The Conversable Intellect

2019 ◽  
pp. 109-144
Author(s):  
Tim Milnes
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Social Conventions ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
The Social ◽  
Pragmatic Turn ◽  
Pragmatics Of Communication

Hume’s rhetorical concerns underscore the ways in which the pragmatic turn in British counter-Enlightenment thought is also, in a broad sense, a linguistic turn. His understanding of the necessity of trust in sustaining the fictions of belief necessary for communication undermines the conception of meaning as representation in ways that enable thinkers like Reid and Bentham to model human thought around the pragmatics of communication. Nonetheless, Hume’s linking of truth and the social conventions of language divides common-sense thinkers like Reid and Stewart (who interpret such indispensable conventions as first principles) from materialists such as Bentham and John Horne Tooke (who see Hume’s fictions of belief as, at best, pragmatically necessary). What unites Hume, Tooke, and Bentham is their vision of language as the source of what Bentham calls ‘logical fictions’, fictions that are at once philosophically unjustifiable and necessary for coherent thought.

Alcohol Problem Prevention: A “Common Sense” Approach

1987 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 369-393
Author(s):  
Selden D. Bacon
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Direct Methods ◽  
The United States ◽  
Alcohol Problems ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Alcohol Related Problems ◽  
Social Science Approach

In view of the low likelihood of the acceptance of the social science approach to alcohol problems proposed several years ago, a “common sense” approach is suggested as an alternative. Several assumptions guide this proposal, the principal one being the absence of any significant progress in the reduction of alcohol problems in the United States over the past 200 years. By the development of a common vocabulary and direct methods of observation and data collection, the “common sense” approach would provide for identifying the strengths of the multitude of past and current efforts in dealing with alcohol problems in terms of both intervention and prevention. The guiding criterion in such an approach would be the impact on alcoholism and alcohol-related problems, the definition of which would be a major task of the research.

Beyond equality of opportunity: from 'common sense' to 'good sense'

Soundings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 79 (79) ◽  
pp. 78-93
Author(s):  
Tony Jefferson
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Equality Of Opportunity ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Good Sense ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ready Availability ◽  
The Relationship

This article addresses the Labour Party's apparent inability to capitalise on the ready availability of good, progressive ideas. It suggests the key is to be found in the idea that the Labour Party no longer represents working-class people, a disjunction that can be best understood using Gramsci's distinction between 'common sense' and 'good sense'. Good sense is a more coherent development of everyday, commonsense thinking, based on its 'healthy nucleus'. However, it must never lose contact with common sense and become abstract and disconnected from life. Using this distinction, a critique of the common-sense notion of meritocracy follows, since the educational disconnect between Labour politicians and their working-class supporters is one of its malign results. This critique builds from the evidence of working-class rejection of meritocracy - the healthy nucleus that recognises the inadequacy of its justifying principle of equality of opportunity. To this is counterposed a good-sense notion of equality - one that embraces equal access to the means for achieving a flourishing life. This notion of equality is then used to explore a number of currently circulating political ideas concerned with equality, both their relationship to common sense and their potential to meet good sense criteria. These ideas include universal basic income, the Conservatives' proposed 'levelling up' agenda, and the demands of Black Lives Matter for racial justice, including the demand to 'defund the police'. A second thread is focused on the relationship between these discourses of common or good sense and the social forces with which they can be connected.

Pluralism in Education and Education in Pluralism

1998 ◽  
Vol 180 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-84
Author(s):  
Stanley L. Jaki
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Trojan Horse ◽  
Religion And Theology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fundamental Understanding ◽  
Rational Thought ◽  
Scientific Ideas ◽  
Theology And Philosophy

The physicist and historian and philosopher of science Stanley L. Jaki first notes that the word “pluralism” has become a euphemism or Trojan horse for relativism. Valid, sound pluralism ought to entail an education in the plurality of subject matters and a respect and understanding for their separate, irreducible integrities and also their rational relatedness to one another. A non-relativist epistemology of universal validity and scope underlies and relates all the great bodies of knowledge and learning—the natural sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, religion and theology, and philosophy itself. Unfortunately the term “pluralism” as now commonly used has confused or obscured this fundamental understanding, the invaluable legacy of rational thought since Plato. The misunderstanding of Einstein's conception of relativity is particularly damaging but typical of the misuse of modern scientific ideas by thinkers in other fields; Einstein's idea of relativity is unfortunately named, as it has nothing to do with epistemological or moral relativism, for neither of which it provides any warrant. All the subsets of rationality—the plurality of subject matters—comprise the universal set of rationality itself, a fact that Plato well understood and that needs to be understood today—perhaps now more than ever. Education need to safeguard and develop the invaluable common-sense human intuitions of the true and good as universal realities.

scholarly journals The (mis)uses of life histories. The linguistic turn, life histories and (women’s) life stories

1999 ◽  
Vol 5 (12) ◽  
pp. 133-151
Author(s):  
Claudia de Lima Costa
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Cultural Scripts ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
The Social ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Women's Lives

This paper retraces the debates on life-histories before and after the linguistic turn in the social sciences, and, more specifically, in the anthropological tradition. It stresses how poststructuralist feminist methodological, theoretical, and political appropriations of personal narratives represent a significant textual intervention in the gendered social-cultural scripts of women’s lives.

