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In a previous series of papers (Sutherland, Dicks, Everard, & Geneletti,), we summarise the use of a range of social science methods in conservation decision‐making. Moon et al. () claim that the special feature risks narrowing the scope of social science research and suggest that we presented a limited perspective on the field. They thereby criticise the special feature for not doing something that it never intended to do in the first instance. We did not claim that the list of articles covered in the special feature is a comprehensive list (which it obviously is not) and we are unclear why anyone would think it is.While we consider the Moon et al. () paper to be a useful contribution for conservation scientists as a supplementary paper, it serves less as a critique to the special feature. Moon et al.('s () paper makes very few direct and substantive criticisms of points raised in the special feature. We respond to areas of contention referring specifically to research philosophy, bias, and data reporting.Moon et al. () criticise the set of papers for perpetuating an objectivist view of the world. We believe that it would be rather disconcerting for the research community if there were no social truths to discover. Rather, social science research methods conducted in specific places can be good ways of exploring how truths vary in different contexts.We also note that Moon et al. () completely missed the point we were trying to make about psychological biases, which are quite different to the issues associated with researcher bias highlighted by them.We encourage readers to pay close attention to the use of social science methods in conservation science. We reiterate, however, that the main purpose of the special feature was to ensure that social science methodologies for decision‐making are accessible for all conservation scientists to use, regardless of disciplinary background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her paper 'Creative Evolution and the Creation of Man,' one of the arguments Colebrook puts forth is that as a means of challenging the mechanistic and teleological conception of Darwinian evolution, creative evolution takes an antihumanist position by positing that there is an absence of end, thus 'man' is able to create his own end. But in taking this position, Colebrook points out that creative evolution re-establishes the humanistic discourse on the human that it was attempting to challenge. To elucidate Colebrook's argument, this paper draws on the work of Derrida to 'play' with the notion of style in order to reflect on the ways in which philosophical deductive argumentation and reasoning constitute and perpetuate humanist and metaphysical discourses on the human, and the ends of 'man.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This essay addresses the problem of the essentiality of nursing knowledge and what kind of theory, if any, is essential to nursing practice. The overarching aim of the essay was to argue for the thesis that nursing may be described as a kind of philosophical activity, and, consequently, that philosophy is the kind of “theory” that is essential to nursing practice and to the nursing discipline at large. The essay consists of two papers. The present paper, Part I, is a critical examination of Mark Risjord's discussion of the problem of the theory‐practice gap in his Nursing Knowledge: Practice, Science, Philosophy, from 2010. According to Risjord, the cause of the theory‐practice gap originates in an erroneous conception of science (logical positivism) which had a decisive influence upon the way nursing scholars appropriated theoretical frameworks for the nursing discipline. This philosophical influence is considered in effect to have generated the theory–practice gap. In order to bridge the gap, Risjord suggests, the nursing discipline needs to adopt a standpoint epistemology conjoined with a postpositivist conception of scientific theory. In this way, a legitimate brand of nursing science may be developed and the theory–practice gap overcome. I will argue that neither Risjord's diagnosis of the problem, nor his recommended cure, may succeed in rescuing the nursing discipline from the theory–practice gap. Rather, the real cause of the theory–practice gap, I will claim, derives from an erroneous conception of nursing (not of science), namely the conception of nursing as a kind of science (roughly speaking). On my view, to overcome the gap, the nursing discipline needs to make salient the inherently philosophical character of nursing. In the second paper (Part II), I will continue the discussion of nursing knowledge and delineate the thesis of nursing as a kind of concrete philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of modern nursing practice that is embedded within complex social situations, critical discussions about the contribution of major philosophers are relevant and important. Whilst nurse theorists have advanced and shaped nursing as a discipline, other major philosophers can offer much to advance nursing enquiry. In this paper, we focus on philosopher Roy Bhaskar who, amongst others, developed critical realism, a philosophy for social science which connects with how many of us think about the world. Bhaskar's work focuses our attention on the interplay between structure and agency and on the search for the causative or generative mechanisms that explain the social world. Bhaskar