and the actual practice of economics is discussed. The author shows how Schütz’s writings describe a spectrum of methods that ranges from low abstraction and an attempt to understand individual plans and purposes on the one hand to highly (...) abstract and aggregate modeling on the other. It is argued that the distribution of economic contributions is heavily skewed toward the latter. The second part of the article presents recent work by economists who have resisted this trend, and who have begun to expand our understanding of economic processes by taking seriously the notion of economics as a social science. (shrink)

Social theory remains puzzled by the relation between practices and structures, or the link between ‘micro’ and ‘macro’. Grand theorists including Giddens and Bourdieu have gained distinction for their writings on these questions, trying to marry insights and concerns of a ‘micro’ sociological nature with traditional ‘macro’ structural questions including inequality, power relations, and social reproduction. These theorists arguably fail, however, in their attempts to move social theory beyond traditional dualisms. Relevant but neglected contributions from ethnomethodology are introduced and compared (...) to the work of Giddens and Bourdieu in an attempt to identify and outline an approach to practices and structures that more reliably avoids problems of dualism and reification, and at the same time offers an understanding of structures and their relations to practices that can be much more closely grounded in empirical studies. Key Words: micro-macro link • reification • ethnomethodology • Pierre Bourdieu • Jeff Coulter. (shrink)

It is a challenge in teaching early modern philosophy to balance historical faithfulness to the arguments and concerns of early modern philosophers and interpreting them as relevant to the kinds of thinking that contemporary undergraduate students find plausible. Early modern philosophy is unique, however, in applying modern scientific method directly to problems concerning nonphysical aspects of reality that our contemporary scientific thought, and with it mainstream contemporary culture, no longer find amenable in their own, independent right to reliable reasoned approaches. (...) At the same time, early modern philosophy often also takes seriously purely conceptual or logically consequential thought in the investigation of these topics, as our mainstream contemporary culture does not. This kind of thought, we argue, is distinctive of philosophy in general and appropriate to nonphysical aspects of reality. Early modern philosophy, then, offers a bridge between the kind of reasoned, objective thought our mainstream culture finds plausible and thought about nonphysical reality or, in general, the thought that characterizes philosophy. (shrink)

This article argues that there is ultimately a very close convergence between prominent conceptions of being in mainstream Anglo‐American philosophy and mainstream postmodern Continental philosophy. One characteristic idea in Anglo‐American or analytic philosophy is that we establish what is meaningful and so what we can say about what is, by making evident the limits of sense or what simply cannot be meant. A characteristic idea in Continental philosophy of being is that being emerges through contrast and interplay with what it (...) is not, with what has no being at all and so is beyond sense. The two traditions consequently conceive being in significantly related ways. As a result, what the Continental tradition gets at with “the meaning of being as such and in general,” and how it gets at it, has much in common with what the Anglo‐American tradition gets at, and how it gets at it, by establishing “what can be meaningfully said.”. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to say something significant about Stanley Cavell's style. To accomplish this task, we adopt a distant reading approach, quantifying what seems to be an idiosyncratic use of parentheses. After outlining our methodological approach and the choices of texts from Cavell's corpus, we will present the results of our quantitative analysis. Two kinds of results will be presented and interpreted: the result of a comparison between Cavell and other authors (i.e. why Cavell's use of parentheses (...) is exceptional) and the result of a quantitative analysis of Cavell's texts (i.e. how Cavell uses parentheses throughout his books). For both results, we will provide our own interpretation. In the conclusion, we will draw the moral of this parenthetical story, hoping to open future parentheses. (shrink)

Taking into account one of the meanings of the expression binding precedent and stipulating a definition for that meaning, this article aims to contribute to the concept's structural characterization. By this I mean the effort to identify the legal norms on which the existence and functioning of binding precedents depend and to show that these norms constitute a group of Hohfeldian legal relations between the courts whose precedents must be followed, the courts that must follow them, and the individuals whose (...) legal situations are as a result modified by the observance and the breach of those precedents. (shrink)

