This paper delves into crucial issues surrounding attempts to make flawless Qur’anic recitation, in Nigeria, a permanent tradition. The paper identifies major militating factors against an error-free recitation of the holy Qur’an in Nigeria as a basis for locating appropriate remedial programmes. The study discovered that factors such as acquisition of deficient typologies, language interference, complexity of the rules, lack of awareness dearth of specialists , dearth of relevant texts , underutilization of orthographic symbols and methodology used in imparting the (...) knowledge constitute major impediments towards achieving ideal recital of the Qur’an. In proffering relevant remedial measures like the teaching of the ideal typologies of Qur’anic recitation supported by a well planned curriculum, the paper concludes that the rectification of diagnosed deficiencies in reciting the Qur’an is feasible, in the long run, provided the intervention strategies proposed are effectively implemented. (shrink)

This paper delves into crucial issues surrounding attempts to make flawless Qur’anic recitation, in Nigeria, a permanent tradition. The paper identifies major militating factors against an error-free recitation of the holy Qur’an in Nigeria as a basis for locating appropriate remedial programmes. The study discovered that factors such as acquisition of deficient typologies, language interference, complexity of the rules, lack of awareness dearth of specialists, dearth of relevant texts, underutilization of orthographic symbols and methodology used in imparting the knowledge constitute (...) major impediments towards achieving ideal recital of the Qur’an. In proffering relevant remedial measures like the teaching of the ideal typologies of Qur’anic recitation supported by a well planned curriculum, the paper concludes that the rectification of diagnosed deficiencies in reciting the Qur’an is feasible, in the long run, provided the intervention strategies proposed are effectively implemented. (shrink)

Burt formulates her critique at a general level of abstraction that highlights the methodological deficiencies of sociogenomics without also calling attention to precisely the same deficiencies in the social science model she seeks to defend against its encroachments. What might have been a methodological bulwark against the excesses of sociogenomics is instead a one-sided critique that merely renews its charter.

In their paper “Should Methodological Naturalists Commit to Metaphysical Naturalism?” Zargar et al. try to show that the correct answer to the question that the title of their paper poses is positive. They argue that methodological naturalism has a metaphysical presupposition, namely causal closure, and an epistemological consequence, namely evidentialism. Causal closure and evidentialism imply metaphysical naturalism. Thus, they conclude, one who believes in methodological naturalism should also endorse causal closure, evidentialism, and metaphysical naturalism as a result. (...) In this paper, I criticize their argument and argue that it is deficient in (at least) two different ways. First, what they consider to be methodological naturalism is in fact a strawman: that is another – more radical – thesis that may be called methodological anti-supernaturalism. Second, and most importantly, even methodological anti-supernaturalism does not in essence need causal closure for its justification. Then, methodological naturalists are not required to adhere to causal closure or metaphysical naturalism. (shrink)

In recent years scholars working in the area of Religious Studies have increasingly been obliged to acknowledge that the level of methodological rigour displayed in many studies on religious phenomena is unsatisfactory, perhaps particularly when compared to that of some academics operating in related subject areas. Arguably one of the principal areas in which an apparent reticence to engage with contemporary developments in method is evident is that of ‘religious ethnography’. The purpose of this short study is to assess (...) the extent to which ethnographic practices in the study of Tibetan Buddhism have historically responded to methodological developments in ethnography and anthropology, and to briefly suggest ways in which studies in this area may progress in the future. (shrink)

Partiendo de las deficiencias detectadas en la realización de la discusión diagnóstica por los estudiantes de Medicina, determinadas en un estudio previo realizado en la Facultad de Ciencias Médicas de Camagüey, se diseñó una metodología para perfeccionar la realización de la discusión diagnóstica en la carrera de Medicina, en la cual se incluyeron un sistema de tareas y las acciones que permiten alcanzar el desarrollo de las habilidades relacionadas con la misma. También se reflejaron las formas organizativas de enseñanza y (...) las actividades de educación en el trabajo en las que se deben abordar los elementos de la metodología, así como la propuesta de criterios evaluativos para estas habilidades, y otros aspectos como la ejecución y evaluación de la metodología. Se consideró que esta propuesta metodológica puede constituir una herramienta útil para los profesores en la conducción del proceso de adquisición de las habilidades de razonamiento clínico en los estudiantes. On the basis of the deficiencies identified in the realization of the diagnostic discussion by medical students, which were determined in a previous study carried out in the Faculty of medical sciences of Camagüey, a methodology was designed to improve the realization of the diagnostic discussion in Medicine degree, which included a set of tasks and actions that allow the development of skills related to it. Also, the teaching organization forms and education activities at work that must deal with methodology elements were stated, as well as the proposal of assessment criteria for these skills and other aspects like assessment and implementation of methodology. It was considered that this methodology can be used as a useful tool for teachers as guides in the process of students´ acquirement of clinical reasoning skills. (shrink)

The expression ‘a university without research is a dignified high school’ is becoming a both local and global concern in the academia. The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which collaborative research methodologies can enhance integration of faculties of arts and humanities in the universities in Malawi for knowledge development and transfer. It has been argued over and over that universities are spotlighted by their outstanding work in research, developing and sharing ideas, new inventions and creativity (...) within the spectrum of partnership development. While striving for partnership through collaborative research approaches, research activities still remain an area of concern in institutions that offer diverse tertiary education in Malawi. The question of how can these institutions or faculties engage each other in collaborative research methodologies in the quest of knowledge development and transfer remains crucial and relevant The study analyzed strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities of the existing research methods in Arts and Humanities and how the two disciplines can create a space for amalgamation so that research findings can benefit both disciplines. The study reveals that collaboration in various disciplines is a challenge owing to variations of conceptual analyses and the deficiency of technical no-how of both teaching staff and students as well as tools for data collection and analysis as may be emphasized in each of the areas of study; Arts and Humanities. Furthermore, while other institutions of higher learning have research ethics committees for checks and balances as a collaborative tool, some institutions do not know that this committee plays a crucial role in the field of research. Within this backdrop, there is need to develop research collaborations within an institution or with other institutions of higher learning that have a well-defined research profile for mutual benefits as far as collaborative research methodologies are concerned. (shrink)