True Church, National Church, Minority Church: Episcopacy and Authority in the Restored Church of Ireland

2016 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Rose Sawyer
Keyword(s):  
First Principles ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The People ◽  
Church Hierarchy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Church Of Ireland ◽  
The Face ◽  
Political Realities ◽  
The Church

The Church of Ireland in the later seventeenth century faced many challenges. After two decades of war and effective suppression, the church in 1660 had to reestablish itself as the national church of the kingdom of Ireland in the face of opposition from both Catholics and Dissenters, who together made up nearly ninety percent of the island's population. While recent scholarship has illuminated Irish protestantism as a social group during this period, the theology of the established church remains unexamined in its historical context. This article considers the theological arguments used by members of the church hierarchy in sermons and tracts written between 1660 and 1689 as they argued that the Church of Ireland was both a true apostolic church and best suited for the security and salvation of the people of Ireland. Attention to these concerns shows that the social and political realities of being a minority church compelled Irish churchmen to focus on basic arguments for an episcopal national establishment. It suggests that this focus on first principles allowed the church a certain amount of ecclesiological flexibility that helped it survive later turbulence such as the non-jurors controversy of 1689–1690 fairly intact.

Neoliberalism in Mexican Cultural Theory

ARTMargins ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 86-87
Author(s):  
Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Shadow Economy ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theoretical Frame ◽  
Mexican Politics

This essay reviews two theoretical books on neoliberalism written by Mexican cultural critics: Capitalismo gore (Gore Capitalism), by Sayak Valencia, published originally in Spanish in 2010 and translated into English in 2018, and La tiranía del sentido común ( The Tyranny of Common Sense) by Irmgard Emmelhainz, published in Spanish in 2016 and yet to be translated into English. These works are pioneering in their discussion of the correlation between neoliberalism, subjectivity, and culture in Mexico, and they have become widely influential in broader discussions of art, visual culture, literature, and cultural production. They add to the work of economic and political historians, such as Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo and María Eugenia Romero Sotelo, by connecting landmark moments in neoliberalization (from the financialization of the global economy in the 1970s to the War on Drugs in the 2000s) to changing paradigms in art. Author Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado contextualizes both books within larger discussions of Mexican cultural neoliberalism and describes the theoretical frame works through which both authors read Mexican politics, art, and popular culture. In Valencia's case, Sánchez Prado discusses her idea of “gore capitalism”: a framework for understanding how neoliberalism relies on dynamics of the shadow economy and on the subjectification of gore (what Valencia calls endriago subjectivity) to function at the social and artistic levels. In the case of Emmelhainz, Sánchez Prado engages with the author's idea of semiocapitalism, a term borrowed from theorist Franco “Bifo” Berardi, which Emmelhainz deploys to account for the interrelation between culture and capital in the era of neoliberalism. As such, Sánchez Prado argues, Emmelhainz and Valencia provide ways of reading artistic and visual production, including museum curatorship and narcocultura, in ways that show their organic relationship to neoliberal economic and political reforms. Find the complete article at artmargins.com .

scholarly journals W kwestii ekologii wiary

2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-175
Author(s):  
Wiesław Sztumski
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
World Community ◽  
The Social

Nowadays, we observe a progressive depreciation of faith together with the degradation of the social environment. It concerns faith in a broad sense here, not only religious but also faith in ideals, in ourselves and the confidence to other people and to different social in situations. We should not permit the further deflation of faith regarding the role which it plays in the life of people, their thinking, and doing, in integrating them in a world community as a result of globalization. On the contrary, it is necessary to strengthen our faith to care for it. Therefore, it is necessary to create an ecology of faith and to develop large, deep, and many-sided study in this domain, because faith is a means for survival in present endangered life environment.

scholarly journals Social representations and ideology: Theories of common sense about COVID-19 among middle-class Brazilians and their ideological implications

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
Luiz Gustavo Silva Souza ◽  
Emma O’Dwyer ◽  
Sabrine Mantuan dos Santos Coutinho ◽  
Sharmistha Chaudhuri ◽  
Laila Lilargem Rocha ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Psychological Analysis ◽  
Related Risk ◽  
The Social

