Companies are increasingly asked to provide innovative solutions to deep-seated problems of human misery, even as economic theory instructs managers to focus on maximizing their shareholders' wealt

Misery Loves Companies: Rethinking Social Initiatives by Business:

Qualitative researchers rely — implicitly or explicitly — on a variety of understandings and corresponding types of validity in the process of describing, interpreting, and explaining phenomena of ...

Understanding and Validity in Qualitative Research

Evidence-based policy is a dominant theme in contemporary public services but the practical realities and challenges involved in using evidence in policy-making are formidable. Part of the problem is one of complexity. In health services and other public services, we are dealing with complex social interventions which act on complex social systems--things like league tables, performance measures, regulation and inspection, or funding reforms. These are not 'magic bullets' which will always hit their target, but programmes whose effects are crucially dependent on context and implementation. Traditional methods of review focus on measuring and reporting on programme effectiveness, often find that the evidence is mixed or conflicting, and provide little or no clue as to why the intervention worked or did not work when applied in different contexts or circumstances, deployed by different stakeholders, or used for different purposes. This paper offers a model of research synthesis which is designed to work with complex social interventions or programmes, and which is based on the emerging 'realist' approach to evaluation. It provides an explanatory analysis aimed at discerning what works for whom, in what circumstances, in what respects and how. The first step is to make explicit the programme theory (or theories)--the underlying assumptions about how an intervention is meant to work and what impacts it is expected to have. We then look for empirical evidence to populate this theoretical framework, supporting, contradicting or modifying the programme theories as it goes. The results of the review combine theoretical understanding and empirical evidence, and focus on explaining the relationship between the context in which the intervention is applied, the mechanisms by which it works and the outcomes which are produced. The aim is to enable decision-makers to reach a deeper understanding of the intervention and how it can be made to work most effectively. Realist review does not provide simple answers to complex questions. It will not tell policy-makers or managers whether something works or not, but will provide the policy and practice community with the kind of rich, detailed and highly practical understanding of complex social interventions which is likely to be of much more use to them when planning and implementing programmes at a national, regional or local level.

Realist review - a new method of systematic review designed for complex policy interventions

Because new product development (NPD) teams are engaged in knowledge creation, NPD management should emphasize cognitive team processes rather than purely social processes. Using the notions of tac...

From Embedded Knowledge to Embodied Knowledge: New Product Development as Knowledge Management:

A National Research Council report, Scientific Research in Education, has elicited considerable criticism from the education research community, but this criticism has not focused on a key assumption of the report—its Humean, regularity conception of causality. It is argued that this conception, which also underlies other arguments for “scientifically-based research,” is narrow and philosophically outdated, and leads to a misrepresentation of the nature and value of qualitative research for causal explanation. An alternative, realist approach to causality is presented that supports the scientific legitimacy of using qualitative research for causal investigation, reframes the arguments for experimental methods in educational research, and can support a more productive collaboration between qualitative and quantitative researchers.

Causal Explanation, Qualitative Research, and Scientific Inquiry in Education

What Is Meaning? A Wittgensteinian Answer to an Un-Wittgensteinian Question

This paper argues that Wittgenstein, both early and late, rejects the idea that the logically simpler and more fundamental case is that of “the mere sign” and that what a meaningful symbol is can be explained through the elaboration of an appropriately supplemented conception of the sign: the sign plus something (say, an interpretation or an assignment of meaning). Rather the sign, in the logically fundamental case of its mode of occurrence, is an internal aspect of the symbol. The Tractatus puts this point as follows: “The sign is that in the symbol which is perceptible by the senses.” Conversely, this means that it is essential to a symbol – to what a symbol is – that it have an essentially perceptible aspect. For Wittgenstein there is no privileged direction of explanatory priority between symbol and sign here: without signs there are no symbols (hence without language there is no thought) and without some sort of relation to symbols there are no signs (hence the philosopher’s concept of the supposedly “merely linguistic” presupposes an internal relation to symbols). Let us start with two quotations – one from Paul Boghossian and one from Wittgenstein. Here is Boghossian: Well, a word is just an inscription, a mark on paper. Something has got to be done to it by its user for it to get a meaning. That much is clear. (Boghossian 2008, 488) Here is the one from Wittgenstein: The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one that we thought quite innocent. (PI, §308)

https://www.nordicwittgensteinreview.com/article/download/3566/4206

Wittgenstein’s Critique of the Additive Conception of Language

The paper represents an effort to advance the debate between those whoadvocate resolute readings of Wittgenstein and those who deplore them. Itseeks to do so by, on the one hand, attempting to correct certain misunderstandingsof such readings (explaining, in effect, why they amount to caricatures)while, on the other, seeking to discourage advocates of such readingsfrom accepting the terms of the debate as defined by the critics (thereby, ineffect, embracing the caricature and seeking to defend it). The paper seeks aform of equilibrium in reading Wittgenstein that has hitherto proven elusiveto commentary on his work. The difficulty has two sides which must bebalanced against each other, without permitting either to assume an undueshare of the burden. The first half of the difficulty is to do full justice to theprofound discontinuity in Wittgenstein’s thinking without neglecting (asthose who are called “standard readers” do) the extent to which it is foldedwithin a fundamental continuity in his philosophy. The second half of thedifficulty is to do full justice to the profound continuity in his thinkingwithout minimizing (as those who are called “zealous mono-Wittgensteinians”do) the extent to which it is folded within a fundamental discontinuityin his philosophy. The aim of this paper will be twofold: (1) to argue that afull acknowledgement of the moment of continuity requires a reasonablyheterodox degree of mono-Wittgensteinianism, and (2) that an equally fullacknowledgement of the complementary moment of discontinuity requiresthat the degree of this heterodoxy remain reasonably mild.

/pdf/wittgenstein-s-later-criticism-of-the-tractatus-dvjon002gw.pdf

Wittgenstein’s Later Criticism of the Tractatus

Throwing the Baby Out

Ponencia de James Conant, University of Chicago, en el marc del Simposi que s'ocupa dels dos camps tematics que mes van interessar al filosof al final de la seva vida: la filosofia de la matematica i la filosofia de la psicologia

James Conant

Papers

What Is Meaning? A Wittgensteinian Answer to an Un-Wittgensteinian Question

Wittgenstein’s Critique of the Additive Conception of Language

Wittgenstein’s Later Criticism of the Tractatus

Throwing the Baby Out

Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics