Philosophy professor, with varied interests in multiple fields, rooted in concerns in the philosophy of social science and cognitive science. Phone: 8139745549
P. Hartl (ed.), Science, Faith, Society: New Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Polanyi, Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action 13,, 2024
This is an account of the career and drift into irrelevance of the liberal theory of science, as ... more This is an account of the career and drift into irrelevance of the liberal theory of science, as advanced by Polanyi, originally in opposition to the Leftist planning of science movement of the thirties. The theory was a relatively realistic if optimistic description of science in the twenties and thirties, but as science expanded in funding it became bound to the system, which diminished the autonomy of scientists that was the core idea of the theory. Ironically the complaint of the Left was that science and too little money and too little utility, and thus needed state control. What killed the liberal theory was the influx of money, new demands for utility, and a large role for private money. Today the theory survives as a source of normative critique of a kind of scientific establishment it no longer describes.
This book presents a theoretical preface which outlines a critique and alternative to conventiona... more This book presents a theoretical preface which outlines a critique and alternative to conventional democratic theory, and follows with a collection of essays that provide relevant supporting concepts from the work and point of view of Weber and Kels
Mad Hazard is a memoir of the career and life of Stephen Turner, chronicling a life in social the... more Mad Hazard is a memoir of the career and life of Stephen Turner, chronicling a life in social theory. Showcasing how Turner’s later work on expertise, tacit knowledge, cognitive science, leadership, and liberal democracy developed out of his early interests, this volume describes the institutional and personal constraints and pressures, as well as the personal relationships, that facilitated and shaped an academic career.
From Turner’s childhood in the racially violent South Side of Chicago, the development of his interests in social theory, through to his education in the shadow of the war in Vietnam and a period of social and personal turmoil, this biographical work shows us not only the development of academic thinking, but the evolution of an academic career. The rebellion within sociology against the hegemonic Merton-Parsons conception of sociology and the methodological orthodoxies of the time leads through to a discussion of the philosophy of science and social science, and from there to a reassessment of the inherited view of the classics, to science studies, and to political and international relations theory – the comprehensive nature of Mad Hazard means the reader can truly understand how Turner’s academic journey evolved.
Revealing an academic career not dependent on prestige and academic power, but also not untouched by hierarchy and academic politics, Mad Hazard is appealing for readers interested in the field of social theory, and beyond that, those interested in the evolution of intellectual life in the present university.
Chapter 1: Perspectives on the Brain and Cognition: The Problem Domain
The problems of cognition... more Chapter 1: Perspectives on the Brain and Cognition: The Problem Domain
The problems of cognition, the brain, the actual experiences of people, and the question of how people acquire their cognitive capacities are all very difficult and subject to conflicting considerations. In this chapter a number of these are described. Yet the various approaches need to be integrated. There are various proposals for doing so. Many of them are fundamentalist, in the sense that they take one set of considerations, such as evolution or computation, as the controlling facts. Typically these approaches have little to say about the social, except in a very abstract way. To take social variation and the complexities of social life into account appears to require a substantial revision of these approaches. At the same time, however, it appears that cognitive science is providing reasons for rejecting or modifying some of the central ideas of social science, such as rational choice, by showing experimentally that the standard models in social science are false. These conflicts point to the need for integration, and to the limitations of proposals for integration. If one begins with the navigational powers of an ant, and infers from them the features that an ant's brain must have in order to do the navigating that can be observed in ant experiments, one arrives, as Roger Gallistel does (1989), with a picture like this: the brain is made up of " functional " components that perform specific tasks in sequences or in relation to one another. It is a reasonable assumption that these components are not the product of learning, but are innate, inherited, fixed, and the product of extremely long evolution. This gets us a striking picture: that brain is like a transistor radio with separate functional units that match up to physical processes and spaces, and which can be treated as something like transistors which are the same from person to person and " produced by evolution " to be standardized units. Brain regions do have different significance for the capacity to act, speak, perceive, and so forth. But because there are few cases in which these hypothetical structures match physical localized patterns in the brain, one must allow for a good deal of looseness in the assumed relation between these " functional " components and their physical realization. If one begins with the problems of computation, recognizing that all models of the cognitive processes in the brain are computational, the issues look like this: what is the structure, or architecture, of the computational processes that allow the brain to do the big things that it unquestionably does—remember, often from the distant past and often with difficulty and error; consciously perform logical reasoning and computation; make intuitive distinctions, decisions, and the like that differ from conscious reasoning; receive perceptual inputs and process them, learn and change responses because of learning, and so forth. The constraints on computational models turn out to be substantial: models which suppose the brain to be a more or less fixed computer turn out to be bad at
The concept of" practices"���whether of representation,... more The concept of" practices"���whether of representation, of political or scientific traditions, or of organizational culture���is central to social theory. In this book, Stephen Turner presents the first analysis and critique of the idea of practice as it has developed in the various theoretical traditions of the social sciences and the humanities. Understood broadly as a tacit understanding" shared" by a group, the concept of a practice has a fatal difficulty, Turner argues: there is no plausible mechanism by which a" practice" is transmitted or ...
The biggest buzzword in contemporary philosophy is "normativity." Volume after volume has been ... more The biggest buzzword in contemporary philosophy is "normativity." Volume after volume has been churned out defending the idea that normativity is real, indispensable, even the single metaphysical basis for everything, including nature. The past of philosophy, especially Kant and German idealism, has been reinterpreted as being about normativity. Wittgenstein has been made into a defender of normativity against naturalism. And the rejection of normativity is characterized as irrationalismB because reason is a normative concept. The term has crept into social theory as well, with Habermas and his endorsement of arguments taken from Robert Brandom.
So what is normativity? The one thing it is not is the sociological fact of people behaving in a certain way, using certain terms, and believing certain things. Behavior can be contrary to the relevant norms, and beliefs can be false. Genuine, as distinct from sociological normativity is the thing that makes behavior wrong, usage genuinely meaningful, and beliefs false. Without genuine normativity, there is no meaning, no truth or falsity, no act correct or incorrect. And this has implications for "sociological" accounts of the social world: without accepting the reality of genuine normativity we can=t even describe the social world as we know it, because the world as we know it is constituted by these normative distinctions.
How do we know all this? Regress arguments. When we use normative language, or even reason about something, and are asked for a justification of our reasoning, we get back to a justification in the same normative language. The mere fact that people expect a promise to be fulfilled doesn't make it a promise or generate an obligation. Only a norm, one that says something like "one should fulfill one's promises" justifies our saying that someone who fails to fulfil a promise has done something wrong. Merely violating our expectations is not wrong.
This, at least, is the conventional wisdom in philosophy. But philosophers ordinarily keep an eye on the shiny regress arguments and avert them from the trainwreck of the metaphysics behind it. What is this normativity that lies at the end of justification? Is there really a realm of the normative? Is it really the case that every time one uses a "normative" term, such as "correct," that one invokes this netherworld of normativities? Does appealing to genuine normativity actually explain anything in this world? And if so, how does this kind of explanation relate to the kinds of explanations social scientists have given of normative facts? What is the source of normativity? There seems to be little agreement, and wide variation, in answers to these questions, where there are answers at all. And when we look at the answers, they turn out to be all over the place- from a system of proprieties co-extensive with language, to presuppositions that flash into existence whenever they are needed, to the Kantian norms of reason, to the tacit rules behind the meanings of sentences, to the normativity embodied in and created by collective intentions, and on and on. This should be an embarrassment, but no one seems to be embarrassed about it.
There is also a puzzle about what exactly "normativity" explains. Does it explain something real that the social sciences don't explain? In the case of science, this problem has been discussed in two ways. One argues that science is a normative activity and therefore any "sociology" which purports to account for science must be insufficient. The other says that philosophy of science is an attempt to make normative sense of science, and that this activity does not compete with explanations of science or the course of scientific development: the project of fashioning a normative lens for science and the project of explaining what scientists believe to be true are different enterprises, that do not compete. One could extend this to other forms of "normativity": there is what people say and understand, and what they believe to be correct speech; then there is what is really correct speech. Social science is concerned with the former, normativity with the latter.
Normativists say that social science explanations don=t explain normativity: they are only about regularities or probabilities, expectations, perhaps, but never the normative fact, and therefore the meaning, of promising itself. Is this really true? A simple example is the explanation of Maori gift customs in Marcel Mauss's classic The Gift. The Maori think there is a spiritual substance, Hau, that attaches to a gift and must be returned by the giving of another gift. They acknowledge that hau is a mysterious thing. Nevertheless, they believe in it, and organize their social and economic life around this substance. Hau is a Good Bad Theory: good, because it co-ordinates behavior and motivates compliance; bad, because hau is an non-explanatory, false, and fails to fit into our ordinary stream of explanation, which is why the Maori treat it as a mystery.
This standard social science explanation works just fine for the Maori. It is difficult to imagine even a normativist philosopher quibbling with it. But it also raises a tough question: why don"t explanations like this apply just as well to our own moral beliefs? If we think we are obligated to return a phone call, is the obligation any more real, or is our belief that this obligation is real any different than the beliefs of the Maori about hau? Isn't the whole concept of normativity suspiciously like the concept of hau, namely a false belief wrongly used to explain something that isn=t there in the first place?
In a way, this one has an easy answer- there is no difference. And there is nothing mysterious that is left over after the social science explanation is given. For beliefs like this, it makes sense to be a relativist. But things appear to be different for reason or rationality itself. How can we treat that as a superstition? We rely on it. It is not a good bad theory, but a good good theory, if it is a theory at all. Here, it seems, the regress arguments work- there is no denying rationality, because justifying our denial would assume rationality, the rationality of the speaker and the person persuaded. And rationality is normative.
Or is it? Do we really "appeal" to rationality when we try to persuade someone or communicate with them? When we try to communicate anything, we have to say something that is intelligible. And we hope that the listener will understand it and see it is true. But that is not the same as invoking a norm. But something is right in the normativist argument. What we do need, to communicate or to reason with another person, as the normativist argument suggests, is a stopping pointB an end of the regress, something that is in common that the justifying can close with. The normativist thinks these stopping points must be norms because they are not causes or data.
But there is another possibility, found both in the philosophical tradition and in the social science tradition- Brentano's notion of Evidenz, which appears also in Weber in relation to empathy. Evidenz is defined by Brentano as being evident to all. The things that are evident to all B - though the "All" needs to be qualified- might include steps in reasoning, or ostensive definitions that were understood by others, which are the kinds of regress-stoppers that are needed. Brentano thought of Evidenz as an alternative answer to the problem of grounding mathematics, which bedeviled Frege and Husserl. The alternative was derided as "psychologism" and the concept of Evidenz as subjective. But the critics were wrong, and they misrepresented it.
Today we can construe these points of mutual obviousness in terms of cognitive science concepts. The mirroring system in humans, the basis for empathy, is a good candidate for naturalizing Evidenz, for accounting for such things as our capacity to understand others without appealing to normativities, hidden structures of norms, and the like. These systems are "objective." They do much of the explanatory work that the mysterious notion of normativity is claimed to do. We can do without these mysteries.
The Wageningen UR Library Catalogue contains bibliographic data on books and periodicals held by ... more The Wageningen UR Library Catalogue contains bibliographic data on books and periodicals held by the libraries of Wageningen University and Research Centre and some 15 associated libraries. Holding data are added to each record. ... Subjects covered include Agrotechnology, Food and Food Production, Plant and Animal Sciences, Soil Science, Geo-information, Landscape and Spatial Planning, Water and Climate, Ecosystem Studies, Economics and Society. ... The joint collections of the participating libraries cover a substantial part of ...
