Rom Harré

The Construction and Deconstruction of Self in Alzheimer's Disease

The loss of self in Aizeheimers Disease is examined from a social constructionist view of the nature of the self. Empirical evidence derived from the structure of the discourse and behaviour of three Alzheimers sufferers is presented to show that self 1 , the self of personal identity, persists far into the end stage of the disease. Self 2 , the multiple personae that are projected into the public arena, and which require the cooperation of others in order to come into being, can be lost, but only indirectly as a result of the disease. The primary cause of the loss of self 2 is the ways in which others view and treat the Alzheimers sufferer. Recommendations are made regarding interactions between Alzheimers sufferers and caregivers.

Rom Harré on Social Structure and Social Change Social Reality and the Myth of Social Structure

The question of whether social structures are efficacious can be tackled by examining how they are produced. There are roles and rules, and there are people. Only the latter have the necessary powers to generate social worlds as products. Changing the social world can be achieved only by changing the rules and customs active people follow. Selectionist models of change also draw our attention to rules. Finally, there are obstacles to social change in `reductions - the minute social practices that shape actual social orders.

Enlarging the paradigm

Abstract The practice of psychology is heavily influenced by metaphysics. Choosing to view action not as behavior but as the implementation of belief systems in interactions mediated mostly by language opens up new research dimensions. For example, the study of emotion is greatly enriched by identifying the rules of use of emotion words and then studying these rules as conditions for the existence of an emotion. This forces the researcher to attend not only to physiology but also to social conventions and moral orders, since emotions involve moral judgments and social prescriptions/ proscriptions. Attending to these local conditions reveals how what anyone does, thinks, or feels is influenced by their own and others conceptions of what they do or do not have the right to do, think, or feel. Studies in developmental psychology must take this into account both in trying to separate an element of competence and in examining the degree to which thought and feeling are defined only in groups.

Natural Powers and Powerful Natures

The justification of a wholly non-Humean conceptual scheme, based upon the idea of enduring individuals with powers, rests in part on the success of such a scheme in resolving the problems bequeathed to us by the Humean tradition and in part must be achieved by a careful construction of the metaphysics of the new scheme itself. By this we mean a thorough exposition of the meaning and interrelations of the concepts of the new scheme. It is to the latter task that we turn in this paper, being satisfied that the power of the scheme to give a rational account of science has been shown,1 and that its effectiveness in resolving the Humean problems and dilemmas has been amply demonstrated.2 We are concerned with four main galaxies of problems in this paper. The first concerns the securing of a basis for assumptions about continuity and the rational accounting for change. Such a basis is required to put arguments which depend upon the concept of a nature on a sound footing. In these arguments, we believe, are to be found the most serious direct confrontations with the Ilumean way of looking at causality and science. The investigation of the concept of the nature of a thing or material leads us into a position from which we can usefully revive the notion of a natural kind. The development of a practical modern conception of natural kind, and the complementary examination of the fundamental assumptions of the rival event-ontology occupies the second section. The third group of problems surrounds the important notion of agency, and we shall develop that concept in a manner wholly independent both of anthropomorphic considerations and of the concept of spontaneity, with which it is sometimes misleadingly identified both in the lay and professional mind. Finally we undertake a further exposition of the nature of the concept of a power, particularly as it is exemplified in the physicists conception of the field of potential.

Explanation in Psychology

There is a strong tendency to tie in explaining to theorizing. So the search for an explanation is taken to be equivalent to the project of formulating a theory for that something. But before we can go on to examine whether this is a viable simplification of our intellectual activities we should notice that while it is widely acknowledged that ‘explanation’ is a multivocal concept little attention has been paid to possible equivocations in the concept of theory. But the two main moieties of the English speaking world use the notion of theory rather differently. In the writings of philosophers and psychologists domiciled in the United States a theory is usually taken to be an algorithm by which a formal representation of something can be computed. For instance in philosophy a ‘theory of meaning’ is just a formal representation of the components of meaning, from which meanings can be recovered by computation. However, in Britain, ‘theory’ is used more in the sense that it would be understood in physics, as a discourse that describes the mechanism by which that something in question is brought about or generated. This logomachy is not just a trivial matter like which part of a car is the hood. Wittgenstein’s (1953) famous prohibition on theorizing in philosophy, semantics and at least parts of psychology means one thing to those who think having a theory of something is having a formal representation and another to those who think of theory as describing generating mechanisms. As a different self-denying ordinance the latter recommends abstaining from introducing hypothetical entities as the generators of what is to be explained.

