Beschreibung
For more than half of the 20* century, psychologists sought to locate the causes of behaviour in individuals and tended to neglect the possibility of locating the psy chological in the social. In the late 1960s, a reaction to that neglect brought about a "crisis" in social psychology. This "crisis" did not affect all social psychologists; some remained seemingly oblivious to its presence; others dismissed its signifi cance and continued much as before. But, in certain quarters, the psychological was re-conceptualised as the social, and the social was taken to be sui generis. Moreover, the possibility of developing general laws and theories to describe and explain social interaction was rejected on the grounds that, as social beings, our actions vary from occasion to occasion, and are, for many reasons, unrepeatable. There is, so it was thought, an inherent instability in the phenomena of interest. The nomothetic ideal was said to rest on individualistic cause-effect positivism of the kind which (arguably) characterised the natural sciences, but social psychology (so it was said) is an historical inquiry, and its conclusions are necessarily historically relative (Gergen, 1973). Events outside psychology converged to give impetus to the "crisis" within.
Inhalt
1. SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM AS A METATHEORY OFPSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 1.1. A POST-MODERNIST PROGRAM 1.2. SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM 1.3. POTTER¿S DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 1.4. SHOTTER¿S CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS 1.5. GERGEN'S METATHEORY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 1.6. UNFOLDING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND REALITY1.6.1. Psychology¿s theories are not derived from observation (A1)1.6.2. Psychology¿s theories do not depict, map, mirror, contain,convey, picture, reflect, store or represent reality (A2) 1.6.3. Psychological phenomena are not discourse-independent (A3) 1.6.4. Summary 1.7. GERGEN¿S RATIONALE FOR PROPOSITIONS A1, A2 AND A3 1.7.1. A theory of meaning involving external reference is implausible 1.7.2. The meanings of psychology¿s theoretical termsareindeterminate 1.7.3. Meaning is contextually dependent 1.7.4. Meaning has social origins within situations 1.8. CONCLUSION 2. RELATIVISM AND SELF-REFUTATION 2.1. INTRODUCTION 2.2. AN ANALYSIS OF THE CHARGE OF RELATIVISM 2.3. RELATIVISM DEFINED 2.4. EPISTEMOLOGICAL RELATIVISM 2.4.1. Epistemological relativism1 2.4.2. Epistemological relativism2 2.5. ONTOLOGICAL RELATIVISM 2.6. CONCEPTUAL RELATIVISM2.7. SELF-REFUTATION 2.7.1. The classical refutation of relativism 2.7.2. Mackie¿s analysis of self-refutation 2.7.3. Ascribing self-refutation to social constructionism 2.8. CONCLUSION 3. NON-FACTUALISM 3.1. INTRODUCTION 3.2. RE-STATING GERGEN¿S POSITION 3.3. NON-FACTUALISM DEFINED 3.3.1. The Fregean approach to assertoric and non-assertoric discourse 3.3.2. The non-factualist approach to assertoric andnon-assertoric discourse 3.3.3. Gergen¿s universal generalisation 3.4. AUSTIN¿S CONSTATIVE-PERFORMATIVE DISTINCTION 3.4.1. The explicit performative formula 3.4.2. A theory of speech acts 3.5. GERGEN¿S ALTERNATIVE TO EXTERNAL REFERENCE AND TO THE RECEIVED VIEW OF ASSERTION 3.5.1. The appropriation of Austin¿s theory 3.5.2.Gergen¿s example of the performative function of words 3.6. DO ALL SPEECH-ACTS EXPRESS STATES OF AFFAIRS? 3.7. CONCLUSION 4. THE RECEIVED VIEW OF LOGICAL POSITIVISM AND ITSRELATIONSHIP TO SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM 4.1. INTRODUCTION 4.2. TERMINOLOGICAL INEXACTNESS: POSITIVISM, LOGICAL POSITIVISM ANDLOGICAL EMPIRICISM 4.3. THE FAILURE OF POSITIVISM AS A METATHEORY FOR PSYCHOLOGY 4.4. THE RECEIVED VIEW 4.5. CONCLUSION 5. CONVENTIONALISM 5.1. INTRODUCTION 5.2. CONVENTIONALISM¿S INTELLECTUAL ANCESTRY 5.2.1. The context: Kant and J. S. Mill 5.2.2. The emergence of conventionalism: Hilbert¿s investigation of Euclidean geometry 5.2.3. Poincare¿s theory of the status of geometrical axioms 5.2.4. Poincare¿s application of conventionalism to scientific principles 5.2.5. Concluding remarks 5.3. THE CONVENTIONALISM OF THE LOGICAL POSITIVISTS 5.3.1. Schlick 5.3.2. Reichenbach 5.3.3. Carnap 5.3.4. Summary 5.4. FROM LOGICAL POSITIVISM TO SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM VIA KUHN¿SACCOUNT OF SCIENCE 5.5. CONVENTIONALISM IN GERGEN¿S METATHEORY 5.5.1. Psychological theories as conventions 5.5.2. Logic as conventions of discourse 5.6. THE INCOHERENCE OF CONVENTIONALISM 5.6.1. The condition of consistency rests on an empirical claim 5.6.2. Conventionalism and the fallacy of constitutive relations 5.6.3. Conventionalism involves dualism 5.6.4. Linguistic conventions are no substitute for logic 5.7. CONCLUSION 6. MEANING AS USE 6.1. INTRODUCTION 6.2. WITTGENSTEIN¿S IDENTIFICATION OF MEANING WITH USE 6.3. SCHLICK¿S ADOPTION OF WITTGENSTEIN¿S CRITERION 6.3.1. The principle of verification: early position - meaning is linked to states of affairs 6.3.2. The principle of verification: middle position - meaning is sometimes identified withuse6.3.3. The principle of verification: meaning is identified with use 6.3.4. The connection with operationism 6.3.5. Concluding remarks 6.4. THE CONSTRUCTIONISTS¿ ADOPTION OF WITTGENSTEIN¿S CRITERION6.4.1. The contextual dependency of meaning6.4.2. The similarities with Schlick¿s ap ...
