Unit 5Empathy, method and truth

Hermeneutics

Last class

• Demarcation: Distinguishing scientific (empirical) knowledge from everyday knowledge

• Empiricism: social sciences should use the methodology of natural sciences

Criticism of empirical method

• Tautological• Deterministic• Without context (historical, cultural etc.)• Uncritical of society

Bleaching human behavior

• Strict demarcation bleaches human behavior• All bones and no flesh

Hermeneutics

hermeneutics

• Hermes: God of deceit, trade and messenger of the Gods

• Hermeneutics focuses on the interpretation of narratives

Wilhelm Dilthey (1883-1911)

• “Erklären” (explaining) Natural sciences (physical laws)

• “Verstehen” (understanding/interpreting) Social sciences

• Verstehen doesn’t really play a role in quantitative research

Erklären (law-governed explanation)

• Causal explanations• Structure• Why does person X go to war? • Because war has broken out

Verstehen (interpretation)

• Empathy• Human agency• Why does person x go to war?• Because he was raised as a patriot and he

feels it his duty to protect his country when it is threatened by a hostile nation.

• In what kind of research cases would empathy be valuable?

• Name some examples

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

Being-in-the-world

• Being-in-the-world is a 'thrownness' (Geworfenheit)

• We are thrown in the world• We are put in a context without prior

knowledge.• There is no such thing as seeing the world

form a birds-eye view • We only see the world from within the world

• All meaning is context dependent• All meaning is anticipated from a certain point

of view

Hermeneutic circleUnderstanding the whole by its parts in reference to the whole

WholePart

Like reading a book

• To understand a sentence of a book you need to understand the whole book (context)

• To understand the whole book you need to understand the individual sentences.

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002)

• You always start out from prejudice, pre-understanding, pre-judgment

• Stating a research question is already interpretation

Truth and Method

• Gadamer was critical of positivism (empiricism) in social sciences

• Social sciences shouldn't use The methodology of natural sciences

prejudice

• Understanding is a dialogue– We understand ourselves – And the matter at hand

Fusion of horizons

• We all have our own horizon• By interpreting the horizon of others we

broaden our own horizon

• People are embedded in a (historical and cultural) context

• They have their own vantage point, their horizon

• Interpreting a narrative involves a fusion of horizons

Interpretative theory

Statements as conveyors of meaning

• Not: what correspondence with reality is there in statement A

• But: What does statement A mean

Interpretative theory

• Room for free will, intentionality• Subjectivist paradigm, meaning is inter-

subjectively created• Understanding an action by relating it to the

(cultural) whole• Analyzing interviews

Examples of relation to the whole

• Name some examples of customs that can only be understood in relation to the whole

Constructing narratives

• People construct their own narrative • By interacting people construct/negotiate a

reality• So our reality is not objectively given but inter-

subjectively constructed

Clifford Geertz (1926-2006)

• Max Weber: Man is an animal in a web of meaning of his own making

• Geertz: Culture is the whole of these webs• These webs should not be researched in the

vein of the natural sciences: in search of laws. • But: interpretative search for meaning

Thick description

• Thin description: what is literally happening• Thick description: What is happening in

context, in the space between erklären and verstehen

Example: Winking

• Person a blinks his eye in an involuntary twitch• Person b blinks his eye as a signal to a friend• In thin description the actions of a and b

would be the same• In thick description we link the action of

person b to a context• His winking is a public code related to a larger

cultural context

Science or relativism?

• Do we get more understanding? • Can we acquire knowledge trough empathy?• Is this scientific?

Epistemology: Empathy as knowledge?

Criticism

• Do we risk relativism if we don’t use the rules of the empirical method? (remember Popper)

• Anything goes? (remember Feyerabend)