This article begins with a brief outline of current African and Western contexts, and the moral predicaments in which leaders in South Africa find themselves. The research problem addressed is how the spiritual maturity and moral excellence of Christian leaders can be advanced. The methodology employed draws on African and Western cultural and Christian traditions of moral formation. Whilst some common means of moral formation are discussed, particular attention is given to the role of spiritual disciplines. The article aims to (...) address the following question: ‘how do leaders become the kind of people who will make good and right decisions, live moral lives, contribute to the life and work of the church, care for others and the environment, and pursue social justice?’ Three clusters of moral deficiencies are discussed, including pride, vainglory and greed, together with the spiritual disciplines that can counteract them. The central argument is that spiritually mature and morally excellent leaders can address more effectively the moral challenges facing the church and South African society.Contribution: This transdisciplinary article contributes to the HTS’s theological research by combining the academic disciplines of Christian Spirituality and Theological Ethics with particular reference to leadership formation. It further contributes to academic contextual discourse by evaluating African and Western traditions of moral formation and advancing practical means of addressing leadership deficiencies. (shrink)

The victories of the Go-playing artificial intelligence “AlphaGo” against professional player Lee Sedol in 2016 had a profound impact on public and academic perceptions of AI. This event shocked observers, as the ability of a machine to defeat a world champion human in a highly complex game seemed to indicate that a machine had achieved human-like—or more than human—intelligence. But why was AlphaGo so readily anthropomorphized by academic and non-academic audiences alike? Drawing from existing analyses of reactions to and arguments (...) concerning AlphaGo and AI generally, this paper argues that “generative” cognitive science—a school of thought exemplified by the linguistic work of Noam Chomsky—offers two novel contributions to this subject. First, generativism sheds light on an irrational double standard in the study of the human mind in contrast to the study of non-cognitive systems—“methodological dualism”—which, I argue, has been transferred to evaluations of AlphaGo and other AI. Second, by exposing this irrational double standard in perceptions of AI, I employ generativism’s more well-known arguments concerning the nature of human intelligence and its scientific study to the evaluation of AI, exposing deficient interpretations widely used in the case of AlphaGo and AI generally. (shrink)

During the "May Fourth" period [I919 and afterl, there was a loud cry to "tear down the shop of Confucius and Sons." Since the establishment of the New China, there have also been several movements to criticize Confucius. Has this been the right thing to do? In my view, this criticism has proceeded in the right direction, but there have been deficiencies in methodology.

Skinner has repeatedly asserted that he does not deny either the existence of private events or the possibility of studying them scientifically. But he has never explained how his position in this respect differs from that of the mentalist or provided a practical methodology for the investigation of private events within a radical behaviorist perspective. With respect to the first of these deficiencies, I argue that observation statements describing a public state of affairs in the common public environment of two (...) or more observers which those observers confirm as a correct description provide a far more objective and secure foundation for empirical knowledge than statements describing private events in the experience of a single individual. In the course of this argument, I also invoke Wittgenstein's (1953) demonstration — his 'private language argument' — of the incoherence of traditional subjective empiricism. Regarding the second deficiency, I argue that observation statements describing private events can serve as data for an objective study, provided that (a) the verbal behavior in which they consist and its context are objectively observed and recorded, and (b) an explanation is given of how this verbal behavior is generated by the events it reports. (shrink)

This article asserts that traditionally dominant models of health promotion in the US are fairly characterized by methodological individualism. This schema produces a focus on the individual as the node of intervention. Such emphasis results in a number of scientific and ethical problems. I identify three principal ethical deficiencies: first, the health promotions used are generally ineffective, which violates canons of distributive justice because scarce health resources are expended on interventions that are unlikely to produce health benefits. Second, the (...) health promotions used tend to expand health inequalities between the affluent and the least well-off. Third, the health promotions used are likely to intensify stigma against the least well-off, a deficiency that itself may exacerbate the ‘densely-woven patterns of disadvantage’ that characterize life on the tail of the social gradient. Because Powers and Faden’s health sufficiency model of social justice argues that the amelioration of such clusters of disadvantage should be the primary ethical goal of public health policy, methodologically individualist models of health promotion are ethically deficient and should not stand as primary approaches for health promotion in a just social order. (shrink)

This dichotomy is discussed. First, by means of a short historical review, two theses are pointed out: (a) Originally scientific knowledge was regarded as a hermeneutical issue. (b) The separation into two methodological and scientific cultures is rather a ‘modern’ phenomenon. It was accomplished not before the 19th century as a product of the rise and final succes of the empirist-positivist paradigm for the so-called exact (natural) sciences and the analytic methodology. Further it is argued, that this separation turned (...) out to be an unproductive one: The traditional logical positivist philosophy of science failed in integrating the interpretive practice of the humanities. On the other hand hermeneutical methodology failed in explicating its principles in a way, that could satisfy modern analytic standards. So it remained deficient in founding the postulated methodological autonomy of the humanities. However, the more the positivist background of the traditional philosophy of science crumbles, the more interest the methodological intuitions of hermeneutists seem to obtain. Finally, a new possibility to explicate the concept of interpretation by means of analytical instrumentary is drawn out: The so-called structuralist view of scientific theories (J. D. Sneed, W. Stegmüller e.a.) seems to explicate properly just that feature of hermeneutical interpretation, which remained unintelligible for the traditional philosophy of science. So some realistic chance appears to mediate the alleged systematic antithesis and to eliminate that methodological dichotomy. Last but not least, a number of new philosophical theories, not coming from hermeneutical side, are mentioned, in which the concept of interpretation is already used in a presystematic, i.e. an implicit and vague, sense. So to explicate that concept seems to me to be a necessary philosophical task at the present time. (shrink)

Autistic difficulties with social interaction have primarily been understood as expressions of underlying impairment of the ability to ‘mindread.’ Although this understanding of autism and social interaction has raised controversy in the phenomenological community for decades, the phenomenological criticism remains largely on a philosophical level. This article helps fill this gap by discussing how phenomenology can contribute to empirical methodologies for studying social interaction in autism. By drawing on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and qualitative data from an ongoing study (...) on social interaction in autism, I discuss how qualitative interviews and participant observation can yield phenomenologically salient data on social interaction. Both, I argue, enjoy their phenomenological promise through facilitating attention to the social-spatial-material fields in and through which social interactions and experiences arise. By developing phenomenologically sound approaches to studying social interaction, this article helps resolve the deficiency of knowledge concerning experiential dimensions of social interaction in autism. (shrink)

This article is a contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship addressing the presumption of innocence, especially interdisciplinary conversations between philosophers and jurists. Terminological confusion and methodological traps and errors notoriously beset academic literature addressing the presumption of innocence and related concepts, such as evidentiary presumptions, and the burden and standard of proof in criminal trials. This article is diagnostic, in the sense that its primary objective is to highlight the assumptions—in particular, the disciplinary assumptions—implicit in influential contributions to debates on the (...) presumption of innocence. It advocates a methodologically pluralistic approach, according to which definitions of the presumption of innocence are necessarily sensitive to purpose and method. These relationships and their implications are not always appreciated, and are seldom explicitly elucidated. Notably, philosophers routinely treat the presumption of innocence as epistemic, evidentiary or otherwise featuring directly in practical reasoning. This article identifies jurisprudential and practical reasons why legal scholars and practitioners concerned with criminal procedure and evidence should reject evidentiary interpretations of the presumption of innocence. By encouraging finer-grained engagement with the history and institutional details of common law procedural traditions, the article aims to show why legal scholars might think that philosophical approaches to the presumption of innocence are already methodologically-loaded and, for our purposes, address the wrong questions with deficient concepts. (shrink)

