A (Post)Foundational Approach to the Philosophy of Science: Part II

Summary  This is a sequel to my paper, “Searching for a (Post)Foundational Approach to Philosophy of Science”, which appeared in an earlier issue of this Journal [Ginev 2001, Journal for General Philosophy of science 32, 27–37]. In the present paper I continue to scrutinize the possibility of a strong hermeneutics of scientific research. My aim is to defend the position of cognitive existentialism that combines the advocacy of science’s cognitive specificity and the rejection of any form of essentialism. A special attention will be paid to the notion of the thematizing project of scientific research.     

The Need for a Revolution in the Philosophy of Science

There is a need to bring about a revolution in the philosophy of science, interpreted to be both the academic discipline, and the official view of the aims and methods of science upheld by the scientific community. At present both are dominated by the view that in science theories are chosen on the basis of empirical considerations alone, nothing being permanently accepted as a part of scientific knowledge independently of evidence. Biasing choice of theory in the direction of simplicity, unity or explanatory power does not permanently commit science to the thesis that nature is simple or unified. This current ‘paradigm’ is, I argue, untenable. We need a new paradigm, which acknowledges that science makes a hierarchy of metaphysical assumptions concerning the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe, theories being chosen partly on the basis of compatibility with these assumptions. Eleven arguments are given for favouring this new ‘paradigm’ over the current one. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Philosophy of Science: What One Needs to Know

This introduction to the philosophy of science offers an overview of the major concepts and developments in contemporary theories of science. Strengths and weaknesses of deductive, inductive, and falsificationist models of science are considered. The "Received View" in the theory of science is contrasted with Kuhn's paradigms and Feyerabend's "anything goes," leading to an examination of the merits of a research program–based approach. After touching on the sociology of science, postmodernism, and the feminist critique, the article concludes with a summary, in six theses, of the implications for religion/science.     

A Developmental Approach to Social Science: A Model for Analyzing Charles Alexander's Scientific Contributions

A seven-paradigm developmental model of social science is presented (behaviorism, gestalt sociologism, empirical positivism, multi-method eclecticism, postmodern interpretivism, cooperative ecological inquiry, and developmental action inquiry). Charles Alexander's research is interpreted as bridging aspects of several paradigms, using third-person empirical positivist experiments to demonstrate the effects of a first-person research/practice called Transcendental Meditiation. The author suggests the possibility of complementing current research on TM with explicit double- and triple-loop research on the second- and third-person practices within the TM movement.     

A Draft for Unifying Controversies in Philosophy of Science

The basic (negative and positive) methodological maxims of three currents of philosophy of science (logical empiricism, falsificationism, and postpositivism) are formulated. Many of these maxims (stratagems) are controversial, e.g., the stance about the nonsense of metaphysics, and that of its indispensability. The restricted validity of these maxims allows for their unification. Within the framework of most of them there may be a relationship of (synchronic, or diachronic) subordination of the contradicting desiderata. In this vein ten stratagems are formulated. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

(Re)Searching for a client in two different worlds: Mind the research‐practice gap

A criticism voiced by counsellors and psychotherapists is that research does not truly reflect the complexities of therapy. Researchers, on the other hand, accuse practitioners of not attending to research findings and suggest that as a result they engage in an ill‐informed process. This polarised understanding can give rise to the situation where the client is missed, falling into the research‐practice gap. In reality the research‐practice gap gets smaller and smaller every time a practitioner employs — which is often the case — a complex and sophisticated construct system in search of a client's psychological distress. The metaphor of the ‘search’ seems to become a point of connection between the practitioner's search and the researcher's (re)search. As a way of exploring this issue, the paper briefly considers the research‐practice gap and the critique of current research. It argues that counsellors and psychotherapists are themselves engaging in research when they practise therapy since every counselling and psychotherapy session is basically a (re)search process.     