was interested in human emancipation, and we suggest his work is of great importance to advance understanding of complex social situations. Critical realism has already been endorsed by a range of disciplines, especially in research which focuses on real problems and acknowledges the complexities of the social world. In recent evidence from healthcare literature, there has been a surge in research using realist methodology (realist evaluation and realist synthesis), which is underpinned by the philosophy of critical realism and which offers a different perspective to understanding nursing and healthcare problems through the realist lens. However, we suggest that sufficient attention is not always paid to the philosophical roots of this methodology. In this paper, we provide insight into Bhaskar's work and demonstrate how research positioned within critical realism and realist methodology can advance nursing and healthcare-related knowledge. Through shining a light on Bhaskar, we illustrate how critical realism philosophy is a natural fit with human and health science enquiry, including nursing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Drawing from the philosophical work of Hans‐Georg Gadamer and the perspectives of theorists Mikhail Bakhtin and Kenneth Burke, the aim of this paper is to critically reflect on the meaning of the word "shared." Method: The authors draw on the concept of epistemic justice, which they argue permeates the clinical encounter, to discuss how various forms of, and claims to, knowledge may influence the attainement of shared decision‐making in health care contexts. The specific objectives are twofold: first, the authors draw key concepts from key Gadamerian, Burkean, and Bakhtinian philosophical perspectives to consider shared decision‐making in relation to two types of epistemic injustice: testimonial and hermeneutic epistemic injustice. Second, building on philosopher Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy, the authors emphasize that major changes in educational structures and systems are required to promote the critical reflexivity required to address issues of epistemic justice, in the broader pursuit of authentic shared decision‐making. Results: They propose three main areas of focus for helath professions education: (a) changes in content (moving from a focus on biomedical knowledge to more content on social sciences) and methods of teaching (more dialogue and the creation of moments of dissonance); (b) a re‐examination of teachers' role in promoting epistemic justice; and (c) inclusion of patients as partners. Conclusions: Without major transformation in what, how, and with whom we teach, future clinicians may be unprepared to enact shared decision‐making in a manner that does justice to the various ways of knowing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To provide rigour when preparing a research design, the researcher needs to carefully consider not only the methodology but also the philosophical intent of the study. This, however, is often absent from reported research and provides the reader with little evidence by which to judge the merits of the chosen methodology and its influence on the study. The purpose of this paper is to set out the case for critical realism as a framework to guide appropriate action in practice development and realistic evaluation for understanding the consequences of those actions. It is evident that critical realism and critical social science share common ground. Emancipatory practice development (ePD) is based on the philosophy of critical social science and therefore by virtue is linked to the tenets of critical realism. Until now, the evaluation of ePD programme has been well served by 4th-generation evaluation. However, this paper outlines the need for a different approach to evaluation, one that is based on critical realism, that is concerned with emancipation, and that can be used in the ever-changing environment of clinical practice. Realistic evaluation not only links strongly to ePD programmes, but also serves as the basis for effective research questions that will test the outcomes of the research and inform the transferability of ePD mechanisms into differing contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a brief overview of Ludwig von Bertalanffy's contributions to the evolution of the fields of biology and systems theory and the significance of his work in relation to contemporary developments across a broad spectrum of disciplines. In documenting some of the ways in which his insights have remained relevant, inspiring scholars and practitioners in a variety of fields, it also addresses the philosophical and ethical implications inherent in Bertalanffy's work. Perhaps one of the most striking dimensions of his writing is his passionate critique of mechanistic science, which he sees as dehumanizing and as responsible for many of the challenges confronting humanity. In contrast, he emphasized the humanistic orientation of his conception of general systems theory as an approach that could provide guidelines and support for addressing these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of books related to social sciences. Some of them are, "Handbook of World Philosophy-Contemporary Developments Since 1945," by John R. Burr, "Shall We Believe in God and the Meaning of Ltfe?," by Max Kochman, "Responsibilities to Future Generations: Environmental Ethics," edited by Ernest Partridge.

