bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Psychology, theories of
Authors: Wetherick N.E. 
Published: September 2018

The object of study in psychology is the experience and behaviour of organisms, particularly human organisms. Psychology resembles the other sciences in employing methods appropriate to material phenomena but, unlike them, the mind (sometimes held to be immaterial) is among its objects of study. If the mind were immaterial it is difficult to see how psychology could proceed. Psychology differs from the other sciences in that understanding may not permit prediction and/or control of the phenomena. This is a consequence of the fact that human organisms may become aware of causal factors that would otherwise have determined their experience or behaviour. Being aware, they have a choice. (This is not, of course, to deny that the choice may itself be determined by more remote factors.)
In the seventeenth century, Descartes proposed that the mind (or soul), though immaterial, was nevertheless capable of two-way causal interaction with the material body. It is often held that what is immaterial cannot interact with what is material but Descartes’ proposal was, in its context, so valuable that it has ever since exercised a profound influence on philosophy and on what most of us take for granted (for example, the unexamined belief that the mind/soul is, in some sense, immaterial but does, in some sense, interact with the body).
The possibility of scientific psychology was preserved by Leibniz’s hypothesis of psycho-physical parallelism (according to which the deity keeps mind and body running in parallel, though there is no causal interaction between them). This view did not survive the passing of an era of universal (and largely unquestioned) religious belief. At the beginning of the twentieth century behaviourism tried to do without mind, it also tried to avoid surreptitious appeal to the lay person’s unexamined ‘mind’ concept. In the 1960s, the cognitive revolution in psychology substantially broadened the range of phenomena under investigation but at the cost of allowing appeals to an unexamined ‘mind of last resort’.
The headlong advance of the computer, which has taken over many functions previously reserved to members of the human species, leaves open the question whether it will, one day, take over all of them – or will be permitted to do so.
Social choice
Authors: Hamlin Alan 
Published: September 2018

Social choice theory is the branch of economics concerned with the relationships between individual values, preferences and rights and collective decision making and evaluation. Social choice theory therefore provides connections between the formal analysis of rational choice, the debate on political process, and ethics. A central theme in social choice theory has been the aggregation of individual preferences into either a social decision rule or a social evaluation rule. The most famous result in social choice theory – Arrow’s impossibility theorem – is that such aggregation is impossible if individual preferences are conceived as ordinal in nature, and if the aggregation procedure is to satisfy certain apparently reasonable conditions. This result implies that neither a voting system nor a system of moral evaluation can be found that satisfies all of the required conditions. Further impossibility theorems arise from attempts to model the role of individual rights.
Much of social choice theory is concerned with interpreting, extending and questioning these impossibility theorems in a variety of contexts. This discussion has generated an extensive interchange at the margins of economics and ethics on topics such as the commensurability of values and the relationship between morality and rationality.
Social relativism
Authors: Musgrave Alan 
Published: September 2018

People in different societies have very different beliefs and systems of belief. To understand such diversity is a prime task of the student of society. The task is especially pressing when alien beliefs seem obviously mistaken, unreasonable or otherwise peculiar. A popular response is social relativism. Perhaps beliefs which seem mistaken, unreasonable or peculiar viewed from our perspective, are by no means mistaken, unreasonable or peculiar viewed from the perspective of the society in which they occur. Different things are not just thought true (reasonable, natural) in different societies – rather, they are true (reasonable, natural) in different societies. Relativism recognizes diversity and deals with it even-handedly.
Relativism has absurd results. Consider the view that what is true in society A need not be true in society B. So if society A believes in witches while society B does not, there are witches in A but not in B. Relativism regarding truth drives us to different ‘worlds’, one with witches in it and another without. This seems absurd: people who live in different societies do not in any literal sense live in different worlds. The challenge is to do justice to social diversity without falling into absurdities such as this.
Systems theory in social science
Authors: Ryan Alan , Bohman James 
Published: September 2018