This is the table of contents and the introduction. The papers are almost all on this site: the s... more This is the table of contents and the introduction. The papers are almost all on this site: the subtitles match the original titles.
Boston studies in the philosophy of science, Jan 1, 1986
The writings of Durkheim and Weber have canonical status in sociology, and their place in this ca... more The writings of Durkheim and Weber have canonical status in sociology, and their place in this canon sometimes obscures their place in the historical stream of the development of problems. Perhaps this is especially true in the case of the methodological texts, where the precursors and sources of their writings are to be found in the traditions of disciplines other than the discipline for which the texts were meant to serve as a foundation. The aim of this book is to show how the dispute over cause, law, and probability developed during the ...
Brains/Practices/Relativism presents the first major rethinking of social theory in light of cogn... more Brains/Practices/Relativism presents the first major rethinking of social theory in light of cognitive science. Stephen P. Turner focuses especially on connectionism, which views learning as a process of adaptation to input that, in turn, leads to patterns of response distinct to each individual. This means that there is no common" server" from which people download shared frameworks that enable them to cooperate or communicate. Therefore, argues Turner," practices"���in the sense that the term is widely used in the social sciences ...
`This is a very fine text, a powerful piece of work that deserves to be read widely. The analysis... more `This is a very fine text, a powerful piece of work that deserves to be read widely. The analysis is truly panoramic. It ranges across central concerns in the fields of social theory, political theory, and science studies and engages with and/or draws upon the ideas of key classical and contemporary thinkers, including Tocqueville, Weber, Schumpeter, Polyani, Habermas, Foucault, Schmitt and Beck' - Barry Smart, Professor of Sociology, University of Portsmouth
What are the political implications of 'expert' knowledge and especially scientific knowledge for liberal democracy? If knowledge is not evenly distributed upon what basis can the philosophy of equal rights be sustained?
This important book points to the crisis in knowledge in liberal democracies. This crisis, simply put, is that most citizens cannot understand, much less judge, the claims scientists make.
One response is the appointment of public commissions to provide conclusions for policy-makers to act upon. There are also `commissions from below', such as grass roots associations that quiz the limits of expert knowledge and power and make rival knowledge claims. Do these commissions represent a new stage in the development of liberal democracy? Or is it merely a pragmatic device of no political consequence.
The central argument of the book is that in a `knowledge society' in which specialized knowledge is increasingly important to politics, more has to be delegated because democratic discussion can't handle it. This limitation in the scope of liberal democracy threatens its fundamental character.
The book will be required reading in the fields of social theory, political theory and science studies.
The problem of the nature of values and the relation between values and rationality is one of... more The problem of the nature of values and the relation between values and rationality is one of the defining issues of twentieth-century thought and Max Weber was one of the defining figures in the debate. In this book, Turner and Factor consider the development of the dispute over Max Weber's contribution to this discourse, by showing how Weber's views have been used, revised and adapted in new contexts.
The story of the dispute is itself fascinating, for it cuts across the major political and intellectual currents of the twentieth century, from positivism, pragmatism and value-free social science, through the philosophy of Jaspers and Heidegger, to Critical Theory and the revival of Natural Right and Natural Law. As Weber's ideas were imported to Britain and America, they found new formulations and new adherents and critics and became absorbed into different traditions and new issues.
This book is the first account of the way in which Weber appropriated and modified sources in... more This book is the first account of the way in which Weber appropriated and modified sources in the legal tradition, in which he was trained, to construct his sociology. It leads directly to a new understanding of Weber's intent and his relations to the tradition of social and political theory. the book takes the reader into the heart of Weber's conceptualizations of action and social science, without ever giving the impression that these are rarefied and marginal issues. This is an important book for understanding the significance of one of the key sociologist's of the twentieth century.
Brains/Practices/Relativism presents the first major rethinking of social theory in light of cogn... more Brains/Practices/Relativism presents the first major rethinking of social theory in light of cognitive science. Stephen P. Turner focuses especially on connectionism, which views learning as a process of adaptation to input that, in turn, leads to patterns of response distinct to each individual. This means that there is no common "server" from which people download shared frameworks that enable them to cooperate or communicate. Therefore, argues Turner, "practices"—in the sense that the term is widely used in the social sciences and humanities—is a myth, and so are the "cultures" that are central to anthropological and sociological thought.
In a series of tightly argued essays, Turner traces out the implications that discarding the notion of shared frameworks has for relativism, social constructionism, normativity, and a number of other concepts. He suggests ways in which these ideas might be reformulated more productively, in part through extended critiques of the work of scholars such as Ian Hacking, Andrew Pickering, Pierre Bourdieu, Quentin Skinner, Robert Brandom, Clifford Geertz, and Edward Shils.
American Sociology has changed radically since 1945, when the field was dominated by young lions ... more American Sociology has changed radically since 1945, when the field was dominated by young lions attempting to make sociology a science. The 1968 student revolt ended much of this, leaving sociology divided and directionless. By the 1980s, enrolments had fallen and departments were closing. But sociology revived, and at both the graduate and undergraduate level the field became dominated by women. What changed and what didn't, and why? Areas of interest, methodology, and status hierarchies were all affected by the changes, but there were also continuities. Some of the continuities reached back to the nineteenth century, when sociology was closely related to reform movements.
This book focuses on the consequences of the 'near-death' experience of sociology in the 1980s, and its slow revival and transformation, as well as the challenges it faces in the new university environments. Certain to be controversial, the book looks forward to a new kind of discipline.
This is the table of contents and the introduction. Most of the chapters are available on this si... more This is the table of contents and the introduction. Most of the chapters are available on this site as separate articles.
Description
Contents
Resources
About the Authors
First published in 1... more Description
Contents
Resources
About the Authors
First published in 1980, this book examines the nature of sociological explanation. The tactics of interpretive sociology have often remained obscure because of confusion over the nature of the evidence for interpretation and the nature of decisions among alternative interpretations. In providing an account of the problem of interpretive sociological claims, the author argues that there is rationality to interpretation. He also presents a fresh view of the relationship between qualitative and statistical claims and shows their complementary character. Dr. Turner's lucid and comprehensive analysis breaks new ground in its fundamental re-examination of the conceptual basis for “explaining” social behaviour. By its call for more rigourous conceptual sophistication in attempted explanations of social behaviour, this book will stimulate controversy and lively discussion among sociologists.
P. Hartl (ed.), Science, Faith, Society: New Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Polanyi, Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action 13,, 2024
This is an account of the career and drift into irrelevance of the liberal theory of science, as ... more This is an account of the career and drift into irrelevance of the liberal theory of science, as advanced by Polanyi, originally in opposition to the Leftist planning of science movement of the thirties. The theory was a relatively realistic if optimistic description of science in the twenties and thirties, but as science expanded in funding it became bound to the system, which diminished the autonomy of scientists that was the core idea of the theory. Ironically the complaint of the Left was that science and too little money and too little utility, and thus needed state control. What killed the liberal theory was the influx of money, new demands for utility, and a large role for private money. Today the theory survives as a source of normative critique of a kind of scientific establishment it no longer describes.
This book presents a theoretical preface which outlines a critique and alternative to conventiona... more This book presents a theoretical preface which outlines a critique and alternative to conventional democratic theory, and follows with a collection of essays that provide relevant supporting concepts from the work and point of view of Weber and Kels
Mad Hazard is a memoir of the career and life of Stephen Turner, chronicling a life in social the... more Mad Hazard is a memoir of the career and life of Stephen Turner, chronicling a life in social theory. Showcasing how Turner’s later work on expertise, tacit knowledge, cognitive science, leadership, and liberal democracy developed out of his early interests, this volume describes the institutional and personal constraints and pressures, as well as the personal relationships, that facilitated and shaped an academic career.
From Turner’s childhood in the racially violent South Side of Chicago, the development of his interests in social theory, through to his education in the shadow of the war in Vietnam and a period of social and personal turmoil, this biographical work shows us not only the development of academic thinking, but the evolution of an academic career. The rebellion within sociology against the hegemonic Merton-Parsons conception of sociology and the methodological orthodoxies of the time leads through to a discussion of the philosophy of science and social science, and from there to a reassessment of the inherited view of the classics, to science studies, and to political and international relations theory – the comprehensive nature of Mad Hazard means the reader can truly understand how Turner’s academic journey evolved.
Revealing an academic career not dependent on prestige and academic power, but also not untouched by hierarchy and academic politics, Mad Hazard is appealing for readers interested in the field of social theory, and beyond that, those interested in the evolution of intellectual life in the present university.
Chapter 1: Perspectives on the Brain and Cognition: The Problem Domain
The problems of cognition... more Chapter 1: Perspectives on the Brain and Cognition: The Problem Domain
The problems of cognition, the brain, the actual experiences of people, and the question of how people acquire their cognitive capacities are all very difficult and subject to conflicting considerations. In this chapter a number of these are described. Yet the various approaches need to be integrated. There are various proposals for doing so. Many of them are fundamentalist, in the sense that they take one set of considerations, such as evolution or computation, as the controlling facts. Typically these approaches have little to say about the social, except in a very abstract way. To take social variation and the complexities of social life into account appears to require a substantial revision of these approaches. At the same time, however, it appears that cognitive science is providing reasons for rejecting or modifying some of the central ideas of social science, such as rational choice, by showing experimentally that the standard models in social science are false. These conflicts point to the need for integration, and to the limitations of proposals for integration. If one begins with the navigational powers of an ant, and infers from them the features that an ant's brain must have in order to do the navigating that can be observed in ant experiments, one arrives, as Roger Gallistel does (1989), with a picture like this: the brain is made up of " functional " components that perform specific tasks in sequences or in relation to one another. It is a reasonable assumption that these components are not the product of learning, but are innate, inherited, fixed, and the product of extremely long evolution. This gets us a striking picture: that brain is like a transistor radio with separate functional units that match up to physical processes and spaces, and which can be treated as something like transistors which are the same from person to person and " produced by evolution " to be standardized units. Brain regions do have different significance for the capacity to act, speak, perceive, and so forth. But because there are few cases in which these hypothetical structures match physical localized patterns in the brain, one must allow for a good deal of looseness in the assumed relation between these " functional " components and their physical realization. If one begins with the problems of computation, recognizing that all models of the cognitive processes in the brain are computational, the issues look like this: what is the structure, or architecture, of the computational processes that allow the brain to do the big things that it unquestionably does—remember, often from the distant past and often with difficulty and error; consciously perform logical reasoning and computation; make intuitive distinctions, decisions, and the like that differ from conscious reasoning; receive perceptual inputs and process them, learn and change responses because of learning, and so forth. The constraints on computational models turn out to be substantial: models which suppose the brain to be a more or less fixed computer turn out to be bad at
The concept of" practices"���whether of representation,... more The concept of" practices"���whether of representation, of political or scientific traditions, or of organizational culture���is central to social theory. In this book, Stephen Turner presents the first analysis and critique of the idea of practice as it has developed in the various theoretical traditions of the social sciences and the humanities. Understood broadly as a tacit understanding" shared" by a group, the concept of a practice has a fatal difficulty, Turner argues: there is no plausible mechanism by which a" practice" is transmitted or ...
The biggest buzzword in contemporary philosophy is "normativity." Volume after volume has been ... more The biggest buzzword in contemporary philosophy is "normativity." Volume after volume has been churned out defending the idea that normativity is real, indispensable, even the single metaphysical basis for everything, including nature. The past of philosophy, especially Kant and German idealism, has been reinterpreted as being about normativity. Wittgenstein has been made into a defender of normativity against naturalism. And the rejection of normativity is characterized as irrationalismB because reason is a normative concept. The term has crept into social theory as well, with Habermas and his endorsement of arguments taken from Robert Brandom.