Can one both be an Aristotelian in ethics and a negativist, whereby the latter involves subscribing to the view that the good cannot be known in our social context but that ethical guidance is nonetheless possible in virtue of a pluralist conception of the bad (of which this context and human history provide us ample knowledge)? Moreover, is it possible to combine Aristotelianism with a thoroughly historical outlook? I have argued that such combinations are, indeed, possible, and that we can find an example of them in Adorno's work. In this paper, I reply to three critics (Allen, Celikates and O'Connor) who cast doubt on this proposal. I also reply to other concerns they raise, regarding immanent critique, negativism, the role of social theory in Adorno's work, and the danger of being co-opted. I stress the holism of Adorno's position, and, amid some more deflationary moves, insist on the distinctiveness of the Aristotelian position that results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the Institute of Australian Geographers' Millennium Project, this article examines the shift of behavioural geography from a cutting edge sub-discipline to a branch of enquiry that is now much less prominent in mainstream human geography, especially in Australia. Through an exploration of the rationale for behavioural geography, a brief outline of the nature of the work that was done, and a consideration of the critiques of behavioural geography, the paper argues that behavioural geography enriched the discipline in several ways: it was instrumental in encouraging geographers to consider the epistemological foundations of the discipline; it fostered consideration of a variety of philosophical and methodological positions; and it highlighted the need to consider interrelationships between individuals, groups, society and environment thereby bringing into prominence the ways in which shared environmental meanings are contested and negotiated. Behavioural geography might be a term that is used much less than it once was and behaviourally-orientated research might increasingly find expression in interdisciplinary outlets rather than in mainstream geography journals but contemporary geography is heir to the endeavours of behavioural geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores parallels between the morphological thought of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the structuralism of Claude Lévi‐Strauss, and the formalism of Vladimir Propp, with emphasis on the manner in which each of these three thinkers adopts an "epistemological attitude" critical of, and external to, conventional philosophical discourse. The core commonality between them lies in their skepticism about the separability of the ideal from the real, and in the seeking of meaning within the observable constitutive structures of a phenomenon rather than any noumenal essence. The first part of the article examines the way Goethe and Lévi‐Strauss negotiate the relation between abstract thought and concrete observation; the second part turns to the way Lévi‐Strauss and Propp negotiate that question within the context of twentieth‐century social science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In trying to bridge the gap between the social sciences and the arts, an attempt was made to dwell on the aesthetic probings of contemporary man through the New Cinema and the Theatre of the Absurd. After writing to a large number of potential contributors to the topic, with intriguing responses and no-responses, we finally achieved an issue devoted to the Arts and Social Science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The professions of nursing and nurse education are currently experiencing a crisis of confidence, particularly in the UK, where the Francis Report and other recent reviews have highlighted a number of cases of nurses who no longer appear willing or able to 'care'. The popular press, along with some elements of the nursing profession, has placed the blame for these failures firmly on the academy and particularly on the relatively recent move to all-graduate status in England for pre-registration student nurses. This has come to be known in the UK as the 'too-posh-to-wash' argument, that there is an incommensurability between being educated to degree level and performing basic nursing tasks. I will argue in this paper that the diagnosis of the problem is substantively correct, but the formulation and the prescription are misguided and dangerous. I will suggest that the growing emphasis on research-based and evidence-based practice is the logical conclusion of an inappropriate scientific paradigm for nursing which is underpinned by the social sciences, by technical rationality, and by a focus on people. In contrast, I will suggest that a more fruitful way of thinking about and practising nursing and nurse education is to consider it as a human science with a focus on persons in which evidence for practice derives largely from practice itself. The history of the idea of a human science is traced from its roots in nineteenth century hermeneutics to the work of Gadamer and R.D. Laing in the 1960s, and I attempt to imagine a paradigm for nursing practice, scholarship, and education based on Laing's 'existential-phenomenological' approach with a focus on the endeavour to understand and relate to individual persons rather than to make broad prescriptions for practice based on statistical and other generalizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One recent trend in contemporary epistemology is to study the way in which the concept of knowledge is actually applied in everyday settings. This approach has inspired an exciting new spirit of collaboration between experimental philosophers and traditional epistemologists, who have begun using the techniques of the social sciences to investigate the factors that influence ordinary judgments about knowledge attribution. This paper provides an overview of some of the results these researchers have uncovered, suggesting that in addition to traditionally considered factors like evidence and justification, a number of important non-truth-conducive factors play significant roles in determining when people ascribe knowledge. The present review focuses on four non-traditional factors: pragmatic load (in relation to contextualism and interest-relative invariantism), moral judgment, performance errors, and demographic variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bergson's engagement with evolutionary theory was remarkably up to date with the science of his time. One century later, the scientific and social landscape is undoubtedly quite different, but some of his insights remain of critical importance for the present. This paper aims at discussing three related aspects of Bergson's philosophy of evolution and their relevance for contemporary debates: first, the stark distinction between the affirmation of the reality of change and becoming, on the one hand, and any notion of progress on the other; second, the insistence on the intimate interplay between forms of knowledge and forms of life; third, his idea that machines and organisms, technology and biology, are not separate domains but, rather, stem from and answer to the same problems and needs that living beings express. Such a Bergsonian framework may prove very helpful in reassessing the implicit assumptions of several contemporary debates on the ethical and political stakes of evolution, biosciences, and technologies, as well as the increasingly problematic boundary between 'biology' and 'culture.