Urban Studies is an interdisciplinary and rapidly evolving field. The aim of this study is to assess the development of Urban Studies as an academic field from 2011 to 2019, by focusing on number of journals and articles, their openness, and their respective bibliometric indicators. A Scopus-based journal-level analysis and a Web of Science-based article-level analysis were performed. Publications from 2011 to 2019 were filtered for ‘Urban Studies’. In 2019, there were 193 Urban Studies journals compared to 83 journals in (...) 2011. The percentage of open access publications increased from 25.6% in 2011 to 45% in 2019. The number of yearly publications was 13,007 in 2011 and expanded to 36,805 in 2019. The number of open access journals significantly increased from 18 (22%) in 2011 to 69 (35.9%) in 2019 (p = 0.005). Institution-based and small publishers are leading the way toward open access journals; the number of open access journals are significantly greater than the number put out by mainstream large publishers. Urban studies is a rapidly evolving interdisciplinary field with different related fields contributing to its development. (shrink)

This article argues that, in order to understand Peter Winch's view of philosophy, it is profitable to read him together with R. G. Collingwood's philosophy of history. Collingwood was both an important source for Winch and a thinker engaged in a closely parallel philosophical pursuit. Collingwood and Winch shared the view that philosophy is an effort to understand the various ways in which human beings make reality intelligible. For both, this called for rapprochement between philosophy and the humanities. Like Collingwood, (...) Winch wanted to reformulate philosophy as a form of human science. Both thinkers advanced a conception of logic where the validity of judgements, propositions, and thought are dependent on their function as instruments in human dialogue. In their treatments of logic, Winch and Collingwood were fleshing out their idea that questions concerning human meaningful behaviour also tie back to the question of what philosophical analysis is about. There is a deep connection between two main issues in both Collingwood's and Winch's writings: on the one hand, the need for ‘internal’ understanding of how human beings relate to reality, and on the other hand, their critique of the idea of logic as a self-sufficient system, external to historically embedded forms of life. At the core of their shared vision there was a comprehensive critique of metaphysical realism. (shrink)

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Volume 52, Issue 3, Page 150-174, June 2022. This article offers a reassessment of the main import of Peter Winch’s philosophy of the social sciences. Critics argue that Winch presented a flawed methodology for the social sciences, while his supporters deny that Winch’s work is about methodology at all. Contrary to both, the author argues that Winch deals with fundamental questions about methodology, and that there is something substantial to learn from his account. Winch engages (...) methodological questions without being committed to social ontology. Instead, Winch’s work on methodology is best described as a descriptive metaphysics of social inquiry. This alternative reading clarifies the close link between Winch’s argument for the autonomy of the social sciences and R. G. Collingwood’s philosophy of history. (shrink)

We will look critically at three essays by Cora Diamond concerning Peter Winch's views on the possibility of communication and criticism between language-games. We briefly present our understanding of Winch's approach to philosophy. Then, we argue that Diamond misidentifies Winch's views, taking them to imply language-game relativism or linguistic idealism. When she does raise valid criticisms against language-game relativism, her critical points mainly coincide with things that Winch has already stressed in his own work. That leaves us with the question (...) what their real disagreement amounts to. Finally, we suggest that at the bottom of Diamond's objections lies her failure to appreciate Winch's insights about the place of logic in human intercourse. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to clarify the role of ‘wonder’ in education. Most of us who work in education want to provide valuable experiences for our students, and we want them to be driven by intrinsic values such as truth and recognition of the dignity of human existence. However, whilst I echo many of the sentiments espoused by advocates of the utility and ethical significance of wonder, I contend that some recent developments—and in particular, Schinkel’s argument that ‘deep’ (‘contemplative’ (...) or ‘cosmic’) wonder has a ‘fundamental’ role in education—are misconceived. This is, I argue, because any concept deployable within educational spaces (whether formal or informal) must pay due regard to the conceptual constraints of the concept of ‘education’; that is, attention must be paid to the role of ‘learning’. Schinkel’s proposals are, I suggest, vulnerable to a critique of sentimentalism and excessive romanticism. As such, they offer little in terms of practical import for educators. As I will propose, if we are to take ‘wonder’ seriously in educational contexts, we must pay attention to the purpose of wonder as an epistemic emotion; namely, aiming for knowledge and understanding, and getting there requires sensitivity to practical know-how and conceptual competence. (shrink)