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the lives of billions of people worldwide. Individuals and groups were compelled to construct theories of common sense about the disease to communicate and guide practices. The theory of social representations provides powerful concepts to analyse the psychosocial construction of COVID-19. This study aimed to understand the social representations of COVID-19 constructed by middle-class Brazilian adults and their ideological implications, providing a social-psychological analysis of these phenomena while the pandemic is still ongoing. We adopted a qualitative approach based on semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted online in April-May 2020. Participants were 13 middle-class Brazilians living in urban areas. We analysed the interviews with thematic analysis and a phenomenological approach. The social representations were organised around three themes: 1) a virus originated in human actions and with anthropocentric meanings (e.g., a punishment for the human-led destruction of the environment); 2) a dramatic disease that attacks the lungs and kills people perceived to have “low immunity”; and 3) a disturbing pandemic that was also conceived as a correction event with positive consequences. The social representations included beliefs about the individualistic determination of immunity, the attribution of divine causes to the pandemic, and the need for the moral reformation of humankind. The discussion highlights the ideological implications of these theories of common sense. Socially underprivileged groups are at greater COVID-19-related risk, which the investigated social representations may contribute to conceal and naturalise.

scholarly journals EL PAPEL DE LAS CONVENCIONES SOCIALES. NOTAS PARA EL ESTUDIO DE LAS ORGANIZACIONES BUROCRÁTICAS

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 128
Author(s):  
Alma Isunza Bizuet
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Related Research ◽  
Bureaucratic Organization ◽  
Social Conventions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Servant ◽  
The Social

En este artículo analizo la propuesta de cambio de paradigmas de las organizaciones burocráticas que busca mejorar la calidad de los servicios públicos ofrecidos a los ciudadanos. El paradigma posburocrático implica una corriente de cambio que cuestiona la figura del «servidor público» y concede mayor importancia a los empleados; se considera el peso y la importancia de las instituciones y su relación con las convenciones sociales que le imprimen una identidad característica a cada organización burocrática particular, por ello examino las aportaciones de la teoría sociológica para comprender la vinculación entre la acción social y las convenciones e instituciones sociales con el fin de documentar la importancia de las convenciones sociales sobre las que descansa el funcionamiento cotidiano de la burocracia, y proponer proyectos de investigación relacionados.   ABSTRACTThis paper analyses changes occurred within paradigms in bureaucratic organizations, aiming at proving the quality of the services offered to the citizens. The posbureaucratic paradigm implies a course change that questions from the own conception the figure of the «public servant» and grants the major importance to the employees, it considers the influence and the importance of the institutions and its relation with the social conventions that imprints a characteristic identity to each particular bureaucratic organization, for that reason the contributions of the sociological theory are examined to understand the entailment between the social action and the social conventions and institutions, to illustrate the importance of the social conventions on which the daily operation of the bureaucracy rests; in order to propose related research projects.

scholarly journals The Jihadi Current and the Lay Thinking: A “Re-Anchorage” Process Hypothesis

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-374
Author(s):  
Dorra Ben Alaya
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
The Social ◽  
Islamist Terrorism ◽  
Familiar Objects ◽  
Theory Of Social Representations

The Jihadi-salafist doctrine which is at the Islamist terrorism origin that affects several countries since the emergence of Al Qaeda in the late 80's, gave birth to the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham/Levant (ISIS/ISIL) established as a Caliphate in 2014. Despite the ISIS official military defeat in 2019, the Jihadi-Salafist current - whose history goes back a long way, is currently behind a number of attacks whether collective or individual, claimed by known organizations or committed in isolation. In our perspective, we try to apprehend the attraction power of the Jihadi narrative issue taking the Theory of Social Representations as a paradigmatic framework. This implies that we dont consider the Jihadi current membership as the manifestation of a deviation from normality or optimal rationality, but as the expression of a certain common sense resonance. More precisely, and taking the case of the Tunisian context, the success of the Jihadi narrative is explained by its effectiveness as an interpretive grid and as a guide for action, making it possible to re-anchor a reality lacking in meaning. This hypothesis of a re-anchoring implies that anchoring as described by Moscovici as one of the two processes at the origin of the social representations formation (with the objectification process), could be not only as a familiarization of the strange by inserting it in an already known pre-existing frame, but by substituting to the frame itself, a new one, in order to be able to insert familiar objects which would have lost their sense precisely because of the old frame itself. This hypothesis could offer a theoretical and heuristic perspective allowing the anchoring process to be conceived as a circular and non-definitive process.

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