scholarly journals Integral Perspective on Happiness

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-106
Author(s):  
Joonas Uotinen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Integral Approach ◽  
Societal Implications ◽  
Subjective Happiness ◽  
Ecological Ethics ◽  
Road Map ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Summum Bonum ◽  
The Social

A happiness science has emerged amidst, and spans, the social sciences. This research, despite the long philosophical tradition on happiness, is in its infancy and a robust theory of happiness is called for. I will review parts of the literature and some of the main happiness theories using Ken Wilber’s Integral approach. I will concentrate largely on Aristotle’s eudaimonia, as that has re-emerged into the centre of happiness discussions as a possible contender for the prevailing subjective happiness theories. The Integral approach seems to provide valuable insights into many happiness theories, juxtapose them in a comprehensible way, pinpoint deficiencies, and propose enhancements. Amongst other things, I will propose a new happiness theory combining John Kekes’ happiness theory with ecological ethics and I will conclude that enlightenment proves to be a good candidate for the ultimate good, or summum bonum, I will enlarge on Aristotle’s theory and propose that Wilber’s theory provides an ‘Integral road map towards eudaimonia enhanced – the enlightenment’. I will argue that eudaimonia and enlightenment, though superficially dissimilar, accord in surprising ways, to a great extent. I will discuss whether the discussion of happiness and morality is critically biased, and I will discuss the societal implications that Wilber’s conception of the human might have through its implications for happiness theories. 

scholarly journals Comparing the Emergence of Technical and Social Sciences Research in Artificial Intelligence

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre K. Ligo ◽  
Krista Rand ◽  
Jason Bassett ◽  
S. E. Galaitsi ◽  
Benjamin D. Trump ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
Societal Implications ◽  
Security Engineering ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Collaborative Engagement ◽  
Scientists And Engineers

Applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be examined from perspectives of different disciplines and research areas ranging from computer science and security, engineering, policymaking, and sociology. The technical scholarship of emerging technologies usually precedes the discussion of their societal implications but can benefit from social science insight in scientific development. Therefore, there is an urgent need for scientists and engineers developing AI algorithms and applications to actively engage with scholars in the social sciences. Without collaborative engagement, developers may encounter resistance to the approval and adoption of their technological advancements. This paper reviews a dataset, collected by Elsevier from the Scopus database, of papers on AI application published between 1997 and 2018, and examines how the co-development of technical and social science communities has grown throughout AI's earliest to latest stages of development. Thus far, more AI research exists that combines social science and technical explorations than AI scholarship of social sciences alone, and both categories are dwarfed by technical research. Moreover, we identify a relative absence of AI research related to its societal implications such as governance, ethics, or moral implications of the technology. The future of AI scholarship will benefit from both technical and social science examinations of the discipline's risk assessment, governance, and public engagement needs, to foster advances in AI that are sustainable, risk-informed, and societally beneficial.

scholarly journals THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF PHENOMENOLOGY AS A RESEARCH METHOD

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (09) ◽  
pp. 474-477
Author(s):  
Ian Mc Coog, Ed.D.
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Qualitative Research Method ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Clark Moustakas

In the philosophical tradition, phenomenology is a means by which random, raw phenomena are categorized into what can be called human experience. Phenomenology is a school of thought within ontology which focuses on the nature of existence. Edmund Husserls view of phenomenology proposed that to understand the world, one should examine the lens through which he/she experiences the world as opposed to attempting to examine the world itself. The application of this idea first expanded to the discipline of psychology by researchers such as Amedeo Giorgi and Clark Moustakas and more recently has been more widely applied to the social sciences as a whole.Possessing an understanding of the philosophy and psychology traditions behind phenomenology greatly increases a researchers ability to implement it as a qualitative research method.

The Enlightenment and the French Revolutionary Birth Pangs of Modernity

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wokler ◽  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Modern Nation State

This chapter's overriding objective is to explain how both the invention of our modern understanding of the social sciences, on the one hand, and the post-Enlightenment establishment of the modern nation-state, on the other, encapsulated doctrines which severed modernity from the Enlightenment philosophy which is presumed to have inspired it. It offers illustrations not so much of the unity of political theory and practice in the modern world as of their disengagement. In providing here some brief remarks on how post-Enlightenment justifications of modernity came to part company from their Enlightenment prefigurations, it hopes to sketch an account of certain links between principles and institutions which bears some relation to both Enlightenment and Hegelian conceptual history.

Method and matter in the social sciences: Umbilically tied to the Enlightenment

2015 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Academic Work ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
The Social

AbstractThis commentary deals with the nonconformity of academics and the ethos of social science. Academics in all fields deviate from majority norms in politics and religion, and this deviance may be essential to the academic mind and to academic norms. The Enlightenment legacy inspires both methods and subject matter in academic work, and severing ties with it may be impossible.

