Mida teevad filosoofid?
by Heidi K.
... Filosoofid mõtlevad, argumenteerivad, vaidlevad, kaaluvad, leiavad seoseid ja arutlevad/arutavad, rohkem omapäi, kuid teinekord ka seltskonnas, mille tulemus võib olla vägagi vaimuvirgutav, enlightening kõlab muidugi minule paremini. Enamus ajast pannakse oma mõtteid, enne kui uued need ületrumpavad kirja; teinekord tuleb mõtelda kellegi teiste mõtteteid pidi, mis teeb mõnes mõttes asja kergemaks, kuid teisalt raskendab ja piirab üsna tugevalt. Originaalseid oma mõttekäike luua on üldiselt ikka väga keeriline ajal mil sõltud palju Teiste (nagu suure tähega Filosoofide) loomingu lugemisest. Ülikoolis tuleb meil kasutada nende kahe kombinatsiooni, et vorpida esseesid x-teemadel X-kuupäevaks (märkate: tähtaeg domineerib teema üle, vähemalt tudengitel tihtilugu). Panen huvi rahuldamise tarbeks kaks lühikest katkendit (abstract'i) minu loomingust (originaalis 6 - 7 lk-d):
The Unity/disunity of Science: language, methods and laws.
Unity of science is a doctrine, by which all special sciences – biology, chemistry, geology, economics, psychology - can be reduced to one fundamental science, usually thought to be physics. Reduction would mean showing special sciences through fundamental science, by showing that the laws of special sciences are all special cases of the universal laws. [1] That idea was the central topic of logical positivism. In this essay I will argue, that the factual unity of science does not exist in the form of coherent uniformity, but rather that it is an general idea we attribute to the set of special sciences. With this objective in mind, the paper will approach the theses of the unity of science from the perspective of three different aspects distinguished by Paul Oppenheim and Hilary Putnam. First, the unity of scientific language – all the terms of science are reduced to terms of some one dicipline. Second, unity of laws, by which laws of science are reduced to the laws of some one dicipline. Third, the laws of science are not only reduced to some one dicipline, but the laws of that dicipline are in some sense connected.[2] To illustrate the theses of this paper, insights from Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy will be presented. Kant focused on the nature of scientific knowledge, showing that humans have a priori access to laws of nature, opposed to plain regularities. He articulated a substantive framework of conditions on science, thereby implying to the possibility of the unity of science, but while still respecting the autonomy of particular sciences.
[2] P. Oppenheim, H. Putnam, „Unity of Science as a Working Hypotheses“. [WWW] http://philosophy.wisc.edu/shapiro/Phil951/2010/openheim.putnam.unity.pdf (14.04.2011)
Social reality: deontic relations in
political institutions
The field of investigation for social sciences, as an empirical science, is the social reality created by human beings, more specifically social institutions. Jonathan Turner has defined the latter as a complex of positions, roles, norms and values lodged in particular types of social structures and organizing relatively stable patterns of human activity with respect to fundamental problems in producing life-sustaining resources, in reproducing individuals, and in sustaining viable societal structures within a given environment, including or example economic, legal and political institutions[1]. Social instututions need to be distinguished from less complex social forms as conventions, rules, roles – constitutive elements of institutions; and from more complex social entities as societies and cultures, of which the given institution is typically a constitutive element[2]. The specific domain of research for social sciences are mainly hierarhical power institutions and it deals less with more trivial forms of social institutions.
[1] Turner, J. The Institutional Order. New York: Longman, 1997, p 6.
[2] P. Oppenheim, H. Putnam, „Unity of Science as a Working Hypotheses“. [WWW] http://philosophy.wisc.edu/shapiro/Phil951/2010/openheim.putnam.unity.pdf (14.04.2011)
Social reality: deontic relations in
political institutions
The field of investigation for social sciences, as an empirical science, is the social reality created by human beings, more specifically social institutions. Jonathan Turner has defined the latter as a complex of positions, roles, norms and values lodged in particular types of social structures and organizing relatively stable patterns of human activity with respect to fundamental problems in producing life-sustaining resources, in reproducing individuals, and in sustaining viable societal structures within a given environment, including or example economic, legal and political institutions[1]. Social instututions need to be distinguished from less complex social forms as conventions, rules, roles – constitutive elements of institutions; and from more complex social entities as societies and cultures, of which the given institution is typically a constitutive element[2]. The specific domain of research for social sciences are mainly hierarhical power institutions and it deals less with more trivial forms of social institutions.
In „The Construction of Social Reality“ (1995) John Searle tries to understand the ontology of social reality, within a universe that consists of physical particles in fields of force. A question he later expands to the more specifical question about the ontology of political reality. He claims that the features of social reality are observer dependent – its very existence depends on the attitudes, thoughts and intentionality of observers, users, creators, designers, buyers-sellers and conscious intentional agents generally; otherwise it is observer or intentionality independent.[3] To argue that a feature is observer-dependent does not imply that cannot have objective knowledge of that feature – the criterium of scientific knowledge. The world for Searle is comprised of objective facts which make the world the way it is and those facts can be known objectively. He divides them into brute facts and social facts, the latter come into existence only through human construction. It is a product of human practices and human attitudes, and so they depend on the shared, collective human thought. A fact is epistemically objective if its truth of falsity can be established independently of the subjective feelings, attitudes and preferences etc of the the makers of the claim; but at the same time the claim can be about a ontologically subjective feature of reality, which existence depends on being experienced by a subject[4]. One can have the domain of reasearch such as social sciences whose entities are ontologically subjective, but one can still make epistemically objective claims about the elements in that domain. In general, the natural sciences are concerned with observer independent phenomena and the social sciences with observer relative phenomena e.g. money, property and goverment.
[1] Turner, J. The Institutional Order. New York: Longman, 1997, p 6.
[2] Miller, S. Social Institutions. [WWW] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-institutions/. (20.05.2011)
[3] Searle, J.R. Social Ontology and Political Power. 2003, p 3.
[4] Searle, J.R. Social Ontology and Political Power. 2003, p 4.