So what is normativity? The one thing it is not is the sociological fact of people behaving in a certain way, using certain terms, and believing certain things. Behavior can be contrary to the relevant norms, and beliefs can be false. Genuine, as distinct from sociological normativity is the thing that makes behavior wrong, usage genuinely meaningful, and beliefs false. Without genuine normativity, there is no meaning, no truth or falsity, no act correct or incorrect. And this has implications for "sociological" accounts of the social world: without accepting the reality of genuine normativity we can=t even describe the social world as we know it, because the world as we know it is constituted by these normative distinctions.
How do we know all this? Regress arguments. When we use normative language, or even reason about something, and are asked for a justification of our reasoning, we get back to a justification in the same normative language. The mere fact that people expect a promise to be fulfilled doesn't make it a promise or generate an obligation. Only a norm, one that says something like "one should fulfill one's promises" justifies our saying that someone who fails to fulfil a promise has done something wrong. Merely violating our expectations is not wrong.
This, at least, is the conventional wisdom in philosophy. But philosophers ordinarily keep an eye on the shiny regress arguments and avert them from the trainwreck of the metaphysics behind it. What is this normativity that lies at the end of justification? Is there really a realm of the normative? Is it really the case that every time one uses a "normative" term, such as "correct," that one invokes this netherworld of normativities? Does appealing to genuine normativity actually explain anything in this world? And if so, how does this kind of explanation relate to the kinds of explanations social scientists have given of normative facts? What is the source of normativity? There seems to be little agreement, and wide variation, in answers to these questions, where there are answers at all. And when we look at the answers, they turn out to be all over the place- from a system of proprieties co-extensive with language, to presuppositions that flash into existence whenever they are needed, to the Kantian norms of reason, to the tacit rules behind the meanings of sentences, to the normativity embodied in and created by collective intentions, and on and on. This should be an embarrassment, but no one seems to be embarrassed about it.
There is also a puzzle about what exactly "normativity" explains. Does it explain something real that the social sciences don't explain? In the case of science, this problem has been discussed in two ways. One argues that science is a normative activity and therefore any "sociology" which purports to account for science must be insufficient. The other says that philosophy of science is an attempt to make normative sense of science, and that this activity does not compete with explanations of science or the course of scientific development: the project of fashioning a normative lens for science and the project of explaining what scientists believe to be true are different enterprises, that do not compete. One could extend this to other forms of "normativity": there is what people say and understand, and what they believe to be correct speech; then there is what is really correct speech. Social science is concerned with the former, normativity with the latter.
Normativists say that social science explanations don=t explain normativity: they are only about regularities or probabilities, expectations, perhaps, but never the normative fact, and therefore the meaning, of promising itself. Is this really true? A simple example is the explanation of Maori gift customs in Marcel Mauss's classic The Gift. The Maori think there is a spiritual substance, Hau, that attaches to a gift and must be returned by the giving of another gift. They acknowledge that hau is a mysterious thing. Nevertheless, they believe in it, and organize their social and economic life around this substance. Hau is a Good Bad Theory: good, because it co-ordinates behavior and motivates compliance; bad, because hau is an non-explanatory, false, and fails to fit into our ordinary stream of explanation, which is why the Maori treat it as a mystery.
This standard social science explanation works just fine for the Maori. It is difficult to imagine even a normativist philosopher quibbling with it. But it also raises a tough question: why don"t explanations like this apply just as well to our own moral beliefs? If we think we are obligated to return a phone call, is the obligation any more real, or is our belief that this obligation is real any different than the beliefs of the Maori about hau? Isn't the whole concept of normativity suspiciously like the concept of hau, namely a false belief wrongly used to explain something that isn=t there in the first place?
In a way, this one has an easy answer- there is no difference. And there is nothing mysterious that is left over after the social science explanation is given. For beliefs like this, it makes sense to be a relativist. But things appear to be different for reason or rationality itself. How can we treat that as a superstition? We rely on it. It is not a good bad theory, but a good good theory, if it is a theory at all. Here, it seems, the regress arguments work- there is no denying rationality, because justifying our denial would assume rationality, the rationality of the speaker and the person persuaded. And rationality is normative.
Or is it? Do we really "appeal" to rationality when we try to persuade someone or communicate with them? When we try to communicate anything, we have to say something that is intelligible. And we hope that the listener will understand it and see it is true. But that is not the same as invoking a norm. But something is right in the normativist argument. What we do need, to communicate or to reason with another person, as the normativist argument suggests, is a stopping pointB an end of the regress, something that is in common that the justifying can close with. The normativist thinks these stopping points must be norms because they are not causes or data.
But there is another possibility, found both in the philosophical tradition and in the social science tradition- Brentano's notion of Evidenz, which appears also in Weber in relation to empathy. Evidenz is defined by Brentano as being evident to all. The things that are evident to all B - though the "All" needs to be qualified- might include steps in reasoning, or ostensive definitions that were understood by others, which are the kinds of regress-stoppers that are needed. Brentano thought of Evidenz as an alternative answer to the problem of grounding mathematics, which bedeviled Frege and Husserl. The alternative was derided as "psychologism" and the concept of Evidenz as subjective. But the critics were wrong, and they misrepresented it.
Today we can construe these points of mutual obviousness in terms of cognitive science concepts. The mirroring system in humans, the basis for empathy, is a good candidate for naturalizing Evidenz, for accounting for such things as our capacity to understand others without appealing to normativities, hidden structures of norms, and the like. These systems are "objective." They do much of the explanatory work that the mysterious notion of normativity is claimed to do. We can do without these mysteries.
The Wageningen UR Library Catalogue contains bibliographic data on books and periodicals held by ... more The Wageningen UR Library Catalogue contains bibliographic data on books and periodicals held by the libraries of Wageningen University and Research Centre and some 15 associated libraries. Holding data are added to each record. ... Subjects covered include Agrotechnology, Food and Food Production, Plant and Animal Sciences, Soil Science, Geo-information, Landscape and Spatial Planning, Water and Climate, Ecosystem Studies, Economics and Society. ... The joint collections of the participating libraries cover a substantial part of ...
This is the table of contents and the introduction. The papers are almost all on this site: the s... more This is the table of contents and the introduction. The papers are almost all on this site: the subtitles match the original titles.
Boston studies in the philosophy of science, Jan 1, 1986
The writings of Durkheim and Weber have canonical status in sociology, and their place in this ca... more The writings of Durkheim and Weber have canonical status in sociology, and their place in this canon sometimes obscures their place in the historical stream of the development of problems. Perhaps this is especially true in the case of the methodological texts, where the precursors and sources of their writings are to be found in the traditions of disciplines other than the discipline for which the texts were meant to serve as a foundation. The aim of this book is to show how the dispute over cause, law, and probability developed during the ...
Brains/Practices/Relativism presents the first major rethinking of social theory in light of cogn... more Brains/Practices/Relativism presents the first major rethinking of social theory in light of cognitive science. Stephen P. Turner focuses especially on connectionism, which views learning as a process of adaptation to input that, in turn, leads to patterns of response distinct to each individual. This means that there is no common" server" from which people download shared frameworks that enable them to cooperate or communicate. Therefore, argues Turner," practices"���in the sense that the term is widely used in the social sciences ...
`This is a very fine text, a powerful piece of work that deserves to be read widely. The analysis... more `This is a very fine text, a powerful piece of work that deserves to be read widely. The analysis is truly panoramic. It ranges across central concerns in the fields of social theory, political theory, and science studies and engages with and/or draws upon the ideas of key classical and contemporary thinkers, including Tocqueville, Weber, Schumpeter, Polyani, Habermas, Foucault, Schmitt and Beck' - Barry Smart, Professor of Sociology, University of Portsmouth
What are the political implications of 'expert' knowledge and especially scientific knowledge for liberal democracy? If knowledge is not evenly distributed upon what basis can the philosophy of equal rights be sustained?
This important book points to the crisis in knowledge in liberal democracies. This crisis, simply put, is that most citizens cannot understand, much less judge, the claims scientists make.
One response is the appointment of public commissions to provide conclusions for policy-makers to act upon. There are also `commissions from below', such as grass roots associations that quiz the limits of expert knowledge and power and make rival knowledge claims. Do these commissions represent a new stage in the development of liberal democracy? Or is it merely a pragmatic device of no political consequence.
The central argument of the book is that in a `knowledge society' in which specialized knowledge is increasingly important to politics, more has to be delegated because democratic discussion can't handle it. This limitation in the scope of liberal democracy threatens its fundamental character.
The book will be required reading in the fields of social theory, political theory and science studies.
The problem of the nature of values and the relation between values and rationality is one of... more The problem of the nature of values and the relation between values and rationality is one of the defining issues of twentieth-century thought and Max Weber was one of the defining figures in the debate. In this book, Turner and Factor consider the development of the dispute over Max Weber's contribution to this discourse, by showing how Weber's views have been used, revised and adapted in new contexts.
The story of the dispute is itself fascinating, for it cuts across the major political and intellectual currents of the twentieth century, from positivism, pragmatism and value-free social science, through the philosophy of Jaspers and Heidegger, to Critical Theory and the revival of Natural Right and Natural Law. As Weber's ideas were imported to Britain and America, they found new formulations and new adherents and critics and became absorbed into different traditions and new issues.
This book is the first account of the way in which Weber appropriated and modified sources in... more This book is the first account of the way in which Weber appropriated and modified sources in the legal tradition, in which he was trained, to construct his sociology. It leads directly to a new understanding of Weber's intent and his relations to the tradition of social and political theory. the book takes the reader into the heart of Weber's conceptualizations of action and social science, without ever giving the impression that these are rarefied and marginal issues. This is an important book for understanding the significance of one of the key sociologist's of the twentieth century.
Brains/Practices/Relativism presents the first major rethinking of social theory in light of cogn... more Brains/Practices/Relativism presents the first major rethinking of social theory in light of cognitive science. Stephen P. Turner focuses especially on connectionism, which views learning as a process of adaptation to input that, in turn, leads to patterns of response distinct to each individual. This means that there is no common "server" from which people download shared frameworks that enable them to cooperate or communicate. Therefore, argues Turner, "practices"—in the sense that the term is widely used in the social sciences and humanities—is a myth, and so are the "cultures" that are central to anthropological and sociological thought.
In a series of tightly argued essays, Turner traces out the implications that discarding the notion of shared frameworks has for relativism, social constructionism, normativity, and a number of other concepts. He suggests ways in which these ideas might be reformulated more productively, in part through extended critiques of the work of scholars such as Ian Hacking, Andrew Pickering, Pierre Bourdieu, Quentin Skinner, Robert Brandom, Clifford Geertz, and Edward Shils.
American Sociology has changed radically since 1945, when the field was dominated by young lions ... more American Sociology has changed radically since 1945, when the field was dominated by young lions attempting to make sociology a science. The 1968 student revolt ended much of this, leaving sociology divided and directionless. By the 1980s, enrolments had fallen and departments were closing. But sociology revived, and at both the graduate and undergraduate level the field became dominated by women. What changed and what didn't, and why? Areas of interest, methodology, and status hierarchies were all affected by the changes, but there were also continuities. Some of the continuities reached back to the nineteenth century, when sociology was closely related to reform movements.
This book focuses on the consequences of the 'near-death' experience of sociology in the 1980s, and its slow revival and transformation, as well as the challenges it faces in the new university environments. Certain to be controversial, the book looks forward to a new kind of discipline.
