James M. Blaut wrote:
>Wolfgang:
>
>I don't have time just at this moment to debate you. But it would seem to
>me that YOU should put forward the evidence, and cite the sources, that
>support YOUR position -- for instance, your statement that the study of
>behavior and naturalistic philosophies are out of date.
>
>Respectfully,
>
>Jim Blaut
Dear James
It is really a pitty that you run out of time just at this moment, because
you seem to be really the expert for philosophy of science and behaviorism.
Obviously my four references in my first mail, which all put forward
arguments against deterministic explanations of human activities, could not
satisfy you.
Well, maybe John Searle's "Minds, Brains and Science" (Reith Lectures,
broadcasted and published by BBC 1984) may help a little bit. He argues (as
I said allready) for a position that takes an ontological monism (there is
only one world) and a terminological pluralism (we do not treat all
phenomena according to the same scheme). This means that determinism and
indeterminis are seen as conceptual instruments to deal (reasonably,
critically, systematically) with certain realms of experience.
Another reveiling source may be Richard Rorty's three introductions and
comments to the three editions of "The linguistic turn", the first one of
1967 and the last one of 1992. It shows very clearly how and why the
attempt to re-design philosophy as a strict (natural) science failed and
had to fail. Allthough this text was not directed to social sciences, it's
content is of great relevance for them. The point is that communication can
not be grasped as a matter of cause and effect, but only as a matter of
interpretation. By consequence, this insight was the end of the "philosophy
of ideal language", which implies "the end" of all attempts to reduce human
interaction to laws in the sense of natural science. The failure of the
linguistic turn paradoxically marks the change from a mental to a
linguistic paradigm within philosophy (the shift from a
spectator-conception of epistemology [as Rorty put it] towards a
communicative conception of epistemology). This implies a pluralistic
understanding of knowlegde and interpretation as it is represented by all
varieties of radical constructivism, autopoietic system theory,
postmodernity, deconstructivism, science and technology studies /
a-modernity / actor network theory .... Such a pluralistic conception of
knowledge is incompatible with the core idea of behaviorism: the
explanation of human acitivities as deterministic causal relations.
Unfortunately there seems to be not so much recent philosophical literature
on behaviorism... But this must not prevent us from reading and
understanding the relevance of arguments that have been expressed in other
contexts and for other purposes.
Kind regards!
Wolfgang Zierhofer
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|