Reasons versus causes in Arocha’s scientific realism

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 442-445
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Lo Dico
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Aggregate Data ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Final Causes ◽  
The Individual

Arocha’s scientific realism (2021) puts at the center of psychology the individual and their variability in behavior: the individual appears to be irreducible to what emerges from the analysis of aggregate data. According to this position, psychology’s aim is to uncover the mechanisms underlying the observable world. This entails adopting the cause-based approach of the natural sciences. Arocha’s article also refers to final causes and intentions and thus to the reason-based approach of the human sciences in contrast to that of the natural sciences. Thus, it is not clear whether the article aims to reduce the final causes to mechanical causes or supports the irreducibility of the former. Starting from these remarks, this comment will argue that the reason-based approach is preferable to the cause-based approach in order to have a scientific psychology. Adopting the reason-based approach also avoids the appeal to aggregate data by focusing upon the single case.

CREATING THE SITUATION OF SUCCESS IN THE HUMAN SCIENCES – A PREREQUISITE FOR THE HUMANIZATION OF EDUCATION

2020 ◽  
pp. 48-57
Author(s):  
Ayta Sakun ◽  
Tatiana Kadlubovich ◽  
Darina Chernyak
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Creative Potential ◽  
Modern Education ◽  
Future Success ◽  
Cognitive Motivation ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Individual

The problem of success became relevant at the beginning of the XXI century. Everyone strives to succeed, to be confident in themselves and in the future. Success is recognized as one of the needs of the individual. Reforming modern education is designed to make it human-centered, effective, close to the practical needs of the learner. The humanization of education is impossible without creating situations of success in learning. Such situations activate a person's cognitive motivation, reveal his creative potential, make a person strong and confident. To create situations of success, teachers use a variety of methods and tools that enhance the cognitive activity of students.

Application of Problem Situations for the Development of Learning Skills in the Study of Natural Sciences

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarita Slavova ◽  
Angel Slavchev
Keyword(s):  
Health Education ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Problem Situation ◽  
Learning Skills ◽  
Problem Situations ◽  
The Individual

The problem situation is one of the ways to form general learning skills in the study of natural sciences. It provides an opportunity to apply the individual approach, choosing a path for making a final decision and full personal development of the student. This article reviews the nature of the problem situation and learning skills, presents a classification of species and offers an example of use in teaching biology and health education - 7th grade to develop the skill of comparison. The article aims to guide teachers in the logical structure for creating a problem situation and the requirements for the content of individual elements. An option for linking it with a specific educational content is also shown.

scholarly journals Application of a New Processing Method to Post-LDL-apheresis Data

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franco Corsini ◽  
Arrigo F. G. Cicero ◽  
Antonia Giannuzzi ◽  
Antonio Gaddi
Keyword(s):  
Relative Error ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Low Density Lipoprotein ◽  
Density Lipoprotein ◽  
Direct Consequence ◽  
Ldl Apheresis ◽  
Theoretical Function ◽  
New Processing ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Estimate Standard Error

Our aim was to elaborate a method to optimise treatment intervals for the individual low-density lipoprotein (LDL)-apheresis treated patients. After each treatment, plasma LDL concentrations show a time-related increase with a decreasing speed until a maximum level.We searched to interpret the post-LDL-apheresis experimental data trend as the physical process that produces the observed curve, so that the fitting presupposed theoretical function is a direct consequence of the physic process, because to establish the better time. Applying the proposed fitting method to a succession of 15 samples obtained from the mean of six plasmapheresis executed on five different subjects, small estimate standard error (5 mg/dl) and relative error (1.7%) with a dispersion evidently related to the experimental error were observed. Obviously, applying the same method to a single case, the dispersion is more marked (relative error <5%), with a SE of 10-13 mg/dl, even though the aspect of a casual phenomenon is conserved. Our physical interpretation appears to be a practical model to predict the LDL-rebound kinetic of the single patient.