‘Systems theory’ is a label for two very different approaches to social analysis. The first was a post-1945 successor to traditional organicist theories of society that for some twenty years dominated US sociology and political science. It was never very popular outside the USA, and is now of largely historical interest; social scientists who aspire to develop a positive science of social interaction have for the past two decades rested their hopes on the individualist analyses provided by rational choice theory.
Systems theory in the first sense of the term flourished in US sociology and political science from the late 1940s to the late 1960s, and is especially associated with the names of Talcott Parsons in sociology and David Easton and Gabriel Almond in political science. A systems approach to social analysis was commonly, though not universally, associated with some form of functionalism, especially in the work of Parsons, the leading structural-functionalist of his day. It fell into disrepute along with functionalism, a victim of the changed political climate of the 1960s as much as of its purely intellectual weaknesses.
The second form of systems theory is associated especially with the name of Niklas Luhmann, and its leading critic is Jürgen Habermas. The second form is in vigorous life, but not well known in the USA.
Absolutism
Authors: Pagden Anthony 
Published: September 2018

The term ‘absolutism’ describes a form of government in which the authority of the ruler is subject to no theoretical or legal constraints. In the language of Roman law – which played a central role in all theories of absolutism – the ruler was legibus solutus, or ‘unfettered legislator’. Absolutism is generally, although not exclusively, used to describe the European monarchies, and in particular those of France, Spain, Russia and Prussia, between the middle of the sixteenth century and the end of the eighteenth. But some form of absolutism existed in nearly every European state until the late eighteenth century. There have also been recognizable forms of absolute rule in both China and Japan.
As a theory absolutism emerged in Europe, and in particular in France, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, in response to the long Civil Wars between the Crown and the nobility known as the Wars of Religion. In the late eighteenth century, as the reform movement associated with the Enlightenment began to influence most European rulers, a form of so-called ‘enlightened absolutism’ (or sometimes ‘enlightened despotism’) emerged. In this the absolute authority of the ruler was directed not towards enhancing the power of the state, but was employed instead for advancing the welfare of his subjects.
Civil society
Authors: Cohen Jean L. 
Published: September 2018

In modern social and political philosophy civil society has come to refer to a sphere of human activity and a set of institutions outside state or government. It embraces families, churches, voluntary associations and social movements. The contrast between civil society and state was first drawn by eighteenth-century liberals for the purpose of attacking absolutism. Originally the term civil society (in Aristotelian Greek, politike koinonia) referred to a political community of equal citizens who participate in ruling and being ruled.
In the twentieth century the separation of philosophy from social sciences, and the greatly expanded role of the state in economic and social life, have seemed to deprive the concept of both its intellectual home and its critical force. Yet, approaching the end of the century, the discourse of civil society is now enormously influential. What explains the concept’s revival? Does it have any application in societies that are not constitutional democracies? From a normative point of view, what distinguishes civil society from both the state and the formal economy?
Coercion
Authors: Feinberg Joel 
Published: September 2018

Coercion (also called ‘duress’) is one of the basic exculpating excuses both in morality and in some systems of criminal law. Unlike various kinds of direct compulsion that give a victim no choice, a coercee is left with a choice, albeit a very unappealing one. They can do what is demanded, or can refuse, opting instead for the consequences, with which they are threatened. Sometimes courts find that the coercive threat that led the defendant to act as they did was objectively resistible by any person of reasonable fortitude, especially when the defendant’s conduct was gravely harmful to others or to the state.
A proposal is an offer when it projects for the recipient’s consideration a prospect that is welcome in itself, and not harmful or unwelcome beyond what would happen in the normal course of events. Coercive offers, according to some writers, are those that force a specific choice from the victim while actually enhancing their freedom. Some argue, however, that genuine coercion requires the active and deliberate creation of a vulnerability, and not mere opportunistic exploitation of a vulnerability discovered fortuitously.
Critical theory
Authors: Geuss Raymond 
Published: September 2018

