Journal ArticleDOI
The relevance of ontological commitments in social sciences: Realist and pragmatist viewpoints
Osmo Kivinen,Tero Piiroinen +1 more
TLDR
The authors discusses the relevance of ontology, the metaphysical study of being, in social sciences through a comparison of three distinct outlooks: Roy Bhaskar's version of critical realism, a pragmatic realist approach the most renowned representatives of which are Rom Harre and Hilary Putnam, and the authors' own synthesis of the pragmatist John Dewey's and the neopragmatist Richard Rorty's ideas, here called methodological relationalism.Abstract:
The article discusses the relevance of ontology, the metaphysical study of being, in social sciences through a comparison of three distinct outlooks: Roy Bhaskar's version of critical realism, a pragmatic realist approach the most renowned representatives of which are Rom Harre and Hilary Putnam, and the authors' own synthesis of the pragmatist John Dewey's and the neopragmatist Richard Rorty's ideas, here called methodological relationalism. The Bhaskarian critical realism is committed to the heavy ontological furniture of metaphysical transcendentalism, resting on essentialist presumptions of causality and social structures, tacitly creating a dualism between individuals and society. Pragmatic realists, for their part, carry much lighter metaphysical baggage than critical realists and, much in a pragmatist vein, accept the idea that social scientists should study society by studying social life-the interwoven activities of individuals. Nevertheless, pragmatic realists only reluctantly, if at all, renounce the subject-object dualism and its ontological implications. Drawing on the ideas of Donald Davidson and Richard Rorty, the writers outline their own antirepresentationalist, antiessentialist approach to social sciences. The proposed methodological relationalism is a pragmatist approach of Deweyan origin. Based on a Darwinian understanding of human beings as organisms trying to cope with their environment, it emphasises the insight that one can neither step outside one's own action, nor withdraw from the actor's point of view, just as one cannot cognitively step outside language.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Society, Biology, and Ecology: Bringing Nature Back Into Sociology’s Disciplinary Narrative Through Critical Realism
TL;DR: In this paper, a call to sociology proper to bring nature back in is made, which is a continuance and a reformulation of an ongoing project: a call for sociology to "Bring Nature Back in".
Journal ArticleDOI
IR and the false promise of philosophical foundations
Nuno P. Monteiro,Keven G. Ruby +1 more
TL;DR: The authors argue that IR scholars should adopt an attitude of "foundational prudence" that is open-minded about what the PoS can offer IR, while precluding imperial foundational projects, which attempt to impose a single meta-theoretical framework on the discipline.
Journal ArticleDOI
Relational sociology, pragmatism, transactions and social fields
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that relational sociology is at risk of losing its raison d'etre if it does not answer two fundamental practical and ontological questions: (1) Why do we need relational sociology? and (2) What do we study in relational sociology.
Journal ArticleDOI
Back- and fore-grounding ontology: exploring the linkages between critical realism, pragmatism, and methodologies in health & rehabilitation sciences
Ryan T DeForge,Jay Shaw +1 more
TL;DR: This paper unpack the tenets of critical realism and pragmatism, and then trace the linkages from these paradigmatic locations through to the methodological choices that address a community-based research problem.
Journal ArticleDOI
Toward Pragmatist Methodological Relationalism: From Philosophizing Sociology to Sociologizing Philosophy
Osmo Kivinen,Tero Piiroinen +1 more
TL;DR: This article analyzed relationalist approaches to social sciences in terms of a conceptual distinction between "philosophizing sociology" and "sociologizing philosophy" and argued that pragmatic philosophy of social sciences is an appropriate tool for assisting social scientists in their methodological work, especially as regards problem-driven case studies.
References
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MonographDOI
Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers
Abstract: This volume complements two highly successful previously published volumes of Richard Rorty's philosophical papers: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, and Essays on Heidegger and Others. The essays in the volume engage with the work of many of today's most innovative thinkers including Robert Brandom, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Jacques Derrida, Jurgen Habermas, John McDowell, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, and Charles Taylor. The collection also touches on problems in contemporary feminism raised by Annette Baier, Marilyn Frye, and Catherine MacKinnon, and considers issues connected with human rights and cultural differences. Anyone with a serious interest in contemporary philosophy and what it can do for us in the modern world will enjoy this invaluable collection.
Journal ArticleDOI
Three Varieties of Knowledge
TL;DR: The primacy of unmediated self-knowledge is attested by the fact that we distrust the exceptions until they can be reconciled with the unmediated as discussed by the authors, and we distrust exceptions only rarely in the case of beliefs about my own states of mind.
Journal ArticleDOI
Agency and Community: A Critical Realist Paradigm
TL;DR: In this article, a middle range sociological research paradigm based on the critical realist philosophy of Roy Bhaskar is developed, where complexity theory and the works of Georg Simmel are used to illustrate the dialectical process through which human agency and community mutually constitute and reproduce one another.
Journal ArticleDOI
From Constructivism to a Pragmatist Conception of Learning
Osmo Kivinen,Pekka Ristelä +1 more
TL;DR: The authors compare the constructivist notion of activity that identifies 'active' with 'conscious' and 'intentional' with John Dewey's habitual conception of action, knowing and learning by doing.