Sociologizing metaphysics and mind: A pragmatist point of view on the methodology of the social sciences

Abstract

There are realist philosophers and social scientists who believe in the indispensability of social ontology. However, we argue that certain pragmatist outlines for inquiry open more fruitful roads to empirical research than such ontologizing perspectives. The pragmatist conceptual tools in a Darwinian vein-concepts like action, habit, coping and community-are in a particularly stark contrast with, for instance, the Searlean and Chomskian metaphysics of human being. In particular, we bring Searle's realist philosophy of society and mind under critical survey in this paper and contrast it with a pragmatist, sociologizing approach. Drawing from Dewey, James, and recent antirepresentationalism, we propose for research work a methodological relationalism of its own kind, altogether detached from the ontologies of society and mind.

Exploring Habermas’s Critical Engagement with Chomsky

“…To summarize, Chomsky accommodates free will and autonomy better than behaviourism and does more justice to the spontaneity of the speaking subject than his opponents. Then again, in doing so, he remains exposed to criticisms of nativism, conceptualism and ultra-rationalism-criticisms that his theory attracts from both sides, i.e., a more mitigated rationalism and the behaviouristic-adaptivist naturalism that underlies, say, Deweyan pragmatism [e.g., such as Kivinen and Piiroinen's (2007)]. The Habermasian emphasis on intersubjectivity, however, salvages the import of Chomsky's insights by couching them in a less ontologically loaded context that is not as easy a target as some poststructuralist and neo-pragmatist critics assume.…”

“…However, in his underlying assumptions, Chomsky retains a dualism of mind and body and confronts the ontological implications of this distinction that put it in a difficult position in the given context of most current philosophical orientation which is largely hostile to Cartesian dualism (Kivinen and Piiroinen 2007). Chomsky believes that a mentalistic account of the human nature can accommodate moral interests and responsibility, whereas Habermas starts from a different anthropology to account for a non-relativistic morality.…”

On the Distinctively Human: Two Perspectives on the Evolution of Language and Conscious Mind

“…The contents of a conscious mind are not the same as the physical brain, and actually consciousness does not even “happen” (solely) in the brain: it is a matter of organism–environment transactions more broadly. (See, e.g., Dewey, MW 14, LW 1; Coulter, 1979, 1999; Kivinen & Piiroinen, 2007; Noë, 2009.) That is, as both consciousness and the experienced world are what they are only due to our active transactions with the environment, they are not “made in the brain or by the brain”; rather, all content of thought, all meaning is produced in our habitual, (trans)active involvement with the world, and so meaningfulness cannot be intrinsic or internal, meaning is relational (Noë, 2009, p. 164).…”

“…By the same token, another decisive difference between intrinsic naturalists and our own position is highlighted—one concerning what language is conceived to be all about. Thinking in a pragmatist vein, we conceive language first and foremost as a tool of communication and coordination of actions (see Kivinen & Piiroinen, 2007, 106 ff. ), whereas Chomsky (2002, pp.…”

“…Here Sterelny is in fact close to Dewey's pragmatism, though he does not identify himself as a pragmatist. Now, learning by doing is certainly vitally important: like all organisms, people still usually just act without thinking about it—we have always been “doers” first, and language‐enabled thought is best conceived of as the servant of behaviour, not the other way round (see Dewey, MW 14; Mead, 1934; also, e.g., Kivinen & Piiroinen, 2007, pp. 105–106; Franks, 2010, p. 87).…”