The term ‘critical theory’ designates the approach to the study of society developed between 1930 and 1970 by the so-called ‘Frankfurt School’. A group of theorists associated with the Institute for Social Research, the School was founded in Frankfurt, Germany in 1923. The three most important philosophers belonging to it were Max Horkheimer, Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno and Herbert Marcuse.
Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse feared that modern Western societies were turning into closed, totalitarian systems in which all individual autonomy was eliminated. In their earliest writings from the 1930s they presented this tendency towards totalitarianism as one result of the capitalist mode of production. In later accounts they give more prominence to the role of science and technology in modern society, and to the concomitant, purely ‘instrumental’, conception of reason. This conception of reason denies that there can be any such thing as inherently rational ends or goals for human action and asserts that reason is concerned exclusively with the choice of effective instruments or means for attaining arbitrary ends.
‘Critical theory’ was to be a form of resistance to contemporary society; its basic method was to be that of ‘internal’ or ‘immanent’ criticism. Every society, it was claimed, must be seen as making a tacit claim to substantive (and not merely instrumental) rationality; that is, making the claim that it allows its members to lead a good life. This claim gives critical theory a standard for criticism which is internal to the society being criticized. Critical theory demonstrates in what ways contemporary society fails to live up to its own claims. The conception of the good life to which each society makes tacit appeal in legitimizing itself will usually not be fully propositionally explicit, so any critical theory will have to begin by extracting a tacit conception of the good life from the beliefs, cultural artefacts and forms of experience present in the society in question. One of the particular difficulties confronting a critical theory of contemporary society is the disappearance of traditional substantive conceptions of the good life that could serve as a basis for internal criticism, and their replacement with the view that modern society needs no legitimation beyond simple reference to its actual efficient functioning, to its ‘instrumental’ rationality. The ideology of ‘instrumental rationality’ thus itself becomes a major target for critical theory.
Culture
Authors: O’Hear Anthony 
Published: September 2018

Culture comprises those aspects of human activity which are socially rather than genetically transmitted. Each social group is characterized by its own culture, which informs the thought and activity of its members in myriad ways, perceptible and imperceptible. The notion of culture, as an explanatory concept, gained prominence at the end of the eighteenth century, as a reaction against the Enlightenment’s belief in the unity of mankind and universal progress. According to J.G. Herder, each culture is different and has its own systems of meaning and value, and cannot be ranked on any universal scale. Followers of Herder, such as Nietzsche and Spengler, stressed the organic nature of culture and praised cultural particularity against what Spengler called civilization, the world city in which cultural distinctions are eroded. It is difficult, however, to see how Herder and his followers avoid an ultimately self-defeating cultural relativism; the task of those who understand the significance of human culture is to make sense of it without sealing cultures off from one another and making interplay between them impossible.
Over and above the anthropological sense of culture, there is also the sense of culture as that through which a people’s highest spiritual and artistic aspirations are articulated. Culture in this sense has been seen by Matthew Arnold and others as a substitute for religion, or as a kind of secular religion. While culture in this sense can certainly inveigh against materialism, it is less clear that it can do this effectively without a basis in religion. Nor is it clear that a rigid distinction between high and low culture is desirable. It is, in fact, only the artistic modernists of the twentieth century who have articulated such a distinction in their work, to the detriment of the high and the low culture of our time.
Green political philosophy
Authors: Ball Terence 
Published: September 2018

All the major political philosophies have been born of crisis. Green political philosophy is no exception to this general rule. It has emerged from that interconnected series of crises that is often termed ‘the environmental crisis’. As we enter the third millennium and the twenty-first century it seems quite clear that the level and degree of environmental degradation and destruction cannot be sustained over the longer term without dire consequences for human and other animal species, and the ecosystems on which all depend. A veritable explosion in the human population, the pollution of air and water, the over-fishing of the oceans, the destruction of tropical and temperate rain forests, the extinction of entire species, the depletion of the ozone layer, the build-up of greenhouse gases, global warming, desertification, wind and water erosion of precious topsoil, the disappearance of valuable farmland and wilderness for ‘development’ – these and many other interrelated phenomena provide the backdrop and justification for the ‘greening’ of much of modern political thinking.
The task of outlining and summarizing the state of green political philosophy is made more difficult because there is as yet no agreement among ‘green’ political thinkers. Indeed there is, at present, no definitive ‘green political philosophy’ as such. The environmental or green movement is diverse and disparate, and appears in different shades of green. These range from ‘light green’ conservationists to ‘dark green’ deep ecologists, from ecofeminists to social ecologists, from the militant ecoteurs of Earth First! to the low-keyed gradualists of the Sierra Club and the Nature Conservancy. These groups differ not only over strategy and tactics, but also over fundamental philosophy.
While there is no single, systematically articulated and agreed-upon green political philosophy, however, there are none the less recurring topics, themes, categories and concepts that are surely central to such a political philosophy. These include the idea that humans are part of nature and members of a larger and more inclusive ‘biotic community’ to which they have obligations or duties. This community includes both human and non-human animals, and the conditions conducive to their survival and flourishing. Such a community consists, moreover, not only of members who are alive but those who are as yet unborn. A green political philosophy values both biological and cultural diversity, and views sustainability as a standard by which to judge the justness of human actions and practices. Exactly how these themes might fit together to form some larger, systematic and coherent whole is still being worked out.
Feminist political philosophy
Authors: Mendus Susan 
Published: September 2018

