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When critical realists consider epistemology they typically start from "epistemological relativism." We find this position necessary, but we also find it insufficient because it lacks a critique of the highly unequal social relations among observers themselves—relations that shape the very production of knowledge. While it is indeed the case that all knowledge is fallible, it is also the case that all knowledge is positioned, with a particular standpoint. What is more, the social power relations between standpoints organize the production of truth in ways that produce systematic distortions. In this paper, we propose a critical realist social epistemology. We introduce feminist standpoint theory and postcolonial theory as our suggested interventions into critical realism and we use two case studies of existing work to highlight i) the social production of truth and the real, and ii) what is at stake for radicalizing epistemology in critical realism. In so doing, our paper emphasizes the epistemic complexities that continuously shape ontology, a commitment to subaltern voices or experiences, and a thorough interrogation of the relations between positions of knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scientists and philosophers of science have argued that metaphysical naturalism and methodological naturalism represent distinct and separable philosophical commitments. This claim is true in the sense that metaphysics and epistemology reflect different philosophical projects. The major question of interest to psychologists, however, is whether at the pragmatic level of research designed to discover the psychological sphere in which we live our lives, the metaphysical and the methodological realms are so tightly interwoven that some important aspects of our humanity cannot be faithfully revealed without distortion, or even missed altogether. This paper argues that, in light of its intellectual origins, methodological naturalism is informed by metaphysical naturalism at the level of its formulation, and, thereby, is by its nature more apt to reveal phenomena of certain ontological types and less apt to faithfully reveal phenomena of other ontological types. In this sense, metaphysical naturalism cannot help but subtly shape psychological investigation and thus insert itself to some degree into our understanding of many important psychological phenomena. The work of the French phenomenologist Jean‐Luc Marion, particularly his concept of "saturated phenomena," is briefly discussed by way of a call for greater methodological openness in psychological research – an openness that will permit psychological scientists to better "save the phenomena" in their accounts of human experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dualism of emic and etic plays a crucial role in the emergence of three culturally informed approaches of psychology: cross-cultural psychology ( CCP), cultural psychology ( CP) and indigenous psychologies ( IPs), a distinction largely accepted nowadays. Similarities and/or differences between these positions are usually discussed either on the level of phenomena (data) or theory. In this paper, however, the discussion takes place on a meta-theoretical or epistemological level, which is also emerging elsewhere. In following several earlier papers of the author, first, four perspectives are distinguished that underlie present day psychology. Second, these are used as a framework for linking them to the three 'camps'. This analysis will show that these perspectives are characterized by different underlying worldviews, interests as well as methodical preferences. Third, it is claimed that this level of discussion is quite fruitful for the ongoing discourse on the three camps, but also helps one to understand, why the duality between emic and etic approaches is-implicitly or explicitly-at the core of these discussions, because their relevance turns out to differ in the three camps. In that sense, the emic/etic duality is used here as a 'litmus test' to exemplify these deeper differences between the camps, thereby highlighting them. Fourth, in order to overcome not only the dilemma between the unique and general in psychology, but also to clarify the relation between the individual and culture it is proposed that psychology should take human action as its unit of analysis, thereby connecting historically to the early beginnings of psychology at the end of the 19th century. It will be argued that a culture inclusive action theory may overcome this tension and may help to integrate western and other indigenous psychologies, and hence it could be advantageous to integrate CP and IPs as well. This is possible because the proposed theory hopefully provides a universal framework for psychological concepts, yet allows for their culture specific expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The so-called epistemological turn of the Descartes- Locke- Kant tradition ( Rorty) is a hallmark of modern philosophy. The broad family of normativism constitutes one major response to the Cartesian heritage building upon some version of the idea that human knowledge, action and sociality build fundamentally upon some form of social agreement and standards. Representationalism and the Cartesian picture more generally have been challenged by normativists but this paper argues that, even where these challenges by normativism have been taken to heart, our intellectual culture remains fundamentally epistemic in certain problematic senses. Two problems are highlighted: first, normativism remains functionally Cartesian, for human action and sociality appear as processes driven by the shared understandings by competent contributors (regardless of how these are constructed naturalistically), and second, normativism is unable to account for forms of human action and sociality other than those occurring in the relatively small worlds of normatively regulated conceptual spaces of mutual access and listening. These points are illustrated by an applied discussion of the blind spots of normativist accounts of the emerging environmental and the on-going economic crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational sociology models social phenomena using the concepts of emergence and downward causation. However, the theoretical status of these concepts is ambiguous; they suppose too much ontology and are invoked by two opposed sociological interpretations of social reality: the individualistic and the holistic. This paper aims to clarify those concepts and argue in favour of their heuristic value for social simulation. It does so by proposing a link between the concept of emergence and Luhmann's theory of communication. For Luhmann, society emerges from the bottom-up as communication and he describes the process by which society limits the possible selections of individuals as downward causation. It is argued that this theory is well positioned to overcome some epistemological drawbacks in computational sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological propositions about the workings of cognition are rarely specified or tested, but are of central relevance to studies of culture, social judgment, and social movements. This paper draws out lessons of recent work from sociological theory, cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience on the embodied nature of knowledge and thought, and develops implications of these lessons for cultural and cognitive sociology. Knowledge ought to be conceived of as fundamentally embodied, because sensory information is a fundamental component of experience as it is stored in long-term memory, and because bodily responses and intuitions often precede reflexive or strategic thought. I argue that the challenge of embodied knowledge for cultural sociology is threefold: to develop cultural theories of motivation; to specify the ways in which the body structures discourses endogenously; and to specify how embodied motivations and embodied discourses interact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformation and change of social knowledge in Modern Turkish Republic has begun with the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Whilst the transformation of knowledge took place in daily knowledge, the change that took place in the political structures had a broad influence in the language, religion and tradition. The appearance of a new form of daily knowledge created a new common sense and this has opened the road towards the possibility of investigating social representations of various phenomena. Among these the social representations of madness in daily knowledge have already existed in common sense knowledge for a long time. With this in mind, the main goal of this paper is to explore contemporary urban Turkish social representations of madness. This study has shown that both scientific and common sense knowledge exist at present in citizens’ daily knowledge and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents abstracts of articles on social psychology, published in the "Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour." "What is Emotionally Authenticity," by Mikko Salmela; "Perspectival Selves in Interaction With Others: Re-reading G.H. Mead's Social Psychology," by Jack Martin; "A Critical Epistemology of Analytical Statistics: Addressing the Sceptical Realist," by Wendy Olsen and Jamie Morgan; "Emotion and Social Structures: Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach," by Christian vom Scheve and Rolf von Laede.

Presents abstracts of social behavior research. "Mental Life in the Space of Reasons"; "Investigative Research as a Knowledge-Generation Method: Discovering and Uncovering"; "Astuteness, Trust and Social Intelligence."

The sociology of knowledge is a heterogeneous set of theories which generally focuses on the social origins of meaning. Strong arguments, epitomized by Durkheim's late work, have hypothesized that the very concepts our minds use to structure experience are constructed through social processes. This view has come under attack from theorists influenced by recent work in developmental psychology that has demonstrated some awareness of these categories in pre-socialized infants. However, further studies have shown that the innate abilities infants display differ in systematic and theoretically significant ways from adults' explicit knowledge. This paper moves beyond the constructionist/nativist dichotomy by outlining the complex relationships between innate intelligence and explicit knowledge. I end by suggesting that there are four, distinct ways the social world influences thought- facilitation, division, specification, and construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ignorance has been both vilified and celebrated throughout the ages. However, the social sciences have had little to say about this topic over the years. In this paper, we argue that in an age of competing and contrasting worldviews, scholarly attention to ignorance can shed light on interpersonal processes and relational dynamics that occur in encounters between subjects holding different points of view. We discuss data from two studies documenting an attribution of ignorance in social relations that serves to relegate the other's point of view to one that stands in need of education or correction. We argue that this communicative strategy enacts a semantic barrier that serves to retain the interlocutor's original point of view unscathed and unchallenged. We argue that this limits dialogical relations by eliminating the requirement for perspective-taking in social dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lizardo argues that The Social Theory of Practices is refuted by the discovery of mirror neurons. The book argues that the kind of sameness of tacit mental content assumed by practice theorists such as Bourdieu is fictional, because there is no actual process by which the same mental content can be transmitted. Mirror neurons, Lizardo claims, provide such a mechanism, as they imply that bodily automatisms, which can be understood as the basis of habitus and concepts, can be shared and copied from one person to another. This response to Lizardo points out that the Gallese arguments on which Lizardo relies relate to phylogenetic and universal body movements, not to the learned movements characteristic of practices, and that there is no sameness producing mechanism parallel to the genetic one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shawn W. Rosenberg, Theorizing Political Psychology: Doing Integrative Social Science Under the Condition of Postmodernity, pp. 427–459 The field of political psychology, like the social sciences more generally, is being challenged. New theoretical direction is being demanded from within and a greater epistemological sophistication and ethical relevance is being demanded from without. In response, an outline for a reconstructed political psychology is offered here. To begin, a theoretical framework for a truly integrative political psychology is sketched. In the attempt to transcend the reductionist quality of cross-disciplinary or multidisciplinary inquiry, the theoretical approach offered here emphasizes the dually structured quality of social life as the singular product of both organizing social structures and defining discourse communities on the one hand and motivated, thinking individuals on the other. To further this theoretical effort, meta-theoretical considerations are addressed. The modernist-postmodernist debate regarding the status of truth and value is used as a point of departure for constructing the epistemological foundation for political psychology. In this light, structural pragmatic guidelines for theory construction, empirical research and normative inquiry are presented. While the focus remains on political psychology in particular, it is assumed that the criticisms of present research and the suggestions for future inquiry apply to the social sciences more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]