The literature on the social situatedness of epistemic agents in science has tended to characteri... more The literature on the social situatedness of epistemic agents in science has tended to characterize their social locations in terms of a hierarchy of power relationships that characterize the larger society. However, this concept does not exhaust the types of social relationships relevant ...
CATEGORIES AND CLASSIFICATION IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Warren Schmaus 1 INTRODUCTION Social scienti... more CATEGORIES AND CLASSIFICATION IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Warren Schmaus 1 INTRODUCTION Social scientists have been proposing hypotheses regarding the relationship be-tween categories and society ever since Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss. These hypotheses range from ...
HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, 2011
ABSTRACT Charles Renouvier (1815-1903) regarded normative questions in epistemology and philosoph... more ABSTRACT Charles Renouvier (1815-1903) regarded normative questions in epistemology and philosophy of science as analogous to those in moral and political philosophy and proposed similar ways of dealing with both. He argued that it was not possible to achieve certainty or even complete consensus in either morality or science. In the social and ethical realm, people should deal with these problems through their voluntary agreement to a social contract that consists of what he called “positive conventions and laws.” This social contract has no normative force unless it is entered into voluntarily. Once it is agreed upon, it provides the basis for civil liberties. It should always remain open to criticism and revision. Denying Kant’s distinction between theoretical and practical reason, Renouvier held that knowledge also depends upon freedom of the will and individual liberty. Just as rules that one is forced to obey have no moral authority, propositions one is forced to accept have no epistemic authority. Renouvier also drew an analogy between the ways in which the social contract and science develop over time through the critical examination of accepted views, thus suggesting that scientific theories were conventional in the same way as the social contract. Science then appears to depend on two sorts of social contract for Renouvier: one that governs society at large and guarantees freedom of inquiry and another that is shared among the scientific community and consists in theories and methods that are conventionally held and subject to critical evaluation and modification.
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, 1992
For Hacking, the word "real" is one of JL Austin's trouser-words, taking its meani... more For Hacking, the word "real" is one of JL Austin's trouser-words, taking its meaning from its negative uses in much the same way as the admittedly sexist expres-sion "wear the trousers". In Representing and Intervening, Hacking proposes that at least some scientific realists can be interpreted ...
In The Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim tried to remove the ambiguity of The Division of La... more In The Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim tried to remove the ambiguity of The Division of Labor in Society that arose from his essentialist model of explanation, in which causes and effects are both necessary and sufficient conditions of each other. The resulting confusion of effects with causes made possible the materialist interpretation of the latter work, in which increasing population density was mistaken for the cause rather than the sign of changes in the social environment associated with an increase in specialization. The Rules tried to defeat this misinterpretation through clarifying such key concepts as cause, function, and social environment Durkheim's readers had failed to see that he had provided only a functional and not a causal explanation of the division of labor, which he took to be an adaptation to, not a result of, factors in the social rather than the physical environment.
Where is social epistemology going? When I read the book, I welcomed it as suggesting a new frame... more Where is social epistemology going? When I read the book, I welcomed it as suggesting a new framework for integrating the history, philosophy, and sociology of science and drawing guidance from these studies for the formulation of science policy. In Fuller's present essay, ...
The literature on the social situatedness of epistemic agents in science has tended to characteri... more The literature on the social situatedness of epistemic agents in science has tended to characterize their social locations in terms of a hierarchy of power relationships that characterize the larger society. However, this concept does not exhaust the types of social relationships relevant ...
CATEGORIES AND CLASSIFICATION IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Warren Schmaus 1 INTRODUCTION Social scienti... more CATEGORIES AND CLASSIFICATION IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Warren Schmaus 1 INTRODUCTION Social scientists have been proposing hypotheses regarding the relationship be-tween categories and society ever since Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss. These hypotheses range from ...
HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, 2011
ABSTRACT Charles Renouvier (1815-1903) regarded normative questions in epistemology and philosoph... more ABSTRACT Charles Renouvier (1815-1903) regarded normative questions in epistemology and philosophy of science as analogous to those in moral and political philosophy and proposed similar ways of dealing with both. He argued that it was not possible to achieve certainty or even complete consensus in either morality or science. In the social and ethical realm, people should deal with these problems through their voluntary agreement to a social contract that consists of what he called “positive conventions and laws.” This social contract has no normative force unless it is entered into voluntarily. Once it is agreed upon, it provides the basis for civil liberties. It should always remain open to criticism and revision. Denying Kant’s distinction between theoretical and practical reason, Renouvier held that knowledge also depends upon freedom of the will and individual liberty. Just as rules that one is forced to obey have no moral authority, propositions one is forced to accept have no epistemic authority. Renouvier also drew an analogy between the ways in which the social contract and science develop over time through the critical examination of accepted views, thus suggesting that scientific theories were conventional in the same way as the social contract. Science then appears to depend on two sorts of social contract for Renouvier: one that governs society at large and guarantees freedom of inquiry and another that is shared among the scientific community and consists in theories and methods that are conventionally held and subject to critical evaluation and modification.
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, 1992
For Hacking, the word "real" is one of JL Austin's trouser-words, taking its meani... more For Hacking, the word "real" is one of JL Austin's trouser-words, taking its meaning from its negative uses in much the same way as the admittedly sexist expres-sion "wear the trousers". In Representing and Intervening, Hacking proposes that at least some scientific realists can be interpreted ...
In The Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim tried to remove the ambiguity of The Division of La... more In The Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim tried to remove the ambiguity of The Division of Labor in Society that arose from his essentialist model of explanation, in which causes and effects are both necessary and sufficient conditions of each other. The resulting confusion of effects with causes made possible the materialist interpretation of the latter work, in which increasing population density was mistaken for the cause rather than the sign of changes in the social environment associated with an increase in specialization. The Rules tried to defeat this misinterpretation through clarifying such key concepts as cause, function, and social environment Durkheim's readers had failed to see that he had provided only a functional and not a causal explanation of the division of labor, which he took to be an adaptation to, not a result of, factors in the social rather than the physical environment.
Where is social epistemology going? When I read the book, I welcomed it as suggesting a new frame... more Where is social epistemology going? When I read the book, I welcomed it as suggesting a new framework for integrating the history, philosophy, and sociology of science and drawing guidance from these studies for the formulation of science policy. In Fuller's present essay, ...
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