This paper advances a novel take on Chantal Mouffe’s appropriation of the late Wittgenstein, arguing that Wittgenstein’s philosophy, at the same time, gives rise to and offers a solution to the relativism problem as it can be found in Mouffe’s radical political thought. Unlike other vindications of Wittgenstein-inspired political thought, I also show at which point Wittgenstein’s support for such an approach comes to an end. I thus acknowledge that the relativism problem – at least to some extent – stems (...) from the ambiguity of Wittgensteinian thought itself. After having outlined these challenges, I suggest turning to alternative approaches from the field of critical social philosophy. In particular, Rahel Jaeggi’s Frankfurt School account of forms of life highlights what such a non-relativist but still context-sensitive approach may look like. By virtue of this last step, this paper contributes to recent engagements by Critical Theorists with the late Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Peter Winch believed that the central task of philosophy was to investigate ‘the force of the concept of reality’ in human practices. This involved creative dialogue with critical metaphysics. In ‘Ceasing to Exist’, Winch considered what it means to judge that something unheard-of has happened. Referring to Wittgenstein, Winch argued that judgments concerning reality must relate our observations to a shared ‘flow of life’. This implies criticism of the form of epistemology associated with metaphysical realism. Just as, according to Wittgenstein, (...) a sentence has no fixed meaning in isolation, an observation does not constitute knowledge outside shared human practices. (shrink)

“Don’t think, but look!” (Wittgenstein 2009: § 66). This insistient advice has served as methodological inspiration for several influential thinkers in the broad range of ‘empirically informed’ philosophy, which has flourished over the last decades. There is, however, a worrisome tension between Wittgenstein’s work and these turns to practices, history, science, field work, and everyday life: Wittgenstein is in general doing something different from what the thinkers who claim to be inspired by him are doing. An argument for the legitimacy (...) of the move from Wittgenstein to empirically informed philosophy is so far missing in the literature. This article shows how this move can be justifiable within a Wittgensteinian frame, philosophically beneficial, and at times even necessary. (shrink)

If ethical reflection on which concepts to use has an avatar, it must be Nietzsche, who took more seriously than most the question of what concepts one should live by, and regarded many of our inherited concepts as deeply problematic. Moreover, his eschewal of traditional attempts to derive the one right set of concepts from timeless rational foundations renders his conceptual ethics strikingly modern, raising the prospect of a Nietzschean alternative to Wittgensteinian non-foundationalism. Yet Nietzsche appears to engage in two (...) seemingly contrary modes of concept evaluation: one looks to concepts’ effects, the other to what concepts express. I offer an account of the expressive character of concepts which unifies these two modes and accounts for Nietzsche’s seemingly bifurcating interests. His fundamental concern is with the effects concepts are likely to have going forward, and it is precisely this concern that motivates his preoccupation with what concepts express. He evaluates concepts by asking for whom they have a point, working back from a concept via the need it fills to the conditions that engender that need and thereby render the concept pointful. For a concept to be pointful is for it to serve the concerns of its users through its effects. But even when it is not pointful, a concept expresses the presuppositions of its pointfulness, which we can work back to by asking who would have need of such a concept. What emerges is a powerful approach to conceptual ethics that looks beyond the formal virtues and vices of concepts at the presuppositions we buy into by using them. (shrink)

Key elements of John Searle’s articulation of the Standard Model of Social Ontology can be found within Max Weber’s ideal type of legal-rational authority. However, the fact that, for Weber, legal-rational authority is just one of three types of legitimate authority, along with traditional and charismatic authority, suggests limitations to the Standard Model’s scope of applicability. Where Searle takes himself to have provided an account of “the structure of human civilization,” Weber’s taxonomy suggests that Searle has only given us an (...) account of a way of being a civilization. This understanding of traditional authority also reveals why the Standard Model misconstrues the structure of ordinary, informal statuses, such as friendship. (shrink)

This essay argues that the main lesson of Lewis Carroll's Regress is that arguments are constitutively presuppositional.