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the link between truth and sight, and the implications of this link for our understandings of the concept of evidence. I propose to give an example of precisely how we might attempt to generalize about a phenomenon such as the recurrence of the association between truth and sight without ignoring important anti-universalist points. In doing this, I hope to give one example of how anthropology, in the original sense of the term, is a still possible enterprise, in spite of the criticisms such an approach has had to face in the last thirty years. Résumé L'auteur examine le lien entre vérité et vision et ses implications pour notre compréhension du concept de preuve. Il propose un exemple de la manière dont nous pourrions tenter de généraliser un phénomène tel que la récurrence de l'association entre vérité et vision, sans négliger d'importants arguments anti-universalistes. Par la même occasion, l'auteur espère donner un exemple de la façon dont l'anthropologie, au sens originel du terme, est encore une entreprise possible malgré les critiques que cette approche a essuyées au cours des trente dernières années. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inherent normativity is the claim that intentional action explanations necessarily have to comply with normatively understood rationality constraints on the ascribed propositional attitudes. This paper argues against inherent normativity in three steps. First, it presents three examples of actions successfully explained with propositional attitudes, where the ascribed attitudes violate relevant rationality constraints. Second, it argues that the inference rules that systematise propositional attitudes are qualitatively different from rationality constraints both in their justification and their recipients. Third, it rejects additional conditions on propositional attitudes, which purport to necessitate a normative commitment. Thus, inherent normativity is rejected; and with it the claim that intentional action explanations differ substantially from other explanations because they are inherently normative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper introduces Alain Badiou's philosophy as a powerful resource for social science in rethinking the link between philosophy and politics. It argues the political imperative to unthink the subject as the key conceptual debate from which to array and define an alternative political agenda around which social science can effect and judge other potential points of transformative application upon the world. It highlights the spatiality of the event and the materialisation of counting politics in what Badiou calls the ‘situation’, situating these within geography's recent concerns over the ethics of anti-foundational thought and the manifesto of thinking politics aside from structural normatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the paper "Collective Moral Autonomy Thesis" (CMA) by David Copp, published within the issue. The author argues that Copp's examples, as part of his argument for the CMA, do not demonstrate the truth of his thesis. He states that Copp did not offer an account of what he calls "collectives" yet in his examples, he refer to organized and unorganized collectives. There is also a certain unclarity, which pertains to both moral and mental properties, in his arguments regarding the relationship between collectives and the individuals who partly constitutes them. Moreover, he suggests that Copp should provide clear examples of collectives which possess moral obligation and bears moral responsibility, for him to sustain the CMA.

This paper presents an analysis of language variation and change in a socially stratified corpus of Glaswegian collected in 1997. Eight consonantal variables in read and spontaneous speech from 32 speakers were analysed separately and then together using multivariate analysis. Our results show that middle-class speakers, with weaker network ties and more opportunities for mobility and contact with English English speakers, are maintaining traditional Scottish features. Working-class adolescents, with more limited mobility and belonging to close-knit networks, are changing their vernacular by using ‘non-local’ features such as TH-fronting and reducing expected Scottish features such as postvocalic /r/. We argue that local context is the key to understanding the findings. Mobility and network structures are involved, but must be taken in conjunction with the recent history of structural changes to Glasgow and the resulting construction of local class-based language ideologies which continue to be relevant in the city today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is almost universally agreed that the main business of commonsense psychology is that of providing generally reliable predictions and explanations of the actions of others. In line with this, it is also generally assumed that we are normally at theoretical remove from others such that we are always ascribing causally efficacious mental states to them for the purpose of prediction, explanation and control. Building on the work of those who regard our primary intersubjective interactions as a form of‘embodied practice’, I defend a second-personal approach in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how key social issues related to American culture, social character, and politics are addressed in the work of two of America's leading liberal sociologists, David Riesman and Daniel Bell. It maps out the trajectory of Riesman's and Bell's early contributions to a critique of mass society in post-war America, as well as Bell's later formulation of “liberalism in crisis” and his assessment of culture in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism . This analysis pays particular attention to the intellectual, biographical, and social settings that helped to shape the often conflicting ideas of each thinker, and examines the discursive shifts within liberal thinking as it attempted to explain and deal with perceived new social crises from the 1950s to the present. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to traditional French historiography, French scientific psychology was born when it differentiated itself from philosophy. This split between the two disciplines is attributed to Taine and Ribot, who, consequently, are considered to be the “founding fathers” of French psychology. In this paper we shall examine the case of Pierre Janet, who, at the turn of the century, was recognized worldwide as the most important French psychologist. It is generally said that he was the follower of Ribot and of Charcot. However, he was also Paul Janet's nephew. Paul Janet was a very well known and influential philosopher of the so-called French “spiritualistic” school, for which psychology was central to philosophy. In 1889, Pierre Janet published his doctoral dissertation, L'Automatisme psychologique, which was immediately considered to be a classic in psychology. We shall argue that this book is as much indebted to the old spiritualistic psychology, which claimed the substantial unity of the self, as to the new psychology at the time, which questioned it. With Pierre Janet, the split between psychology and philosophy in France was reconsidered. It would be more accurate to speak in terms of a compromise between philosophy and the “new” physiological and pathological psychology. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes and makes the case for sociological metatheorizing, or the systematic study of sociological theory. Three types of metatheorizing are delineated on the basis of their end products: the attainment of a deeper understanding of theory, the creation of new theory, and the creation of an overarching theoretical perspective (a metatheory). The basic problems in metatheorizing are reviewed and it is concluded that the most basic difficulty has been the lack of a clear definition of the subfield. Some thoughts on the future of metatheorizing in sociology are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper starts by outlining a general perspective in social psychology. It may turn out that social constructivism, the perspective outlined in the early sixties is one of the major contributions of European social psychology to social sciences in general. Whatever its fate, some particular points are made: a) physics is not the only model we have to follow b) the existing ways of explanation can and must be upgraded c) more complex theories are required d) changes in methodological and statistical criteria are expected in order to deal with new and complex phenomena. Nevertheless the main problem today is description and not explanation. That is the discovery and observation of a wider range of new social phenomena. How successful we will he in this endeavor decides if social psychology becomes a major science or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectively disadvantaged groups in American society often fail to take political actions that would rectify their disadvantaged state. Scholarly treatments of this failure to mobilize have traditionally examined the beliefs of the disadvantaged about distributive fairness, i. e., about the fair distribution of money or opportunities across members of society. This paper explores citizens' be/left about the fairness of the procedures by which outcome distributions are made. We argue that procedural evaluations are a key input into evaluations of the political system and, through such evaluations, into political actions. in fact, people's beliefs about procedures are often more important than their beliefs about the fairness of the distribution of income or opportunity. An examination of procedural justice beliefs suggests, in turn, that citizens' views about the fairness of procedures focus on opportunities to speak rather than on actual control over decisions. This focus on voice probably results from socialization. In the terminology of Crosby and Clayton [(1986) "introduction: The Search for Connections," Journal of Social Issues, 42(2), 1-9], people's societal values may override their experiences with their current objective situation in the development of their views about society. As a result, objectively unjust procedures may be viewed as fair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The word "Notes" in the title is not a reasoned and sly attempt to appear properly modest, nor is the phrase "Psychological Theory" meant to indicate anything short of all that should be implied by such a grandiloquent phrase. To comment upon each of these in reverse order the author proposes, in this paper, to argue that up to now one has had no explicitly stated complete psychological theory, but rather, that one seems to have contented themselves with a collection of discontinuous, unrelated "theorettes" It is the author's opinion that psychology has now reached the stage where it has accumulated sufficient data and understanding to reformulate, explicitly its entire theoretical framework. And the author proposes to point to the proper direction in which the theoretician in psychology should move. But at the same time the author will not go beyond such a general pointing. However, the author is willing to risk this danger because he believes these notes point to an important direction and because he feels that this program, in the hands of abler theoreticians and experimenters, will prove extremely fruitful.

Alongside claims that 'the methodological pluralism debate has been won', worries grow just why the victory is not shared by the wider social sciences and applied disciplines. Remedies are sought but mainly tinkering on presentation tactics. Against this status quo, this article argues for a critical reflection on theoretic approaches to methodological pluralism. Seemingly convenient for legitimating diverse methodologies though, the Paradigm root metaphor has from the very beginning trapped methodological pluralism theorising in a no‐win battle. Drawing on Kuhn's later perspective of scientific change as 'proliferation of specialties', this article posits that the enhanced evolutionist metaphor fits better with methodological pluralism by depicting the increasing variety of methodologies as deepened division of labour and combined‐use of methodologies as enlarging human competence. In Kuhn's spirit, this article calls for a strongly pluralist, responsive approach, not so much in flexibly 'managing paradigms' or 'living with incommensurability' as in reflexively deliberating