Introduction

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilles Saint-Paul
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Behavioral Economics ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Limited Government ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
State Involvement ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

This introductory chapter provides a background to the rise of paternalistic policies. The recent development of paternalism is not devoid of intellectual apparatus. Of all the social sciences, economics is the one that has traditionally stuck to the individualistic values of the Enlightenment. However, in recent years, a new brand of economics (labeled “behavioral”) departs from those foundations and brings new ammunition to state involvement in private lives. The aim of this book is to explain what behavioral economics is and whether it is dangerous for those who believe in individual freedom and limited government. The chapter also explains utilitarianism. Utilitarianism states that “society” should be organized so as to yield the greatest possible level of welfare, where it is assumed that there is some way of comparing and adding welfare across individuals.

scholarly journals Afterword. Tendencies of religious change in the world of the twentieth century and their implications in the Ukrainian context

2008 ◽  
pp. 314-339
Author(s):  
Viktor Ye. Yelenskyy
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
The West ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

How will religion develop in the 21st century? How optimistic can her outlook be on her future? What will be the meaning of global religious change in the coming decades? Despite being very advanced in the West, the answers to these questions remain problematic. In the famous work, "Returning the Sacred: Arguments for the Future of Religion," D. Bell noted that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, most thinkers expected that religion would disappear in the twentieth century. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many sociologists believed that sociologists believed that "At least since the Enlightenment, most Western intellectuals have expected the death of religion as fervently as the ancient Jews of the coming of the Messiah," reminds American religious scholars R. Stark and R. Bindbridge. and the social sciences were particularly distinguished in the prediction of the inevitable triumph of rationality over “prejudice.” The most celebrated figures in sociology, anthropology, and psychology unanimously expressed the belief that their children, or indeed grandchildren, would witness a new era in which, from Freud, the infantile illusions of religion humanity will outgrow ”

scholarly journals Resisting the Drive to Theorise: A Phenomenological Perspective on Social Science Research

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 43-56
Author(s):  
Emma Williams
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Philosophical Idea ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Phenomenological Perspective

This article explores predominant uses of theory in social science research in relation to the approach of phenomenological philosophy. While phenomenology is sometimes interpreted as one theoretical or methodological paradigm amongst others in the field of qualitative research, this article explores key thinkers within the philosophical tradition of phenomenology to argue that this tradition can raise challenges for predominant conceptions of research and theorizing in the social sciences and certain philosophical idea(l)s that can be connected to them. The distinctive nature of phenomenological description is outlined, and new possibilities for qualitative research are sketched. 

scholarly journals South African Social Science and the Azanian Philosophical Tradition

Theoria ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (168) ◽  
pp. 111-135
Author(s):  
Anjuli Webster
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Social Science ◽  
South African ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Ethical Question ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Material Problem ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This article discusses the contemporary history of South African social science in relation to the Azanian Philosophical Tradition. It is addressed directly to white scholars, urging introspection with regard to the ethical question of epistemic justice in relation to the evolution of the social sciences in conqueror South Africa. I consider the establishment of the professional social sciences at South African universities in the early twentieth century as a central part of the epistemic project of conqueror South Africa. In contrast, the Azanian Philosophical Tradition is rooted in African philosophy and articulated in resistance against the injustice of conquest and colonialism in southern Africa since the seventeenth century. It understands conquest as the fundamental historical antagonism shaping the philosophical, political, and material problem of ‘South Africa’. The tradition is silenced by and exceeds the political and epistemic strictures of the settler colonial nation state and social science.

What Can We Learn From Factorial Surveys About Human Behavior?

Methodology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knut Petzold ◽  
Tobias Wolbring
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Behavioral Intentions ◽  
Actual Behavior ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Factorial Survey ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Intended Behavior ◽  
The Social ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
High Level

Abstract. Factorial survey experiments are increasingly used in the social sciences to investigate behavioral intentions. The measurement of self-reported behavioral intentions with factorial survey experiments frequently assumes that the determinants of intended behavior affect actual behavior in a similar way. We critically investigate this fundamental assumption using the misdirected email technique. Student participants of a survey were randomly assigned to a field experiment or a survey experiment. The email informs the recipient about the reception of a scholarship with varying stakes (full-time vs. book) and recipient’s names (German vs. Arabic). In the survey experiment, respondents saw an image of the same email. This validation design ensured a high level of correspondence between units, settings, and treatments across both studies. Results reveal that while the frequencies of self-reported intentions and actual behavior deviate, treatments show similar relative effects. Hence, although further research on this topic is needed, this study suggests that determinants of behavior might be inferred from behavioral intentions measured with survey experiments.

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