Ian Jarvie

Bio: Ian Jarvie is an academic researcher from York University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Rationality & Critical rationalism. The author has an hindex of 24, co-authored 134 publications receiving 2084 citations. Previous affiliations of Ian Jarvie include Keele University & London School of Economics and Political Science.

A Cognitive Theory of Religion [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract: I use an old observation (that religion is anthropomorphistic) to solve a problem almost as old (why do people have religious beliefs?) by arguing that religion is a special case of the more general phenomenon of anthropomorphism. This view suggests that religious belief, often thought nonempirical and cognitively anomalous, is as much based in experience as is nonreligious belief and that it consists in a plausible application of significant models to ambiguous phenomena. Anthropomorphism, often thought a cognitive aberration, appears to me both reasonable and inevitable, although by definition mistaken. On this argument, religious models of and for the world differ in content from nonreligious models but are epistemologically similar to them.

The revolution in anthropology

Abstract: Professor Jarvie examines the nature of the revolution in social anthropology in order to investigate its results. Working within Karl Popper's radical view of the nature of science, he argues that the subject is one of the oldest and most fundamental of all studies and suggests it can easily be traced back to Plato and Aristotle, not merely as a matter of historical curiosity, but as having fruitful results for the understanding of Malinowski and the revolution.

Rationality and relativism

Abstract: Relativism is easily confused with tolerance and hence with rational scepticism. Absolutism is easily confused with sure conviction and hence with irrational fanaticism. But cognitive relativism, by denying absolute truth even as a regulative idea, evacuates the possibility of criticism, and hence the project of co-operative, progressive, learning from experience. All this is permitted by weak absolutism which is also able crisply to define the notions of relative truth and of toleration. Hence it is a better framework for the cognitive work of the anthropologist since it assimilates every community of knowers to the model of the community of science, be they primitive peoples or sophisticated anthropologists. Evans-Pritchard on the Azande, Turnbull on the Ik, and Gellner on Legitimation of Belief are discussed.

The Problem of the Rationality of Magic

Abstract: As a beginning we want to distinguish rational action from rational belief. An action is rational, by and large, if it is goal-directed;1 a belief is rational if it satisfies some standard or criterion.2 When we deem a person ‘rational’ we mean he acts rationally, or he holds rational beliefs, or both. Let us call the rationality that consists in acting rationally the weak sense of ‘rationality’; and the rationality that consists in acting rationally on the basis of rationally held beliefs the strong sense of ‘rationality’. Now our thesis in this study can be formulated so: magic is rational in the weak sense, but not in the strong sense; this demarcates it from science which is rational in the strong sense.

We Have Never Been Modern

Abstract: What makes us modern? This is a classic question in philosophy as well as in political science. However it is often raised without including science and technology in its definition. The argument of this book is that we are modern as long as we split our political process in two - between politics proper, and science and technology. This division allows the formidable expansion of the Western empires. However it has become more and more difficult to maintain this distance between science and politics. Hence the postmodern predicament - the feeling that the modern stance is no longer acceptable but that there is no alternative. The solution, advances one of France's leading sociologists of science, is to realize that we have never been modern to begin with. The comparative anthropology this text provides reintroduces science to the fabric of daily life and aims to make us compatible both with our past and with other cultures wrongly called pre-modern.

Nations and Nationalism

Abstract: Series Editor's Preface. Introduction by John Breuilly. Acknowledgements. 1. Definitions. State and nation. The nation. 2. Culture in Agrarian Society. Power and culture in the agro-literature society. The varieties of agrarian rulers. 3. Industrial Society. The society of perpetual growth. Social genetics. The age of universal high culture. 4. The Transition to an Age of Nationalism. A note on the weakness of nationalism. Wild and garden culture. 5. What is a Nation. The course of true nationalism never did run smooth. 6. Social Entropy and Equality in Industrial Society. Obstacles to entropy. Fissures and barriers. A diversity of focus. 7. A Typology of Nationalisms. The varieties of nationalist experience. Diaspora nationalism. 8. The Future of Nationalism. Industrial culture - one or many?. 9. Nationalism and Ideology. Who is for Nuremberg?. One nation, one state. 10. Conclusion. What is not being said. Summary. Select bibliography. Bilbliography of Ernest Gellner's writing: Ian Jarvie. Index

The Act of Creation

Abstract: While the study of psychology has offered little in the way of explaining the creative process, Koestler examines the idea that we are at our most creative when rational thought is suspended--for example, in dreams and trancelike states. All who read The Act of Creation will find it a compelling and illuminating book.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Abstract: 13 EADERS of Mr. Bertrand Russell's philosophical £v works know that one of his pupils before the outbreak of the war, an Austrian, Mr. Ludwig Wittgenstein, caused him to change his views in some important particulars. Curiosity can now be satisfied. The “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus “which Mr. Ogden has included in his new library of philosophy is a remarkable and strikingly original work. It is published in German and English in parallel pages. It is difficult to appreciate the reason for this, seeing that the author is evidently familiar with our language and has himself carefully revised the proofs of the translation. Also we should have liked to have the Tractatus without Mr. Russell's Introduction, not, we hasten to add, on account of any fault or shortcoming in that introduction, which is highly appreciative and in part a defence of himself, in part explanatory of the author, but for the reason that good wine needs no bush and that Mr. Russell's bush has the unfortunate effect of dulling the palate instead of whetting the appetite. In his penultimate sentence Mr. Russell says; “To have constructed a theory of logic which is not at any point obviously wrong is to have achieved a work of extraordinary difficulty and importance.” We agree, but how uninspiring when compared with Mr. Wittgenstein's own statement of aim: “What can be said at all can be said clearly, and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. By Ludwig Wittgenstein. (International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method.) Pp. 189. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd.; New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., Inc., 1922.) 10s. 6d. net.