the comparative advantages of adopting different theoretic approaches in terms of efficacy in facilitating compelling theorising and sharing ideas with practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attempts to conduct systematic reviews of ethical arguments in bioethics are fundamentally misguided. All areas of enquiry need thorough and informative literature reviews, and efforts to bring transparency and systematic methods to bioethics are to be welcomed. Nevertheless, the raw materials of bioethical articles are not suited to methods of systematic review. The eclecticism of philosophy may lead to suspicion of philosophical methods in bioethics. Because bioethics aims to influence medical and scientific practice it is tempting to adopt scientific language and methods. One manifestation is the increasing innovation in, and use of, systematic reviews of ethical arguments in bioethics. Yet bioethics, as a broadly philosophical area of enquiry, is unsuited to systematic review. Bioethical arguments are evaluative, so notions of quality and bias are inapplicable. Bioethical argument is conceptual rather than numerical, and the classification of concepts is itself a process of argument that cannot aspire to neutrality. Any 'systematic review' of ethical arguments in bioethics thus falls short of that name. Furthermore, labels matter. Although the bioethics research community may find that adopting the language and the outward methods of clinical science offers apparent prospects of credibility, policy influence and funding, we argue that such misdirection carries risks and is unlikely to pay dividends in the long term. Bioethical sources are amenable to the review methods of the social sciences, and it is on these methods that specific methods of bioethics literature review should be built. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its emergence in the first half of the twentieth century, there has been considerable discussion of the viability and value of analytic induction (AI) as a conceptualisation of social scientific method; one which challenges the correlational approach to causal analysis characteristic of much quantitative work. However, less attention has been given to the philosophical sources on which Znaniecki, Lindesmith, and other exponents of AI relied. This paper explores some of these, and focuses in particular upon the use made of Lewin's distinction between Aristotelian and Galileian forms of science. The status of AI is ambiguous in relation to this; and it is a distinction that raises some fundamental issues more generally about the methodology of social science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the claim of Neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists called the eudaimonist thesis. The claim stresses that there is a kind of deep and enduring happiness and it is impossible without virtue. The paper presents an advanced studies from empirical psychology to support the eudaimonist thesis that is interpreted as a psychological claim, and reconsider counterexamples that have been directed against the thesis interpreted as a conceptual assertion. It discusses that refocusing the debate in the way affords a fresh perspective on a familiar philosophical landscape, and provides eudaimonist virtue ethics with a source of empirical support for its moral psychology.

The recently formed French School of the “économie des conventions” have claimed that they are developing a revolutionary new approach to the social sciences. This group of researchers in economics, philosophy, sociology, law and history attempt to transcend the inherited analytical frameworks of structural-functionalist sociology and neoclassical economics and provide an alternative picture of the social world. This article will investigate some of these claims in detail. First, I trace the cohesion of the Convention School's ideas around the key concept of convention. Conventionalist theory reflects an ontological shift towards the recognition of intersubjectivity. This shift leads to tension between the advocacy of methodological individualism on the one hand and the use of convention as a central analytical category on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Management research is especially open to the benefits of using insights from a variety of social science disciplines but it should not use these indiscriminately. A strategy of pragmatic pluralism is proposed as a way of ensuring that concepts taken from different social science paradigms or disciplines are drawn together into a single coherent perspective to shape the particular study to which they relate. This is illustrated with reference to an ethnographic study of managerial work carried out by the author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting a critical realist perspective, this article examines the emergence of a relatively new non‐professional healthcare role, the assistant practitioner (AP). The role is presented as a malleable construct cascading through and sensitive to structure–agency interaction at different levels of NHS England: the sector, organisation and department. At the core of the analysis is the permissiveness of structures established at the respective levels of the NHS, facilitating or restricting agency as the role progresses through the healthcare system. A permissive regulatory framework at the sector level is reflected in the different choices made by two case study NHS acute hospital trusts, in their engagement with the AP role. These different choices have consequences for how the AP impacts at the departmental level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Special Feature led by Sutherland, Dicks, Everard, and Geneletti (Methods Ecology and Evolution, 9, 7–9, 2018) sought to highlight the importance of "qualitative methods" for conservation. The intention is welcome, and the collection makes many important contributions. Yet, the articles presented a limited perspective on the field, with a focus on objectivist and instrumental methods, omitting discussion of some broader philosophical and methodological considerations crucial to social science research. Consequently, the Special Feature risks narrowing the scope of social science research and, potentially, reducing its quality and usefulness. In this article, we seek to build on the strengths of the articles of the Special Feature by drawing in a discussion on social science research philosophy, methodology, and methods.We start with a brief discussion on the value of thinking about data as being qualitative (i.e., text, image, or numeric) or quantitative (i.e., numeric), not methods or research. Thinking about methods as qualitative can obscure