Three Approaches to Doing Philosophy: a Proposal for Grouping Philosophical Exercises in Classroom Teaching

Classroom teaching has two aims: learning philosophy, that is, the great philosophers, and doing philosophy. This article provides an overview of thirty exercises that can be used for doing philosophy, grouped into three approaches. The first approach, doing philosophy as connective truth finding or communicative action, is related to such philosophers as Dewey and Arendt, and is illustrated by the Socratic method. The second, doing philosophy as test‐based truth finding, is related to such philosophers as Popper, and is illustrated by Community of Philosophical Inquiry. The third, doing philosophy as juridical debate, judging truth‐value and making judgment, is related to such philosophers as Foucault, and is illustrated by philosophical debate. The analysis shows that although the classical methods applied by the great philosophers appear to be missing from classroom exercises, they do, in fact, remain at the heart of the matter.     

Towards a relational framework for pathological gambling (Part I): Five circuits

Relationship patterns before and after pathological gambling were investigated qualitatively using eight in‐depth clinical case studies in which one partner met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders‐IV pathological gambling criteria. Five circuits of couple interactions are described: (i) fault‐lines; (ii) pressure points; (iii) escalation; (iv) relapse and (v) congruence. The exploration of these circuits is developed in two complementary articles. This first article delineates the first four circuits as recursive self‐perpetuating cycles of couple distress in systemic interaction with pathological gambling development and relapse. The second article delineates how a couple can be helped to extricate themselves from these recursive circuits through ‘congruence’. Implications of this relational formulation of pathological gambling for conceptualization, assessment and treatment are discussed.     

The Spirit(s) of Science: Paradoxical Positivism as Religious Discourse among Spiritualists

This article examines a narrative dilemma that popular texts on evolution face. On the one hand, popular science tends to privilege linear and culturally familiar narrative structures, as previous studies of popularization have often emphasized. On the other hand, however, the Darwinian idea of natural selection resists linear narration, as narrative theorist H. Porter Abbott has argued. This resistance arises from the fact that evolution by natural selection lacks proper narrative entities and narrative events and that it relies on two parallel narrative levels, the levels of species and organism. This paper explores how two popular science books on evolution negotiate this narrative dilemma by introducing a third narrative level. Both texts appropriate characteristics from the narrative levels of species and organism and project them on molecular and minute scales by portraying evolution as a micro-narrative that takes place in chromosomes, genes, cells and microscopic details of human organs. While this textual strategy produces a coherent and compelling narrative that for the most part succeeds in masking the structural gap between the narrative levels of species and organism, it also risks naturalizing cultural imagery. In particular, this micro-narrative tends to represent popular gender ideologies as biological truths embedded in molecular processes within our bodies.     

Credit for discoveries: Citation data as a Basis for History of Science Analysis

Citation data have become an increasingly significant source of information for historians, sociologists, and other researchers studying the evolution of science. In the past few decades elaborate methodologies have been developed for the use of citation data in the study of the modern history of science. This article focuses on how citation indexes make it possible to trace the background and development of discoveries as well as to assess the credit that publishing scientists assign to particular discoverers. Kuhn's notion of discovery is discussed. The priority dispute over the discovery of the AIDS virus is used as an example.     

Negative problem orientation (Part I): psychometric properties of a new measure

Negative problem orientation, a set of dysfunctional attitudes toward social problem-solving, has increasingly become an important construct in our understanding of deficits in problem-solving ability in daily life. Until recently, no measure was specifically constructed to assess negative problem orientation directly, other than as a subscale in a more global measure of problem-solving ability. The goal of the present study was to translate the French version of the Negative Problem Orientation Questionnaire (NPOQ), and to examine its psychometric properties. The sample consisted of 201 university students who completed five questionnaires assessing psychological distress, pessimism, components of problem-solving ability, and the NPOQ. A unitary factor structure was revealed, accounting for 54.8% of the variance. The NPOQ had excellent internal consistency, good test-retest reliability at 5 weeks, and demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity when measured against self-reported pessimism, depression, anxiety, and problem-solving ability. The findings suggest that the NPOQ is a measure with sound psychometric properties that will be a valuable tool in future research on problem orientation.     

Honoring and Privileging Personal Experience and Knowledge: Ideas for a Narrative Therapy Approach to the Training and Supervision of New Therapists

This article discusses an approach for the training and supervision of new therapists built around social constructionist and poststructuralist ideas from a narrative therapy perspective. We briefly discuss some of the pitfalls of current training/supervision in marriage and family therapy (MFT) that are deficit based and/or that disproportionately grant privilege to expert knowledge. We articulate this emerging training approach which utilizes the rite of passage metaphor, centers relationalism, and incorporates the honoring and privileging of new therapists' lived experience, knowledges, skills, talents, ideas, morals, personal ethics, values, beliefs. Concrete practices of experience privileging, re-membering, and creating communities of concern are detailed, and illustrative examples from our supervision work are given.     

