Mark Risjord

Methodological triangulation in nursing research

Methodological triangulation is the use of more than one method to investigate a phenomenon. Nurse researchers investigate health phenomena using methods drawn from the natural and social sciences. The methodological debate concerns the possibility of confirming a single theory with different kinds of methods. The nursing debate parallels the philosophical debate about how the natural and social sciences are related. This article critiques the presuppositions of the nursing debate and suggests alternatives. The consequence is a view of triangulation that permits different methods to confirm a single theory. The article then explores the consequences for the philosophy of social science.

Relativism and the Ontological Turn within Anthropology

The “ontological turn” is a recent movement within cultural anthropology. Its proponents want to move beyond a representationalist framework, where cultures are treated as systems of belief (concepts, etc.) that provide different perspectives on a single world. Authors who write in this vein move from talk of many cultures to many “worlds,” thus appearing to affirm a form of relativism. We argue that, unlike earlier forms of relativism, the ontological turn in anthropology is not only immune to the arguments of Donald Davidson’s “The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” but it affirms and develops the antirepresentationalist position of Davidson’s subsequent essays.

Ethnography and culture

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses ethnography and culture. Late 20th century writers subjected ethnography to withering criticism. The primary target of critical attack, however, was not ethnography, but culture. This chapter highlights several venerable philosophical debates about the social sciences. The first is the “explanation–understanding” problem. In its traditional and paradigmatic form, the explanation–understanding issue concerns whether the “social sciences” require ways of generating knowledge that are distinct from those used in the “natural sciences.” Ethnography generally eschews preferring to use interviews, participation, and forms of linguistic analysis. Methodological individualism is the second important philosophical debate discussed in this chapter. Ethnography developed as part of the colonial encounter. At the very least, ethnographic research required the cooperation of colonial authorities; occasionally, it was more deeply implicated. Willingly or unwillingly, ethnographers occupied a position in a structure that dominated and exploited non-European peoples.

Reasons, causes, and action explanation

To explain an intentional action one must exhibit the agent’s reasons. Donald Davidson famously argued that the only clear way to understand action explanation is to hold that reasons are causes. Davidson’s discussion conflated two issues: whether reasons are causes and whether reasons causally explain intentional action. Contemporary work on explanation and normativity help disentangle these issues and ground an argument that intentional action explanations cannot be a species of causal explanation. Interestingly, this conclusion is consistent with Davidson’s conclusion that reasons are causes. In other words, reasons are causes, but rationalizing explanations are not causal explanations.

The Politics of Explanation and the Origins of Ethnography

At the turn of the twentieth century, comparative studies of human culture (ethnology) gave way to studies of the details of individual societies (ethnography). While many writers have noticed a political sub-text to this paradigm shift, they have regarded political interests as extrinsic to the change. The central historical issue is why anthropologinsts stopped asking global, comparative questions and started asking local questions about features of particular societies. The change in questions cannot be explained by empirical factors clone, and following Jarvie, this essay argues that political factors motivate the change. Jarvies understanding of the role played by egalitarian politics is criticized, and the esay develops a new model of how political or moral values can become constitutive of scientific enquiry. On the erotetic view of explanation, whether one proposition explains another depends on the choice of contrast clas and relevance criterion. Since political or moral values can motivate these choices, explanation can depend on non-epistemic values. The essay argues that the comparative questions of nineteenth-century ethnology presupposed that Europeans were superior to other races. It closes by arguing that Fanz Boas recognized the political values implicit in nineteenth-century ethnology and rejected its questions on those grounds.

Nursing and human freedom

Debates over how to conceptualize the nursing role were prominent in the nursing literature during the latter part of the twentieth century. There were, broadly, two schools of thought. Writers like Henderson and Orem used the idea of a self-care deficit to understand the nurse as doing for the patient what he or she could not do alone. Later writers found this paternalistic and emphasized the importance of the patients free will. This essay uses the ideas of positive and negative freedom to explore the differing conceptions of autonomy which are implicit in this debate. The notion of positive freedom has often been criticized as paternalistic, and the criticisms of self-care in the nursing literature echo criticisms from political philosophy. Recent work on relational autonomy and on the relationship between autonomy and identity are used to address these objections. This essay argues for a more nuanced conception of the obligation to support autonomy that includes both positive (freedom to) and negative (freedom from) dimensions. This conception of autonomy provides a moral foundation for conceptualizing nursing in something like Hendersons terms: as involving the duty to expand the patients capacities. The essay concludes by generalizing the lesson. Respect for autonomy on the part of any health care provider requires both respect for the patients choices and a commitment to expand the patients ability to actualize their choices.

No Strings Attached: Functional and Intentional Action Explanations

Functional explanation in the social sciences is the focal point for conflict between individualistic and social modes of explanation. While the agent thought she was acting for reasons, the functional explanation seems to reveal the hidden strings of the puppet master. This essay argues that the conflict is merely apparent. The erotetic model of explanation is used to analyze the forms of intentional action and functional explanations. Two explanations conflict if either the presuppositions of their respective why-questions conflict or the typical answers identified by their relevance criteria conflict. While a functional explanation may have the same topic and foil as an intentional action explanation, both the why-questions and their typical answers are compatible.

Meaning, belief, and language acquisition

Abstract A very plausible and common view of meaning supposes that linguistic meaning is to be understood in terms of speakers’ intentions. This program proposes to analyse the meaning of a sentence in terms of what speakers mean by or in uttering it; and this speaker meaning in turn is to be analysed in terms of the speakers intentions. This essay argues that intention‐based semantics cannot provide an adequate analysis of linguistic meaning: not because of contrived counterexamples, nor because it conflicts with scruples about intentionality which we do or should have. It fails because research in psychology shows that children do not attribute beliefs to others in the way demanded by the theory. Empirical evidence is provided for the claim that two‐ and three‐year‐old children do not satisfy the conditions for speaker meaning, and thus cannot be said to mean anything by their utterances. It seems to me that children both mean something by their utterances and that their utterances have linguistic mean...

Scientific Change as Political Action Franz Boas and the Anthropology of Race

A theory is value-neutral when no constitutive values are part of its content. Nonneutral theories seem to lack objectivity because it is not clear how the constitutive values could be empirically confirmed. This article analyzes Franz Boas’s famous arguments against nineteenth-century evolutionary anthropology and racial theory. While he recognized that talk of “higher civilizations” encoded a constitutive, political value with consequences for slavery and colonialism, he argued against it on empirical and methodological grounds. Boas’s arguments thus provide a model of how, under the right conditions, scientific inquiry can provide empirically objective grounds for political critique.

The limits of cognitive theory in anthropology

The cognitive revolution in psychology was a significant advance in our thinking about the mind. Philosophers and social scientists have looked to the cognitive sciences with the hope that the social world will yield to similar explanatory strategies. Dan Sperber has argued for a programme that would conceptualize the entire domain of anthropological theory in cognitive terms. Sperbers ‘epidemiology’ specifically excludes interpretive, structuralist and functionalist theories. This essay evaluates Sperbers epidemiological approach to anthropological theory. It argues that as a programme for anthropological theorizing, Sperbers epidemiology could not be empirically grounded. Cognitive explanations depend on prior interpretations. While interpretation is a kind of theorizing, it cannot be assimilated to cognitive explanation. The essay concludes by sketching an explanatory coherence framework in which ethnographic interpretation and cognitive explanation are seen as parts of a unified body of anthropological theorizing.