Social and political concepts are indispensable yet historically and culturally variable in a way that poses a challenge: how can we reconcile confident commitment to them with awareness of their contingency? In this article, we argue that available responses to this problem—Foundationalism, Ironism, and Right Wittgensteinianism—are unsatisfactory. Instead, we draw on the work of Bernard Williams to tease out and develop a Left Wittgensteinian response. In present-day pluralistic and historically self-conscious societies, mere confidence in our concepts is not enough. For (...) modern individuals who are ineluctably aware of conceptual change, engaged concept-use requires reasonable confidence, and in the absence of rational foundations, the possibility of reasonable confidence is tied to the possibility of critically discriminating between conceptual practices worth endorsing and those worth rejecting. We show that Left Wittgensteinianism offers such a basis for critical discrimination through point-based explanations of conceptual practices which relate them to the needs of concept-users. We end by considering how Left Wittgensteinianism guides our understanding of how conceptual practices can be revised in the face of new needs. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers have used expressions of Wittgenstein’s (e.g. “language-games,” “form of life,” and “family resemblance”) in attempts to conceive of the discipline of philosophy in a broad, open, and perhaps global way. These Wittgenstein-inspired approaches indicate an awareness of the importance of cultural and historical diversity for approaching philosophical questions. While some philosophers have taken inspiration from Wittgenstein in embracing contextualism in philosophical hermeneutics, Wittgenstein himself was more instrumental than contextual in his treatment of other philosophers; his focus (...) in his writings was on his own philosophical problems. Does this mean that Wittgensteinian philosophy is a poor resource after all for comparative, cross-cultural, or globally-engaged philosophy (i.e. if it is properly Wittgensteinian)? In this article, I examine the relevance of Wittgenstein to contextually-sensitive philosophy through studies of his conceptions of history and culture, his interest in Spengler’s philosophy of history, and recent scholarship by Hans-Johann Glock and Hans Sluga on the place of contextualism in Wittgenstein’s analysis of philosophical problems. Ultimately, this article advances the view that there are strong resources in Wittgenstein’s philosophy for those seeking a more globally-engaged approach to the field. (shrink)

In this essay, I seek to demonstrate the interplay of philosophical voices – particularly, that of a platonist voice and a community-agreement-view voice – that drives Wittgenstein’s rule-following dialectic forward; and I argue that each voice succumbs to a particular form of dialectical oscillation that renders its response to the problem of rule-following philosophically inadequate. Finally, I suggest that, by seeing and taking stock of the dilemma in which these responses to the skeptical problem are caught, we can come to (...) appreciate Wittgenstein’s own view of what might constitute a proper a response to the so-called problem of rule-following. This view can be preliminarily characterized by saying that Wittgenstein’s aim is to dissolve the temptation to philosophically rebut the skeptical challenge posed by the rule-following dialectic, an aim he achieves by revealing the semantic emptiness of the apparent sentences that raise the skeptical problem. (shrink)

This essay accounts for the notion of _Lebensform_ by assigning it a _logical _role in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. Wittgenstein’s additions of the notion to his manuscripts of the _PI_ occurred during the initial drafting of the book 1936-7, after he abandoned his effort to revise _The Brown Book_. It is argued that this constituted a substantive step forward in his attitude toward the notion of simplicity as it figures within the notion of logical analysis. Next, a reconstruction of his later (...) remarks on _Lebensformen_ is offered which factors in his reading of Alan Turing’s “On computable numbers, with an application to the _Entscheidungsproblem_“, as well as his discussions with Turing 1937-1939. An interpretation of the five occurrences of _Lebensform_ in the PI is then given in terms of a logical “regression” to _Lebensform_ as a fundamental notion. This regression characterizes Wittgenstein’s mature answer to the question, “What is the nature of the logical?”. (shrink)

After decades of acrimonious debate on the nature of scientific knowledge, researchers in the human or social sciences are reaching a state of relative equanimity, a condition that may be characterized as a reflective pragmatism. Yet, even while the context has favored the development of new forms of research, the longstanding ocular metaphor of inquiry remains pervasive. That is, researchers continue the practice of observing what is the case, with the intent to illuminate, understand, report on, or furnish insight into (...) given states of affairs. And, while selectively useful, such an orientation is not only limited in potential but subject to a receding span of application. As I will propose, when the logics of reflective pragmatism are fully extended, we enter a new territory of understanding, one in which the vision of research is radically altered. We replace the captivating gaze on the world as it is with value based explorations into what it could be. This conception of a future forming orientation to research opens the way to new aims, practices, and reflections. (shrink)

Abstract The goal of social explanation is to understand human action, both individual and collective. To do so successfully we must explain action on three distinct (but intertwined) levels: the actors? intentions, the meaning that actors and interpreters ascribe to action, and the structural ideals that govern action. Each level of explanation has certain types of rationality associated with it. Only on the level of intentionality does instrumental rationality assume a prime importance, yet even there it must compete with normative (...) and expressive accounts of action. (shrink)

