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Functional Contextualism
Steven C. Hayes
University of Nevada
What is Philosophy of Science?
• Philosophy is a process of specifying your assumptions, detecting inconsistencies among them, and acknowledging their implications
Why Does it Matter?
• Concepts unplugged from their orienting assumptions lose vitality
• Incoherence can lead to dead ends
• Assumptions provide coherent measures of progress
Stephen C. Pepper
• We are not so cognitively advanced that we can deal with complexity without the guidance of underlying root metaphors, drawn from common sense
Why Contextualism?
• The unit: The situated, historical, purposive act
• Truth criterion: successful working
• Why? This is when behaviorism became “radical”
Types
• Descriptive: a personal experience of the participants in the whole
• Functional: prediction and influence with precision, scope, and depth
The Weirdest Feature
• A-ontological: multiple language games are possible
• It is an essential part of contextualism and of radical behaviorism
• Necessary to the truth criterion
The Weirdest Feature
• Descriptive contextualists have used it to tear down science
• But that is a kind of ontology
How Do You Know?
• The mind demands an answer
• But there is more to us that the answer why
• Consider values
Where it Goes in Functional Contextualism
• Keeps us focused on what works, not who is right
• Keeps us flexible
• Grounds knowledge in experience
• But most of all …
Helps Us Shut Up
• When we have nothing useful to say beyond experience itself
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