In all its forms, feminism asserts that social and political structures in society discriminate against women. Feminist political philosophy aims to show how traditional political philosophy is implicated in that discrimination and how the resources of political philosophy may nevertheless be employed in the service of women. Sometimes, feminist political philosophy extends the arguments of traditional political philosophy to indicate that women are unjustly treated and to propose ways in which that injustice might be removed. This is clearest in liberal feminism, where it is argued that since women are essentially the same as men in being rational creatures, they are entitled to the same legal and political rights as men: arguments which defend the rights of man also support the rights of women. Similarly, Marxist and socialist feminism extend the insights of Marxism and socialism in an attempt to expose and remove the oppression of women: Marxist emphasis on the exploitation of labour under capital is supplemented by Marxist feminist emphasis on the exploitation of women under patriarchy.
However, there are also forms of feminist political philosophy which are more critical of traditional political philosophy and which question the very distinctions upon which it is premised. Thus, radical feminist philosophers question the scope of the term ‘political’ as it is usually used by political philosophers, and argue that by excluding domestic concerns, traditional political philosophy excludes many of the things which are most important to women. The aim here is not to extend the insights of political philosophy, but rather to highlight the ways in which political philosophy itself shows a distinct gender bias.
Yet more radically, the postmodernists have been critical of philosophy’s emphasis on truth and objectivity, and some feminists have extended their arguments to suggest that the very language of philosophy, and by extension of political philosophy, is ‘man-made’.
Feminist political philosophy is therefore not one thing but many, and feminist political philosophers are deeply divided as to whether traditional political philosophy may be modified so as to include women’s interests, or whether it is itself one of the ways in which women’s politically disadvantaged position is legitimized and perpetuated.
Historicism
Authors: Thornhill Christopher 
Published: September 2018

Historicism, defined as ‘the affirmation that life and reality are history alone’ by Benedetto Croce (1938: 65), is understood to mean various traditions of historiographical thinking which developed in the nineteenth century, predominantly in Germany. Historicism is an insistence on the historicity of all knowledge and cognition, and on the radical segregation of human from natural history. It is intended as a critique of the normative, allegedly anti-historical, epistemologies of Enlightenment thought, expressly that of Kant. The most significant theorists and historians commonly associated with historicism are Leopold von Ranke, Wilhelm Dilthey, J.G. Droysen, Friedrich Meinecke, Croce and R.G. Collingwood.
The main antecedents for the development of historicism are to be found in two key bodies of work. J.G. Herder’s Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man (1784) argues against the construction of history as linear progress, stating rather that human history is composed of fundamentally incomparable national cultures or totalities. G.W.F. Hegel’s The Philosophy of History (1826) insists on the historical situatedness of each individual consciousness as a particular moment within the total progression of all history towards a final goal. The shifting fusion of these ideas provides the foundation for both the strengths and the problems of historicism. Historicism follows both Herder, in attempting to do justice to objective history in its discontinuity and uniqueness, and Hegel, in attempting to determine general patterns of historical change. Indeed, historicism can perhaps be best termed a Hegelian philosophy of history without an all-encompassing notion of progress.
Rather than constituting a unified intellectual movement, historicism is best known for its elusiveness. Its multifarious quality can be inferred from the variety of critical positions taken up against it. Influential critiques of historicism have been written by Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Rickert, Ernst Troeltsch, Walter Benjamin, Karl Löwith and Karl Popper. Critical engagement with historicism has focused on its alleged relativism, its alleged particularism, its alleged claims to totality, its alleged subjectivism and its alleged objectivism. More positive debates with historicism have significantly influenced the thought of Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl and Hans-Georg Gadamer.