In the division between analytic and continental thought, pragmatism has often been cast as a middle way. Fundamentally critical of each, it also shares resonances with both of these traditions. However, while this observation is common, remarkably little has been done to examine its truth in contemporary political thought. Drawing on recent trends in political theory, including ‘New Realism’, critical genealogical methods and a surge in pragmatic approaches, this article identifies an emerging situated turn in political thought. Emerging from several (...) major traditions in contemporary political thinking, this trend has pragmatic themes at its centre. Having identified this as a fertile opportunity for inter-methodological work across the analytic/continental divide, it then turns to the late work of Richard Rorty in order to expose his productive framework for such cross-border exchanges. Arguing for its fundamentally democratic and pluralistic nature, this analysis also exposes this framework’s weaknesses before illustrating how recent methodological exchanges between genealogy and pragmatism rectify these deficiencies while providing a viable model for future work across traditional philosophical boundaries. (shrink)

Kate Manne claims that her account of gaslighting rectifies regrettable deficiencies in existing theories. However, Manne hasn’t done enough to demonstrate the novelty of her view given that she fails to seriously engage with a significant portion of the gaslighting literature. This is an issue in the politics of methodology. Many theorists working on gaslighting exist within the margins, attempting to centre their perspectives over dominant points of view. We must listen to marginalised folk when aiming to understand a phenomenon (...) that disproportionately affects them. If Manne had listened, she would have come to see difficulties with some of her suggestions, such as the possibility of unintentional gaslighting. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;It is frequently asserted that the debate between individualists and non-individualists is futile and that a suitably modified methodological individualism is trivially true. This thesis seeks to challenge this assertion, and to revive the debate by first identifying a plausible version of methodological individualism and then by outlining a non-individualist alternative. ;Identifying a plausible version of methodological individualism is not easy because the doctrine is rarely (...) stated with clarity and precision. Chapter I seeks to remedy this deficiency and unravels the various forms of methodological individualism. It also affirms that the doctrine would not be individualist if it did not possess a residual psychologism; for the individualist, intentional contents must, in principle, be individually individuated. ;I examine in detail all significant versions of explanatory individualism. Chapter II takes up its reductionist variants and concludes that most non-individualist arguments against the irreducibility of the social to the individual founder because of a failure to distinguish correlatory and micro-reductionist versions of methodological individualism. While good arguments exist against the possibility of correlatory laws connecting social and individual properties, their success presupposes the absence of identity reductions. No arguments are found in this chapter against these. However, the following chapter impugns two of the central assumptions of all nomological variants. This considerably weakens the case for such explicable non-nomologically in terms of the beliefs and desires of individuals. ;In Chapter V, an assumption of intentionalism that beliefs have a linguistic content is examined. It is claimed that such contents have an ineliminable social character. It is contended that beliefs qua attitudes have a social dimension and that they presuppose the existence of social practices. A conception of such practices is outlined to forestall the objection that they can be reduced to inter-psychologically generated actions. With this view of social beliefs and practices, we hope to possess a sketch of contextualism, the non-individualist methodological stance that encourages an independent study of social practices and a contextual study of individual intentional states. If this attempt is even partly successful, we have at least two rival prescriptive ideals guiding the social scientist. This considerably bolsters up the contention of the thesis that something serious continues to be at stake in the debate between the individualist and the non-individualist. (shrink)

This dissertation investigates the possibility of a systematic yet non-methodological grounding for knowledge within the framework of hermeneutics. In opposition to formalistic and scientistic construals of philosophy, I argue that philosophy is essentially non-formalistic, nuanced, and contingent, characterized by circularity, ambiguity, and paradox. In rejecting formalized fixed positions and emphasizing circularity and contingency, I am concerned nevertheless to ensure that my account does not dissolve into random flux or empty indeterminacy. I look to articulate, therefore, a middle space between (...) radical closure and radical openness in an account I have termed anchored openness. ;In developing this account, I contrast it with other models of this middle space. In the accounts of Hegel and Derrida, the outcome is a one-sided extremism which proves unacceptable. The concept of the hermeneutic circle furnishes a valuable preliminary account, but it cannot provide the full elaboration of this perspective. Gadamer's account comes close to striking the appropriate balance between extremist poles and articulating the middle space, but because of its problematic objectivist and relativist implications, it also proves inadequate as a model of anchored openness. ;For a more salutary model that avoids the deficiencies of these accounts, I turn finally to Kant's Critique of Judgement. Through an analysis of the aesthetic judgement, I find the systematic yet open principles needed for this account: mediation and openness, subjective universality, and grounded free play. I conclude by suggesting possible future directions for the development of these principles. (shrink)

The history of the idea of progress and the history of the concept of progress are two different things, not least because they emanate from considerably different intellectual traditions. In anglophone history of ideas, progress has typically been viewed as a belief. Historians of ideas explore the past evaluating the extent to which a given society met certain conditions of belief. By contrast, in the history of concepts as developed by Reinhart Koselleck, progress has occupied the dual role of a (...) ‘basic concept’ that grasps modern sociopolitical reality and a ‘collective singular’ that aggregates previous and adjacent meanings in the one linguistic unit. This article compares these two historical research programmes, highlights their merits and deficiencies, and concludes by offering a new approach to the history of concepts as suggested by R.G. Collingwood’s theory of a scale of forms. In each of the approaches to the history of ideas and concepts addressed, particular attention is given to the problem of what qualifies as progress, and thus to a longstanding problem concerning the attribution of progress to past societies routinely excluded from its history, including those left out by Koselleck’s conventional secular-modern thesis. (shrink)