This essay examines some of the arguments in David Deutsch's book The Fabric of Reality , chief among them its case for the so-called many-universe interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM), presented as the only physically and logically consistent solution to the QM paradoxes of wave/particle dualism, remote simultaneous interaction, the observer-induced 'collapse of the wave-packet', etc. The hypothesis assumes that all possible outcomes are realized in every such momentary 'collapse', since the observer splits off into so many parallel, coexisting, but (...) epistemically non-interaccessible 'worlds' whose subsequent branchings constitute the lifeline-or experiential world-series- for each of those proliferating centres of consciousness. Although Deutsch concedes that his 'multiverse' theory is counter-intuitive, he none the less takes it to be borne out beyond question by the sheer observational/predictive success of QM and the conceptual dilemmas that supposedly arise with alternative (single-universe) accounts. Moreover, he claims the theory resolves a range of longstanding philosophical problems, notably those of mind/body dualism, the various traditional paradoxes of time, and the freewill/determinism issue. The essay suggests on the contrary, that Deutsch unwittingly transposes into the framework of presentday quantum debate speculative themes from the history of rationalist metaphysics, often with bizarre or philosophically dubious results, and that he rules out at least one promising rival account, namely Bohm's 'hidden variables' theory. It goes on to consider reasons for resistance to that theory among proponents of the 'orthodox' (Copenhagen) doctrine, and for the strong anti-realist, at times even irrationalist bias that has characterized much of this discussion since Bohr's debates with Einstein about quantum non-locality, observer-intervention, and the limits of precise measurement. Finally, the contrast is pointed out between Deutsch's ontologically extravagant use of the many-worlds hypothesis (akin to certain ideas advanced by speculative metaphysicians from Leibniz down) and those realist modes of counterfactual reasoning- e.g. in Kripke and the early Putnam- which deploy similar arguments to very different causal-explanatory ends. (shrink)

Past criticisms to the contrary, methodological individualism in the social sciences is neither trivial nor obviously false. In the style of Weber's sociology, it restricts the ultimate explanatory repertoire of social science to agents' reasons for action. Although this restriction is not obviously false, it ought not to be accepted, at present, as a regulative principle. It excludes, as too far-fetched to merit investigation, certain hypotheses concerning the influence of objective interests on large-scale social phenomena. And these hypotheses, in fact, (...) merit empirical consideration. The attractiveness of methodological individualism as a regulative principle depends on two independent confusions, the conflation of an agent's reasons for action with the beliefs, needs, desires, or goals which are the reasons why he acted as he did, and the identification of explaining a phenomenon and describing its causes. (shrink)

The article combines later Wittgenstein’s fictitious language games, along with the forms of life associated with them, with the concept of otherness and places them both within the philosophy of education. The account of otherness overlaps with the view of fictional language games in that the latter deviates from our ordinary, extant uses of language and our Lebensform, and thus can be perceived as extraordinary, unusual, strange, and sometimes nonsensical. The advantages of dealing with such construed preposterousness rely, first, on (...) its leading to a better understanding of our own form of life; second, on its opening a window on the changing of our form of life; third, on its acquainting us with the other. The educational roles of it are presented, first, as being needed at the very beginning of a child’s language learning, when the learner probes the limits of sense and thus enters the domain of otherness; second, as freeing children from the tyranny of adults’ norms and showing the norms that adults accept as absurd; thirdly, as puzzlement that gives an impulse to our thought development, which occurs in contact with the other. Therefore, it is claimed that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy opens perspectives on educational thinking not only in terms of teacher training (Abrichtung) of the learner to follow the rules of existing practices, but also in terms of imagination and critical attitude towards the existing forms of life. (shrink)

Philosophy as well as anthropology is a discipline concerned with what it means to be human, and hence with investigating the multiple ways of making sense of human life. An important task in this process is to remain open to diverse conceptions of human beings, not least conceptions that may on the face of it appear to be morally alien. A case in point are conceptions that are bound up with cannibalism, a practice sometimes assumed to be so morally scandalous (...) that it probably never happens, at least in a culturally sanctioned form. Questioning this assumption, along with Cora Diamond's contention that the very concept of a human being involves a prohibition against consuming human flesh, the present article explores how cannibalism can have an intelligible place in a human society – exemplified by the Wari’ of western Brazil. By coming to see this, we are enabled to enlarge our conception of the heterogeneity of possible ways of being human. (shrink)