Failing to come to terms with things: a multi‐storied conversation about poststructuralist ideas and narrative practices in response to some of life's failures

This paper is designed to demonstrate some of the multi‐storied representational possibilities available to us as writers and practitioner‐researchers. It highlights some of the opportunities that are available to therapists and the people who consult them when they describe their conversational space as a site for co‐research. It illustrates the reciprocity present in conversations, including therapeutic conversations, by juxtaposing three stories that are interrelated retellings from different writing genres. In positioning poetic, storied and more academic/interpretative texts alongside each other, we hope to trouble the edges between academic and creative writing and also between practice and research. In placing these stories next to each other we seek to disrupt carefully contained ‘client’ and ‘therapist’ positions. We intend to question some current bereavement orthodoxies by demonstrating some less taken‐for‐granted ways in which people, living and dead, can and do continue to sustain each other's lives. We also hope to invite the readers and future writers of this journal to play alongside us in this conversation.     

A contribution to the development of a psychoanalytical methodology for research into language: A systematic study of narration as an expression of sexuality

Systematic research on language has a solid starting point in Freudian hypotheses on sexuality. This theory is the semantic ground for categorising narrations and providing a basis for the research method. The author places his research in the frame of the systematisation of the Freudian theory of substitute formations in the preconscious. He affirms that these formations are influenced in a particular way by each variant of sexuality. The author proposes an inventory (in Freudian terms) of those variants of sexuality, and he affirms that they can be detected in the discourse. Five universal scenes having the status of a canon, with specific features for each of the ways in which sexuality is manifested, make up narrations. The author describes the features of each narration and provides some examples. He also examines problems related to the use of the method (the coexistence of different variants of sexuality in a single fragment of a narration and the successive steps in the use of the method). The author briefly considers some other problems: the analysis of defences, the study of words and theoretical research. Finally, he examines the validity and reliability of the method.     

Mirror for the Other: Problem of the Self in Continental Philosophy (from Hegel to Lacan)

This essay intends to explore the genesis of one of the key concepts in continental philosophy of personalism–the concept of the ‘Other. It attempts to use most influential philosophical and psychological contexts to demonstrate how the Self is linked to the Other logically, notionally and conceptually. The present analysis employs two principal approaches to the problem–philosophical and psychological. From the stand point of the former, the key figure of the hereunder discourse is Hegel and his theory, while the later will be represented predominantly by Lacanian ideas. The present article will also discuss major influences of Hegel’s philosophical ideas on the Lacan’s theory.     

Crossan on the Couch, Along with the Rest of Us: Part Two: Six Proposals Toward a New Paradigm for a Psychologically Realistic Approach to the Search for the Historical Jesus as Suggested by the Work of Hal Childs

Building on the theoretical basis spelled out in my first article on Hal Childs' The Myth of the Historical Jesus and the Evolution of Consciousness, the present article engages in dialogue with Crossan's 2000 autobiography, A Long Way From Tipperary. The dialogue focuses on six proposals emerging from Childs' work that advocate the inclusion of psychological realism in rethinking the task, practice, and outcome of historical Jesus research. The six proposals are as follows: first, that psychological realism is an essential part of historical realism; second, that unconscious factors are to be considered at work in the viewer as well as in the viewed in historical Jesus research; third, that every reconstruction of the historical Jesus is mythic; fourth, that the preunderstanding that the Jesus scholar brings to historical Jesus research is generated within a hermeneutical circle constituted by a vast web of relationships, purposes, and meanings that include every aspect of the scholar's life; fifth, that the final goal of historical Jesus research is not the facts about the historic Jesus, but the meaning of these facts as archetypal images for self-understanding, world-understanding, and the evolution of consciousness; and sixth, that the purpose of the Gospel is to evoke new archetypal projections in the reader that can lead to new incarnations of the archetypal Self awakened and informed by the story of Jesus, often as recovered by the Jesus historian.