scholarly journals Ryle’s “Intellectualist Legend” in Historical Context

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Kremer
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Timothy Williamson ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that emerged from his criticism of the “intellectualist legend” that to do something intelligently is “to do a bit of theory and then to do a bit of practice,” and became a philosophical commonplace in the second half of the last century. In this century Jason Stanley (initially with Timothy Williamson) has attacked Ryle’s distinction, arguing that “knowing-how is a species of knowing-that,” and accusing Ryle of setting up a straw man in his critique of “intellectualism.” Examining the use of the terms “intellectualism” and “anti-intellectualism” in the first half of the 20th century, in a wide-ranging debate in the social sciences as well as in philosophy, I show that Ryle was not criticizing a straw man, but a live historical position. In the context of this controversy, Ryle’s position represents a third way between “intellectualism” and “anti-intellectualism,” an option that has largely gone missing in the 21st century discussion. This argument illustrates how history can inform the history of philosophy, and how the history of philosophy can inform contemporary philosophical inquiry.

Does Popper Explain Historical Explanation?

1995 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 225-240
Author(s):  
Kenneth Minogue
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

It is one of Karl Popper's great distinctions that he has an intense—some would say too intense—awareness of the history of philosophy within which he works. He knows not only its patterns, but also its comedies, and sometimes he plays rhetorically against their grain. He knows, for example, that the drive to consistency tends to turn philosophy into compositions of related doctrines, each seeming to involve the others. Religious belief, for example, tends to go with idealism and free will, religious scepticism with materialism and determinism. Popper does not believe in a religion, was for long some kind of a socialist, and takes his bearings from the philosophy of science. Aha! it seems we have located him. Here is a positivist, a materialist, probably a determinist. But of course he denies he is any of these things. Again, like many modern thinkers, he wants to extend scientific method not only to the social sciences but also to history. So far so familiar, until we discover that he regards nature as no less ‘cloudy’ than human societies.

Philosophy for Girls

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pluralistic Approach ◽  
Women Philosophers

Written by twenty expert women in philosophy and representing a diverse and pluralistic approach to philosophy as a discipline, this book engages girls and women ages sixteen to twenty-four, as well as university and high school educators and students who want a change from standard anthologies that include few or no women. The book is divided into four sections that correspond to major fields in philosophy—metaphysics, epistemology, social and political philosophy, and ethics—but the chapters within those sections provide fresh ways of understanding those fields.Every chapter begins with a lively anecdote about a girl or woman in literature, myth, history, science, or art. Chapters are dominated by women’s voices, with nearly all primary and secondary sources used coming from women in the history of philosophy and a diverse set of contemporary women philosophers. All chapters offer the authors’ distinct philosophical perspectives written in their own voices and styles, representing diverse training, backgrounds, and interests. The introduction and prologue explicitly invite the book’s readers to engage in philosophical conversation and reflection, thus setting the stage for continued contemplation and dialogue beyond the book itself. The result is a rigorous yet accessible entry point into serious philosophical contemplation designed to embolden and strengthen its readers’ own senses of philosophical inquiry and competence. The book’s readers will feel confident in knowing that expert women affirm an equitable and just intellectual landscape for all and thus have lovingly collaborated to write this book.

Exorcising the Ghost in the Machine

Philosophy ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 63 (246) ◽  
pp. 487-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. P. Rickman
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Direct Bearing ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

The history of philosophy provides part of the history, or pre-history, of the social sciences. As they were struggling into being, or even before they existed, philosophy was hammering out some of the conceptual tools, lines of approach and basic hypotheses. One of the constantly recurring themes in the history of philosophy which has a direct bearing on the social sciences is the relationship between mind and matter.

scholarly journals Perubahan Tema dan Perspektif dalam Historiografi Asia Tenggara, 1955-2010

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-66
Author(s):  
Sugeng Prakoso
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
The Social ◽  
Asian Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Asian History ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
External Forces ◽  
Annales School

This article examines the changes in themes and perspectives in the writing of Southeast Asian history in the period 1955 to 2010. The historiography of the 1950s tended to political history and the dominant view of the external influences of India, China, Islam, and the West on Southeast Asian history. In the 1960s the thematic focus shifted to economic and social aspects along with the emergence of the trend of social sciences approaches in historical studies which was influenced by the Annales School. In the 1980s, with the onset of the linguistic and cultural turns in the social sciences, historians in the region turned to diachronic studies of the formation of identity, mentality, representation and discourse of local knowledge. The shift in perspective also occurred with the emergence of the (Southeast) Asian-centric perspective which saw changes in Southeast Asian society as a result of the dynamic interaction between the region's internal and external forces. Since the end of the 1990s, there has been a tendency for the ‘interstices’, that is linking the history of the Southeast Asian region with its global historical context, and on the connectivity of historical disciplines with other social-humanities disciplines to build bridges of trans-disciplinary studies.Artikel ini mengkaji perubahan tema dan perspektif dalam penulisan sejarah Asia Tenggara pada periode 1955 sampai 2010. Historiografi dasawarsa 1950-an cenderung pada sejarah politik dan dominannya pandangan ihwal pengaruh eksternal India, Cina, Islam, dan Barat atas sejarah Asia Tenggara. Pada dasawarsa 1960-an fokus tematis bergeser ke aspek ekonomi dan sosial seiring dengan munculnya tren pendekatan ilmu-ilmu sosial yang dipengaruhi oleh Mazhab Annales. Pada dasawarsa 1980-an, dengan menguatnya kajian linguistik dan budaya, sejarawan di kawasan ini beralih ke studi diakronis tentang pembentukan identitas, mentalitas, representasi, dan wacana pengetahuan lokal. Pergeseran perspektif juga terjadi dengan menguatnya perspektif Asia (Tenggara)-sentris yang melihat perubahan-perubahan di dalam masyarakat Asia Tenggara sebagai hasil interaksi dinamis antara kekuatan internal dan eksternal kawasan itu. Sejak akhir dasawarsa 1990-an, muncul kecenderungan pada ‘interstisi’, yaitu menghubungkan sejarah kawasan lokal Asia Tenggara dengan konteks historis globalnya, dan pada konektivitas disiplin sejarah dengan berbagai disiplin ilmu sosial-humaniora lainnya untuk membangun jembatan kajian transdisipliner.  