Introduction: Responsibility and choice -- The idea of moral responsibility -- Complex choice situations -- Differing types of responsibility -- Hans Jonas' idea of "caring for beings" -- The moral experience of women -- Criticizing rational choice -- The rational choice model 5 -- Bounded rationality -- Myopic and deficient choices -- Violations of the axioms -- Rational fools -- The strategic role of emotions -- Social norms -- The communitarian challenge -- Duty, self-interest, and love -- Responsible decision making (...) -- Norms, goals, and stakeholders -- Choice as problem solving -- Ethical norms -- Who are the stakeholders? -- Co-evolving goals and alternatives -- Responsibility and the diversity of choices -- Rationality and respect -- Deontology -- Choices people can make -- The psychology of choice -- Prospect theory -- The "matching law" -- Incommensurability -- Modeling responsible decision making -- What is a responsible decision? -- Deontological payoffs -- Goal-achievement values -- Payoffs for the stakeholders -- Evaluation from multiple perspectives -- The maximin rule -- A geometric representation -- The procedural model -- Real world cases -- Donna's case -- The Ford Pinto case -- The World Bank environmental policy -- Applications in economics and public policy -- Responsibility and social justice -- The paradox of a paretian liberal -- Res ponsible agency in prisoner's dilemma situations -- Multidimensional cost-benefit analysis -- Ethical and social performance of business -- Nature, society, and future generations -- Epilogue: The responsible person. (shrink)

This paper proposes to assess the naturalist project in epistemology with an eye towards exposing the project as deficient for serving as a robust epistemological project. Epistemologists treasure a certain family of questions and burden themselves with a number of specific concerns the most important of which, I think, cannot be answered by the epistemological naturalist. Ignoring these questions, I will argue, essentially amounts to a dismissal of the principle tension that primarily motivates and properly guides epistemological theorizing. This tension (...) is the familiar appearance vs. reality distinction and characterizes what I am calling the classical landmark or boundary-stone for epistemological theorizing. I will defend the claim that a full replacement of the traditional/classical epistemological project by a naturalized epistemology closes epistemology off from making important claims needed in a theory of human knowledge and, for that reason, a full replacement should be resisted. These claims that an epistemology should be expected to make issue from what I call the classical landmark for epistemological inquiry. Naturalist's effectively ignore this landmark and I caution them in the spirit of the proverb to not "remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set. (shrink)

A review of U. Mäki (ed.). Fact and Fiction in Economics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. pp. xvi 384. ISBN 0521 00957. As people interested mainly in theory, methodologists and philos...

Although the academic interest in ethical mutual fund performance has developed steadily, the evidence to date is mainly sample-specific. To tackle this critique, new research should extend to unexplored countries. Using this as a motivation, we examine the performance and risk sensitivities of Canadian ethical mutual funds vis-à-vis their conventional peers. In order to overcome the methodological deficiencies most prior papers suffered from, we use performance measurement approaches in the spirit of Carhart (1997, Journal of Finance 52(1): 57–82) and (...) Ferson and Schadt (1996, Journal of Finance 51(2): 425–461). In doing so, we investigate the aggregated performance and investment style of ethical and conventional mutual funds and allow for time variation in the funds’ systematic risk. Our␣Canadian evidence supports the conjecture that any␣performance differential between ethical mutual funds and their conventional peers is statistically insignificant. (shrink)

The conservative idea that it is a philosopher’s job to clarify common sense beliefs about ordinary concepts is being weeded out from the population and replaced by a revisionist agenda: philosophers should not merely describe but also analyze and suggest ways to improve our concepts. This project is called "conceptual engineering." The conceptual engineering literature is growing rapidly as more philosophers undertake normative conceptual work. However, many philosophers are practicing conceptual engineering untethered to an explicit methodology. Analyses addressing how we (...) should engineer a concept and what should be considered successful are scarce. The thesis of this dissertation is that Carnapian Explication solves this methodological deficiency. (shrink)

This review begins with a detailed focus on the Turnaway Study, which addresses associations among early abortion, later abortion, and denied abortion relative to various outcomes including mental health indicators. The Turnaway Study was comprised of 516 women; however, an exact percentage of the population is not discernable due to missing information. Extrapolating from what is known reveals a likely low of 0.32% to a maximum of 3.18% of participants sampled from the available the pool. Motivation for conducting the Turnaway (...) Study, methodological deficiencies (sampling issues and others), and bias are specifically addressed. Despite serious departures from accepted scientific practices, journals in psychology and medicine have published dozens of articles generated from the study’s data. The high volume of one-sided publications has stifled dialogue on potential adverse psychological consequences of this common procedure. Following a critical analysis of the Turnaway Study, an overview of the strongest studies on abortion and mental health is offered. This comprehensive literature comprised of numerous large-scale studies from across the globe has been largely overlooked by scientists and the public, while the Turnaway Study dominates the media, information provided to women, and legal challenges involving abortion restrictions. In the final section of this article, literature reviews by professional organizations are considered, demonstrating that the biased science characterizing the Turnaway Study is aligned with a pervasive and systemic phenomenon wherein deriving reliable and valid results via careful attention to methodology and scrutiny by the scientific community have been supplanted by politics. (shrink)