Changing Beliefs About Emotions in IBS: A Single Case Design

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-317
Author(s):  
H.M. Bowers ◽  
A.L. Wroe
Keyword(s):  
Single Case ◽  
Individual Case ◽  
Single Case Design ◽  
Emotional Suppression ◽  
Cognitive Behavioural ◽  
Scale Scores ◽  
Irritable Bowel ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Beliefs About Emotions

Background: Previous research suggests benefits of targeting beliefs about the unacceptability of emotions in treatment for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Aims: The current study developed and tested an intervention focusing on beliefs and behaviours around emotional expression. Method: Four participants with IBS attended five group sessions using cognitive behavioural techniques focusing on beliefs about the unacceptability of expressing emotions. Bi-weekly questionnaires were completed and a group interview was conducted. This study used an AB design with four participants. Results: Averages indicate that participants showed decreases in beliefs about unacceptability of emotions and emotional suppression during the intervention, although this was not reflected in any of the individual trends in Beliefs about Emotions Scale scores and was significant in only one individual case for Courtauld Emotional Control Scale scores. Affective distress and quality of life improved during follow-up, with only one participant not improving with regard to distress. Qualitative data suggest that participants felt that the intervention was beneficial, referencing the value in sharing their emotions. Conclusions: This study suggests the potential for beliefs about emotions and emotional suppression to be addressed in cognitive behavioural interventions in IBS. That beliefs and behaviours improved before outcomes suggests they may be important processes to investigate in treatment for IBS.

Taking the Humanities Seriously

2020 ◽  
pp. 108926802097502
Author(s):  
Barbara S. Held
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Renaissance Art ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy

As the humanities suffer decline in the academy, some psychologists have turned to them as an especially apt way to advance a psychological science that reflects lived experience more accurately and robustly. Disciplinary psychology’s adoption of the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of the natural sciences is often seen as a misapplication that has resulted in a science that diminishes if not demolishes subjectivity and misrepresents many. By contrast, the humanities are taken to be well positioned to infuse scientific psychology with myriad aspects of lived experience. I applaud all efforts to take the humanities seriously, by incorporating the theories, methods, and observations of the humanities in psychological science; the question is, how best to do this. On what understanding of the humanities should scientific psychology proceed? With these questions in mind, I review arguments about how psychological science can benefit from attention to the humanities. I also consider worries about a scientistic turn within the humane disciplines themselves, which turn mirrors worries about scientism in psychology. Contemporary examples of scholarship on the origins of ancient Greek philosophy and depictions of Christ in Renaissance art illustrate how the wars over truth and evidence that plague psychology are no less fierce in the humanities. I conclude that if psychologists apprehend the humanities with the critical understandings called for in psychological science, we may not only appreciate their contributions more completely and accurately, but may also deploy those contributions more substantially, in working to broaden and deepen psychological science.

The Strange Late Birth of the British Academy

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Drayton
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Human Knowledge

The British Academy was founded in 1902. In November 1899, the Council of the Royal Society sent a letter to prominent scholars suggesting the formation of some body to represent Britain in disciplines other than the natural sciences. A meeting of the scholars gave its support for a suggestion that the Royal Society might give room to literary and human sciences in a special section, or support the foundation of a separate body. For over a year, the Royal Society deliberated, but concluded in June of 1901 that it could neither include the literary sciences within it, nor initiate the establishing of a British academy. It was thus the scientists who provided both stimulus and constraint for the mobilisation of human knowledge in the British Academy and to welcome all branches of intellectual enterprise within one temple.

Dilthey, Wilhelm (1833–1911)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf A. Makkreel
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Descriptive Psychology ◽  
Wilhelm Dilthey ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
Philosophy Of Life ◽  
Causal Laws ◽  
The Way

Wilhelm Dilthey saw his work as contributing to a ‘Critique of Historical Reason’ which would expand the scope of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason by examining the epistemological conditions of the human sciences as well as of the natural sciences. Both kinds of science take their departure from ordinary life and experience, but whereas the natural sciences seek to focus on the way things behave independently of human involvement, the human sciences take account of this very involvement. The natural sciences use external observation and measurement to construct an objective domain of nature that is abstracted from the fullness of lived experience. The human sciences (humanities and social sciences), by contrast, help to define what Dilthey calls the historical world. By making use of inner as well as outer experience, the human sciences preserve a more direct link with our original sense of life than do the natural sciences. Whereas the natural sciences seek explanations of nature, connecting the discrete representations of outer experience through hypothetical generalizations and causal laws, the human sciences aim at an understanding that articulates the fundamental structures of historical life given in lived experience. Finding lived experience to be inherently connected and meaningful, Dilthey opposed traditional atomistic and associationist psychologies and developed a descriptive psychology that has been recognized as anticipating phenomenology. Dilthey first thought that this descriptive psychology could provide a neutral foundation for the other human sciences, but in his later hermeneutical writings he rejected the idea of a foundational discipline or method. Thus he ends by claiming that all the human sciences are interpretive and mutually dependent. Hermeneutically conceived, understanding is a process of interpreting the ‘objectifications of life’, the external expressions or manifestations of human thought and action. Interpersonal understanding is attained through these common objectifications and not, as is widely believed, through empathy. Moreover, to fully understand myself I must analyse the expressions of my life in the same way that I analyse the expressions of others. Not every aspect of life can be captured within the respective limits of the natural and the human sciences. Dilthey’s philosophy of life also leaves room for a kind of anthropological reflection whereby we attempt to do justice to the ultimate riddles of life and death. Such reflection receives its fullest expression in worldviews, which are overall perspectives on life encompassing the way we perceive and conceive the world, evaluate it aesthetically and respond to it in action. Dilthey discerned many typical worldviews in art and religion, but in Western philosophy he distinguished three recurrent types: the worldviews of naturalism, the idealism of freedom and objective idealism.

Scientific realism and social science

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Keat
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Realist Conception

A central issue in the philosophy of the social sciences is the possibility of naturalism: whether disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, economics and psychology can be ‘scientific’ in broadly the same sense in which this term is applied to physics, chemistry, biology and so on. In the long history of debates about this issue, both naturalists and anti-naturalists have tended to accept a particular view of the natural sciences – the ‘positivist’ conception of science. But the challenges to this previously dominant position in the philosophy of science from around the 1960s made this shared assumption increasingly problematic. It was no longer clear what would be implied by the naturalist requirement that the social sciences should be modelled on the natural sciences. It also became necessary to reconsider the arguments previously employed by anti-naturalists, to see whether these held only on the assumption of a positivist conception of science. If so, a non-positivist naturalism might be defended: a methodological unity of the social and natural sciences based on some alternative to positivism. That this is possible has been argued by scientific realists in the social sciences, drawing on a particular alternative to positivism: the realist conception of science developed in the 1970s by Harré and others.

scholarly journals Natural Sciences and Social Sciences

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-119
Author(s):  
C.S.A (Kris) van Koppen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nature And Society

Klintman, Mikael. 2017. Human Sciences and Human Interests: Integrating the Social, Economic, and Evolutionary Sciences. London: Routledge.Jetzkowitz, Jens. 2019. Co-evolution of Nature and Society: Foundations for Interdisciplinary Sustainability Studies. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911)

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrus Tool
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Culture ◽  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Specific Nature ◽  
Wilhelm Dilthey ◽  
Helmuth Plessner ◽  
Hans Georg Gadamer

Wilhelm Dilthey initially studied theology in Germany but later shifted to philosophy and history. He tackled the specific nature of human sciences in relation to natural sciences and initiated a debate on the connection between understanding and explanation in scientific knowledge. In addition to his own school, he exerted influence on fellow philosophers Martin Heidegger, Helmuth Plessner, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. This chapter explores the formation of Dilthey’s philosophical views, including the principle of phenomenality, the theory of human sciences, and the role of inner experience as the main source of cognition in human sciences. It also discusses his later work and his arguments concerning empirical factuality, congealed objectivity, and processual reality. Finally, the chapter examines how ideas similar to those of Dilthey have influenced organizational culture and dynamics.

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