scholarly journals Non-Naturalism and Reference

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jussi Suikkanen ◽  
Jussi Suikkanen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Causal Mechanism ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Natural Properties ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Causal Theories ◽  
Qua Problem

Metaethical realists disagree about the nature of normative properties. Naturalists think that they are ordinary natural properties: causally efficacious, a posteriori knowable, and usable in the best explanations of natural and social sciences. Non-naturalist realists, in contrast, argue that they are sui generis: causally inert, a priori knowable and not a part of the subject matter of sciences. It has been assumed so far that naturalists can explain causally how the normative predicates manage to refer to normative properties, whereas non-naturalists are unable to provide equally satisfactory metasemantic explanations. This article first describes how the previous non-naturalist accounts of reference fail to tell us how the normative predicates could have come to refer to the non-natural properties rather than to the natural ones. I will then use the so-called qua-problem to show how the causal theories of reference of naturalists also fail to fix the reference of normative predicates to unique natural properties. Finally, I will suggest that, just as naturalists need to rely on the non-causal mechanism of reference magnetism to solve the previous problem, non-naturalists, too, can rely on the very same idea to respond to the pressing metasemantic challenges that they face concerning reference.

Science and common sense in the study of international politics

1984 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-39
Author(s):  
Roger D. Spegele
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Humean View

The history of recent efforts to establish a science of international politics may be usefully viewed as elaborate glosses on David Hume's powerful philosophical programme for resolving, reconciling or dissolving a variety of perspicuous dualities: the external and the internal, mind and body, reason and experience. Philosophers and historians of ideas still dispute the extent to which Hume succeeded but if one is to judge by the two leading ‘scientific’ research programmes1 for international politics—inductivism and naive falsificationism —these dualities are as unresolved as ever, with fatal consequences for the thesis of the unity of the sciences. For the failure to reconcile or otherwise dissolve such divisions shows that, on the Humean view, there is at least one difference between the physical (or natural) sciences. and the moral (or social) sciences: namely, that while the latter bear on the internal and external, the former are concerned primarily with the external. How much this difference matters and how the issue is avoided by the proponents of inductivism and naïve falsification is the subject matter of this paper.

‘Some of Our People can be the Most Difficult’. Reflections on Difficult Interviews

2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Sam Pryke
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Initial Response ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Complex Matter

This article questions the methodological convention in the social sciences that the interviewer must never disagree with a respondent in qualitative research. The issue arose during research on the British Serbian community when some participants sought to justify, exculpate or reject Serbian liability for atrocity. My initial response not to demur but to simply move onto the next question morally tainted the research, as it seemed to collud in a denial of Serbian responsibility for atrocity in an understanding of war (1991-99) in which the Serbs were always the victim. I discuss, through an extended excerpt from an interview conducted later in the research, my attempt to challenge respondents over this claim. I set the moral and methodological case to object to the denial of atrocity against the practical dangers present in doing so: the risk of a loosing track of the spine of a prepared script of questions as a fruitless argument develops and the intricacies of the subject matter are exposed. But I also allow for an interpretation that would suggest that my response was altogether too cautious. My conclusion, such as one can make one about such a complex matter, is that to object in such a kind of instance is legitimate.

Do We Have Reason to Doubt the Importance of the Distinction between A Priori and A Posteriori Knowledge?

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-155
Author(s):  
Paul Boghossian ◽  
Timothy Williamson
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Type Of Exercise

This essay defends the a priori–a posteriori distinction against two skeptical challenges posed by Williamson in Chapter 8. Against the argument that no top-down characterization of the distinction can line up with the intuitive paradigm examples, it contends that the argument’s reliance on the distinction between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ experience renders it ineffective. An alternative way of running the argument is shown to lead to a different conclusion, one about the nature of justifiers. Against Williamson’s central argument, which presents a pair of cases designed to show that whatever distinction the paradigm examples mark it cannot be one of epistemological significance, the essay argues that Williamson fails to draw the correct conclusions from his cases, and in particular fails to show that the subject in either case can acquire justified belief via the type of exercise of the imagination that he describes.

scholarly journals Is There a Metaphysics of Consciousness Without a Phenomenology of Consciousness? Some Thoughts Derived from Husserl's Philosophical Phenomenology

2010 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 141-154
Author(s):  
Eduard Marbach
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Mental Acts ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Philosophical Phenomenology

AbstractThe paper first addresses Husserl's conception of philosophical phenomenology, metaphysics, and the relation between them, in order to explain why, on Husserl's view, there is no metaphysics of consciousness without a phenomenology of consciousness. In doing so, it recalls some of the methodological tenets of Husserl's phenomenology, pointing out that phenomenology is an eidetic or a priori science which has first of all to do with mere ideal possibilities of consciousness and its correlates; metaphysics of consciousness, on the other hand, has to do with its reality or actuality, requiring an eidetic foundation in order to become scientifically valuable. Presuming that, if consciousness is to be the subject-matter of a metaphysics which is not simply speculative or based on prejudice, it is crucial to get the phenomenology of consciousness right, the paper then engages in a detailed descriptive-eidetic analysis of mental acts of re-presenting something and tries to argue that their structures, involving components of non-actual experiencing, pose a serious problem for a materialistic or physicalistic metaphysics of consciousness. The paper ends with a brief comment on Husserl's broader view of metaphysics, having to do with the irrationality of the transcendental fact, i.e. the constitution of the factual world and the factual life of the mind.

scholarly journals Overdurability and Technical Wear of Materials Used in the Construction of Old Buildings

Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 378
Author(s):  
Jarosław Konior
Keyword(s):  
Inverse Relationship ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Natural Aging ◽  
Distribution Functions ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Technical Maintenance ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
The Many

The technical maintenance of old tenement houses traditionally constructed is an ongoing problem, and will continue to be so in the coming years. The subject of the article includes old residential buildings from the turn of the XIX and XX centuries, which are a part of Wroclaw’s downtown district. They can be understood as an essential link in the process of shaping the cultural and social microenvironment of man. The ability of them to meet the multiple expectations of residents depends on the natural aging of tenement houses’ materials, the methods of their maintenance and use, and the influence of the many factors that cause their accelerated wear. The assumed durability is the main reference parameter of the changing age of the inspected tenement houses. The course of the theoretical and observed degree of the technical wear of these buildings was compared with their durability. For the age of these buildings, the technical wear should reach 100%. It was observed that in the first period of use of tenement houses, the phenomenon of “infradurability” occurs, and after exceeding a certain age—depending on the maintenance conditions of the building—the phenomenon of “overdurability” of the building occurs. It was shown that the durability of important elements of old buildings, as a parameter that was defined “a posteriori”, ranges from 153 to 177 years, and is greater than the corresponding literature values indicated “a priori”. The probability of reaching such an age of an element, in which the observed values of technical wear exceed the theoretical values, is much higher than the probability of an opposite event. A comparative analysis of the distribution functions of these probabilities indicates that the probabilities of theoretical wear values are higher than those observed in the case of the assumed literature durability of elements. There is also an inverse relationship for durability that corresponds to the age of the oldest examined elements of tenement houses.

scholarly journals The subject and competences of the methaphysics of law

2000 ◽  
Vol 72 (8-9) ◽  
pp. 131-141
Author(s):  
Janko Kubinjec
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law ◽  
Priori Knowledge

The subjective and objective spirit do not differ by the degree of their authenticity, but only by different spheres to which they extend. The law reaches both the subjective sphere and the objective sphere of the spirit, but the laws on which it is based belong exclusively to the sphere of the subjective spirit. The laws on which the law is based are imanent to man as a spiritual being and they are transcendental to man as the subject of knowledge. They are the object of an a priori knowledge, in contrast to the law itself which is the object of an a posteriori knowledge. The subject of methaphysics is a priori knowledge of the laws on which the law is based and this is. at the same time, the limit of its competences.

Introduction. An Introduction to Research Methods in the Social Sciences

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Ece Özlem Atikcan ◽  
Jean-Frédéric Morin ◽  
Christian Olsson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Easy Task ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Scientific Truth ◽  
Do So

Introducing research methods in the social sciences is not an easy task given how complex the subject matter is. Social sciences, like all sciences, can be divided into categories (disciplines). Disciplines are frequently defined according to what they study (their empirical object) and how they study it (their particular problematization of the object). They are, however, by no means unitary entities. Within each discipline, multiple theories typically contend over the ability to tell provisional truths about the world. They do so by building on specific visions of the nature of the world, reflections on how to generate scientific truth, systematic ways of collecting and analyzing data (methods) and of justifying these methods as part of a coherent research design (methodologies).

Debating the A Priori

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Boghossian ◽  
Timothy Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Linguistic Understanding ◽  
Central Case

The book records a series of philosophical exchanges between its authors, amounting to a debate extended over more than fifteen years. Its subject matter is the nature and scope of reason. A central case at issue is basic logical knowledge, and the justification for basic deductive inferences, but the arguments range far more widely, at stake the distinctions between analytic and synthetic, and between a priori and a posteriori. The discussion naturally involves problems about the conditions for linguistic understanding and competence, and what it might be to grasp a concept or to have an intuition. Since reason is central to philosophical method, there are associated implications for how philosophy itself works, or should work. In particular, the discussion raises fundamental concerns about how to approach epistemology.

scholarly journals Axiological Foundations of Social Pedagogy: Search Areas

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 35-43
Author(s):  
Mariusz Cichosz
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Pedagogy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Related Mode

The issue of values is of key importance in social sciences and thus in pedagogy. The process of education is strongly embedded and makes references to such aspects as models, templates and standards. In turn, they are interpreted axiologically and always receive the axiological interpretation. Every pedagogical sub-discipline tackles this issue in a specific and aspect-related mode. For social pedagogy, apart from the traditional cognitive and interpretative areas, such as the adopted concepts of man and social life, the area and the subject matter of principles on the basis of which the social world should be/ could be transformed is also of great importance. One of such principles is the principle of the common good. One may ask: to which traditions does social pedagogy refer in this respect, how does it interpret this principle and what are the present-day challenges related to it?

Are the Notions ‘A Priori Truth’ and ‘Necessary Truth’ Extensionally Equivalent?

1974 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-602 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Erwin
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Analytic Truth ◽  
Necessary Truth ◽  
The World ◽  
Important Sense ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Mathematics

There is a widely held view that the expressions ‘necessary truth’, ‘a priori truth’ and ‘analytic truth’ either express the same concept or, at least, refer to all and only the same items. Philosophers who hold this view, and who are sometimes described as ‘empiricists’, often draw the conclusion that the truths of logic and mathematics, if necessary, are also a priori and are, in some important sense, empty or not about the world. The subject matter of these disciplines, then, is said to differ in a philosophically important way from that of the empirical sciences, such as physics or chemistry. Rationalists, in contrast, have traditionally held that some a priori truths, either of logic or mathematics (or of some other area), are synthetic and, hence, non-analytic: i.e., there are synthetic a priori truths.

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