scholarly journals Thinking like a State - Embodied intelligence in the deep history of our collective minds

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avel GUÉNIN--CARLUT
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Life Form ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Active Inference ◽  
Minimal Form ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Embodied Intelligence

This article aims to show how the deep history of early State societies entails the development of a collective form of cognitive agency. It relates classical works in the anthropology of States (in particular Scott’s Seeing like a State) with the enactive account of biological and cognitive organisation, thanks to the unified ontology for self-organisation dynamics across scales offered by the Active Inference framework. Active Inference conceives of cognition as synchronisation across individuated sensorimotor states. It entails that biological or sociocultural constraints display a minimal form of cognition by shaping the behaviour of faster dynamics in a certain way. When such constraints collectively define a basic life form (an integrated, operationally closed system), they can therefore be said to embody adaptive knowledge properly speaking.The (en)Active Inference account I articulate here strongly motivates and methodologically grounds a holist approach in the social sciences. Indeed, it grounds the study of human societies in the role of structural constraints, whose “meaning” depends both on the broader system’s activity and in the historical context of their emergence. The present account of the dynamics of early urbanisation and State genesis aims to illustrate this approach.

The Problem

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats Alvesson ◽  
Yiannis Gabriel ◽  
Roland Paulsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Prestigious Journal ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Academic Researchers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Wide Gap

This chapter introduces ‘the problem’ of meaningless research in the social sciences. Over the past twenty years there has been an enormous growth in research publications, but never before in the history of humanity have so many social scientists written so much to so little effect. Academic research in the social sciences is often inward looking, addressed to small tribes of fellow researchers, and its purpose in what is increasingly a game is that of getting published in a prestigious journal. A wide gap has emerged between the esoteric concerns of social science researchers and the pressing issues facing today’s societies. The chapter critiques the inaccessibility of the language used by academic researchers, and the formulaic qualities of most research papers, fostered by the demands of the publishing game. It calls for a radical move from research for the sake of publishing to research that has something meaningful to say.

Historical Overview of Qualitative Research in the Social Sciences

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-58
Author(s):  
Svend Brinkmann ◽  
Michael Hviid Jacobsen ◽  
Søren Kristiansen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Social History ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Conceptual History ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Technological History

Qualitative research does not represent a monolithic, agreed-on approach to research but is a vibrant and contested field with many contradictions and different perspectives. To respect the multivoicedness of qualitative research, this chapter will approach its history in the plural—as a variety of histories. The chapter will work polyvocally and focus on six histories of qualitative research, which are sometimes overlapping, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes even incommensurable. They can be considered articulations of different discourses about the history of the field, which compete for researchers’ attention. The six histories are: (a) the conceptual history of qualitative research, (b) the internal history of qualitative research, (c) the marginalizing history of qualitative research, (d) the repressed history of qualitative research, (e) the social history of qualitative research, and (f) the technological history of qualitative research.

Women in science: from images to data

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Jami
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Women Scientists ◽  
Working Environment ◽  
Women In Science ◽  
Standing Committee ◽  
Family Responsibilities ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

Abstract In recent decades research in the social sciences, including in the history of science, has shown that women scientists continue to be depicted as exceptions to the rule that a normal scientist is a man. The underlying message is that being an outstanding scientist is incompatible with being an ordinary woman. From women scientists’ reported experiences, we learn that family responsibilities as well as sexism in their working environment are two major hindrances to their careers. This experience is now backed by statistical analysis, so that what used to be regarded as an individual problem for each woman of science can now be identified as a multi-layered social phenomenon, to be analysed and remedied as such. Over the last five years, international scientific unions have come together to address these issues, first through the Gender Gap in Science Project, and recently through the setting up of a Standing Committee for Gender Equality in Science (SCGES) whose task is to foster measures to reduce the barriers that women scientists have to surmount in their working lives.

scholarly journals Plato on Natural Kinds: The Promethean Method of the Philebus

Apeiron ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Proios
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Natural World ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Abstract Plato’s invention of the metaphor of carving the world by the joints (Phaedrus 265d–66c) gives him a privileged place in the history of natural kind theory in philosophy and science; he is often understood to present a paradigmatic but antiquated view of natural kinds as possessing eternal, immutable, necessary essences. Yet, I highlight that, as a point of distinction from contemporary views about natural kinds, Plato subscribes to an intelligent-design, teleological framework, in which the natural world is the product of craft and, as a result, is structured such that it is good for it to be that way. In Plato’s Philebus, the character Socrates introduces a method of inquiry whose articulation of natural kinds enables it to confer expert knowledge, such as literacy. My paper contributes to an understanding of Plato’s view of natural kinds by interpreting this method in light of Plato’s teleological conception of nature. I argue that a human inquirer who uses the method identifies kinds with relational essences within a system causally related to the production of some unique craft-object, such as writing. As a result, I recast Plato’s place in the history of philosophy, including Plato’s view of the relation between the kinds according to the natural and social sciences. Whereas some are inclined to separate natural from social kinds, Plato holds the unique view that all naturalness is a social feature of kinds reflecting the role of intelligent agency.

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