At the heart of Mizrahi’s project lies a sociological narrative concerning the recent history of philosophers’ negative attitudes towards scientism. Critics (e.g. de Ridder (2019), Wilson (2019) and Bryant (2020)), have detected various empirical inadequacies in Mizrahi’s methodology for discussing these attitudes. Bryant (2020) points out one of the main pertinent methodological deficiencies here, namely that the mere appearance of the word ‘scientism’ in a text does not suffice in determining whether the author feels threatened by it. Not all (...) philosophers use the term in ‘inherently negative’ (29) or pejorative ways. In this paper, I not only corroborate Bryant’s critical claim, but argue that Mizrahi’s response to this part of Bryant’s objection is inadequate. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is a criticism of reductionism ? both in its ?static? interpretation (usually referred to as the layer model or level?picture of science) and in its ?dynamic? interpretation (as a theory of the growth of scientific knowledge), with emphasis on the latter ? from the point of view of Popperian fallibilism and Feyerabendian pluralism, but without being committed to the idiosyncrasies of these standpoints. In both aspects of criticism, the rejection is based on the proposal of (...) a global alternative. Hummell and Opp's research programme for the reduction of sociology to psychology is used as a starting?point and taken as the primary object of criticism. Following the introductory Section I, Section II analyses the three crucial notions of Hummell and Opp's research programme ? their explications of the notions of ?sociology?, ?psychology? and the concept of reduction itself ? and criticizes the authors? deficient ?logic of reduction?. Although the ?local? shortcomings of our authors? ?logic of reduction? do not affect reductionism as such, i.e. logically sound versions of reductionism as devised by Kemeny, Nagel, Oppenheim, Putnam, Woodger et al., it is argued that the logical soundness of sophisticated reductionism cannot compensate for its additional epistemological and methodological deficiencies. Section III analyses the ?dynamic? interpretation of reductionism as a particular developmental pattern of scientific growth. It is argued that even reductionism at its best can produce only cumulative progress, thus ?a priori? excluding scientific revolutions which are inevitably counter?inductive as well as counter?reductive. Section IV discusses the philosophical background of modern reductionism, and examines the effects both of reductionism and of anti?reductionistic pluralism on the autonomy of scientific fields. It is argued that pluralistic anti?reductionism undermines spurious claims for autonomy much more effectively than reductionism. As a ?local? improvement of the reductionistic research programme, the replacement of the predominant one?way reductionism by a less restrictive many?way reductionism is proposed. It is argued that the appropriate treatment for an allegedly backward science (say sociology) is not its reduction to an allegedly more advanced science (say psychology) but its non?reductive replacement by new theories (of the same or of another field) that do not incorporate the older ones. As a ?global? alternative to the reduction of sociology to psychology, the frontier?crossing direct application of psychological theories to sociological phenomena is proposed. A plea is made for a pluralistic science without reduction, based on intra? and interscientific criticism as the proper method for the advancement of knowledge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 13.1 (2005) 37-75 [Access article in PDF] The Nature of Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts in Music Education Elvira Panaiotidi North Ossetian State Pedagogical Institute, Russia The advent of the praxial philosophy of music education in the mid-1990s and its systematic development in David Elliott's Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education1 created an unprecedented situation in music education in North America. Having brought (...) to an end the monopoly of one theoretical approach, that of music education as aesthetic education (MEAE), it challenged the music education community with a choice. While Elliott tried to convince music educators of the falsity of MEAE and of the advantages of his own conception, Bennett Reimer and his proponents defended their position. The polemic between "aestheticians" and "praxialists," represented by the exchange between Reimer and Elliott in the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, 2 brought to light a methodological deficiency in music education theory, namely, its inability to provide tenacious theoretical footing which could help settle the dispute. How do changes in the theory and practice [End Page 37] of music education occur? What are the rational standards by which to judge theories? What is the nature and logic of a dynamic development in music education theory and practice? These and similar questions have remained largely unapproached by music educators.The present paper is an attempt to initiate a discussion on these issues by exposing one possible metatheoretical strategy. As the title suggests, the strategy I am going to employ is based on the concept of paradigm. This Greek term which was once used to describe Platonic ideas, nowadays broadly circulates in descriptions of transformative processes in nearly every domain of life: we hear about paradigm shifts in musicology, the job market and tax policy, genetics, and so on. It is usually used as a kind of unproblematic category with a precisely defined and commonly accepted meaning, so that no indication of the origin of its usage in a given context is provided. In most cases, however, it turns out that "paradigm shift" is equivalent to and stands for "change" of whatever type, scope, or depth and is preferred because it is a mode or perhaps because it sounds more pretentious. In contrast to this tendency, both "paradigm" and "paradigm shift" are taken here most seriously and their usage is intimately related to the tradition in philosophy of science established by Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.3 This may appear dubious after we have been recently told that the impact of this book and the very concept of paradigm have "been largely, but not entirely, for the worse," namely, "to dull the critical sensibility of the academy" and "to kill the historicist impulse."4 "Kuhnification," it has been argued, is responsible for the suppression of free inquiry and bringing about "paradigmitis," a syndrome characterized by "a collective sense of historical amnesia and political inertia."5 Nonetheless, it is my contention that the paradigm approach per se is not dismissed by the criticism of Kuhn's conception and can be modified in such a way as to be made fruitful for structuring music education discourse and the explication of theory development in music education. To show how this is possible is the task before me.Underlying this project is the idea that theory development in music education can be adequately grasped and appraised in terms of more general units than specific theories which I shall call paradigms. That I am giving preference to this term and not choosing another from the group of providers of the conceptual framework that have been suggested throughout the history—"research tradition" (Laudan), "research programme"(Lakatos), "comprehensive cosmological point of view" (Feyerabend)—is that I find it more pertinent: it is neutral enough and allows for modifications which are necessary in view of the specific nature of music education discourse.In what follows, I will begin with an examination of Peter Abbs' account of paradigms and paradigm shifts in arts education. I... (shrink)

In their survey of empirical research based on rational choice theory, Don Green and Ian Shapiro point to a list of methodological deficiencies or ?pathologies.? The main problem with Green and Shapiro's list lies in the standards they use to evaluate the achievements of rational choice theory. These standards are derived from a view of empirical research that is deeply questionable and, in the stated form, inconsistent with both standard insights in contemporary philosophy of science and the established practice (...) in the most successful empirical sciences. (shrink)

In this paper, part of the ideas developed in Lewowicz (2000) will be reconsidered in the light of Pandora's Hope (1999a) - one of the latest publications of Bruno Latour. We will ponder the significance of these ideas and some of the incidental advances or retreats of the views of this author in the last 20 years. Although we still believe that, from the ontological point of view, Latour's philosophy is materialistic - then eliminativist - and not ontological relativist (contrary (...) to the opinion of his colleague philosophers), some of the symmetries developed in that text show outstanding ontological-epistemological and even methodological deficiencies which we try to show here; especially the symmetry between 'human and nonhuman actors' (Latour 1999a) and his very singular (but not without a fair amount of antecedents) concept of history of the things whose neologism is that of pragmatogony. Andrew Pickering (The mangle of practice, 1999a) proposed and developed the concept of temporary emergency. In view of this concept, he succeeds in criticising Latour's exact symmetries making use primarily of the concept of intentionality to account for the asymmetry (by no means radical, according to the latter) between 'the human and nonhuman collective'. In this paper we will try to reinforce (and inevitably to question) the notion of temporal emergency by giving it a less local aspect than the one given by this author. We will not only hold the asymmetry of certain dichotomies - presumably avoided by and avoidable according to Latour - but we will also claim the historical impossibility of such an avoidance: the concept of historialised emergency and not just temporalised, precludes this. It is concluded, firstly, that only an eliminativist materialism (within the range of materialisms) is able to avoid and even 'overcome' such pairs like nature/society and some of its derivatives like subject/object and individual/collective. Secondly, the decisive character of some dichotomies will be defended and lastly it will be attempted to account for the almost only ontological possibility of constructivism: the eliminativist materialism. (shrink)

