Michael McCarthy

Bio: Michael McCarthy is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Philosophical methodology & Western philosophy. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 17 citations.

Pluralism, Invariance, and Conflict

Abstract: During the past two hundred years, uncertainty and suspicion about the philosophical enterprise have become acute. The educated public is confused about the intellectual and cultural importance of philosophy, and philosophers themselves are divided on its theoretical purpose and meaning. There are, to be sure, specifically philosophical sources of this condition. They include Kant's critique of traditional metaphysics, the logical positivists' debunking of ethics and theology, Wittgenstein's restrictions on the scope of meaningful discourse, Richard Rorty's call for an end to epistemology, and the deconstructionist attempt to envisage a postphilosophical world. Yet it would be a mistake to assume that the unease of philosophers is solely the result of an intramural debate. The practice of philosophy has always been responsive to the cultural context in which it occurs. The extended crisis of philosophy through the last two centuries is the natural reflection of an ongoing crisis in modernity. Since the French Revolution, the enlightenment culture shaped by Galilean science and Cartesian philosophy has had to accommodate a new set of intellectual pressures. Foremost among these pressures are a profound and pervasive historical consciousness, an increasing drive towards specialization as cultural practices have become effectively autonomous, and a new appreciation of communal belonging as a formative influence on mentality and character. In conjunction these factors have undermined the early modern understanding of rationality and science. They have also weakened our confidence in the human capacity for objectivity and self-transcendence. This diminished confidence is reflected philosophically in the resurgence of epistemic and ethical theories that are skeptical or relativistic in character. Its influence, however, has not been confined to the philosophical community. Our common expectations of political and ethical life and our convictions about education and the worth of tradition have been shaken by this extended period of intellectual confusion. In The Crisis of Philosophy,(1) I explored the effect of these theoretical and cultural changes on traditional conceptions of philosophy and defended the position that the permanent aim of philosophy is the integrated unfolding of the unrestricted human desire to know. That relentless desire is at the core of all theoretical inquiry and it prefigures the goal of unified knowledge which philosophy actively seeks. As human intelligence develops in the individual person and in the community of inquiry, the diversity of knowledge dramatically increases and the task of epistemic integration becomes more difficult. Philosophical strategies of synthesis adopted in an earlier stage of meaning no longer appear promising or plausible. It appears that we stand at a decisive historical juncture in which development and decline are occurring simultaneously. The dynamic developments of modernity are the product of unprecedented specialization. The hard-won autonomy of science and culture has encouraged a dispersion of spiritual energy. The arts and the sciences have been transformed by this liberation, but the integrative practices like politics and philosophy have suffered. The human price we have paid for our centrifugal development is a loss of coherence and unity. There exists a justified fear among contemporary philosophers that the integration now sought will only be achieved through Procrustean measures. This fear has led to incessant reminders of our finitude, our fallibility, and our rootedness in history. As a check against philosophic hybris, these reminders are welcome; but at this time the love of wisdom needs tempering rather than repression. If the invariance and unity to which philosophy aspires precluded multiplicity and change, or if the quest for integration were inconsistent with the fact of historicity, then the contemporary critics of philosophy would surely be right. …

Describing the Bricolage: Conceptualizing a New Rigor in Qualitative Research

Abstract: Picking up on Norman Denzin's and Yvonna Lincoln's articulation of the concept of bricolage, the essay describes a critical notion of this research orientation. As an interdisciplinary approach, br...

On to the Next Level: Continuing the Conceptualization of the Bricolage

Abstract: The bricolage offers insight into new forms of rigor and complexity in social research. This article explores new forms of complex, multimethodological, multilogical forms of inquiry into the socia...

The role of spirituality in formulating a theory of the psychology of religion

Abstract: . I challenge the psychology of religion to move beyond its merely descriptive status and, by focusing on spirituality as the essential dimension of religion, to approach the traditional ideal of science as explanation: a delineation of the necessary and sufficient to account for a phenomenon such as to articulate a general “law” relevant to every instance of the phenomenon. An explanatory psychology of spirituality would elucidate the scientific underpinnings of the psychology of religion as well as that of the social sciences in general, all of which grapple with the issues of human meaning making. Three prevalent and debilitating errors preclude that achievement: (1) the confounding of the spiritual and the divine and the importation of “God” into psychology, (2) the uncritical association of any spiritual phenomenon with spirituality, and (3) the attempt to eschew value judgments from the study of religion and spirituality. To confirm the possibility of avoiding these errors in the face of radical postmodernism, I build on Bernard Lonergan's analyses of intentional consciousness, or human spirit, and thus intimate a psychology of spirituality that is fully nontheological and potentially explanatory.

Describing the Bricolage

Abstract: Following Joe’s demand to humanize, politicize, and transgress through qualitative research, it was natural for him to go to create a new strand of bricolage, a completely fresh approach to qualitative work. Looking at Levi Strauss’s context of bricolage and the nods made to bricolage by Norm Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, Joe was determined to continue to criticalize and rigorize the traditional ways in which to do multi-methodological research.

A Down-to-Earth Approach to the Psychology of Spirituality a Century After James's Varieties

Abstract: Spirituality has recently become a mushrooming topic in psychological circles but, taking its cue from the religions, psychology tends to define spirituality in terms of relationship with God or other similarly conceived, metaphysical, nonhuman entities. Such emphasis on the otherworldly and the extraordinary confuses the psychological enterprise by introducing into it nonfalsifiable, intractable, and incompatible presuppositions. In the spirit of William James and humanistic psychology, this article calls for a more down-to-earth approach to the matter. Building on Bernard Lonergan's analysis of human consciousness or spirit, this article suggests an approach that might account for spiritual phenomena apart from appeal to gratuitous metaphysical presuppositions; potentially ground universally applicable, normative, core beliefs and ethics; and be open to theist extrapolation and other religious applications. Consideration of the implications of such an enterprise draws out the methodological challenges, ...