Rationality And Relativism

Author : Martin Hollis
Publisher : Mit Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262580618
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rationality and Relativism written by Martin Hollis and published by Mit Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributors represent the complete spectrum of positions between a relativism that challenges the very concept of a single world and the idea that there are ascertainable, objective universals.

Author : Martin Hollis
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316101770
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Philosophy of Social Science written by Martin Hollis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994-09-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This textbook by Martin Hollis offers an exceptionally clear and concise introduction to the philosophy of social science. It examines questions which give rise to fundamental philosophical issues. Are social structures better conceived of as systems of laws and forces, or as webs of meanings and practices? Is social action better viewed as rational behaviour, or as self-expression? By exploring such questions, the reader is led to reflect upon the nature of scientific method in social science. Is the aim to explain the social world after a manner worked out for the natural world, or to understand the social world from within?

Author : I.C. Jarvie
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317401174
Total Pages : 159 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rationality and Relativism written by I.C. Jarvie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-03 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropology revolves round answers to problems about the nature, development and unity of mankind; problems that are both philosophical and scientific. In this book, first published in 1984, Professor Jarvie applies Popper’s philosophy of science to understanding the history and theory of anthropology. Jarvie describes how the ancient view that the aim of science and philosophy was to get at the truth is challenged in anthropology by the doctrine of cultural relativism; that is, that truth varies with the cultural framework. He shows how philosophers as various as Peter Winch, W.V.O. Quine, W.T. Jones, Nelson Goodman and Richard Rorty were influenced by this doctrine. Yet these philosophers also accept the value of rational argument. Jarvie believes that there is a contradiction between relativism and any notion of human rationality that centres around argument. Forced by the contradiction to choose between rationality and relativism, he argues strongly that logical, scientific and moral considerations favour rationality and urge repudiation of relativism. The central argument of the book is that relativism is intellectually disastrous and has fostered intellectual attitudes from which anthropology still suffers.

Author : Martin Hollis
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262580616
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rationality and Relativism written by Martin Hollis and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1982-11-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are there absolute truths that can be gradually approached over time through rational processes? Or are all modes and systems of thought equally valid if viewed from within their own internally consistent frames of reference? Are there universal forms of reasoning and understanding that enable us to distinguish between rational beliefs and those that are demonstrably false, or is everything relative? These central questions are addressed and debated by the distinguished contributors to this lively book. Some of them—Hollis, Lukes, Robin Horton, and Ernest Gellner—discuss new directions in their thinking since their earlier articles appeared in 1970 in the seminal volume Rationality (edited by Bryan Wilson). They are now joined in the debate by Ian Hacking, W. Newton-Smith, Charles Taylor, Jon Elster, Dan Sperber, and, in the jointly authored lead article, by Barry Barnes and David Bloor. Emerging from the debate are a variety of supportable interpretations and conclusions rather than a single, distinct "truth." The contributors represent the complete spectrum of positions between a relativism that challenges the very concept of a single world and the idea that there are ascertainable, objective universals.

Author : Howard Sankey
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 042977611X
Total Pages : 210 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rationality, Relativism and Incommensurability written by Howard Sankey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-24 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1997, this volume brings together a series of essays on the philosophy of science and responds to the "crisis of rationality" which evolved from the denial of both a stable methodology and a common language for science. Howard Sankey holds that important insights about scientific methodology and rationality may be gleaned from the historical approach, from which the existence of profound conceptual change in science, as well as the absence of a neutral observation language, are important findings. Half of Sankey’s essays concentrate specifically on the thesis that alternative scientific theories are incommensurable due to semantic differences between the vocabulary in which they are expressed. Several others seek to derive a new way of thinking about scientific rationality from the historical critique of the idea of a fixed scientific method. Still others demonstrate how some seemingly relativistic themes of the historical approach may be embraced in a non-relativistic manner within the context of a pluralistic and naturalistic theory of scientific methodology and rationality.

Author : Paul O'Grady
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317489829
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Relativism written by Paul O'Grady and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The issue of relativism looms large in many contemporary discussions of knowledge, reality, society, religion, culture and gender. Is truth relative? To what extent is knowledge dependent on context? Are there different logics? Do different cultures and societies see the world differently? And is reality itself something that is constructed? This book offers a path through these debates. O'Grady begins by clarifying what exactly relativism is and how it differs from scepticism and pluralism. He then examines five main types of cognitive relativism: alethic relativism, logical relativism, ontological relativism; epistemological relativism, and relativism about rationality. Each is clearly distinguised and the arguments for and against each are assessed. O'Grady offers a welcome survey of recent debates, engaging with the work of Davidson, Devitt, Kuhn, Putnam, Quine, Rorty, Searle, Winch and Wittgenstein, among others, and he offers a distinct position of his own on this hotly contested issue.

Author : Steven Lukes
Publisher : Profile Books
ISBN 13 : 1847653200
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Moral Relativism written by Steven Lukes and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2011-05-26 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do we as humans have no shared standards by which we can understand each other? Do we truly have divergent views about what constitutes good and evil, harm and welfare, dignity and humiliation, or is there some underlying commonality that wins out? These questions show up everywhere, from the debate over female circumcision to the UN Declaration of Human Rights. They become ever more pressing in an age of mass immigration, religious extremism and the rise of identity politics. So by what right do we judge particular practices as barbaric? Who are the real barbarians? This provocative book takes an enlightening look at what we believe, why we believe it and whether there really is an irreparable moral discord between 'us' and 'them'.

Author : Cynthia Lins Hamlin
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134575939
Total Pages : 167 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beyond Relativism written by Cynthia Lins Hamlin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-01-14 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that critical realism offers the theory of cognitive rationality a real way of overcoming the limitations of methodological individualism by recognising both the agents' - and the social structure's - causal powers and liabilities. Cynthia Lins Hamlin persuasively argues that critical realism represents a better safeguard against the relativism which springs from the conflation of social reality and our ideas about it. This is an important book for sociologists and anyone working in the social sciences, and for all those concerned with the methodology, and philosophy, of social science.

Author : Joseph Margolis
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 9400943628
Total Pages : 245 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rationality, Relativism and the Human Sciences written by Joseph Margolis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium was launched in the early eighties. It began during a particularly lean period in the American economy. But its success is linked as much to the need to be in touch with the rapidly changing currents of the philosophical climate as with the need to insure an adequately stocked professional community in the Philadelphia area faced, perhaps permanently, with the threat of increasing attrition. The member schools of the Consortium now include Bryn Mawr College, the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and Villanova University, that is, the schools of the area that offer advanced degrees in philosophy. The philosophy faculties of these schools form the core of the Consortium, which offers graduate students the instructional and library facilities of each member school. The Consortium is also supported by the associated faculties of other regional schools that do not offer advanced degrees - notably, those at Drexel University, Haverford College, La Salle University, and Swarthmore College - both philosophers and members of other departments as well as interested and professionally qualified persons from the entire region. The affiliated and core professionals now number several hundreds, and the Consortium's various ventures have been received most enthusiastically by the academic community. At this moment, the Consortium is planning its fifth year of what it calls the Conferences on the Philosophy of the Human Studies.

Author : Jack W. Meiland
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Relativism, Cognitive and Moral written by Jack W. Meiland and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: