Key Terms Flashcards
Relativism
Relativism about F (for example) means that something does not intrinsically have or not have F but that is determined by context
Relativism (about truth at least) seems self-undermining
- The claim that something is relative to a perspective..is relative to that perspective
Absolutism
Absolutism about F means that something does intrinsically have or not have F regardless of context
Absolutism is the standard view in PoS
Language and Relativism
Truth can be thought to be relative to language. There is a choice involved but once we have chosen then truths become absolute.
Example:
“We are all sinners.”
– True if you accept the traditional moral vocabulary of Christianity or Islam.
– False if you reject the idea of sin.
● This is an example where there is disagreement about which concepts to use at all
Truth of Absolutism
– It is never the case that one claim is both true and false
Truth of Relativism
There is a nevertheless a sense in which a claim can be (and not just thought to be)
true for one person, but false for the other.
Solution to tension between Relativism and Absolutism
Disagreement goes deeper than truth: it is about the choice of which concepts
to use; a choice of vocabulary.
Connection to Thomas Kuhn’s paradigms!
Traditional Lens of Subjectivity & Objectivity
subjectivity and objectivity are each
other’s opposites.
● Therefore: objectivity is attained only when the subject plays no role at all.
● something is objective if it is a property
of the object itself, subjective if it has to do with the subject’s relation to the object.
Helps us explain why ‘the chocolate ice cream is -7 degrees’ seems to be more objective than ‘the chocolate ice cream tastes good
Objectivity Problem
Not much is truly objective.
primary qualities = those properties that objects themselves have;
secondary qualities = those properties that describe how we perceive the primary properties.
● For instance, fire does not itself have the property ‘painful’,
for that depends on our capacity to feel pain.
● But also not the property ‘yellow’, for that depends on our
eyes and brains.
Giving an objective account of physical properties would already be limited but applying it to the humanities and social sciences is near impossible
Standard Argument Against Objectivity
“We human beings always only see things from our particular perspective. Since we
cannot see things from other people’s perspective, and certainly cannot see things
from no perspective at all, anything we know is subjective. Hence, objectivity is
impossible.”
● The underlying assumption here is this:
– Objectivity means seeing things from no perspective at all.
Perspectives and Objectivity
It would make literally no sense to say that the objective way of seeing a figure is seeing it from no perspective at all.
– There is no such thing as seeing something from no perspective.
And seeing only from one perspective gives us a limited view/knowledge
Solution:
So we must combine perspectives to get a fuller picture
Another way of understanding: Objectivity
objectivity is what accommodates the
experiences of many different subjects.
To be objective is to be such that different subjects who may have different perspectives on the matter can all end up agreeing on it.
Benefits to the alternative way of understanding objectivity
Thinking about objectivity in this way pushes us to:
– Listen to people from different backgrounds (scientific, cultural, and so on)
– Try to broaden our own perspectives on things
– Try to reach agreement through argument and accommodation
– In some cases, pay special attention to underrepresented groups
It does not push us to:
– Abandon the hope of ever breaking out of our own limited perspective
– Accept uncritically everything that other people think
– Believe that we can ever finish broadening our perspective
Collingwood: Actions and Events
Natural Sciences:
- Study events
- They occur, have no meaning, and are described by causes
Humanities/Social Sciences
- Study actions
- They occur, have a meaning, and are described by reasons
Collingwood: Events
Fall under causal laws, and are explained by them
– There are no normative questions to be asked: we can ask whether something was the
real cause, but not whether it was a good cause
– They don’t have a meaning, and don’t require interpretation
Example: An eruption is unequivocally an eruption.
Collingwood: Action
Are done for reasons, and are explained by them
– There are normative questions to be asked: we can as whether something was the real
reason, but also whether it was a good reason
– They have a meaning, and require interpretation
Example: Is Hamlet’s not killing of his uncle an act of mercy, a theatrical performance, an act
of cowardice, an act of vengeance?
What is ‘meaning’
Meaning is holistic:
– What something is, depends on the greater whole of which it is a part.
– individual elements are determined by their context.
Interpretation: The Hermeneutic Circle
Crucially, interpretation is gradual. We need to start off with some understanding to get the hermeneutic circle going.
● From this pre-understanding, we can go through the hermeneutic circle as often as we want, increasing our understanding and the amount of context we bring in.
● The hermeneutic circle is more of a hermeneutic spiral.