This is the table of contents and the introduction. Most of the chapters are available on this si... more This is the table of contents and the introduction. Most of the chapters are available on this site as separate articles.
Description
Contents
Resources
About the Authors
First published in 1... more Description
Contents
Resources
About the Authors
First published in 1980, this book examines the nature of sociological explanation. The tactics of interpretive sociology have often remained obscure because of confusion over the nature of the evidence for interpretation and the nature of decisions among alternative interpretations. In providing an account of the problem of interpretive sociological claims, the author argues that there is rationality to interpretation. He also presents a fresh view of the relationship between qualitative and statistical claims and shows their complementary character. Dr. Turner's lucid and comprehensive analysis breaks new ground in its fundamental re-examination of the conceptual basis for “explaining” social behaviour. By its call for more rigourous conceptual sophistication in attempted explanations of social behaviour, this book will stimulate controversy and lively discussion among sociologists.
Discussions of post-truth typically appeal to a notion of science as objective and therefore non-... more Discussions of post-truth typically appeal to a notion of science as objective and therefore non-ideological. Objectivity has been attacked as itself an ideology, and a large literature has developed which claims that there are alternative “epistemologies” which reveal facts which this ideology excludes. The focus on the question what is a fact leads to “post-truth: this question is in turn treated as ideological. But this is misleading in two ways. One is that the kinds of facts that are supposed to be added by these alternative epistemologies have been part of sociology all along. The disagreement is not about facts, but about affirming the validity of viewpoints. Another is that sociology problematizes ideology itself, without affirming any ideology. This approach provides its own discipline: we come to understand what something like “oppression” means, and means for the people involved, in terms of the difference between our assumptions and practices, from our living life, and theirs.
The occasion was a public lecture of the kind that ings the Left together: a talk by Mexican wri... more The occasion was a public lecture of the kind that ings the Left together: a talk by Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes on relations between Mexico and the United States. At the end of the line of people who went to the microphone to ask questions of the speaker was a woman with a child. The woman had buttons for various causes on her blouse. She was earnest. Her question: do you approve of the idea that maquiladoras should be held to the same labor and wage standards as the United States in a new NAFTA agreement? The answer Fuentes gave was that the question was no longer of much importance, because the maquiladoras, who
Rudolf von Ihering was the leading German philosopher of law of the nineteenth century. He was al... more Rudolf von Ihering was the leading German philosopher of law of the nineteenth century. He was also a major source of Weber’s more famous sociological definitions of action. Characteristically, Weber transformed material he found: in this case Ihering attempt to reconcile the causaland teleological aspects of action. In Ihering’s hands these become, respectively, the external and internal moments of action, or intentional thought and the factual consequences of action. For Weber they are made into epistemic aspects of action, the causal and the meaningful, each of which is essential to an account of action, but which are logically and epistemically distinct. Ihering thought purposes were the products of underlying interests, but included ‘ideal’ interests in this category. Weber radicalized this by expanding the category and making it historically central. This radicalization bears on rational choice theory: if ideal interests have a large historical role independent of material int...
Models are the coin of the realm in current philosophy of
science, as they are in science itself,... more Models are the coin of the realm in current philosophy of science, as they are in science itself, having replaced laws and theories as the primary strategy. Logical Positivism tried to erase the older neo-Kantian distinction between ideal constructions and reality. It returns in the case of models. Nowak's concept of idealization provided an alternative account of this issue. It construed model application as concretizations of hypotheses which improve by accounting for exceptions. This appears to account for physical law. But it raises the problem of uniqueness: is the result unique, as physical law should be? Neo-Kantianism failed this test. Its solutions were circular justifications for claims of uniqueness. Nowak inherited the problem without resolving it.
This is an old paper about modeling theories involving sequences, and comparing them quantitative... more This is an old paper about modeling theories involving sequences, and comparing them quantitatively. It has become newly relevant because of recent work in this area.
According to its Google Ngram, the term ‘post-traditional’ arrives at the turn of the twentieth c... more According to its Google Ngram, the term ‘post-traditional’ arrives at the turn of the twentieth century, but only begins to be widely used after 1960, probably as a result of its appearance in a subtitle of a book by Robert Bellah,1 after which its use has continued to increase geometrically, up to the present. There is a core problem with the term which is signalled by this citation pattern. It can be understood as a novel theoretical concept which applies to the last half of the twentieth century, telling us something about the meaning of our own time. The term, however, has a problematic relation to a much deeper, older and more pervasive set of distinctions, involving modernity and the larger trajectory of European society from the medieval period on, the Enlightenment, democratization, capitalism and industrialization, urbanism, and ‘rationalization’ and differentiation. It also followed, and resembled, a long-running discussion of the prospects for a new kind of society, based...
Statistical sociology involves massive underdetermination of "theory" by data, which makes it imp... more Statistical sociology involves massive underdetermination of "theory" by data, which makes it impossible to treat conventional statistical sociology as a means for the development of a science of scientific laws, as was claimed as an aspiration in the forties and beyond.
This is a discussion of the historical work of Martin Bulmer that contrasts his deeply historical... more This is a discussion of the historical work of Martin Bulmer that contrasts his deeply historical sensibility with the ideologically driven sensibility of recent history of sociology.
This is an application and explication of Levi-Straussian structuralism to the phenomenon of comp... more This is an application and explication of Levi-Straussian structuralism to the phenomenon of complex organizations to show the way that the formal boundaries of organizations differ from the underlying logic-creating structures that bear on the social relations of participants.
Oakeshott’s essay on the rule of law has had no impact on the literature on the rule of law. But ... more Oakeshott’s essay on the rule of law has had no impact on the literature on the rule of law. But it deserves more serious consideration. Oakeshott provides an account of the modern legal order that parallels the two tier models of Hans Kelsen and H. L. A. Hart, as well as Max Weber, Georg Jellinek, whom Oakeshott cites as a source, was Kelsen’s teacher and Weber’s colleague. What Kelsen and Weber have in common is the ideal of the law as a neutral object, as distinct from an instrument of policy, a notion that Oakeshott adopts and expands on.
Michael Oakeshott employed a device of argument and analysis that appears in a number of other th... more Michael Oakeshott employed a device of argument and analysis that appears in a number of other thinkers, where it is given the name “antinomies.” These differ from binary oppositions or contradictories in that the two poles are bound together. In this discussion, the nature of this binding is explored in detail, in large part in relation to Oakeshott’s own usages, such as his discussion of the relation of faith and skepticism, between collective goal-oriented associations and those based on contract, and between a legal regime based on neutral rules and one oriented to policy goals . Other examples might include Weber’s distinction between the politics of intention and the politics of responsibility. Moreover, such ambiguous concepts as “rights,” have antinomic interpretations. In each of these cases, the full realization of one ideal led, in practice, to consequences associated with the other: in political practice, neither polar ideal was realizable without concessions to the othe...
Practice relativism is the idea that practices are foundational for bodies of activity and though... more Practice relativism is the idea that practices are foundational for bodies of activity and thought, and differ from one another in ways that lead those who constitute the world in terms of them to incommensurable or conflicting conclusions. It is true that practices are not criticizable in any simple way because they are largely tacit and inaccessible. But to make them relativistic one needs an added claim: that practices are “normative”, or conceptual in character. It is argued that this is not supportable by any explanatory necessity, and that the differences in outcomes, though real, are not instances of relativism.
In this discussion, the author asks the question if Oakeshott's famous depiction of a practic... more In this discussion, the author asks the question if Oakeshott's famous depiction of a practice might be understood in relation to contemporary cognitive science, in particular connectionism (the contemporary cognitive science approach concerned with the problem of skills and skilled knowing) and in terms of the now conventional view of “normativity” in Anglo-American philosophy. The author suggests that Oakeshott meant to contrast practices to an alternative “Kantian” model of a shared tacit mental frame or set of rules. If cognitive science, in its connectionist forms, allows us to give a naturalistic though nonreductive sense to his words, Oakeshott, like other philosophers who have employed the concept of tradition, expanded his discussion into a broader reconsideration of the nature of theorizing, a metaphilosophy. And this extension can be understood in relation to such recent thinkers as McDowell and, in particular, to the problem of the acquisition of the normative.
Robert Merton's essays on theories of the middle range and his essays on functional explanati... more Robert Merton's essays on theories of the middle range and his essays on functional explanation and the structural approach are among the most influential in the history of sociology. But their import is a puzzle. He explicitly allied himself with some of the most extreme scientistic formalists and contributed to and endorsed the Columbia model of theory construction. But Merton never responded to criticisms by Ernest Nagel of his arguments or acknowledged the rivalry between Lazarsfeld and Herbert Simon, rarely cited the philosophical and methodological literature, and responded to critics with ambiguous concessions, leaving the Mertonian legacy profoundly ambiguous.
A Review of Walter B. Weimer. This is a challenging work that re-examines the engagement of phil... more A Review of Walter B. Weimer. This is a challenging work that re-examines the engagement of philosophy of science with psychology, and the many issues that psychological methodology has black-boxed, but deserve to be re-examined. These include measurement, human variability, causality and the idea of laws, comparisons with economic modeling. the failures of phenomenalism and behaviorism as reductivisms, downward causation, and the persistent need to consider functional organization.
Tradition & Discovery: The Journal of the Polanyi Society 47:3, 2021
This is a brief response to comments by Struan Jacobs and Peter Blum on The Calling of Social Tho... more This is a brief response to comments by Struan Jacobs and Peter Blum on The Calling of Social Thought, Rediscovering the Work of Edward Shils, a recent collection of essays edited by Christopher Adair-Toteff and Stephen Turner. It identifies a distinctive contribution of Shils to the larger problem of the tacit. Struan Jacobs is right to point out that there are several chapters that should and perhaps could have been included relating Shils to other thinkers, such as T.S. Eliot. The "should" in this case would be an editor's wish; the "could" part, finding the right person to do it, is always the hard part. It would have also been nice to relate him to Frank Knight, who was a formative influence, and to Robert Park, whose sensibility he took a great deal from, and admired. Like Park, Shils had a personal interest in social worlds, in workers, and in ordinary people, and Chicago provided him with a rich variety of them. The workings of a family restaurant in Chinatown in Chicago fascinated him, and inspired his loyalty. So did a young priest from Europe who came to Chicago to take his classes, and whom he admired for his parish work. Academics, especially those who were too concerned with climbing the prestige ladder, were, for him, somewhat amusing. He loved academic gossip, however, and retailed it. It is too bad that this part of his character was not preserved. A reviewer pointed out the failure to deal with India-something I would have also liked to do, as well as Africa, which interested him especially for the contrast between the post-Colonial intellectuals and leaders in the British and French Empires whom he saw as oriented to their respective centers-London and Paris. Our expected chapter on the relation to Parsons was sadly lost because of the tragic illness of the contributor, Uta Gehrhardt, which we learned of too late to replace her. Minerva, to which he devoted so much of his life and effort, deserved its own history: in this case there is at least an excellent article. Shils as a pedagogue and contributor to the Soc Sci sequence at Chicago deserved treatment. His relation to Saul Bellow has been told, from the point of view of Bellow's biographers, but there are other relations to historians and writers that could have been explored. So could his relation with RAND. One hopes all these themes will get the treatment they deserve.