This paper explores corporate governance failure by drawing upon contemporary perspectives in the philosophy of the social sciences to identify four contending perceptions of corporate governance. Each posits a set of corporate governance ‘certainties’ that derive from incompatible contentions about what is knowable and can exist in the social world in which corporations conduct their affairs. The broad conclusion drawn is that corporate governance processes must be seen as environments where failures of governance lead to one of two possible outcomes. (...) Either trench warfare takes place between the corporate governors and those they seek to govern and with whom they disagree, resulting inevitably in victory of one over the other; or competing governance interests and desires are confronted and integrated. The latter requires tolerance on the part of both corporate governors and the governed, and a willingness to settle competing governance truth-claims with consistency and without self-deception and self-delusion. (shrink)

Psychology has penetrated many domains of society and its vocabulary and discourse has become part of our everyday conversations. It not only carries with it the promise that it will deliver insights into human behaviour, but it is also believed that it can address many of the problems human beings are confronted with. As a discipline it thrives in the present climate of performativity, where more attention is given to means than to ends. The article observes first that for education (...) and thus for educational research, though psychology’s approach can be valuable, other theoretical stances are also necessary. It then analyses why psychology may be attractive nowadays in the educational field and identifies its prestige in academia, partly arising from its professionalization, but above all the use of a particular method and the focus on certain contents. This has historical antecedents, and so some illustrations are given of previous developments, paying attention as well to the controversies in which educational psychology has been involved in the past, as well as to the need of biographical research, which warns us to be careful with generalizations. It is argued that a more balanced approach (invoking the particularities of the situation as well as a broader concept of practical rationality) is required for the study of education and that educational researchers therefore should resist the tendency to see psychology as the default auxiliary science of education; instead they should reclaim their territory, do justice to the responsibility that is required and highlight the importance of understanding social practices to a large extent in terms of reasons and intentions. (shrink)

John Searle has recently developed a theory of reasons for acting that intends to rescue the freedom of the will, endangered by causal determinism, whether physical or psychological. To achieve this purpose, Searle postulates a series of “gaps” that are supposed toendowthe self with free will. Reviewing key steps in Searle's argument, this article shows that such an undertaking cannot be successfully completed because of its solipsist premises. The author argues that reasons for acting do not have a subjective, I-ontology (...) but a first-person plural, Weontology that better accounts for agency and responsibility. (shrink)

Body theory is the work of historians, sociologists, philosophers, and other scholars in the past twenty to twenty-five years that explicitly focuses on the body, especially on sexuality and gender. The body is seen as an ideological surface on which history and politics inscribe their truths. It is, in short, a corporeal epistemology standing in opposition to all the old cognitive epistemologies (e.g., Descartes, Locke, and modern analytic thought as a whole). Régimes of power are known through the way they (...) oppress, manipulate, and construct the human body. Body theory includes the work of Michel Foucault, Thomas Laquer, and feminist scholars such as Hélène Cixous, Laura Mulvey, and Elaine Showalter. This work is carried on, by and large, in the methodological atmosphere of a constructivist notion of gender, sexuality, social ideas, and the self. (shrink)

The work of Ludwig Wittgenstein is seldom used by philosophers of technology, let alone in a systematic way, and in general there has been little discussion about the role of language in relation to technology. Conversely, Wittgenstein scholars have paid little attention to technology in the work of Wittgenstein. In this paper we read the Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty in order to explore the relation between language use and technology use, and take some significant steps towards constructing a framework (...) for a Wittgensteinian philosophy of technology. This framework takes on board, and is in line with, insights from postphenomenological and hermeneutic approaches, but moves beyond those approaches by benefiting from Wittgenstein’s insights into the use of tools, technique, and performance, and by offering a transcendental interpretation of games, forms of life, and grammar. Focusing on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language in the Investigations, we first discuss the relation between language use and technology use, understood as tool use, by drawing on his analogy between language and tools. This suggests a more general theory of technology use, understood as performance. Then we turn to his epistemology and argue that Wittgenstein’s understanding of language use can be embedded within a more general theory about technology use understood as tool use and technique, since language-in-use is always already a skilled and embodied technological practice. Finally, we propose a transcendental interpretation of games, forms of life, and grammar, which also gives us a transcendental way of looking at technique, technological practice, and performance. With this analysis and interpretation, further supported by comments on robotics and music, we contribute to using and integrating Wittgenstein in a more systematic way within philosophy of technology and engage with perennial questions from the philosophical tradition. (shrink)

