Philosophy of the Humanities vocab

Normal science (Kuhn)

The periods during which scientists work within a given paradigm without questioning its foundations (the paradigm)

Paradigm (Kuhn)

An exemplar or textbook example of good scientific practice in a given discipline; in a broader sense the disciplinary matrix, i.e. the whole of beliefs, assumptions, and norms concerning scientific research with which a community of scientists

Episteme (Foucault)

The deep structure of knowledge

Falsification

Refutation. The statement ‘All swans are white’ is falsified by accepting the observation statement that there is a black swan

Bildung

In Humboldt, the broad intellectual formation that covers not only factual knowledge but also the capacity to judge and to act

Aristotelian science

A systematization of the knowledge yielded by common sense and everyday observation

Empiricism

The philosophical current that argues that observation is the ultimate source and justification of knowledge

Gestalt switch

Suddenly observing the same thing ‘with different eyes’; for example, one may see in one and the same drawing alternatively a duck or a rabbit

Copernican turn

Kant’s shift in epistemology in proclaiming that knowledge revolves not around the known object or ‘reality’ but around the knowing subject

synthetic a priori statements

judgement that does not rest on experience, yet expresses novel knowledge

Kant’s Euclidean geometry

Kant perceives Euclidean geometry as one of the a priori facts of the world, needing no observation or logical basis

Validity

the extent that something is logically binding

Hume’s problem (Popper)

The question concerning the justification of induction; cf. problem of induction

Kant’s problem (Popper)

The question concerning the demarcation between scientific pseudoscientific knowledge claims

Antihumanism (Foucault)

In Foucault, the rejection of the humanist assumption of man as being in the final instance free, and of the view of history as a linear process of progress and emancipation towards freedom

Difference between Foucault’s episteme and Kuhn’s paradigms

Kuhn’s paradigms are shared scientific frameworks (rules, methods, and accepted theories) which lead to normal science and eventually revolutions vs. Foucault’s epistemes which are broader, often unconscious rules defining what is known in all fields (arts, philosophies, etc.) which encompass power

Capital v. wealth (Marx)

Capital: must be used, in circulation, become more, focus on growth; vs. wealth, accumulation of money with no growth or circulation

4 causes (Aristotle)

The four causes of Aristotle are the material (what it is made of), formal (its form or essence), efficient (what its made for or caused to be), and final form (its purpose or end goal)

Class struggle

In Marx, the irreducible political conflict between different social classes, which is the motor of history

Master slave dialectic (Hegel and Marx)

Idea that the master cannot reach self-realization (opposite of alienation); slave can only reach servile consciousness

Ideal type

Non-empirical model of empirical phenomena that abstracts away from individual variations

Contradiction

Two statements that cannot be simultaneously true, e.g. ‘It is raining’ and ‘It is not raining’

Master slave morality (Nietzsche)

Master morality which originates from the powerful who affirm their strength, nobility, and action as ‘good’ while dismissing the weak as ‘bad’ vs. slave morality driven by resentment which inverts the masters values and deems his strengths as ‘evil’ which transforms their own weaknesses (humility, patience) into virtues

Crucial test

an experiment that can decide the fate of a theory or hypothesis

Deduction

Logically valid or logically binding derivation of one statement from another. From ‘All swans are white’, it logically or deductively follows

Induction

Generalization on the basis of a limited number of observations; not a logically binging form of argument

Dialectics

The view that takes developments as the unstable and changeable result of opposite forces through a process of negation and of the sublation of contradictions

Dialectic idealism (Hegel) v. Dialectical materialism (Marx)

Dialectical idealism is the Hegelian idea that the course of history exists in the dialectical development of spirit vs. dialectical materialism; the view that society evolves according to the dialectical development of material (and in particular economic) contradictions

Dialectic idealism (Hegel)

The view that history develops according to the dialectical development of spirit, which is primary with respect to matter

Dialectical materialism (Marx)

The view that society evolves according to the dialectical development of material (and in particular economic) contradictions

Discipline (Foucault)

The normalizing and individualizing power that does not function in terms of laws, transgression, and sovereignty, but in terms of knowledge and of the normal and the abnormal

Discursive formation (Foucault)

a system of statements that is not ordered or governed by an underlying or transcendental subject

Discursive practice (Foucault)

‘Knowledge’ studied in terms of statements made, i.e., in terms of practices informed by power

Existential statement

A statement concerning whether or not a particular object exists or concerning its particular properties: ‘There exists at least one black swan’

Internalism v. externalism

The view that scientific knowledge develops according to its own inner logic and independently of social factors (Internalism) vs. the view that scientific knowledge is shaped by external societal, cultural, or historical factors

Falsification criterion

Popper’s view that genuine science can be distinguished from pseudoscience by the fact that its theories are formulated in such a way that they can be falsified

Critical Rationalism (Popper)

concerned with the aims and the societal position of science

Geist

In Hegel, essentially spirit which he believed is the sole reality which is more real than even the world of physical objects; not limited to Kant’s Vernunft and it develops in a far broader form of cognitive, moral, and other self-realization which emerges primarily in the cultural and social relations between people

Volksgeist

In Hegel, the people’s spirit or national spirit which forms peoples or nations

Geisteswissenschaften

Essentially, the German term for the humanities discipline which focused on the products of the human mind

Genealogy

Non-teleological and non-dialectical form of historical analysis that analyses social phenomena in terms of power practices