Mark Bevir raises the question of how genealogy, understood as a technique-based radical historic... more Mark Bevir raises the question of how genealogy, understood as a technique-based radical historicism, and the notion of the contingency of ideas, ground " critique. " His problem is to avoid the relativism of radical historicism in a way that allows for " critique " without appealing to non-radical historicist absolutisms of the kind that ground the notion of false consciousness. He does so by appealing to the notion of motivated irrationality, which he claims avoids the problem of relativism and the problems of " false consciousness. " The genealogies of Nietzsche and Foucault, however, do not ground " critique. " The relevant normative judgments, of nobility in Nietzsche, for example, are presupposed.
Social Epsitemoplogy Review and Reply Collective, 2019
This comment briefly reviews alternative approaches to expertise, and explains why some version o... more This comment briefly reviews alternative approaches to expertise, and explains why some version of reputationalism is most plausible.
I argue that Dixon et al. fail to maintain a careful distinction between the negative evaluation ... more I argue that Dixon et al. fail to maintain a careful distinction between the negative evaluation definition of “prejudice” and the implications of this definition for correcting the social ills that prejudice engenders. I also argue that they adduce little evidence to suggest that if prejudice were diminished, commensurate reductions in discrimination would not follow.
What sort of thing is this ���anti-liberal conception���? Factual? Ideological? Valuative? The au... more What sort of thing is this ���anti-liberal conception���? Factual? Ideological? Valuative? The author of this particular statement was a German liberal legal thinker, Walter Jellinek, who was characterizing the new reality of the Nazi regime. One reading would be this: it is primarily a claim in the domain of social theory, that is, an explanatory claim. Historically, the problem of the reality and significance of ���society��� and other supra-individual entities has been the Urproblem of social theory. It has been bound up with every other problem and problematic distinction in the larger domain ...
This is a review of volume 4 of Alexander's Theoretical Logic in Sociology which is devoted to Pa... more This is a review of volume 4 of Alexander's Theoretical Logic in Sociology which is devoted to Parsons
This is a review of Alexander's Theoretical Logic in Sociology Volume 1, which provides a kind of... more This is a review of Alexander's Theoretical Logic in Sociology Volume 1, which provides a kind of philosophy of science for sociology
This is an essay review of a book by Derek Phillips which relies on Alan Gewirth. It points out t... more This is an essay review of a book by Derek Phillips which relies on Alan Gewirth. It points out the omissions in the arguments that undermine their practical applications.
In his last book, TS Kuhn (2000), Fuller challenged the received view of the academic life and wo... more In his last book, TS Kuhn (2000), Fuller challenged the received view of the academic life and work of TS Kuhn. He continues in similar vein in Kuhn vs. Popper but adds a further dimension to his story by measuring his deconstructed Kuhn against a reconstructed Popper. Fuller takes aim at our regular misunderstandings:''So Popper was a democrat concerned with science as a form of dynamic inquiry and Kuhn an elitist focused on science as stabilising social practice.
This is a review essay on a book by Fritz Ringer, which has some entertainment value, as well as ... more This is a review essay on a book by Fritz Ringer, which has some entertainment value, as well as some serious discussion of Weber's views on historical causality, relativism, and other topics which are travestied in Ringer's book.
From a certain point of view one can see why Fritz Ringer's Max Weber's Methodology: the Unificat... more From a certain point of view one can see why Fritz Ringer's Max Weber's Methodology: the Unification of the Cultural and Social Sciences1 would be an attractive book. It appears to be comprehensive. It appears to explain a large number of obscure and difficult texts in short sentences and in terms of relatively simple ideas���even diagrams with arrows. Yet it is not too simple.
In the usual senses of rationality, it is not rational to be moral. Rather than invent a convolut... more In the usual senses of rationality, it is not rational to be moral. Rather than invent a convoluted moral theory which makes morality rational, I take the easy way out, and accept the usual claims of ethical writers to the effect that everyone in history but them is wrong, but extend this condemnation to their own views, and claim that false beliefs are the normal ground of morality. Human nature doesn't help here, since our drives conflict. False moral beliefs are means of resolving these conflicts and producing social order-- until change forces us to invent new false beliefs.
Two women who have not been prominently featured in women's history neither fit standard narrativ... more Two women who have not been prominently featured in women's history neither fit standard narratives nor are readily intelligible. Progressive era intellectuals often held opinions that we would now regard as contradictory, but these two are exceptionally difficult to place in the normal frame. Eastman was a great organizer; Gildersleeve, long term Dean of Barnard, was a great promoter of women's causes, within a framework of women's organization, but also a major player in international affairs, serving as one of the representative to the founding of the UN and as an activist against the foundation of the state of Israel. Their context is discussed and explained. But the mystery remains.
Fifth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities, to be held 5-7 June ... more Fifth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities, to be held 5-7 June 2017 at Stony Brook University
Stephen Turner (University of South Florida) Jacob Mackey (Queens College, CUNY) Georg Theiner & Nikolaus Fogle (Villanova University) Evelyn B. Tribble (Otago University) & John Sutton (Macquarie University)
“On the whole, what is familiar is precisely not understood because it is familiar” (Hegel, Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit)
This book explores the shift in sociology away from the shared aspiration of the classical transi... more This book explores the shift in sociology away from the shared aspiration of the classical transition, of transcending partiality through the construction of a "science of society", in the face of challenges to the notion of objectivity.
With the increasing subjugation of sociology to political ideologies and a growing emphasis on "policy", which casts sociology in the role of a provider of intellectual content for political programs, this volume asks whether the situation is the result of an exhaustion of ideas or might perhaps be rooted in the failure in the very program of establishing sociology as a science. Taking seriously the challenges to the classical aspiration of constructing theories that both explain and are grounded in empirical reality, The Future of Sociology asks whether the core idea of transcending ideology is still worth pursuing, and whether there remains scope for making sociology scientific.
As such, it will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, social theory, and social scientific methodology.
The late 1960s are remembered today as the last time wholesale social upheaval shook Europe and t... more The late 1960s are remembered today as the last time wholesale social upheaval shook Europe and the United States. College students during that tumultuous period���epitomized by the events of May 1968���were as permanently marked in their worldviews as their parents had been by the Depression and World War II. Sociology was at the center of these events, and it changed decisively because of them. The Disobedient Generation collects newly written autobiographies by an international cross-section of well-known sociologists ...
In the last few decades, a considerable number of studies on Renaissance witchcraft have appeared... more In the last few decades, a considerable number of studies on Renaissance witchcraft have appeared in various European countries as well as in the United States. The four volumes reviewed here are part of this trend, which does not seem to abate. They cover a variety of issues and are an expression of the wide range of disciplines involved in the clarification of this intriguing phenomenon.
... A refreshingly unsentimental exposé of the collaboration and connivance between academic soci... more ... A refreshingly unsentimental exposé of the collaboration and connivance between academic sociology and fascism, it should be widely studied and debated.' Professor Bryan S. Turner, Department of Sociology, Essex University Stephen Turner is Distinguished Research ...
Page 1. THE CLASSICS AND BEYOND Edited by STEPHEN P. TURNER Page 2. Page 3. Social Theory and Soc... more Page 1. THE CLASSICS AND BEYOND Edited by STEPHEN P. TURNER Page 2. Page 3. Social Theory and Sociology Page 4. In Memory of Edward Shils, 1910-1995 Page 5. Social Theory and Sociology The Classics and Beyond Edited by Stephen P. Turner BLACKWELL ...
Blackwell Philosophy Guides Series Editor: Steven M. Cahn, City University of New York Graduate S... more Blackwell Philosophy Guides Series Editor: Steven M. Cahn, City University of New York Graduate School Written by an international assembly of distinguished philosophers, the Blackwell Philosophy Guides create a groundbreaking student resource���a complete critical survey of the central themes and issues of philosophy today. Focusing and advancing key arguments throughout, each essay incorporates essential background material serving to clarify the history and logic of the relevant topic. Accordingly, these volumes will be a valuable resource for a broad range of ...
Poznań Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, 2018
The purpose of this book is to discuss the revival of analytical philosophy of history proposed b... more The purpose of this book is to discuss the revival of analytical philosophy of history proposed by Paul A. Roth, a world-known analytical philosopher of the social sciences and the humanities. The first four papers outline the reasons for the decline of philosophy of history, its present phase of development, and its possible future. The other authors discuss important questions of this field of research including: the ontological status of the past, the epistemological assumptions of historical research, the explanatory dimensions of the narrative. In the last group of papers, the authors apply some of Roth's theoretical ideas within their own fields of research.
Contributors are: Krzysztof Brzechczyn (Poland), Nancy D. Campbell (USA), Serge Grigoriev (USA), Géza Kállay (Hungary), Piotr Kowalewski (Poland), Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen (Finland), Chris Lorenz (The Netherlands), Herman Paul (The Netherlands), Dawid Rogacz (Poland), Paul A. Roth (USA), Laura Stark (USA), Stephen Turner (USA), Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski (Poland), and Eugen Zeleňák (Slovakia) Available at: http://www.brill.com/products/book/towards-revival-analytical-philosophy-history.
Vilfredo Pareto's Contributions to Modern Social Theory A Centennial Appraisal, 2023
Pareto was enormously popular at Harvard in the thirties, and the basis of a famous seminar. But ... more Pareto was enormously popular at Harvard in the thirties, and the basis of a famous seminar. But this changed in 1942, with the death of his major promoter and the publication of a book by Carl J Friedrich which essentially accused Pareto's elite theory of being anti-democratic-- a powerful claim in wartime. But Friedrich was a supporter of bureaucratic elitism himself. He disguised the anti-democratic character of his own views in the course of his meretricious but successful attack.
has been an advocate of a hermeneutic approach to intercultural
understanding in such texts as: T... more has been an advocate of a hermeneutic approach to intercultural understanding in such texts as: The Power of Dialogue (1999), Hermeneutic Cosmopolitanism, or: Toward a Cosmopolitan Public Sphere (2011), "Hermeneutics,Phenomenology, and Philosophical Anthropology'' (2006), "Recognition and Difference'' (2005), "Agency and the Other" (2012). In what follows I would like to conduct a kind of philosophical experiment: to translate the basic ideas of this approach into the language and concerns, and also the findings, of cognitive science. My strategy will be to replace some key ideas from the basics of his account with cognitive science concepts dealing with the same or similar phenomena, and ask whether the same ldnds of conclusions Kogler draws about social theory and normative matters could be made. This leads to somewhat surprising results, especially in relation to such concepts as recognition and in the role of play in preschool children's development.
The Technologisation of the Social A Political Anthropology of the Digital Machine, 2022
This chapter distinguishes certain responses to technology and explains why the continuously chan... more This chapter distinguishes certain responses to technology and explains why the continuously changing digital world produces a liminal state in users.
This is a discussion of the present status and transformation of academic freedom under administr... more This is a discussion of the present status and transformation of academic freedom under administrative law, and the role of IRBs Title IX and the Marquette case in relation to these changes.
The mental, the mind, psychology, brain science, and evolutionary, developmental, and comparative... more The mental, the mind, psychology, brain science, and evolutionary, developmental, and comparative psychology, as well as the philosophical analysis of action and thought, are all topics that interact in complex ways with social theory. This interaction, and its difficulties, reach back to the beginnings of sociology, with Comte's rejection of the "psychology" of his own time. There is a sense in which these relations stabilized in the mid-twentieth century, during the behavioral science revolution. The failure of this revolution, and the success of the cognitive revolution in psychology that followed, along with the demise of Freudianism as a serious account of the person, destabilized these relations and returned us to the issues of the past. In this chapter I will give a brief and very general account of this past, identifying the main rivals to the psychology that became the de facto standard view in social science, and explaining their relevance today.
