I. C. Jarvie

A Cognitive Theory of Religion [and Comments and Reply]

I use an old observation (that religion is anthropomorphistic) to solve a problem almost as old (why do people have religious beliefs?) by arguing that religion is a special case of the more general phenomenon of anthropomorphism. This view suggests that religious belief, often thought nonempirical and cognitively anomalous, is as much based in experience as is nonreligious belief and that it consists in a plausible application of significant models to ambiguous phenomena. Anthropomorphism, often thought a cognitive aberration, appears to me both reasonable and inevitable, although by definition mistaken. On this argument, religious models of and for the world differ in content from nonreligious models but are epistemologically similar to them.

The Problem of the Rationality of Magic

As a beginning we want to distinguish rational action from rational belief. An action is rational, by and large, if it is goal-directed;1 a belief is rational if it satisfies some standard or criterion.2 When we deem a person ‘rational’ we mean he acts rationally, or he holds rational beliefs, or both. Let us call the rationality that consists in acting rationally the weak sense of ‘rationality’; and the rationality that consists in acting rationally on the basis of rationally held beliefs the strong sense of ‘rationality’. Now our thesis in this study can be formulated so: magic is rational in the weak sense, but not in the strong sense; this demarcates it from science which is rational in the strong sense.

The Problem of Ethical Integrity in Participant Observation

A curious problem arises in connexion with the notion of the participant observer, a problem partly ethical and partly methodological. It seems not to have been clearly seen and stated, although solutions to it exist — in practice, as it were. The problem arises like this. Standard accounts of the method of participant observation require, I would argue, an anthropological observer to be both a stranger and a friend among the people he is studying. Yet one person cannot be a stranger and a friend at the same time: the roles are mutually exclusive. This being so, it is a fortiori impossible to play either role in integrity while trying to combine them, with the result that an uneasy compromise is liable to be forged.

Technology and the Structure of Knowledge

The problem with which I want to engage your attention this evening requires a little more specification than is given in my title. It would seem obvious enough that technology is a species of knowledge. Our so called ‘age of technology’ seems to have more of this commodity we can call ‘technological knowledge’ than any previous age or society. You would expect, then, that technology as a species of knowledge would be highly revered, widely studied, and generally well understood in our society. You would think, in fact, that a talk with my title would be no more required than one on ‘science and the structure of knowledge’. This happens not to be so. Technology is not generally revered, especially by intellectuals, not well understood and studied, and even has its claims to be a species of knowledge disputed. I take it as my task to try to dispel such views. What I shall suggest in the course of what follows is that from one angle technology is only a part of the logical structure of our knowledge; and that from another angle the whole of our knowledge can be regarded as a substructure, as included under technology. Viewed logically, technology is a substructure of knowledge; it is knowledge of what physicists call the ‘initial conditions’. Viewed anthropologically, knowledge is part of man’s multiform attempts to adapt to his environment which we call his technology.

Magic and Rationality Again

The previous paper has created some controversy, and has been labelled both absurd and obvious. We would not deny the charge of obviousness. For if the basic question here is how to understand beliefs that are prima facie irrational, then our suggestion — that first there had to be prior agreement on criteria of rationality of belief — was hardly startling. We by-passed detailed discussion of such criteria because this would take us into one of the most extensive debates in contemporary philosophy (for example, the entire vast literature on induction consists of attempts to state criteria for rational belief or rational choice between beliefs). Our heart would not have been in a summary of this literature because we thought it pointless. Unless beliefs are a sub-class of actions (which, we hinted in a footnote, they are), then it is not at all clear whether a belief can be rational or irrational, any more than whether it can be red or not red, lazy or energetic. To be more precise, it is quite generally agreed that the act of believing in a belief, or of holding on to a belief, may or may not be rational; not really the object of the act — the belief itself, the doctrine, the theory in question. While it makes sense to claim that Catholics, alchemists, phlogistonists, and Newtonians are rational or irrational, then, it is loose to claim Catholicism, alchemy, phologistonism and Newtonianism to be so.

Thinking about society : theory and practice

thinking about society theory pdf Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems.A system is a cohesive conglomeration of interrelated and interdependent parts that is either natural or man-made.Every system is delineated by its spatial and temporal boundaries, surrounded and influenced by its environment, described by its structure and purpose or nature and expressed in its functioning.

Seeing Through Movies

At one time, movies were beneath the notice of academics; they ranked lower even than such acceptable relaxants as detective mysteries. Times have changed: hundreds of universities now offer courses in various aspects of the movies-their history, their art, their sociological significance, and how to make them. Out of the closet have poured dozens of professors who have long harboured a secret passion for the movies. Where books on the movies were

Science in a Democratic Republic

Polanyis and Poppers defenses of the status quo in science are explored and criticized. According to Polanyi, science resembles a hierarchical and tradition-oriented republic and is necessarily conservative; according to Poppers political philosophy the best republic is social democratic and reformist. By either philosophers lights science is not a model republic; yet each claims it to be so. Both authors are inconsistent in failing to apply their own ideals. Both underplay the extent to which science depends upon the wider society; and neither makes sufficient allowance for the ways it can disrupt the social order. Polanyi even demands extraterritorial exemption for science from the scrutiny of incompetent outsiders. In their different ways, each minimizes the problems of institutionalized science and fails to consider the value, even the long-term necessity, for science of democratic criticism and control. Transnational control of science is an open challenge for democratic polities.

Introduction to the special issues on situational analysis

Although two earlier issues of Philosophy of the Social Sciences (PSS) have been devoted to a specific book by Karl Popper-The Open Society and Its Enemies (see PSS December 1996 and March 1997)-this and a following issue are instead devoted to a theme in Popper’s work, namely, situational analysis. The articles were originally written for a workshop on &dquo;Popper’s Situational Analysis and the Social Sciences,&dquo; which took place in October 1997 in Vienna and was organized by the Research Unit for Socioeconomics at the Austrian Academy of the Sciences. The three goals of the workshop, according to the invitation issued to the participants, were the following: to inform about the status of situational analysis in the different social sciences, to investigate why situational analysis had not made more of an impact on the various social sciences, and to outline the potential contribution of Popper’s ideas on situational analysis to the different social sciences.

The Rationality of Creativity

My title links two abstract nouns that are usually set over against each other, seen as contrasting, if not in opposition. The view that informs this paper is that what can usefully be said about creativity is very little, and rather trite; and that it is co-extensive with the rational element in creativity. There may or may not be other than rational elements in creativity; confronted with them, my inclination would be for the first time to invoke Wittgenstein: “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one should be silent.” The little I think can be said about the rationality of creativity will be confined to section five. The preceding sections will offer a general critique of the literature, bringing out its poverty and also its irrationality.