The Self-Reflexivity of Social Action (original) (raw)
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Self Reflexivity. The Ultimate End of Knowledge
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2014
In the history of modern knowledge one could notice the analogies that exist between the paths and the resolutions of any major forms of non-dogmatic enquiry which attempted to provide a comprehensive explanation and understanding of the Human Being and the Universe. The investigation in the Natural Sciences established the cornerstone of objectivity as its guiding principle. From the beginning, it has looked downward for the most solid foundation in objects and ended up finding the human consciousness reflected by the very core of quantum reality, the (self-)reflexivity of human consciousness in quantum reality. In the Social and Psychological Sciences, the (self-)reflexivity of a particular knowledge (theory/matter) over the knowledge that produced it (discipline itself/researcher) forms the main epistemological and methodological debate over the meaning and the condition of possibility for the scientific objectivity in the field. Modern Philosophy started with the methodical doubt from the Cartesian Meditations, advanced through a transcendental perspective and ended in the pure self-reflexivity of the phenomenological consciousness. Even if the unavoidable conclusion is that Self-reflexivity has proved to be the closing stage of any mature reflective mode of knowledge-whether it was natural, social or psychological science, philosophical or literary-the key question is 'Why?'
Reflexivity of the subject in selected contemporary social theories
Roczniki Nauk Społecznych
The subject of this article is the question of human reflexivity, where the individual is understood as the subject of social relations. We are interested in individual and collective subjectivity. The paper begins with an attempt to depict the theoretical field, on the grounds of which the problem of reflexivity appears in sociology. Next, we present the main concepts in the subjectivity theory found in sociological and philosophical literature. This allowed us to prepare an interpretational basis that is helpful in analysing specific subject reflexivity concepts. The presented theories arise from the views of M.S. Archer, P. Bourdieu, A. Giddens and C. Taylor. These views serve as the basis of our discussion concerning reflexivity, its meaning and interpretational challenges encountered in contemporary social theories of the subjectivity orientation. As a conclusion, the authors consider the main problems placed before the field of humanities concerning the further development of subjectivity theories.
Sociological Theory
This article offers a critique of the self-observation of the social sciences practiced in the philosophy of the social sciences and the critique of epistemological orientations. This kind of reflection involves the curious construction of wholes under labels, which are the result of a process of “distillation” or “abstraction” of a “position” somewhat removed from actual research practices and from the concrete claims and findings that researchers produce, share, and debate. In this context, I call for more sociological forms of reflexivity, informed by empirical research on practices in the natural sciences and by sociomaterial approaches in science and technology studies and cultural sociology. I illustrate the use of sociological self-observation for improving sociological research with two examples: I discuss patterns in how comparisons are used in relation to how comparisons could be used, and I discuss how cases are selected in relation to how they could be selected.
Reflexivity and Social Phenomenology
2011
This thesis develops an account of human understanding on the basis of an analysis of German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, and in relation to the thought of the Kyoto School philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro. The aim is to describe shared human intelligibility as founded upon a historical tradition and maintained by concrete practices, and yet as expressed only by
This essay provides a basis for examining the basic ontological, explanatory, and theoretical characteristics of social scientific knowledge, with special application to sociology. The philosophy of the social sciences is the field within philosophy that thinks critically about the nature and scope of social scientific knowledge and explanation. The essay considers some of the ways that philosophers and social scientists have conceptualized the nature of social phenomena, and argues for an ontology based on socially situated individuals in interaction. The essay examines several features of social explanation, focusing on the idea of a causal mechanism. It argues that social explanations come down to a claim about social causation, and social causation in turn should be understood in terms of a hypothesized causal mechanism connecting one set of social facts with another. The essay turns finally to several issues of epistemology. How are social science hypotheses and theories to be tested empirically? And what are some of the limitations of positivism and naturalism as theories of social science knowledge? The essay closes by returning to ontology in a consideration of methodological individualism and holism.
Outline for a Reflexive Epistemology [Epistemology & Philosophy of Science 42(4):46-66, 2014]
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science 42(4): 46-66, 2014
This paper addresses the notion of a “theory of knowledge” from the perspective of sociological reflexivity. What becomes of the meaning of epistemology once the ontological status of knowledge is taken seriously, and its political dimensions impossible to ignore? If the knower is no longer an impersonal, universal subject, but always a situated and purposeful actor, what kind of epistemology do we need, and what social functions can we expect it to play? Sociological reflexivity embraces the historicity and situatedness of knowledge understood as a cultural product and a social practice. It therefore enables us to cope with the collapse of our absolute and universal epistemic foundations and frames of reference, and to redefine the existential and practical meanings of knowledge for social life. In so doing, it also gives political meaning to epistemology itself, understood as a sociological theory of knowledge, not a normative one. Reflexivity can be envisaged as both a “bending back” and a “bending forward” of knowledge as praxis. As a bending back of knowledge on itself, it entails a rigorous understanding of the social conditions of possibility of our thought and our values, and hence a critical assessment of what our world-views and notions of truth owe to the social order in which we are inscribed. As a bending forward, it turns this objective understanding into an instrument of existential and social emancipation, by delineating the structural spaces of freedom and agency that allow for a meaningful and responsible scholarly practice.
Does reflexivity separate the human sciences from the natural sciences
A number of writers have picked out the way knowledge in the human sciences reflexively alters the human subject as what separates these sciences from the natural sciences. Furthermore, they take this reflexivity to be a condition of moral existence. The article sympathetically examines this emphasis on reflexive processes, but it rejects the particular conclusion that the reflexive phenomenon enables us to demarcate the human sciences. The first sections analyse the different meanings that references to reflexivity have in the psychological and social sciences, in philosophy and in material life, and they link these meanings to the post-positivist philosophy of the social sciences. The discussion considers the problems raised (most influentially in the human sciences by Foucault) by being reflexive about reflexivity itself. They put a large question mark against hopes for a revived philosophical anthropology. Whatever the philosophical arguments, however, there is clearly a reflexive practice in the humanities and human sciences which there is not in the natural sciences. This leads to the argument that there are different forms of knowledge for different purposes and that it may therefore be divergence of purpose, not reflexivity itself, that creates differences among the sciences. It is the fact and purpose of human self-reflection that marks out the human sciences. If this is so, then it explains why an apparently circumscribed question about the