Chemical Kinds and Essences Revisited

The philosophical problem of the utility andmeaning of essences for chemistry cannot beresolved by Wittgensteins principle thatessence cannot explain use, because use isdisplayed in a field of family resemblances.The transition of chemical taxonomy fromvernacular and mystical based terms to theorybased terms stabilized as a unified descriptivetaxonomy, removes chemical discourse from itsconnection with the vernacular. The transitioncan be tracked using the Lockean concepts ofreal and nominal essences, and the changingpriorities between them. Analyzing propertiesdispositionally, initiating a search forgroundings strengthens the case for a logicalasymmetry between descriptive and explanatorydiscourses. Taxonomy is now driven byexplanatory concepts, but not including thosefrom quantum chemistry.

Commonsense Morality Across Cultures: Notions of Fairness, Justice, Honor and Equity

Two college-age samples, one from the United States (Washington, DC) and one from Spain (Madrid), were studied with mixed methods, phenomenological (with qualitative analyses) and traditional experimental (with quantitative analyses) - regarding the alleged foundational topic of `unfairness. Participants gave their instantiations of `Its not fair! (`No es justo), which were deconstructed and qualitatively analyzed to find and compare the essential types of unfairness. Using traditional experimental methods, unfairness vignettes were rated by severity and quantitatively analyzed, to see whether the two cultural groups make similar or different distinctions among the concepts of `unfairness, `injustice and `misfortune. From qualitative analyses, the fairness principles of `equity and `equality appeared in both groups, but `honor and dignity violations were much more frequent in the Spanish group, as different fairness principles interacted in complex ways. From the quantitative analyses, `unfairness was the broadest of the three concepts, extending beyond `injustice and both cultural groups viewed `misfortunes as `unfairnesses. Implications for a commonsense morality across cultures are discussed.

How psychologies “secrete” moralities

Abstract We are concerned with cultural continuities in “technical” and “folk” models of psychology, and in the relation of psychological theory to a cultures moral codes. Practical psychologies derive from underlying metaphysical ontologies of the person. We compare features of a traditional Western metaphysics of the person with a metaphysics indigenous to South Asia, with particular attention to the different consequences these have for their respective “psychologies,” and from these to their theories of prescriptive morality. We analyze the relationships between metaphysical ontologies, practical psychologies, and moral codes and discuss the potential relevance of these relationships for understanding and evaluating the psychological and moral models of familiar and unfamiliar cultures.

Wittgenstein and artificial intelligence

Abstract Recent studies of Wittgensteins later writing have made clear that they stand as a defence of two main ideas: that scepticism about the possibility of interpersonal discussions about our subjective feelings is misplaced and, as a seemingly startling corollary; that a mind state account of most ‘mental activities’ is incoherent. This leads to a great emphasis on skills and practices which, a fortiori, are definable only relationally, by reference to targets. In this paper I try to show that the ‘computer’ analogue for the mind f ails on both of Wittgensteins dimensions. There are no physiognomic language games in the computer centre, while the ‘target’ aspect of skill and practice concepts ties them in to a wholly human world.

From observability to manipulability: Extending the inductive arguments for realism

In recent years there have been several attempts to construct inductive arguments for some version of scientific realism. Neither the characteristics of what would count as inductive evidence nor the conclusion to be inferred have been specified in ways that escape sceptical criticism. By introducing the pragmatic criterion of manipulative efficacy for a good theory and by sharpening the specification of the necessary inductive principle, the viability of a mutually supporting pair of argument forms are defended. It is shown that by the use of these forms, taken together, a sequence of inductive arguments could be constructed, given suitable cases histories to serve as evidence. It also shown that the best inductive argument for the most daring realist claim is the weakest when compared with similarly structured arguments for less daring claims.