● The process is circular and the potential context is unlimited = interpretation is in principle open-ended.
You have never finished interpreting something.
3 ideas about interpretation
- There is one correct interpretation, even if we can
perhaps never reach it. - There are possibly many good interpretations, but
also many less good or outright bad ones. - All interpretations are equally good.
Dilthey & Verstehen
The humanities investigate the humans experiences. Unities are the background against which things in my life can have meanings. At the same time, it is meaning
which forms these unities.
Thus, the method of the humanities is interpretation
We investigate (interpret) the expressions of human experience
Verstehen: Understanding experiences and the expressions it gave rise to
Dilthey: Humanities vs Natural sciences
Different aims:
– The natural sciences teach us laws that allow us to manipulate nature.
– The humanities give us access to new experiences with which we enrich our lives.
● Different requirements:
– The natural sciences are based exclusively on thinking.
– The humanities require the total participation of our powers, including thinking, feeling, our whole personality.
● The humanities require and generate self-understanding.
Dilthey & Verstehen: 3 levels of understanding
Elementary understanding
Higher understanding
Re-experiencing
2 Types of Rationality
Theoretical rationality: rationality of beliefs
Practical rationality: rationality of actions
Perhaps theoretical rationality is a kind of practical rationality where the purpose is to
arrive at the truth.
Objective & Subjective Rationality
Objective rationality -> your reasons really are good reasons / your actions really do lead
to your goal
Subjective rationality -> your reasons seem to be good reasons given your background /
your actions seem to lead you to your goal given your beliefs
Practical Rationality
Means/Ends Rationality
Goals / aims / purposes / ends are taken as given and not evaluated
Actions are evaluated on whether they are effective means to your ends
This model suggests its perfectly rational to
–> Put your hand in the fire, given that you want to experience pain
Why do we need rationality?
- We need to be rational scientists
- We need the assumption of rationality to study and understand people.
Example:
Neanderthals developed highly complex methods of shaping stones
– In particular, they developed techniques to create many flakes that were sharp on one
side and blunt on the other side, and had the right size to be held in one’s hand
– Such flakes are ideal for cutting meat and cleaning animal skins
● Conclusion:
– Neanderthals used these flakes to cut meat and clean animal skins
● This conclusion presupposes that Neanderthals were rational
Rational Choice Theory
Based on means/end rationality
Acknowledges the problem that agents often have more than one goal.
Core idea: we can set up a calculus of benefits and costs.
(A Utility Function)
Agents behave rationally when they maximize their expected utility
Assumptions of RCT
- Agents have perfect information about their goals and the probabilities of outcomes of
their actions.
– Agents have unlimited computing power.
– In multi-agent contexts: agents have perfect information about the goals of other
actors.
Criticisms of RCT
1: no room for irrational action
2: highly unrealistic
● Agents often have incomplete information, they face uncertainty, and they may not even know their own preferences very well.
Example of RCT Application
Will tax breaks get Dutch people to install solar panels on
their roofs?
● Define utility in terms of money.
● Calculate the relevant expected costs and benefits:
– BENEFITS: having to play less for energy; selling energy; tax breaks
– COSTS: purchase, installation, maintenance, annual depreciation
● Predict how big a tax break will make people purchase solar
panels.
BUT– Even in simple cases like the solar panels, there is uncertainty about electricity prices in the future; uncertainty about whether I’ll need my money for something else; a lack of time and energy to find out about the expected utility; uncertainty about innovation in solar panel technology; a vague sense that perhaps these panels lead to pollution; ideological reasons for or against solar panels; etc.
Bounded Rationality
The study of rationality in situations of practical restrictions
Gives us forms of choosing that are
– Cheap and easy to implement
– Give results that are good enough
Mostly useful as an empirical research
programme.
● We have to establish which heuristics people actually use in what circumstances.
● And then we can claim to understand why they made these decisions, and predict their future decisions.
Heuristic
Context-dependent rule of thumb for reasoning and decision making (not necessarily optimal)
Recognition heuristic
In some cases, a very fast and fairly successful choice strategy is simply to choose what you recognise.
● Examples:
– Which German city is larger, Hamburg or Augsburg?
– Who won Wimbledon in 2003, Roger Federer of Mark Philippoussis?
Not flawless, of course!
– What is the capital of the state of New York, New York City or Albany?