Turner/The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory, 2008
Social theory, both the term and the subject, preceded the discipline of sociology. Non-academic ... more Social theory, both the term and the subject, preceded the discipline of sociology. Non-academic writers, such as Herbert Spencer (1969 [1851]; 1897 [1876]), and Benjamin Kidd (1894), academics from other fields, such as the economist Simon Patten (1896), as well as socialist thinkers, wrote extensively on the subject. Some of this ���social theory��� never became part of sociology. But during the first decade of the twentieth century, in the course of the division of the social sciences into disciplines in the United States, social theory had ...
A large proportion of the time and effort of scientists is spent in activities that have no obvio... more A large proportion of the time and effort of scientists is spent in activities that have no obvious place in the traditional model of" basic science discovery leading to application in a marketable product." Some of this time is spent on basic science that does not lead to application in a marketable product; this can be assimilated, though very problematically, to the traditional model by regarding it as failed effort, or the production of a different kind of good, such as generally available scientific knowledge that can be seen as a" public good ...
This is a discussion of the problem of underdetermination in relation to theory construction in c... more This is a discussion of the problem of underdetermination in relation to theory construction in conventional American sociology in the 1945-1990 period.
This is a history of the concept, from its interwar origins to its postwar uses in MacIntyre, Bel... more This is a history of the concept, from its interwar origins to its postwar uses in MacIntyre, Bellah, and Giddens.
Πολιτεία LIBER AMICORUM AGOSTINO CARRINO MIMESIS / IL PRINCIPE E LA REPUBBLICA, 2020
The paper discusses the concept of "democratic values," and points out the anti-democratic charac... more The paper discusses the concept of "democratic values," and points out the anti-democratic character of philosophical impositions of values when they are not the values adopted democratically. It then returns to the core definitions of democracy in Kelsen to ask what is democratically essential and what is not, a project Kelsen himself began. It concludes by contrasting participation, which is inessential, to accountability, which is essential.
Turner, Stephen. 2017. Naturalizing the Tacit. In Jassen Andreev, Emil Lensky, and Paula Angelova (eds.) Das Interpretative Universum. Würzburg: Koenigshausen & Neumann, 355-376. , 2017
This is a survey of issues having to do with tacit knowledge from a cognitive science perspective... more This is a survey of issues having to do with tacit knowledge from a cognitive science perspective, but in response to issues raised in classical social theory and more recent phenomenology.
The philosophy of science, the philosophy of social science, and organizational studies have a lo... more The philosophy of science, the philosophy of social science, and organizational studies have a long and complex history of interaction. Some of this interaction has been direct, between philosophical conceptions of science and organizational thinkers, some mediated through sociology and those metatheoretical debates that have influenced the sociology of organizations. Several key figures in the history of organizational theory, notably Churchman and Schon, were philosophers by training who carried their philosophical concerns into their thinking about organizations. In what follows, I will give an overview, necessarily very incomplete, of the main phases in this history, and draw some conclusions about themes that reappear in the history.
This paper deals with the demise of the idea of a learned person, the rise of academic profession... more This paper deals with the demise of the idea of a learned person, the rise of academic professionalism, and the death of the academic ethic in the contemporary university. The rise of quit-lit is indicative of the present dire situation in the university, but more historical perspective is needed to understand just how dire it is.
This paper discusses the image of Germany as a state in the middle between Russia and Anglo-ameri... more This paper discusses the image of Germany as a state in the middle between Russia and Anglo-america, from Weber through to Spengler and Heidegger, and examines the implications of this image for the idea of liberalism itself, specifically the problem of liberal political forms and "freedom" without liberal political culture.
This chapter tells the story of the emergence of quantitative sociology at Columbia at the turn o... more This chapter tells the story of the emergence of quantitative sociology at Columbia at the turn of the century. It discusses especially the connections with charities and reformism, the personal interests of the participants, and the leading intellectual role played by Franklin Giddings, and the revolutionary significance of his model of testing social science hypotheses.
Social theory is ordinarily not thought of as an autonomous academic field, a genuine and complet... more Social theory is ordinarily not thought of as an autonomous academic field, a genuine and complete academic identity, or as an appropriate, or feasible, academic career choice, or as much more than an amorphous publishing category for books that are non-empirical, not strongly identified with a discipline, which make some ���social��� reference.
Aproximaciones a la filosofía política de la ciencia, 2013
La reflexión sobre asuntos de conocimiento y poder, ciencia y sociedad, y la m turaleza de la cie... more La reflexión sobre asuntos de conocimiento y poder, ciencia y sociedad, y la m turaleza de la ciencia como actividad socialmente organizada e instituciona lizada, puede encontrarse ya desde La República de Platón, alcanzando mo mentos álgidos en la visión baconiana de una clase de científicos a quiene se les ha otorgado el poder de dominio, en los intentos de la Royal Societ. en Londres, para construirse una identidad propia como un tipo de asocia ción política, en la emergencia de la ciencia como categoría social vinculad; al Estado durante la Ilustración, particularmente con Turgot y Condorcet quienes identificaban el avance de la ciencia con el avance de la sociedad, e. avance científico como el motor del progreso. En este capítulo examinaré esta historia, identificaré los temas centraleE que dominaron esa literatura, y cuestionaré la relevancia actual de tal historia. El tésultado quizá sea sorprendente: pese a que la antigua "Izquierda'' sostuvo po-siciones antagónicas a las de la actual Izquierda participativa, las consideraciones que motivaron a la vieja izquierda son hoy más significativas que nunca. La Ilustración reconsiderada Háy un asunto particularmente central. La ciencia en sentido estricto no es ¡, ,, ' Suficiente para el progreso humano. Llevar a cabo la tarea de hacer que la Ciencia beneficie a la sociedad necesariamente requería un grado significati-' \i-o de conocimiento acerca del mundo social. No obstante, este conocimien-. to siempre ha probado ser problemático, difícil de considerarse como cientí-fico, y en conflicto con la política. Las dificultades fueron inmediatas: tras la
This paper uses the example of modelling cognitive processes in science in terms to discuss basic... more This paper uses the example of modelling cognitive processes in science in terms to discuss basic constraints on theories of tacitness that results from the underdetermination of overt conduct and belief by the tacit background. There is no reason to think that any given construction of the tacit background is the only possible one.
Despite the fact that Max Weber is the original and sole source of the social science concept of ... more Despite the fact that Max Weber is the original and sole source of the social science concept of charisma (as distinct from the religious concept), and the fact that his discussion of charisma is highly precise, detailed, and widely applicable (Adair-Toteff, 2005; Turner 1993, 2003; Baehr, 2008, for discussions), the literature on charisma rarely uses the details of his ideal-type of charismatic authority, and is largely limited to ritual citation.
Faculty of Philosophy at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań and Polish Philosophical Association,... more Faculty of Philosophy at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań and Polish Philosophical Association, Poznań Division invite for an online discussion on the book of Giacomo Borbone, "The Relevance of Models. Idealization and Concretization in Leszek Nowak" (Műnchen: Grin Verlag 2021). The participants will be: Francesco Coniglione (Catania University, Italy), Adolfo Garcia de la Sienra (Universidad Veracruzana, México), Igor Hanzel (Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia), Theo A.F. Kuipers (Groningen University, The Netherlands), Stephen Turner (University of South Florida, USA), Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski (Liberal Arts and Sciences, Collegium Historicum, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland). Online discussion will be held on Monday, December 13, 2021, at 5 P.M. (Central European Time).
This is a discussion of the phenomenon of "curating" or censoring social media and other digital ... more This is a discussion of the phenomenon of "curating" or censoring social media and other digital sources to create a particular world of experience that is intended to alter the viewers sense of what is normal or acceptable
Providing a comprehensive engagement with the work of Hans-Herbert Kögler, this is the first volu... more Providing a comprehensive engagement with the work of Hans-Herbert Kögler, this is the first volume to expand upon and critique his distinctive approach to critical theory: critical hermeneutics.
In the current climate of crisis, the relevance and fruitfulness of Kögler's work has never been greater, as he fuses the philosophies of Paul Ricoeur, Hans Georg Gadamer, and his mentor, Jürgen Habermas, to respond to critical international issues surrounding politics, society, and the environment. Working towards a truly non-ethno-centric and global conception of intercultural dialogue, an essential aspect of Kögler's critical hermeneutics is his account of selfhood as reflexive: socially situated, embodied, and linguistically articulated, permeated by power, but yet critical and creative.
Leading international scholars, representing a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, build upon Kögler's approach in this volume and explore the methodological, theoretical, and applicative scope of critical hermeneutics beyond the Frankfurt School. In doing so, they address some of the most pressing issues facing global society today, from multilingual education to the urgent need for interreligious and intercultural understanding.
Closing with a response from Kögler himself, Hans-Herbert Kögler's Critical Hermeneutics also offers an exclusive account of the philosopher's contemporary re-appraisal of the core tenets of critical hermeneutics.
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From Turner’s childhood in the racially violent South Side of Chicago, the development of his interests in social theory, through to his education in the shadow of the war in Vietnam and a period of social and personal turmoil, this biographical work shows us not only the development of academic thinking, but the evolution of an academic career. The rebellion within sociology against the hegemonic Merton-Parsons conception of sociology and the methodological orthodoxies of the time leads through to a discussion of the philosophy of science and social science, and from there to a reassessment of the inherited view of the classics, to science studies, and to political and international relations theory – the comprehensive nature of Mad Hazard means the reader can truly understand how Turner’s academic journey evolved.
Revealing an academic career not dependent on prestige and academic power, but also not untouched by hierarchy and academic politics, Mad Hazard is appealing for readers interested in the field of social theory, and beyond that, those interested in the evolution of intellectual life in the present university.
The problems of cognition, the brain, the actual experiences of people, and the question of how people acquire their cognitive capacities are all very difficult and subject to conflicting considerations. In this chapter a number of these are described. Yet the various approaches need to be integrated. There are various proposals for doing so. Many of them are fundamentalist, in the sense that they take one set of considerations, such as evolution or computation, as the controlling facts. Typically these approaches have little to say about the social, except in a very abstract way. To take social variation and the complexities of social life into account appears to require a substantial revision of these approaches. At the same time, however, it appears that cognitive science is providing reasons for rejecting or modifying some of the central ideas of social science, such as rational choice, by showing experimentally that the standard models in social science are false. These conflicts point to the need for integration, and to the limitations of proposals for integration. If one begins with the navigational powers of an ant, and infers from them the features that an ant's brain must have in order to do the navigating that can be observed in ant experiments, one arrives, as Roger Gallistel does (1989), with a picture like this: the brain is made up of " functional " components that perform specific tasks in sequences or in relation to one another. It is a reasonable assumption that these components are not the product of learning, but are innate, inherited, fixed, and the product of extremely long evolution. This gets us a striking picture: that brain is like a transistor radio with separate functional units that match up to physical processes and spaces, and which can be treated as something like transistors which are the same from person to person and " produced by evolution " to be standardized units. Brain regions do have different significance for the capacity to act, speak, perceive, and so forth. But because there are few cases in which these hypothetical structures match physical localized patterns in the brain, one must allow for a good deal of looseness in the assumed relation between these " functional " components and their physical realization. If one begins with the problems of computation, recognizing that all models of the cognitive processes in the brain are computational, the issues look like this: what is the structure, or architecture, of the computational processes that allow the brain to do the big things that it unquestionably does—remember, often from the distant past and often with difficulty and error; consciously perform logical reasoning and computation; make intuitive distinctions, decisions, and the like that differ from conscious reasoning; receive perceptual inputs and process them, learn and change responses because of learning, and so forth. The constraints on computational models turn out to be substantial: models which suppose the brain to be a more or less fixed computer turn out to be bad at
So what is normativity? The one thing it is not is the sociological fact of people behaving in a certain way, using certain terms, and believing certain things. Behavior can be contrary to the relevant norms, and beliefs can be false. Genuine, as distinct from sociological normativity is the thing that makes behavior wrong, usage genuinely meaningful, and beliefs false. Without genuine normativity, there is no meaning, no truth or falsity, no act correct or incorrect. And this has implications for "sociological" accounts of the social world: without accepting the reality of genuine normativity we can=t even describe the social world as we know it, because the world as we know it is constituted by these normative distinctions.
How do we know all this? Regress arguments. When we use normative language, or even reason about something, and are asked for a justification of our reasoning, we get back to a justification in the same normative language. The mere fact that people expect a promise to be fulfilled doesn't make it a promise or generate an obligation. Only a norm, one that says something like "one should fulfill one's promises" justifies our saying that someone who fails to fulfil a promise has done something wrong. Merely violating our expectations is not wrong.
This, at least, is the conventional wisdom in philosophy. But philosophers ordinarily keep an eye on the shiny regress arguments and avert them from the trainwreck of the metaphysics behind it. What is this normativity that lies at the end of justification? Is there really a realm of the normative? Is it really the case that every time one uses a "normative" term, such as "correct," that one invokes this netherworld of normativities? Does appealing to genuine normativity actually explain anything in this world? And if so, how does this kind of explanation relate to the kinds of explanations social scientists have given of normative facts? What is the source of normativity? There seems to be little agreement, and wide variation, in answers to these questions, where there are answers at all. And when we look at the answers, they turn out to be all over the place- from a system of proprieties co-extensive with language, to presuppositions that flash into existence whenever they are needed, to the Kantian norms of reason, to the tacit rules behind the meanings of sentences, to the normativity embodied in and created by collective intentions, and on and on. This should be an embarrassment, but no one seems to be embarrassed about it.
There is also a puzzle about what exactly "normativity" explains. Does it explain something real that the social sciences don't explain? In the case of science, this problem has been discussed in two ways. One argues that science is a normative activity and therefore any "sociology" which purports to account for science must be insufficient. The other says that philosophy of science is an attempt to make normative sense of science, and that this activity does not compete with explanations of science or the course of scientific development: the project of fashioning a normative lens for science and the project of explaining what scientists believe to be true are different enterprises, that do not compete. One could extend this to other forms of "normativity": there is what people say and understand, and what they believe to be correct speech; then there is what is really correct speech. Social science is concerned with the former, normativity with the latter.
Normativists say that social science explanations don=t explain normativity: they are only about regularities or probabilities, expectations, perhaps, but never the normative fact, and therefore the meaning, of promising itself. Is this really true? A simple example is the explanation of Maori gift customs in Marcel Mauss's classic The Gift. The Maori think there is a spiritual substance, Hau, that attaches to a gift and must be returned by the giving of another gift. They acknowledge that hau is a mysterious thing. Nevertheless, they believe in it, and organize their social and economic life around this substance. Hau is a Good Bad Theory: good, because it co-ordinates behavior and motivates compliance; bad, because hau is an non-explanatory, false, and fails to fit into our ordinary stream of explanation, which is why the Maori treat it as a mystery.
This standard social science explanation works just fine for the Maori. It is difficult to imagine even a normativist philosopher quibbling with it. But it also raises a tough question: why don"t explanations like this apply just as well to our own moral beliefs? If we think we are obligated to return a phone call, is the obligation any more real, or is our belief that this obligation is real any different than the beliefs of the Maori about hau? Isn't the whole concept of normativity suspiciously like the concept of hau, namely a false belief wrongly used to explain something that isn=t there in the first place?
In a way, this one has an easy answer- there is no difference. And there is nothing mysterious that is left over after the social science explanation is given. For beliefs like this, it makes sense to be a relativist. But things appear to be different for reason or rationality itself. How can we treat that as a superstition? We rely on it. It is not a good bad theory, but a good good theory, if it is a theory at all. Here, it seems, the regress arguments work- there is no denying rationality, because justifying our denial would assume rationality, the rationality of the speaker and the person persuaded. And rationality is normative.
Or is it? Do we really "appeal" to rationality when we try to persuade someone or communicate with them? When we try to communicate anything, we have to say something that is intelligible. And we hope that the listener will understand it and see it is true. But that is not the same as invoking a norm. But something is right in the normativist argument. What we do need, to communicate or to reason with another person, as the normativist argument suggests, is a stopping pointB an end of the regress, something that is in common that the justifying can close with. The normativist thinks these stopping points must be norms because they are not causes or data.
But there is another possibility, found both in the philosophical tradition and in the social science tradition- Brentano's notion of Evidenz, which appears also in Weber in relation to empathy. Evidenz is defined by Brentano as being evident to all. The things that are evident to all B - though the "All" needs to be qualified- might include steps in reasoning, or ostensive definitions that were understood by others, which are the kinds of regress-stoppers that are needed. Brentano thought of Evidenz as an alternative answer to the problem of grounding mathematics, which bedeviled Frege and Husserl. The alternative was derided as "psychologism" and the concept of Evidenz as subjective. But the critics were wrong, and they misrepresented it.
Today we can construe these points of mutual obviousness in terms of cognitive science concepts. The mirroring system in humans, the basis for empathy, is a good candidate for naturalizing Evidenz, for accounting for such things as our capacity to understand others without appealing to normativities, hidden structures of norms, and the like. These systems are "objective." They do much of the explanatory work that the mysterious notion of normativity is claimed to do. We can do without these mysteries.
What are the political implications of 'expert' knowledge and especially scientific knowledge for liberal democracy? If knowledge is not evenly distributed upon what basis can the philosophy of equal rights be sustained?
This important book points to the crisis in knowledge in liberal democracies. This crisis, simply put, is that most citizens cannot understand, much less judge, the claims scientists make.
One response is the appointment of public commissions to provide conclusions for policy-makers to act upon. There are also `commissions from below', such as grass roots associations that quiz the limits of expert knowledge and power and make rival knowledge claims. Do these commissions represent a new stage in the development of liberal democracy? Or is it merely a pragmatic device of no political consequence.
The central argument of the book is that in a `knowledge society' in which specialized knowledge is increasingly important to politics, more has to be delegated because democratic discussion can't handle it. This limitation in the scope of liberal democracy threatens its fundamental character.
The book will be required reading in the fields of social theory, political theory and science studies.
The story of the dispute is itself fascinating, for it cuts across the major political and intellectual currents of the twentieth century, from positivism, pragmatism and value-free social science, through the philosophy of Jaspers and Heidegger, to Critical Theory and the revival of Natural Right and Natural Law. As Weber's ideas were imported to Britain and America, they found new formulations and new adherents and critics and became absorbed into different traditions and new issues.
This book was first published in 1984.
In a series of tightly argued essays, Turner traces out the implications that discarding the notion of shared frameworks has for relativism, social constructionism, normativity, and a number of other concepts. He suggests ways in which these ideas might be reformulated more productively, in part through extended critiques of the work of scholars such as Ian Hacking, Andrew Pickering, Pierre Bourdieu, Quentin Skinner, Robert Brandom, Clifford Geertz, and Edward Shils.
This book focuses on the consequences of the 'near-death' experience of sociology in the 1980s, and its slow revival and transformation, as well as the challenges it faces in the new university environments. Certain to be controversial, the book looks forward to a new kind of discipline.
Contents
Resources
About the Authors
First published in 1980, this book examines the nature of sociological explanation. The tactics of interpretive sociology have often remained obscure because of confusion over the nature of the evidence for interpretation and the nature of decisions among alternative interpretations. In providing an account of the problem of interpretive sociological claims, the author argues that there is rationality to interpretation. He also presents a fresh view of the relationship between qualitative and statistical claims and shows their complementary character. Dr. Turner's lucid and comprehensive analysis breaks new ground in its fundamental re-examination of the conceptual basis for “explaining” social behaviour. By its call for more rigourous conceptual sophistication in attempted explanations of social behaviour, this book will stimulate controversy and lively discussion among sociologists.
From Turner’s childhood in the racially violent South Side of Chicago, the development of his interests in social theory, through to his education in the shadow of the war in Vietnam and a period of social and personal turmoil, this biographical work shows us not only the development of academic thinking, but the evolution of an academic career. The rebellion within sociology against the hegemonic Merton-Parsons conception of sociology and the methodological orthodoxies of the time leads through to a discussion of the philosophy of science and social science, and from there to a reassessment of the inherited view of the classics, to science studies, and to political and international relations theory – the comprehensive nature of Mad Hazard means the reader can truly understand how Turner’s academic journey evolved.
Revealing an academic career not dependent on prestige and academic power, but also not untouched by hierarchy and academic politics, Mad Hazard is appealing for readers interested in the field of social theory, and beyond that, those interested in the evolution of intellectual life in the present university.
The problems of cognition, the brain, the actual experiences of people, and the question of how people acquire their cognitive capacities are all very difficult and subject to conflicting considerations. In this chapter a number of these are described. Yet the various approaches need to be integrated. There are various proposals for doing so. Many of them are fundamentalist, in the sense that they take one set of considerations, such as evolution or computation, as the controlling facts. Typically these approaches have little to say about the social, except in a very abstract way. To take social variation and the complexities of social life into account appears to require a substantial revision of these approaches. At the same time, however, it appears that cognitive science is providing reasons for rejecting or modifying some of the central ideas of social science, such as rational choice, by showing experimentally that the standard models in social science are false. These conflicts point to the need for integration, and to the limitations of proposals for integration. If one begins with the navigational powers of an ant, and infers from them the features that an ant's brain must have in order to do the navigating that can be observed in ant experiments, one arrives, as Roger Gallistel does (1989), with a picture like this: the brain is made up of " functional " components that perform specific tasks in sequences or in relation to one another. It is a reasonable assumption that these components are not the product of learning, but are innate, inherited, fixed, and the product of extremely long evolution. This gets us a striking picture: that brain is like a transistor radio with separate functional units that match up to physical processes and spaces, and which can be treated as something like transistors which are the same from person to person and " produced by evolution " to be standardized units. Brain regions do have different significance for the capacity to act, speak, perceive, and so forth. But because there are few cases in which these hypothetical structures match physical localized patterns in the brain, one must allow for a good deal of looseness in the assumed relation between these " functional " components and their physical realization. If one begins with the problems of computation, recognizing that all models of the cognitive processes in the brain are computational, the issues look like this: what is the structure, or architecture, of the computational processes that allow the brain to do the big things that it unquestionably does—remember, often from the distant past and often with difficulty and error; consciously perform logical reasoning and computation; make intuitive distinctions, decisions, and the like that differ from conscious reasoning; receive perceptual inputs and process them, learn and change responses because of learning, and so forth. The constraints on computational models turn out to be substantial: models which suppose the brain to be a more or less fixed computer turn out to be bad at
So what is normativity? The one thing it is not is the sociological fact of people behaving in a certain way, using certain terms, and believing certain things. Behavior can be contrary to the relevant norms, and beliefs can be false. Genuine, as distinct from sociological normativity is the thing that makes behavior wrong, usage genuinely meaningful, and beliefs false. Without genuine normativity, there is no meaning, no truth or falsity, no act correct or incorrect. And this has implications for "sociological" accounts of the social world: without accepting the reality of genuine normativity we can=t even describe the social world as we know it, because the world as we know it is constituted by these normative distinctions.