many important aspects of research design by implying that "qualitative methods" somehow embody a particular set of assumptions or principles. Researchers can bring similar, or very different, sets of assumptions to their research design, irrespective of whether they collect qualitative or quantitative data.We clarify broad concepts, including philosophy, methodology, and methods, explaining their role in social science research design. Doing so provides us with an opportunity to examine some of the terms used across the articles of the Special Feature (e.g., bias), revealing that they are used in ways that could be interpreted as being inconsistent with their use in a number of applications of social science.We provide worked examples of how social science research can be designed to collect qualitative data that not only understands decision‐making processes, but also the unique social–ecological contexts in which it takes place. These examples demonstrate the importance of coherence between philosophy, methodology, and methods in research design, and the importance of reflexivity throughout the research process.We conclude with encouragement for conservation social scientists to explore a wider range of qualitative research approaches, providing guidance for the selection and application of social science methods for ecology and conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In 1972, Sherwood Washburn, one of the forerunners of biological anthropology, gave an invited address during the 4th Congress of the International Primatological Society in Portland, Oregon, in which he expounded his vision for the field of primatology. His address was published the following year in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology and titled: “The promise of primatology.” In this centennial commentary, we revisit Washburn's “promise”, 45 years on. His address and article discuss the constraints acting on the field, including a positioning of the discipline across different kinds of university departments, and within the social sciences, which he viewed as a mixed blessing. Prescient aspects of Washburn's address include a focus on the need to study communication multimodally, and a hope that the study of mechanisms would become foundational within the field. We discuss new promising aspects of primatology, focusing on technological advances in a number of areas highlighted by Washburn that have ushered in new eras of research, and the increasingly large number of long‐term field sites, which see the discipline well‐set for new developmental and longitudinal studies. We find much to admire in Washburn's keen foresight, and natural intuition. Washburn hoped that primatology would repudiate the notion that “the social should be studied without reference to the biological.” In this regard, we consider much of Washburn's promise fulfilled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Systems engineering has at its core the elucidation and instantiation of certain life-cycle properties that help to define the system of interest. System engineers refer to these life-cycle properties as the 'ilities.' The ilities-repeatability, predictability, auditability, quality, reliability, flexibility, scalability, etc.-are nonfunctional requirements and properties that are usually used to evaluate the performance of the system, often after the system is in use. In sociotechnical systems the ilities are important, but there is another set of properties, concepts, and constructs which is derived from the social sciences and are at least as important, if not more so, than the ilities-the 'ologies.' Sociotechnical enterprises represent a microsociological construct. The ologies emerge from the interaction of people in the systems and have profound implications for systems engineers and managers analyzing, designing, maintaining, and transforming such systems. Therefore, systems engineers must have an understanding of the disciplines from the social sciences, such as sociology and philosophy. This article serves as an introduction to the prevalence and importance of the social sciences to the discipline of systems engineering, offers one proposed framework for understanding the connected nature of the ologies, and provides systems-relevant background and context provided by these sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doctoral programmes in nursing are charged with developing the next generation of nurse scholars, scientists, and healthcare leaders. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing ( AACN) endorses the inclusion of philosophy of science content in research-focused doctoral programmes. Because a philosophy course circumscribed to the natural or social sciences does not address the broad forms of knowledge that are relevant to nursing practice, we have developed and co-taught a course on the philosophy of knowledge that introduces students to competing claims regarding the nature of knowledge, truth, and rationality. In addressing broad themes related to science and knowledge of the body, health and illness, and ethics, the course equips students to tread the rough and shifting ground of nursing scholarship and practice. Providing doctoral students with this philosophical footing is intended to give future scholars, researchers, and healthcare leaders the intellectual skills to critically reflect on knowledge claims, to challenge the hegemony of science, and to recognize the disciplinary forms of knowledge that are left out or trivialized. Our pedagogical approach to knowledge development does not denigrate scientific knowledge, but elevates forms of inquiry and notions of clinical knowledge that are too often marginalized in doctoral education and the academy in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on public reason liberalism and utilitarianism with reference to theorists like Russell Hardin and Robert Goodin. According to the author, public reason liberals misinterpret their own theory and frame their arguments with reference to the defects of utilitarianism. The author states that public reason liberal objections to utilitarianism fail and the plausible version of public reason liberalism sync with utilitarianism in its implications.

The article addresses the absence of focused studies on pre-Ghazalian classical Ash'ari anthropology by offering a comprehensive exploration of the theory of man expounded in the available classical Ash'ari sources. It investigates the concerns and circumstances that were at play in the transformation that Ahs'ari anthropology underwent during the late-fifth/eleventh and sixty/twelfth centuries. It also includes criticisms of the philosophical theory of the rational soul.