Since the advent of the twenty-first century, science has experienced a crisis pertaining to the replicability of quantitative research findings, which has become known as the ‘replication crisis’. The replication crisis has particularly afflicted research in the behavioural sciences, and psychology in particular. Given the relevance of psychology to education, it is unsurprising that the replication crisis also presents an issue for quantitative educational research, thus potentially compromising its practical usefulness. This article outlines the replication crisis in psychology, and highlights (...) its significance for quantitative educational research. Greater methodological rigour, aimed at addressing methodological deficiencies in the conduct of scientific research, has been suggested as a response to the replication crisis. Following a review of various calls for greater methodological rigour, the current article argues that, whilst methodological deficiencies may be a contributory factor, there is potentially a more fundamental reason for the replication crisis. The case is made that the non-separability of a measured attribute from the measurement instrument, and the irreducible uncertainty in unmeasured attributes, may be the principal reasons for the replication crisis in psychology and education. Implications of such an explanation for the crisis are articulated in relation to the evidence-based policy agenda in education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:98 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY quoted in great numbers. The other is Kern's philosophical competence and his skill in handling complex problems. The book is divided into two parts. Part I gives the reader a brief historical survey of Husserl's changing attitudes toward Kant and the neo-Kantians (especially Natorp and ttickert). Indicating the influences which shaped Husserl's thinking during the years of his studies at the universities of Berlin and (...) Vienna, Kern traces Husserl's development throughout his career as a thinker and a writer. But this survey (pp. 1-50) provides merely the general framework within which the intensive and detailed analyses of Part II (pp. 51-424) must be viewed. Two appendices, an extensive bibliography, and a name index complete the work. The detailed discussions of Part II are, of course, the really important contributions to our understanding of Husserl's relation to Kant and the Kantians. As was to be expected, Husserl found in Kant's works formulations of problems and profound insights that he regarded as crucial to any philosophy. At times, however, Husserl was sure that because of mistaken assumptions, insufficiently clarified presuppositions, and methodological deficiencies Kant himself had not fully realized his intentions. Still, it is evident that, in time, Husserl found himself increasingly in sympathy with Kant's postion. In fact, in the end he used Kant's term "transcendental idealism" to designate his own philosophy. In the course of this development, however, Husserl's thinking underwent various changes and reversals. The detailed analyses of them make fascinating reading and are most revelatory of Husserl's own struggles with obtrnsive problems. In Chapter z of Part II (pp. 55-134), the author discusses Husserl's criticism of Kant's positionwKant's conception of the apriori, his strict separation of "sensibility" and "understanding," his presupposition of a "natural world view," his failure to ask sufficiently radical questions concerning the foundations of knowledge, his lack of a proper method of analysis, and his "psychologism." In the course of his own development, however, Husserl modified and, in some respects, even reversed his criticisms of Kant. Chapters ~, m, re and v of Part II, dealing with problems of formal and transcendental logic, with the possibihty of metaphysics on Kantian principles, and with the complex problems of subjectivity, bear witness to the fact that Huseerl often changed his opinion of Kant's work. Of special interest, however, is Chapter vz. It is devoted to a comparison of Husserl's and Kant's "transcendental idealism" and reveals most strikingly the similarities of the two positions. The chapter dealing with Husserl's relation to l~atorp and Rickert, interesting in its own way, is essentially only a footnote, as it were, to the rest of the hook; but it completes the survey. As I said before, this book gives us not only a remarkable insight into the various phases of development in Husserl's thinking and is therefore indispensable to a real understanding of Husserl's intentions and achievements; it also lets us see Kant's philosophy in a new and revealing perspective--both as to its value and it deficiencies. Only a detailed study can do justice to this book. W. H. WF~mMF~STZR Florida State University Ludwig Wittgenstein. Zettel. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. (University of California Press and Basil Blackwell, 1967. Pp. v + 124 [German and English on facing pages]. $6.95.) The paragraphs in this volume, the editors tell us, were collected in a box-file by Wittgenstein from a period beginning in 1929,though the bulk of them come from typescripts dictated between 1945 and 1948. The editors credit Peter Geach with the major work of arrangement. Whoever is responsible did a superlative job, a remark that holds as well for Miss Anscombe's translation. The editors and Mr. Geach have performed an invaluable service to those interested BOOK REVIEWS 99 in Wittgenstein and--quite apart from Wittgensteinian exegesis--in the problems treated in these pages. The philosophical topics are those of the Investigations (PI) and The Remarks on the Foundations o] Mathematir~ (RFM)---e.g., the attack on... (shrink)

The English Court of Appeal is currently faced with three analytically distinct approaches to the question of when one party owes another a duty of care in respect of her economic interests, all of which bear the authority of the House of Lords. Unable to choose between them, it has recently adopted a fourth approach combining which combines them, in the apparent belief that the combination will eradicate any individual deficiencies. Against the background of a recent case, the author argues (...) that this is a holding strategy at best and methodologically deficient. He also challenges the continuing lip-service paid by courts to models of liability based upon ‘assumptions of responsibility,’ examining and criticising the causes of their persistence in the law in the face of widespread academic criticism. Instead, the author argues, the House of Lords should now clearly endorse a single reasoning strategy to economic loss cases based on the three-stage approach in Caparo Industries v Dickman. Properly understood, this approach offers the best prospect of facilitating consistent and transparent decision-making in the longer term. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 13.1 (2005) 37-75 [Access article in PDF] The Nature of Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts in Music Education Elvira Panaiotidi North Ossetian State Pedagogical Institute, Russia The advent of the praxial philosophy of music education in the mid-1990s and its systematic development in David Elliott's Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education1 created an unprecedented situation in music education in North America. Having brought (...) to an end the monopoly of one theoretical approach, that of music education as aesthetic education (MEAE), it challenged the music education community with a choice. While Elliott tried to convince music educators of the falsity of MEAE and of the advantages of his own conception, Bennett Reimer and his proponents defended their position. The polemic between "aestheticians" and "praxialists," represented by the exchange between Reimer and Elliott in the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, 2 brought to light a methodological deficiency in music education theory, namely, its inability to provide tenacious theoretical footing which could help settle the dispute. How do changes in the theory and practice [End Page 37] of music education occur? What are the rational standards by which to judge theories? What is the nature and logic of a dynamic development in music education theory and practice? These and similar questions have remained largely unapproached by music educators.The present paper is an attempt to initiate a discussion on these issues by exposing one possible metatheoretical strategy. As the title suggests, the strategy I am going to employ is based on the concept of paradigm. This Greek term which was once used to describe Platonic ideas, nowadays broadly circulates in descriptions of transformative processes in nearly every domain of life: we hear about paradigm shifts in musicology, the job market and tax policy, genetics, and so on. It is usually used as a kind of unproblematic category with a precisely defined and commonly accepted meaning, so that no indication of the origin of its usage in a given context is provided. In most cases, however, it turns out that "paradigm shift" is equivalent to and stands for "change" of whatever type, scope, or depth and is preferred because it is a mode or perhaps because it sounds more pretentious. In contrast to this tendency, both "paradigm" and "paradigm shift" are taken here most seriously and their usage is intimately related to the tradition in philosophy of science established by Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.3 This may appear dubious after we have been recently told that the impact of this book and the very concept of paradigm have "been largely, but not entirely, for the worse," namely, "to dull the critical sensibility of the academy" and "to kill the historicist impulse."4 "Kuhnification," it has been argued, is responsible for the suppression of free inquiry and bringing about "paradigmitis," a syndrome characterized by "a collective sense of historical amnesia and political inertia."5 Nonetheless, it is my contention that the paradigm approach per se is not dismissed by the criticism of Kuhn's conception and can be modified in such a way as to be made fruitful for structuring music education discourse and the explication of theory development in music education. To show how this is possible is the task before me.Underlying this project is the idea that theory development in music education can be adequately grasped and appraised in terms of more general units than specific theories which I shall call paradigms. That I am giving preference to this term and not choosing another from the group of providers of the conceptual framework that have been suggested throughout the history—"research tradition" (Laudan), "research programme"(Lakatos), "comprehensive cosmological point of view" (Feyerabend)—is that I find it more pertinent: it is neutral enough and allows for modifications which are necessary in view of the specific nature of music education discourse.In what follows, I will begin with an examination of Peter Abbs' account of paradigms and paradigm shifts in arts education. I... (shrink)