How do we know all this? Regress arguments. When we use normative language, or even reason about something, and are asked for a justification of our reasoning, we get back to a justification in the same normative language. The mere fact that people expect a promise to be fulfilled doesn't make it a promise or generate an obligation. Only a norm, one that says something like "one should fulfill one's promises" justifies our saying that someone who fails to fulfil a promise has done something wrong. Merely violating our expectations is not wrong.
This, at least, is the conventional wisdom in philosophy. But philosophers ordinarily keep an eye on the shiny regress arguments and avert them from the trainwreck of the metaphysics behind it. What is this normativity that lies at the end of justification? Is there really a realm of the normative? Is it really the case that every time one uses a "normative" term, such as "correct," that one invokes this netherworld of normativities? Does appealing to genuine normativity actually explain anything in this world? And if so, how does this kind of explanation relate to the kinds of explanations social scientists have given of normative facts? What is the source of normativity? There seems to be little agreement, and wide variation, in answers to these questions, where there are answers at all. And when we look at the answers, they turn out to be all over the place- from a system of proprieties co-extensive with language, to presuppositions that flash into existence whenever they are needed, to the Kantian norms of reason, to the tacit rules behind the meanings of sentences, to the normativity embodied in and created by collective intentions, and on and on. This should be an embarrassment, but no one seems to be embarrassed about it.
There is also a puzzle about what exactly "normativity" explains. Does it explain something real that the social sciences don't explain? In the case of science, this problem has been discussed in two ways. One argues that science is a normative activity and therefore any "sociology" which purports to account for science must be insufficient. The other says that philosophy of science is an attempt to make normative sense of science, and that this activity does not compete with explanations of science or the course of scientific development: the project of fashioning a normative lens for science and the project of explaining what scientists believe to be true are different enterprises, that do not compete. One could extend this to other forms of "normativity": there is what people say and understand, and what they believe to be correct speech; then there is what is really correct speech. Social science is concerned with the former, normativity with the latter.
Normativists say that social science explanations don=t explain normativity: they are only about regularities or probabilities, expectations, perhaps, but never the normative fact, and therefore the meaning, of promising itself. Is this really true? A simple example is the explanation of Maori gift customs in Marcel Mauss's classic The Gift. The Maori think there is a spiritual substance, Hau, that attaches to a gift and must be returned by the giving of another gift. They acknowledge that hau is a mysterious thing. Nevertheless, they believe in it, and organize their social and economic life around this substance. Hau is a Good Bad Theory: good, because it co-ordinates behavior and motivates compliance; bad, because hau is an non-explanatory, false, and fails to fit into our ordinary stream of explanation, which is why the Maori treat it as a mystery.
This standard social science explanation works just fine for the Maori. It is difficult to imagine even a normativist philosopher quibbling with it. But it also raises a tough question: why don"t explanations like this apply just as well to our own moral beliefs? If we think we are obligated to return a phone call, is the obligation any more real, or is our belief that this obligation is real any different than the beliefs of the Maori about hau? Isn't the whole concept of normativity suspiciously like the concept of hau, namely a false belief wrongly used to explain something that isn=t there in the first place?
In a way, this one has an easy answer- there is no difference. And there is nothing mysterious that is left over after the social science explanation is given. For beliefs like this, it makes sense to be a relativist. But things appear to be different for reason or rationality itself. How can we treat that as a superstition? We rely on it. It is not a good bad theory, but a good good theory, if it is a theory at all. Here, it seems, the regress arguments work- there is no denying rationality, because justifying our denial would assume rationality, the rationality of the speaker and the person persuaded. And rationality is normative.
Or is it? Do we really "appeal" to rationality when we try to persuade someone or communicate with them? When we try to communicate anything, we have to say something that is intelligible. And we hope that the listener will understand it and see it is true. But that is not the same as invoking a norm. But something is right in the normativist argument. What we do need, to communicate or to reason with another person, as the normativist argument suggests, is a stopping pointB an end of the regress, something that is in common that the justifying can close with. The normativist thinks these stopping points must be norms because they are not causes or data.
But there is another possibility, found both in the philosophical tradition and in the social science tradition- Brentano's notion of Evidenz, which appears also in Weber in relation to empathy. Evidenz is defined by Brentano as being evident to all. The things that are evident to all B - though the "All" needs to be qualified- might include steps in reasoning, or ostensive definitions that were understood by others, which are the kinds of regress-stoppers that are needed. Brentano thought of Evidenz as an alternative answer to the problem of grounding mathematics, which bedeviled Frege and Husserl. The alternative was derided as "psychologism" and the concept of Evidenz as subjective. But the critics were wrong, and they misrepresented it.
Today we can construe these points of mutual obviousness in terms of cognitive science concepts. The mirroring system in humans, the basis for empathy, is a good candidate for naturalizing Evidenz, for accounting for such things as our capacity to understand others without appealing to normativities, hidden structures of norms, and the like. These systems are "objective." They do much of the explanatory work that the mysterious notion of normativity is claimed to do. We can do without these mysteries.
What are the political implications of 'expert' knowledge and especially scientific knowledge for liberal democracy? If knowledge is not evenly distributed upon what basis can the philosophy of equal rights be sustained?
This important book points to the crisis in knowledge in liberal democracies. This crisis, simply put, is that most citizens cannot understand, much less judge, the claims scientists make.
One response is the appointment of public commissions to provide conclusions for policy-makers to act upon. There are also `commissions from below', such as grass roots associations that quiz the limits of expert knowledge and power and make rival knowledge claims. Do these commissions represent a new stage in the development of liberal democracy? Or is it merely a pragmatic device of no political consequence.
The central argument of the book is that in a `knowledge society' in which specialized knowledge is increasingly important to politics, more has to be delegated because democratic discussion can't handle it. This limitation in the scope of liberal democracy threatens its fundamental character.
The book will be required reading in the fields of social theory, political theory and science studies.
The story of the dispute is itself fascinating, for it cuts across the major political and intellectual currents of the twentieth century, from positivism, pragmatism and value-free social science, through the philosophy of Jaspers and Heidegger, to Critical Theory and the revival of Natural Right and Natural Law. As Weber's ideas were imported to Britain and America, they found new formulations and new adherents and critics and became absorbed into different traditions and new issues.
This book was first published in 1984.
In a series of tightly argued essays, Turner traces out the implications that discarding the notion of shared frameworks has for relativism, social constructionism, normativity, and a number of other concepts. He suggests ways in which these ideas might be reformulated more productively, in part through extended critiques of the work of scholars such as Ian Hacking, Andrew Pickering, Pierre Bourdieu, Quentin Skinner, Robert Brandom, Clifford Geertz, and Edward Shils.
This book focuses on the consequences of the 'near-death' experience of sociology in the 1980s, and its slow revival and transformation, as well as the challenges it faces in the new university environments. Certain to be controversial, the book looks forward to a new kind of discipline.
Contents
Resources
About the Authors
First published in 1980, this book examines the nature of sociological explanation. The tactics of interpretive sociology have often remained obscure because of confusion over the nature of the evidence for interpretation and the nature of decisions among alternative interpretations. In providing an account of the problem of interpretive sociological claims, the author argues that there is rationality to interpretation. He also presents a fresh view of the relationship between qualitative and statistical claims and shows their complementary character. Dr. Turner's lucid and comprehensive analysis breaks new ground in its fundamental re-examination of the conceptual basis for “explaining” social behaviour. By its call for more rigourous conceptual sophistication in attempted explanations of social behaviour, this book will stimulate controversy and lively discussion among sociologists.
sociology problematizes ideology itself, without affirming any ideology. This approach provides its own discipline: we come to understand what something like “oppression” means, and means for the people involved, in terms of the difference between our assumptions and practices, from our
living life, and theirs.
science, as they are in science itself, having replaced laws and theories
as the primary strategy. Logical Positivism tried to erase the older
neo-Kantian distinction between ideal constructions and reality. It
returns in the case of models. Nowak's concept of idealization provided
an alternative account of this issue. It construed model application
as concretizations of hypotheses which improve by accounting
for exceptions. This appears to account for physical law. But it raises
the problem of uniqueness: is the result unique, as physical law should
be? Neo-Kantianism failed this test. Its solutions were circular justifications
for claims of uniqueness. Nowak inherited the problem without
resolving it.
Web: http://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/cognitivefutures/CFP.html
Panel Participants:
Stephen Turner (University of South Florida)
Jacob Mackey (Queens College, CUNY)
Georg Theiner & Nikolaus Fogle (Villanova University)
Evelyn B. Tribble (Otago University) & John Sutton (Macquarie University)
“On the whole, what is familiar is precisely not understood because it is familiar” (Hegel, Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit)
With the increasing subjugation of sociology to political ideologies and a growing emphasis on "policy", which casts sociology in the role of a provider of intellectual content for political programs, this volume asks whether the situation is the result of an exhaustion of ideas or might perhaps be rooted in the failure in the very program of establishing sociology as a science. Taking seriously the challenges to the classical aspiration of constructing theories that both explain and are grounded in empirical reality, The Future of Sociology asks whether the core idea of transcending ideology is still worth pursuing, and whether there remains scope for making sociology scientific.
As such, it will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, social theory, and social scientific methodology.
Contributors are: Krzysztof Brzechczyn (Poland), Nancy D. Campbell (USA), Serge Grigoriev (USA), Géza Kállay (Hungary), Piotr Kowalewski (Poland), Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen (Finland), Chris Lorenz (The Netherlands), Herman Paul (The Netherlands), Dawid Rogacz (Poland), Paul A. Roth (USA), Laura Stark (USA), Stephen Turner (USA), Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski (Poland), and Eugen Zeleňák (Slovakia) Available at: http://www.brill.com/products/book/towards-revival-analytical-philosophy-history.
understanding in such texts as: The Power of Dialogue (1999), Hermeneutic
Cosmopolitanism, or: Toward a Cosmopolitan Public Sphere (2011), "Hermeneutics,Phenomenology, and Philosophical Anthropology'' (2006), "Recognition and Difference'' (2005), "Agency and the Other" (2012). In what follows I would like to conduct a kind of philosophical experiment: to translate the basic ideas of this approach into the language and concerns, and also the findings, of cognitive science. My strategy
will be to replace some key ideas from the basics of his account with cognitive science concepts dealing with the same or similar phenomena, and ask whether the same ldnds of conclusions Kogler draws about social theory and normative matters could be made. This leads to somewhat surprising results, especially in relation to such concepts as recognition and in the role of play in preschool children's development.
Online discussion will be held on Monday, December 13, 2021, at 5 P.M.
(Central European Time).
In the current climate of crisis, the relevance and fruitfulness of Kögler's work has never been greater, as he fuses the philosophies of Paul Ricoeur, Hans Georg Gadamer, and his mentor, Jürgen Habermas, to respond to critical international issues surrounding politics, society, and the environment. Working towards a truly non-ethno-centric and global conception of intercultural dialogue, an essential aspect of Kögler's critical hermeneutics is his account of selfhood as reflexive: socially situated, embodied, and linguistically articulated, permeated by power, but yet critical and creative.
Leading international scholars, representing a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, build upon Kögler's approach in this volume and explore the methodological, theoretical, and applicative scope of critical hermeneutics beyond the Frankfurt School. In doing so, they address some of the most pressing issues facing global society today, from multilingual education to the urgent need for interreligious and intercultural understanding.
Closing with a response from Kögler himself, Hans-Herbert Kögler's Critical Hermeneutics also offers an exclusive account of the philosopher's contemporary re-appraisal of the core tenets of critical hermeneutics.