Historic a priori (Foucault)

The historically changing self-evident truths at the basis of all knowledge

Heterosexual matrix

in Butler, the tacit normative assumptions that represent heterosexuality as normal or natural

Incommensurability

Epistemologically, the impossibility of comparing two paradigms in a neutral and paradigm-independent manner; sociologically, the miscommunication between scientists from different paradigms because they unknowingly employ the same terms in different senses

Linguistic turn

In philosophy, the shift in attention from the justification of judgments to the meaningfulness of statements

Practical turn

The turn within the social sciences and the humanities towards practices as the primary object of inquiry with respect to both structures and actor’s intentions

Marxism

A social-scientific and political current that analyses the course of history as the dialectical development of economic relations

Mode of production

Stage of economic relations between the different people involved in the production process; e.g., feudalism, capitalism

Neo-Kantianism

The nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century current that regarded the Kantian subject not as universal and unchanging but as historically and/or culturally determined

Logical empiricism

Only descriptive or assertive language use was meaningful, and assumption that linguistic behavior should be explained in terms of mental states like intentions or beliefs; distinction between analytic and synthetic statement, emphasis on reductionism. Every empirical statement can be reduced or ‘translated’ into a statement about pure or direct observation

Ontology

Theory concerning what exists and how it exists

Orientalism

In Said, the thesis that the Western philological study of the Orient does not constitute neutral or objective descriptive science but supports and justifies Western colonial or imperialist domination of the non-Western world

Positivism

In the social sciences, the belief that only the empirical sciences can yield valid knowledge or serve as the basis for a successful social order; in historiography, the view that the historian should only recover historical facts and should abstain from interpretations and value judgments

Philosophy of consciousness

The philosophical view that takes consciousness as primary and not mediated by language or social processes

Postcolonialism

The approach that explores the influence of Western voyages of discovery, colonial domination, and slavery on the development

Philology

The historical and critical reconstruction of languages and texts, and the attempt to recover the cultural life of an era as a whole on the basis of these reconstructions

Power-knowledge

In Foucault, the internal and indissoluble albeit historically variable interconnection between knowledge and power

Rationalism (Weber)

The belief that the human mind does not derive its knowledge passively from observation but itself plays an active role in forming knowledge; in Weber, the rationalized world view and forms of social action specific to Western modernity

Reductionism

The belief that a theory can be completely translated or reduced to others kinds of statements, e.g., concerning pure, theory independent experience

Sign (Kuhn)

Physically observable object that indicates or expresses something else

Stemmatic method (Darwin)

Philological approach that tries to order the manuscripts of a text in the form of a pedigree

Social action (Weber)

Action in so far as it is directed towards others and is connected by the actor with a subjective meaning

Taxonomy

Hierarchically ordered representation in classes, which should mirror the order of things themselves

Teleological explanation

Explanation of a thing or process in terms of its function or of the aim towards which it is directed

Subject-object scheme

The idea that knowledge consists in a relation of depiction or representation between a knowing subject and a known object

Whig history/ presentism

The tendency to view the past as merely an imperfect preparation of the present, which is seen as self-evidently superior

Verification criterion of meaning

The notion that a statement’s meaning is completely captured in its empirical truth conditions

Will to power

In Nietzsche, the instinctive drive underlying human actions and morality

Zeitgeist

In Hegel, spirit’s stage of development at a particular moment in history

Philosophical adequacy

The criterion that demands that a theory about science is in agreement with philosophical (e.g. epistemological) ideas and beliefs

Genome evolution

Allowed for scientific analysis of DNA and human remains; lead to rejection of racial assumptions and nationalistic connections to the ancient past

Non-Euclidean geometry

Proved later by Einstein, disproves parts of Kant’s theory

Age of similarity (Foucault)

All knowledge of the renaissance is on the basis of similarity; basis on Aristotelian world view and systems such as the elements, humours, strings, etc.; in the order of knowing, humans had no distinct position in the universe

Age of representation (Foucault)

Signs represent the order of things and they are separated into categories based on similarities and difference; systems of signs (words), that represent an order of things that is natural in the world itself, and by that same movement, signs are not part of the world (they are part of the representation of the world that stems outside the world)

Modern age of expression (Foucault)

Age of history and expression; all things human are reconceived as expressions of some inner constitution; language loses transparency; man becomes a knowing subject and object of knowledge

Historicism/historicity

The belief that the course of history has fixed laws and can hence be predicted

Negation and sublation (Hegel)

Negation - a crucial, active force negatively driving development and sublation - simultaneously negating and preserving something in a higher synthesis (cancelling out contradictions to preserve what is true in each element)

Alienization/Unhappy consciousness

In Hegel, when spirit does not recognize what it produces (everything, the world around it) or the self-consciousness (spirit) has recognized the objective world outside of itself but experiences it as alien from itself

Modern historiography

Separation from previous historiography that focused on a moral aim; within modern historiography scholars search for the oldest and most authentic documents and are hence seen to most closely approximate the historical event itself

Modern alienation/commodity fetishism

Marxism; in a capitalist system, the idea that items within themselves have value because they can be bought

Status group (Weber)

Social meaning of a group which is subjective; in Weber a non-economic group possibly with honor, ethnicity, religion, etc.

Vernunft

Kant’s notion of reason, limited to knowledge, the will, and our faculty of judgement