Fifty years ago, in 1961, Feinstein published his first path-breaking articles leading to his seminal work Clinical Judgement and to the establishment of clinical epidemiology. Feinstein had an Aristotelian approach to scientific method: methods must be adapted to the material examined. Feinstein died 10 years ago and few years before his death he concluded that efforts to promote a person-oriented medicine had failed. He criticised medicine for not having recognized that only persons can suitably observe, evaluate and rate their own (...) health status. Feinstein’s position was—as in Clinical Judgement—methodological. He didn’t espouse ethical principles. He pointed to methodological deficiencies in clinical epidemiology and evidence-based medicine. In this article we’ll provide a framework for understanding and justifying Feinstein’s call for a person-oriented medicine which recognizes patients as co-actors in clinical reasoning. It’s argued that craftsmanship and practical wisdom are integrated in clinical judgement and reasoning and that clinical reasoning is not only about means to achieve the end, health. We do also reason and deliberate about ends. The ‘defining end’ of medicine (health) has continuously been negotiated and so been the object of deliberation. For centuries among professionals, in recent years among professionals and patients. These negotiations and deliberations lead to ongoing specifications of health as a ‘guiding end’, i.e. an end guiding clinical reasoning about what to do in particular situations. Feinstein’s self-critical account to clinical epidemiology at the end of his professional career reflects the fact that patients during the last 30–40 years (i.e. in the period after the publication of Clinical Judgement) widely have been recognized as persons with rights to autonomy. Feinstein’s lesson is, however, that espousing and recognizing ethical ideals is not enough. A change of clinical practice and its methods is necessary. His critique also implies that clinical epidemiology and evidence-based medicine as practiced haven’t provided such a turn. (shrink)

James C. Scott’s book The Art of Not Being Governed is offered, in this essay review, as the latest evidence of the high value of Scott’s transdisciplinary research into how ordinary people resist state power. Scott’s critics have found his work methodologically deficient, suggesting that his approach is more a matter of art than of science. In this defense of methodological pluralism, Scott’s approach is shown to be vindicated by his insights into how the peoples of Zomia evolved ways (...) to evade incorporation, over a period of centuries, into any of the states of Southeast Asia. Scott’s book is examined as a prime example of how the study of politics can and should help to effect political change — and its insights on anarchism as a way of life are applied to the Occupy Wall Street movement. (shrink)

Current health care standards, in many countries, Australia included, are regrettably poor. Surprisingly, practitioners and treating teams alike in mental health and disability sectors, in particular, make far too many basic care-related mistakes, in addition to the already abundant diagnostic mistakes that cause and amplify great harm. In part, too many practitioners also fail to distinguish adverse effects for what they are and all too often treat adverse effects, instead, as comorbidities. Diagnostic failures are dangerous, the result of which generates (...) and perpetuates harms that are extremely costly in terms of patient welfare, in addition to the financial burden placed on everyone. In this essay, I contend that the authority bestowed upon psychiatry is misplaced. Subsequently, this misplaced authority affects the governing and investigatory institutions reliant and informed by psychiatry. The examination process undertaken in this investigation traces the metaphysics of psychiatric disorders relative to the Diagnostic-Statistical-Manual (DSM) in all its iterations and to the epistemological construction process that serves to underpin the fundamentals of psychiatric practice. There exists a crisis of confidence in psychiatric practice and I urge drastic reform be undertaken to arrest the damage. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:98 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY quoted in great numbers. The other is Kern's philosophical competence and his skill in handling complex problems. The book is divided into two parts. Part I gives the reader a brief historical survey of Husserl's changing attitudes toward Kant and the neo-Kantians (especially Natorp and ttickert). Indicating the influences which shaped Husserl's thinking during the years of his studies at the universities of Berlin and (...) Vienna, Kern traces Husserl's development throughout his career as a thinker and a writer. But this survey (pp. 1-50) provides merely the general framework within which the intensive and detailed analyses of Part II (pp. 51-424) must be viewed. Two appendices, an extensive bibliography, and a name index complete the work. The detailed discussions of Part II are, of course, the really important contributions to our understanding of Husserl's relation to Kant and the Kantians. As was to be expected, Husserl found in Kant's works formulations of problems and profound insights that he regarded as crucial to any philosophy. At times, however, Husserl was sure that because of mistaken assumptions, insufficiently clarified presuppositions, and methodological deficiencies Kant himself had not fully realized his intentions. Still, it is evident that, in time, Husserl found himself increasingly in sympathy with Kant's postion. In fact, in the end he used Kant's term "transcendental idealism" to designate his own philosophy. In the course of this development, however, Husserl's thinking underwent various changes and reversals. The detailed analyses of them make fascinating reading and are most revelatory of Husserl's own struggles with obtrnsive problems. In Chapter z of Part II (pp. 55-134), the author discusses Husserl's criticism of Kant's positionwKant's conception of the apriori, his strict separation of "sensibility" and "understanding," his presupposition of a "natural world view," his failure to ask sufficiently radical questions concerning the foundations of knowledge, his lack of a proper method of analysis, and his "psychologism." In the course of his own development, however, Husserl modified and, in some respects, even reversed his criticisms of Kant. Chapters ~, m, re and v of Part II, dealing with problems of formal and transcendental logic, with the possibihty of metaphysics on Kantian principles, and with the complex problems of subjectivity, bear witness to the fact that Huseerl often changed his opinion of Kant's work. Of special interest, however, is Chapter vz. It is devoted to a comparison of Husserl's and Kant's "transcendental idealism" and reveals most strikingly the similarities of the two positions. The chapter dealing with Husserl's relation to l~atorp and Rickert, interesting in its own way, is essentially only a footnote, as it were, to the rest of the hook; but it completes the survey. As I said before, this book gives us not only a remarkable insight into the various phases of development in Husserl's thinking and is therefore indispensable to a real understanding of Husserl's intentions and achievements; it also lets us see Kant's philosophy in a new and revealing perspective--both as to its value and it deficiencies. Only a detailed study can do justice to this book. W. H. WF~mMF~STZR Florida State University Ludwig Wittgenstein. Zettel. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. (University of California Press and Basil Blackwell, 1967. Pp. v + 124 [German and English on facing pages]. $6.95.) The paragraphs in this volume, the editors tell us, were collected in a box-file by Wittgenstein from a period beginning in 1929,though the bulk of them come from typescripts dictated between 1945 and 1948. The editors credit Peter Geach with the major work of arrangement. Whoever is responsible did a superlative job, a remark that holds as well for Miss Anscombe's translation. The editors and Mr. Geach have performed an invaluable service to those interested BOOK REVIEWS 99 in Wittgenstein and--quite apart from Wittgensteinian exegesis--in the problems treated in these pages. The philosophical topics are those of the Investigations (PI) and The Remarks on the Foundations o] Mathematir~ (RFM)---e.g., the attack on... (shrink)

