The Empirical and the New Empiricisms St Pierre, Elizabeth A
Cultural studies, critical methodologies,
04/2016, Letnik:
16, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The premise of this article is that social science researchers often rush to application, to empirical method and methodology, before studying the history, philosophy, and politics of various ...empiricisms. Because there are incompatibilities between the empiricisms of different systems of thought, it is dangerous to attempt new empirical work without having studied the old empiricisms, lest those incompatibilities produce weak, fundamentally flawed scholarship. To help prevent such confusions, this article briefly describes two empiricisms commonly used in social science research—logical empiricism and the empiricism of phenomenology—as well as Deleuze and Guattari’s transcendental empiricism, which is being used in much new empirical inquiry.
The human mind is capable of entertaining an astounding range of thoughts. These thoughts are composed of concepts or ideas, which are the building blocks of thoughts. This book is about where all of ...these concepts come from and the psychological structures that ultimately account for their acquisition. We argue that the debate over the origins of concepts, known as the rationalism-empiricism debate, has been widely misunderstood—not just by its critics but also by researchers who have been active participants in the debate. Part I fundamentally rethinks the foundations of the debate. Part II defends a rationalist view of the origins of concepts according to which many concepts across many conceptual domains are either innate or acquired via rationalist learning mechanisms. Our case is built around seven distinct arguments, which together form a large-scale inference to the best explanation argument for our account. Part III then defends this account against the most important empiricist objections and alternatives. Finally, Part IV argues against an extreme but highly influential rationalist view—Jerry Fodor’s infamous view that it is impossible to learn new concepts and his related radical concept nativism, which holds that essentially all lexical concepts are innate. Throughout the book, our discussion blends philosophical and theoretical reflection with consideration of a broad range of empirical work drawn from many different disciplines studying the mind, providing a thorough update to the rationalism-empiricism debate in philosophy and cognitive science and a major new rationalist account of the origins of concepts.
New Empiricisms and New Materialisms St. Pierre, Elizabeth A.; Jackson, Alecia Y.; Mazzei, Lisa A.
Cultural studies, critical methodologies,
04/2016, Letnik:
16, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article, which introduces this special issue on new empiricisms and new materialisms, focuses on two of the many conditions that enable this new work: first, an ethical imperative to rethink the ...nature of being to refuse the devastating dividing practices of the dogmatic Cartesian image of thought and, second, a heightened curiosity and accompanying experimentation in the becoming of existence. The article includes a brief description of how matter matters differently in this new work, of Deleuze and Guattari’s description of philosophy as the laying out of a plane that enables new concepts, a discussion of the “new,” and how/if methodology can be thought in the “new.”
Because post qualitative inquiry uses an ontology of immanence from poststructuralism as well as transcendental empiricism, it cannot be a social science research methodology with preexisting ...research methods and research practices a researcher can apply. In fact, it is methodology-free and so refuses the demands of “application.” Recommendations for those interested in post qualitative inquiry include putting methodology aside and, instead, reading widely across philosophy, social theories, and the history of science and social science to find concepts that reorient thinking. Post qualitative inquiry encourages concrete, practical experimentation and the creation of the not yet instead of the repetition of what is.
A core philosophical project is the attempt to uncover the fundamental nature of reality, the limited set of facts upon which all other facts depend. Perhaps the most popular theory of fundamental ...reality in contemporary analytic philosophy is physicalism: the view that the world is fundamentally physical in nature. The first half of this book argues that physicalist views cannot account for the evident reality of conscious experience and hence that physicalism cannot be true. However, the book also tries to show that familiar arguments to this conclusion—Frank Jackson’s form of the knowledge argument and David Chalmers’ two-dimensional conceivability argument—are not wholly adequate. The second half of the book explores and defends a radical alternative to physicalism known as “Russellian monism.” Russellian monists believe that (i) physics tells us nothing about the concrete, categorical nature of material entities, and that (ii) it is this “hidden” nature of matter that explains human and animal consciousness. Throughout the second half of the book various forms of Russellian monism are surveyed, and the key challenges facing it are discussed. Ultimately the book defends a cosmopsychist form of Russellian monism, according to which all facts are grounded in facts about the conscious universe.
The future of theory in the age of big data and algorithms is a frequent topic in management research. However, with corporate ownership of big data and data processing capabilities designed for ...profit generation increasing rapidly, we witness a shift from scientific to ‘corporate empiricism’. Building on this debate, our ‘Point’ essay argues that theorizing in management research is at risk now. Unlike the ‘Counterpoint’ article, which portrays a bright future for management theory given available technological opportunities, we are concerned about management researchers increasingly ‘borrowing’ data from the corporate realm (e.g., Google et al.) to build or test theory. Our objection is that this data borrowing can harm scientific theorizing due to how scaling effects, proxy measures and algorithmic decision‐making performatively combine to undermine the scientific validity of theories. This undermining occurs through reducing scientific explanations, while technology shapes theory and reality in a profit‐predicting rather than in a truth‐seeking manner. Our essay has meta‐theoretical implications for management theory per se, as well as for political debates concerning the jurisdiction and legitimacy of knowledge claims in management research. Practically, these implications connect to debates on scientific responsibilities of researchers.
Cognition, it is often heard nowadays, is embodied. My concern is with embodied accounts of language comprehension. First, the basic idea will be outlined and some of the evidence that has been put ...forward in their favor will be examined. Second, their empiricist heritage and their conception of ideas will be discussed. Third, an objection will be raised according to which embodied accounts underestimate the cognitive functions language fulfills. The remainder of the paper will be devoted to arguing for the cognitive indispensability of non‐embodied, representations by highlighting some of the cognitive benefits they bestow upon us.
PDF