Since management is about influencing - influencing people who work in the organization, the structure and practices of the organization, as well as its environment - how ‘influencing’ is understood evidently makes a huge difference. The still popular empiricist concept of cause-effect relations as presupposing regularities is mistaken, since it forms no sufficient basis for action in new and unique situations. As alternative notions of causation, the paper discusses the Critical Realist conception of causal powers and the counterfactual conditional view, (...) arguing that the classical notion of power (dunamis in Greek; power, potentiality, possibility, ability, capacity, capability in English) offers the most fruitful analysis of causal relations for managerial purposes. The paper presents the four ontological features of power scrutinised already by Aristotle in his Metaphysics and Physics, and actively discussed in current philosophy of science. These are the potentiality-actuality distinction, full power as consisting of an active and a receptive component, the distinction of rational and non-rational powers, and the idea of hierarchy of powers. These ontological distinctions suit management contexts not only because they allow room for new unique decision-making situations, but primarily because they imply invaluable practical advice. The relevance of the power ontology for management is illustrated in the context of the Bohm and the new Timeout dialogue. The paper concludes with a summary of the practical implications of the classical power ontology to management and the adoption of dialogical practices to managerial expertise. (shrink)

This paper deals with Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox, focussing on the infinite rule-regress as featured in Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. I argue that one of the most salient and popular proposed solutions (championed by John McDowell), which argues that rule-following is grounded in “custom,” “practice” or “form of life, remains unsatisfactory because part of this proposal is the rejection of further “theory” (commonly attributed to Wittgenstein) which seemingly makes it impossible to substantiate the claim of how customs, practices (...) or forms of life ground rule-following. I argue that this conundrum can be solved by introducing Wilhelm Dilthey’s overlooked notion of objective spirit as the objectivated sediment of historical human communality. This proposal allows us to substantiate Wittgenstein’s hints at the connection between rule-following and customs, practices, and forms of life without introducing “problematic theories.” Combining Wittgenstein’s views with Dilthey’s notion of objective spirit results in a solution that is neither skeptical nor straight, but therapeutic. (shrink)

This paper uses the distinction between thick and thin ethical concepts to illuminate the philosophical discourse referred to as “applied ethics.” It explores what thick ethical concepts have to offer in terms of a method for discussing issues in applied ethics. By focusing on thick ethical concepts, applied ethics can avoid the pitfall of creating a conceptual gap between empirical discourse and normative discourse. Applied ethics, the paper argues, is linked to philosophical and anthropological aspirations that have traditionally sought to (...) uncover the thick normative vocabulary relevant to particular practices and cultures. By focusing on thick descriptions, applied ethics discloses the rich normative meaning of our social practices and social relations. The concepts used therein are often unintelligible apart from the particular social practices through which their meaning is manifested. Accordingly, thick ethical concepts are philosophically useful for adopting a nonrepresentational conception of language, which underlies the expression of meaning of particular social practices. (shrink)

[T]he dominated live in a world structured by others for their purposes — purposes that at the very least are not our own and that are in various degrees inimical to our development and even existence.We are perhaps used to the idea that there are various species of oppression: political, economic, or sexual, for instance. But where there is the phenomenon that Nancy Hartsock picks out in saying that the world is “structured” by the powerful to the detriment of the (...) powerless, there is another species of oppression at work, one that has not been registered in mainstream epistemology: epistemic oppression. The word ‘structured’ may be read materially, so as to imply that social institutions and practices favour the powerful, or ontologically, so as to imply that the powerful somehow constitute the world. But for present purposes I am interested only in an epistemological reading, which implies that the powerful have some sort of unfair advantage in “structuring” our understandings of the social world. I will try to present an account of what this initially vague idea involves. I hope thereby to explain an exact sense in which the powerful can have a kind of epistemic advantage that means the powerless are epistemically oppressed. (shrink)

Misunderstanding other people can be interpreted as the result of an insufficient performance of people’s skills to understand other persons and their experiences. But what does understand mean in these contexts? And what are the relevant skills that need to be engaged to successfully understand other people? I argue that understanding other people is a form of recognition of the epistemic validity of another person’s perspective. I claim that minimal understanding does not require an endorsement of another person’s perspective. This (...) makes the avoidance of lack of understanding a feasible achievement in almost all cases, though it often requires effort in the interactive process of understanding. I specifically analyse the epistemic and normative roles of empathy in this process. In pursuing this aim, I also defend empathy against recent philosophical arguments that point at moral dangers of empathic processes. (shrink)

Lincoln and Guba provided some principles and four evaluative criteria called “trustworthiness” to guide social science research naturalistically. However, drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature, a field engaged with methods and practices of science for several decades, one can argue that this approach is not still fully naturalistic. In this paper, we review Lincoln and Guba’s four criteria of trustworthiness from an STS perspective. We argue that the STS literature can challenge these criteria, but at the same time (...) they have the potential to be reconstructed with the help of the materials STS provides. (shrink)

Kei Yoshida’s recent book Philosophy of the Social Sciences: An Introduction is the first introductory textbook on the philosophy of the social sciences written in Japanese. It concisely expounds on a wide range of topics in the discipline, while its explication of those topics is not impartial or neutral as the author himself says. This paper gives a critical review of the book. The first half of it briefly overviews and assesses the book as a whole. The latter half of (...) the paper reconstructs the gist of the author’s exposition of the naturalism/interpretivism debate and criticizes it. (shrink)

Lockean approaches to property take it that persons can unilaterally acquire private ownership over hitherto unowned resources. Such natural law accounts of property rights are often thought to be of limited use when dealing with the complexities of natural resource use outside of the paradigm of private ownership of land for agricultural or residential development. The tragedy of the commons has been shown to be anything but an inevitability, and yet Lockeanism seems to demand that even the most robust common (...) property arrangements be converted to privatized units. This often motivates a move away from natural law in the moral analysis of property rights. I argue however that it is not the deontological nature of Lockean principles that are at fault, but rather the manner of their application. Lockean theory often exhibits a bias in favour of private property: assuming that only private property can protect one’s interest in autonomy, and therefore asserting that each individual has a power of private acquisition. Starting with a claim against interference however enables us to mould the appropriate property rights to each individual’s particular interest in autonomy. This sometimes leads to private ownership, but often leads to various forms of commons. (shrink)

En este escrito se analiza la significación y el uso filosófico que Wittgenstein dio en su pensamiento maduro al concepto de forma de vida. Así, aunque se señala que Wittgenstein sólo hizo uso de dicho concepto en el contexto de la justificación de la praxis lingüística como límite epistemológico, se enfatiza no obstante que en ese uso ya es posible vislumbrar una cierta concepción antropológica sobre los seres humanos como animales de conducta expresiva, intencional, simbólica, lingüística generadora de reglas y (...) amante de regularidades. El artículo acaba con un análisis del problema de la forma de vida de los animales y su relación con la forma de vida humana: en concreto se destaca el carácter lingüístico y cultural de la forma de vida humana, y se muestran los límites en la atribución a los animales no-humanos de los predicados mentales humanos. (shrink)

It is generally assumed that a corporate purpose aiming to benefit all stakeholders has a positive effect on employee motivation and engagement, but no empirical studies into these specific effects were found. To examine this assumption, a corporate mission and vision matching the definition of a higher purpose were tested in two subsequent studies. The first study (N = 270) was a cross-sectional self-report study. The second study included a longitudinal design (N = 56) modeling purpose, motivation, and engagement in (...) a cross-lagged panel design over three time-points. The results associated purpose with motivation and engagement. The subsequent longitudinal analysis confirmed the presumed directionality from purpose to engagement, but not to motivation. Hence, while a corporate purpose can be added to the list of antecedents to work engagement, the relationship with motivation, despite the significant association with purpose in the cross-sectional study, remains more complicated. The present study adds to the knowledge of the beneficial effects of a broader purpose and responds to the current surge of interest in purpose as an instrument for sustainable business. (shrink)

We argue that sport in general, and association football in particular, are activities that invite spectators and players alike to talk about them. Using a Wittgensteinian approach, we argued more...

On the strength of a clarification of the nature of philosophy of education, a critical overview is offered of Wittgenstein's impact on the field. The focus then narrows to give attention to Wittgenstein's claim that “Nothing is hidden”, pitched here in a questionable relation to contemporary concerns with transparency. Familiar readings of this passage are challenged in connection with Wittgenstein's late writings on psychology, especially with regard to imagination and pretence. These are argued to be essential to the development of (...) mind and world, from the child's first entry into language, and hence crucial to education. (shrink)