On the methodological dichotomy between natural sciences and the humanities. This dichotomy is discussed. First, by means of a short historical review, two theses are pointed out: (a) Originally scientific knowledge was regarded as a hermeneutical issue. (b) The separation into two methodological and scientific cultures is rather a 'modern' phenomenon. It was accomplished not before the 19th century as a product of the rise and final succes of the empirist-positivist paradigm for the so-called exact (natural) sciences and (...) the analytic methodology. Further it is argued, that this separation turned out to be an unproductive one: The traditional logical positivist philosophy of science failed in integrating the interpretive practice of the humanities. On the other hand hermeneutical methodology failed in explicating its principles in a way, that could satisfy modern analytic standards. So it remained deficient in founding the postulated methodological autonomy of the humanities. However, the more the positivist background of the traditional philosophy of science crumbles, the more interest the methodological intutions of hermeneutists seem to obtain. Finally, a new possibility to explicate the concept of interpretation by means of analytical instrumentary is drawn out: The so-called structuralist view of scientific theories (J. D. Sneed, W. Stegmüller e.a.) seems to explicate properly just that feature of hermeneutical interpretation, which remained unintelligible for the traditional philosophy of science. So some realistic chance appears to mediate the alleged systematic antithesis and to eliminate that methodological dichotomy. Last but not least, a number of new philosophical theories, can coming from hermeneutical side, are mentioned, in which the concept of interpretation is already used in a presystematic, i.e. an implicit and vague, sense. So to explicate that concept seems to me to be a necessary philosophical task at the present time. (shrink)

This book details a history of the methodology of textual interpretation from Ancient Greece to the 20th century. It presents a complete English translation of Hermeneutics and Its Problems, written by Russian philosopher Gustav Gustavovich Shpet, along with insightful commentary. Written in 1918, Shpet's text remained unpublished in its original Russian until the collapse of the Soviet Union. This engaging translation will be of value to anyone interested in early phenomenology, Russian intellectual history, as well as the divergence of phenomenology (...) and the analytic philosophy of language. The volume also features translations of five key essays written by Shpet. The first presents an extended elaboration of a non-egological conception of consciousness on Husserlian grounds that considerably predates the well-known arguments of early Sartre and Gurwitsch. The second details the rudiments of a phenomenological philosophy of history that traces a central theme back to Parmenides. The next two reveal Shpet’s abiding philosophical interest in combating skepticism and what he took to be the reigning neo-Kantian model by which philosophy is a handmaiden to mathematical physics. The final one features a terse statement of Shpet’s overall philosophical viewpoint, written during the early years of the Stalinist period. Shpet offers an example of one facet of philosophy from a phenomenological viewpoint, demonstrating the progress as well as the deficiencies of successive eras along the historical journey. In doing so, he also gradually reveals the need for a theory of signs, interpretation, and understanding. This collection brings together key documents for assessing Shpet’s hermeneutic phenomenology and his perceived need to develop a phenomenological philosophy of language. (shrink)

Critical discourse analysis is a useful and productive qualitative methodology but has been underutilized within nursing research. In order to redress this deficiency the research presented in this article represents an exploration of the way in which critical discourse analysis may be applied to the analysis of public debates around policy for nursing practice. In this article the author discusses the history of the application of critical discourse analysis and provides an example of its application to the debate around (...) the use of nurse practitioners within the Australian healthcare system. (shrink)

Paul Feyerabend's globally acclaimed work, which sparked and continues to stimulate fierce debate, examines the deficiencies of many widespread ideas about scientific progress and the nature of knowledge. Feyerabend argues that scientific advances can only be understood in a historical context. He looks at the way the philosophy of science has consistently overemphasized practice over method, and considers the possibility that anarchism could replace rationalism in the theory of knowledge. -- Amazon.com.

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is an emotive subject, particularly in southern Africa. Among those who have been directly affected by the disease, or who perceive themselves to be personally at risk, talking about AIDS inevitably arouses strong emotions - amongst them fear, distress, loss and anger. Conventionally, human geography research has avoided engagement with such emotions. Although the ideal of the detached observer has been roundly critiqued, the emphasis in methodological literature on 'doing no harm' has led (...) even qualitative researchers to avoid difficult emotional encounters. Nonetheless, research is inevitably shaped by emotions, not least those of the researchers themselves. In this paper, we examine the role of emotions in the research process through our experiences of researching the lives of young AIDS migrants in Malawi and Lesotho. We explore how the context of the research gave rise to the production of particular emotions, and how, in response, we shaped the research, presenting a research agenda focused more on migration than AIDS. This example reveals a tension between universalised ethics expressed through ethical research guidelines that demand informed consent, and ethics of care, sensitive to emotional context. It also demonstrates how dualistic distinctions between reason and emotion, justice and care, global and local are unhelpful in interpreting the ethics of research practice. (shrink)

Inspite of the great success in many disciplines the program of reductionism has failed its genuine purpose. Systemtheory however has yielded a new concept of reductionism which we call reductionism by correspondence and which may imply a new understanding of the mind-body problem. The crucial operations of reductionism by correspondence are called idealization, interpretation and classification. They are used to optimize the description of a system. Nevertheless they lead to certain deficiencies which cannot be avoided in principle. We are therefore (...) driven to the assumption that natural systems can only be described as probabilistic systems. From this point of view nothing is said about the direction of the reduction. (shrink)