We use this all the time in the supermarket, unless we have good reasons to spend extra time.
Take-the-best heuristic
In choosing between two options, base your choice on a single dimension of difference, ignoring everything else.
● Examples:
– I care about climate change, so I choose the political party that does most against
climate change, ignoring all else.
– Offered three hotels in Benidorm, I decide to just check which is closer to the beach.
– Seeing two paths in the woods, I choose the one where I see most mushrooms.
● Clearly suboptimal if you want to optimise, but makes for fast decision making.
● Can be extended to take in more than one dimension.
Bounded Rationality: Criticisms/Things to Consider
Some actual human decision making may be more rigorous than simple heuristics suggest.
It’s also not always clear how agents select heuristics. When do I know that a particular heuristic will be good enough?
And aren’t we actually optimising, except that our utility also involves the limited resources we have for decision making?
Rationality and Emotion
Western thinking has long made a sharp distinction between rationality and emotion
– Emotion is antagonistic to rationality
– The best decisions are made by un-emotional people (Often linked to sexist narratives: men as rational, women as emotional)
● Cognitivist views of emotions became popular (again) from the 1980s. Suggest that emotions have cognitive content and can be rational:
– Being afraid of a tiger is rational, being afraid of a mouse is not.
– Feeling disgust of rotting carcasses is rational, feeling disgust of tulips is not
3 Functions of the Emotion System
– Motivational kick: emotions put us into motion, to not just have goals but also pursue
them
– Cognitive short cut: emotions enable us to quickly identify salient factors
– Access to values
● It’s hard to do justice to human decision making without taking emotions into account.
Qualitative Methods
Good for:
– Reverse causal inference – reasoning from effects to causes
– Reconstructing complex causal pathways
– Generation hypotheses
Weaknesses:
– Danger of selection bias
– Difficult to generalise findings
Quantitative Methods
Good for:
– Forward causal inference – reasoning from causes to effects
– Testing generalisations about relationships between variables
Weaknesses:
– Poor basis for reconstructing complex causal pathways
– Usually not a great basis for hypothesis generation
Case Study
A qualitative method
The intensive study of a single case with the purpose to shed light on a larger class of cases
A researcher may choose cases with various characteristics:
– Typical case: highly representative example
– Extreme case: may reveal causal relations most strongly
– Exceptional case: may reveal causes of accidents
– Deviant case: anomaly, may help pinpoint limitations of a theory
Internal Validity
– Degree to which a study’s findings are warranted for the case studied
External Validity
– Degree to which a study’s conclusions are generalisable
Validity Trade-Off
Measures taken to enhance the warrant of findings (internal validity) tend to limit their
generalisability (external validity)
● For instance, looking into a lot of detail
– And vice versa
Analogy
A relation of similarity or isomorphism between two domains of phenomena
By extension: the cognitive process of transferring conceptual resources from
one domain to another
Analogies help..
- Discover similarities and identities between domains
- Generalise over and unify distinct domains
- Create and extend scientific concepts
4 conceptual elements of analogy
source domain - Domain of phenomena that supplies the terms of the analogy: typically more familiar to us
target domain - Domain of phenomena to which we apply the analogy: typically less familiar to us
mapping - Set of correspondences between terms in the source and terms on the target
domain
relations - Claims that, under the mapping, hold for both the source and the target
domain
Example of Analogy
Organic Analogy
“Society is analogous to an organism”
Classical social science understood societies by analogy with organisms
– Emile Durkheim (1858 – 1917), French sociologist
– Functionalism: interpreted society in terms of the functions of its constituent elements
Mapping from domain of organisms to domain of societies
– Living organism -> Society
– Parts, e.g. organs -> Components, e.g. institutions
– Functions of organs -> Functions of institutions
– Ill health -> Loss of social equilibrium
Claims that hold in both domains:
– The whole [organism / society] is greater than the sum of its parts [organs / institutions]
– Parts [organs / institutions] work together for the benefit of the whole [organism / society]
– To understand a part [organ / institution] is to show how to relate it to other parts and what role it plays in the continued existence of the whole [organism / society]
3 classes of analogous relations
● Positive analogy
– We know already that these relations hold in both the source and the target domains
● Negative analogy
– We know already that these relations hold in one domain but not in the other
● Neutral analogy
– We know that these relations hold in the source domain, but we do not know if
they also hold in the target domain