The anthropology of consciousness is a field of enormous and demanding scope. In this article, there is no attempt to address all of the current trends in thinking and research; rather, the aim was to draw a line through the field that extends from the 19th century and European philosophies to some contemporary expressions of those philosophies in social science research. In particular, taking the original project of Edmund Husserl, an approach to the phenomenological investigation of the nature of consciousness and, in addition, states of consciousness is proposed in the form of 'existential grammars.' The treatment is propaedeutic: The ideas presented here are part of an on-going, long-term project tied to cross-cultural and experimental research on consciousness. However, the short-term outcomes are promising in elucidating the foundational questions not only about consciousness but also about specific areas of interest such as healing and the nature of scientific investigation itself. One important direction in this work is to illuminate, where possible, the pre-reflective rationalities of human experience, of consciousness itself, in such a way that we might generate codes of consciousness ultimately not as the equivalent of genetic models, but as descriptors of the core matrix of consciousness out of which alterations of consciousness might be better understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans massively depend on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. To ensure that, despite this risk, communication remains advantageous, humans have, we claim, a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Here we outline this claim and consider some of the ways in which epistemic vigilance works in mental and social life by surveying issues, research and theories in different domains of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology and the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his article, “Educational Research: The Hardest Science of All,” policy scholar David Berliner (2002) asserts that “no unpoetic description of the human condition can ever be complete” (p. 20). Berliner's words echo the epistemological and methodological climate of late 1970s and early 1980s social science research, a phase often characterized as the “literary turn.” In this historical moment, social science scholars turned to interdisciplinary sources, most notably literary theory and the humanities, for new means of addressing the ineffable, aesthetic aspects of human activity. This work and emphasis remains a prominent, growing genre within several fields, exemplified by widespread recognition of Margaret Wheatley's poetic approach to leadership inquiry and pedagogy (2009), frequent inclusion of aesthetic works in leading research journals (such as Qualitative Inquiry), and recent creation of arts- and humanities-based educational research criteria for submissions to the American Educational Research Association's annual conference and sponsored journals. No field of inquiry better illustrates the need to understand human activity as “poetic” than leadership, which is perhaps the quintessential marker of social existence. Accordingly, in this symposium we wish to explore how such interdisciplinary approaches, specifically those grounded in the humanities, have manifested in leadership inquiry and pedagogy. It is our hope that this collection of essays will illustrate the breadth and depth of the field of leadership studies, as well as offer our readers new perspectives and inspiration in their own research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origins and development of the psychology of liberation are described, detailing the intellectual and political context in which the concept of liberation emerged in Latin American social sciences. Its constitution as a mode of doing psychology, and the founding ideas of Ignacio Martin Baró, its pioneer, are analyzed. Primary concepts such as problematization, de-ideologization, and de-alienation are discussed, and I explain how they are integrated into a central process characterized as conscientization. The role of relatedness as an epistemological base for knowledge construction and liberation is highlighted. The dynamics in which these processes interact in order to facilitate and catalyze the transformation of negative living conditions through participatory action and reflection, to empower people so they become conscious citizens, and to strengthening civil society and democracy is also discussed. I argue that the ethical, critical, and political character of the liberating actions respond for the participatory, reflexive, and transformative conception of this form of psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores two kinds of agential moral properties: obligation and responsibility, based on his collective moral autonomy thesis (CMA). According to the author, the CMA thesis can be perceived as the disjunction of two claims: the forward-looking claim and the backward-looking claim. In the forward-looking claim, the possibility for a collective to have a moral obligation to do something despite the fact that no person who is a member of that collective has a significantly related moral obligation, is proposed. In the backward-looking claim, the possibility for a collective to have a moral responsibility for having done something although no person who is a member of that collective is morally responsible for doing something significantly related, is suggested.

I criticize Carpendale and Lewis's (2004 ) attempt to produce a Wittgensteinian theory, as an alternative to work in the “theory of mind” (TOM) tradition, not because I disagree with it as theory, but because Wittgenstein would be critical of any attempt to make such a use of his work. Theories are concerned with discovering rules, principles, of lawful regularities hidden behind appearances. Wittgenstein's whole latter philosophy is inimical to such an aim. His concern is not with theories but with descriptions—which can be explanatory, but in a relational or orientational rather than a causal fashion. Below, I give some initial examples to show what Wittgensteinian investigations in developmental psychology might look like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses issues related to systems research and behavioral science. It is necessary to identify symptoms and warning signs in order to reveal possible flaws. The actual interventions succeeded the development of a sound model. The failures that consist the warning signs include the aggregation issue, the time series issue and the competing model issue.

The article presents and critically discusses the relevant arguments favoring opening or closing of borders. The author used a problem-driven rather than a theory-driven approach for two reasons. First, most theoretical paradigms are neither systematic nor consistent. This results, especially given the general problem of indeterminacy of general principles, in quite divergent views on whether borders should be open or closed. Second, arguments in favor of open or closed borders are often shared by, and developed within the same, theoretical approach. The author chose to contrast universalist arguments in favor of open borders with particularist arguments in favor of closed borders . In conclusion, the author, discusses the main reasons why it is so difficult to balance these arguments, why practical philosophy is in so much trouble, and what should be done to overcome this.

Clarifies what speakers may have in mind when they make utterances about the state of social world. Family of X d/b Y utterances; Group intentionality; Creation of social facts.