Empathy And Agency : The Problem Of Understanding In The Human Sciences

ISBN-13: 9780813391199 / Angielski / Miękka / 1999 / 331 str.

Hans Herbert Kogler

Opis

How do we, as interpreters and theorists in the human and social sciences, understand agency? What are the methods, models, and mediating theoretical frameworks that allow us to give a reliable and adequate account of beliefs, actions, and cultural practices? More specifically, how can we as interpretive analysts employ our own cognitive capacities so as to render the beliefs, intentions, and actions of other human beings intelligible? These are the leading questions that a group of well-established social philosophers explore in this volume in light of the most recent (and hotly debated) findings in cognitive science, developmental psychology, and philosophy of mind. In particular, the debate concerning simulation -- whether agents interpret others by means of implicit theoretical assumptions, or whether they rather simulate their behavior by putting themselves in their shoes -- has produced a wide set of important empirical and philosophical insights. This book takes up those insights and discusses their impact in the context of their most important paradigms in social methodology today.A systematic introduction pertaining to the understanding-explanation debate sets the stage, followed by eleven chapters representing the different approaches tot he field. The paradigms include Wittgensteinian, Davidsonian and Diltheyan approaches, hermeneutics and critical theory, game theory, naturalized epistemology, philosophy of history and twentieth-century social theory, as well as simulation approach proper. As stake are the relation between everyday and social-scientific interpretation, the role of empathy (or role-taking) in understanding human agency, the implications of attributing rationality in the course of interpretation, as well as the relation between rational and causal models in social explanation. The discussions cut across well-established disciplinary boundaries so that the book appeals to both analytic and hermeneutic traditions within philosophy. In addition, the book speaks to all who are engaged in interpreting or explaining human agency in the cultural and social sciences.

Spis treści

Preface -- Introduction: Empathy, Simulation, and Interpretation in the Philosophy of Social Science -- Simulation and the Explanation of Action -- The Theory of Holistic Simulation: Beyond Interpretivism and Postempiricism -- Imitation or the Internalization of Norms: Is Twentieth-Century Social Theory Based on the Wrong Choice? -- Simulation and Epistemic Competence -- Understanding Other Minds and the Problem of Rationality -- Simulation Theory and the Verstehen School: A Wittgensteinian Approach -- From Simulation to Structural Transposition: A Diltheyan Critique of Empathy and Defense of Verstehen -- Empathy, Dialogical Self, and Reflexive Interpretation: The Symbolic Source of Simulation -- The Importance of the Second Person: Interpretation, Practical Knowledge, and Normative Attitudes -- The Object of Understanding -- Reenactment as Critique of Logical Analysis: Wittgensteinian Themes in Collingwood

O autorze

Hans Herbert Kogler