Many weaknesses of game theory are cured by new models that embody simple cognitive principles, while maintaining the formalism and generality that makes game theory useful. Social preference models can generate team reasoning by combining reciprocation and correlated equilibrium. Models of limited iterated thinking explain data better than equilibrium models do; and they self-repair problems of implausibility and multiplicity of equilibria.

The goal of neuroeconomics is a mathematical theory of how the brain implements decisions, that is tied to behaviour. This theory is likely to show some decisions for which rational-choice theory is a good approximation, to provide a deeper level of distinction among competing behavioural alternatives, and to provide empirical inspiration for economics to incorporate more nuanced ideas about endogeneity of preferences, individual difference, emotions, endogeneous regulation of states, and so forth. I also address some concerns about rhetoric and practical (...) epistemology. Neuroscience articles are necessarily speculative and the science has proceeded rapidly because of that rhetorical convention. Single-study papers are encouraged and are necessarily limited in what can be inferred, so the sturdiest cumulation of results, and the best guide forward, comes in review journals which compile results and suggest themes. The potential of neuroeconomics is in combining the clearest experimental paradigms and statistical methods in economics, with the unprecedented capacity to measure a range of neural and cognitive activity that economists like Edgeworth, Fisher and Ramsey daydreamed about but did not have. (shrink)

What motives underlie the ways humans interact socially? Are these the same for all societies? Are these part of our nature, or influenced by our environments?Over the last decade, research in experimental economics has emphatically falsified the textbook representation of Homo economicus. Literally hundreds of experiments suggest that people care not only about their own material payoffs, but also about such things as fairness, equity and reciprocity. However, this research left fundamental questions unanswered: Are such social preferences stable components of (...) human nature; or, are they modulated by economic, social and cultural environments? Until now, experimental research could not address this question because virtually all subjects had been university students, and while there are cultural differences among student populations throughout the world, these differences are small compared to the full range of human social and cultural environments. A vast amount of ethnographic and historical research suggests that people's motives are influenced by economic, social, and cultural environments, yet such methods can only yield circumstantial evidence about human motives. Combining ethnographic and experimental approaches to fill this gap, this book breaks new ground in reporting the results of a large cross-cultural study aimed at determining the sources of social preferences that underlie the diversity of human sociality. The same experiments which provided evidence for social preferences among university students were performed in fifteen small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of social, economic and cultural conditions by experienced field researchers who had also done long-term ethnographic field work in these societies. The findings of these experiments demonstrated that no society in which experimental behaviour is consistent with the canonical model of self-interest. Indeed, results showed that the variation in behaviour is far greater than previously thought, and that the differences between societies in market integration and the importance of cooperation explain a substantial portion of this variation, which individual-level economic and demographic variables could not. Finally, the extent to which experimental play mirrors patterns of interaction found in everyday life is traced.The book starts with a succinct but substantive introduction to the use of game theory as an analytical tool and its use in the social sciences for the rigorous testing of hypotheses about fundamental aspects of social behaviour outside artificially constructed laboratories. The results of the fifteen case studies are summarized in a suggestive chapter about the scope of the project. (shrink)

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range (...) of small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model – based on self-interest – fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral variability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life. Key Words: altruism; cooperation; cross-cultural research; experimental economics; game theory; ultimatum game; public goods game; self-interest. (shrink)

We would like to thank the commentators for their generous comments, valuable insights and helpful suggestions. We begin this response by discussing the selfishness axiom and the importance of the preferences, beliefs, and constraints framework as a way of modeling some of the proximate influences on human behavior. Next, we broaden the discussion to ultimate-level (that is evolutionary) explanations, where we review and clarify gene-culture coevolutionary theory, and then tackle the possibility that evolutionary approaches that exclude culture might be sufficient (...) to explain the data. Finally, we consider various methodological and epistemological concerns expressed by our commentators. (shrink)

This article looks into mining in central Germany in the late eighteenth century as one area of highly charged exchange between (specific manifestations of early modern) science and the (early modern) state. It describes bureaucratic knowledge as socially distributed cognition by following the steps of a high-ranking official that led him to discover a rich silver ore deposit. Although this involved hybridization of practical/artisanal and theoretical/scientific knowledge, and knowers, the focus of this article is on purification or boundary work that (...) took place when actors in and around the mines consciously contributed to different circuits of knowledge production. For the sake of analysis, the article suggests a way of opposing bureaucratic versus scientific knowledge production, even when the sites, actors involved in, and practices of that knowledge production were the same or similar. Whereas the science of the time invoked consensus among equals to conflate competing knowledge claims, bureaucracies did so by applying a hierarchy among ranked individuals. (shrink)

The ArgumentJohann von Justi, the foremost literary cameralist of his generation, served as chief police commissioner in Göttingen between 1755 and 1757. While in Göttingen, Justi offered lectures at the university on the “œconomic, police and cameral sciences.” He also arrested vagrants, wrote on chemistry, disciplined unruly students, conducted chemical experiments, supervised the pricing of Göttingen's staple goods, engaged in a public controversy with a prominent Berlin chemist, edited and published a bi-weekly periodical (Göttingische Policey-Amts Nachrichien), and worked (...) with the university's curator to refashion the academic structure of the sciences. Taken together, these various activities reflected his broad vision for social and academic change, a vision with important implications for the form and content of the sciences. Drawing on archival material in Göttingen, on articles from thePolicey-Amts Nachrichten, and on Justi's other cameralist and chemical writings, I use his everyday experiences as a local police official to explore the meaning of his chemical work. I argue that Justi's chemistry was suffused with the cameralist dreams and ambitions of a small-town police commissioner. It is what I call police chemistry. (shrink)

Tracing the History of a Super‐Category: The ‘Empirical’ in German Agricultural Improvement and Science around 1800. In accordance with some historians of philosophy, this paper claims that Kant′s critical philosophy can be seen as a watershed between the largely negative and ascriptive term ‘empiric’ applied during the early modern period and the more self‐referential term ‘empiricist’ of the modern period. I will examine the usage and polemical function of the ‘empirical’ label in German agricultural improvement, and will point out its (...) largely negative connotation with respect to agricultural knowledge before 1810. I will then go on to demonstrate how the most prominent founding figure of modern agricultural science in Germany, Albrecht Daniel Thaer (1752–1828), used the conceptual watershed moment as a means to his own academic and polemical ends. Whereas Thaer's opponents, cameralist authors such as Johann Beckmann (1739–1811) and Friedrich Benedict Weber (1774–1848), remained on one side of the watershed, Thaer's reasoning embraced both connotations of the ‘empirical’, and did so in significant ways. My conclusion is that the conceptual transition of the term reflects societal conflicts and social change on a broader level. Thus, the general historiographical claim of this paper is that conceptual histories are a useful and prolific tool of historical research. (shrink)

Experts and intellectuals in the social sciences have a long history of relating to the state and the public. These relations vary in kind from those based on technical knowledge applied to policy to cults to social scientists in organic relations to social movements to organized attempts to develop public policyguided by social science knowledge. The most successful early attempts were cameralism and official statistics, but intellectuals like John Stuart Mill also reached a wide public audience in the nineteenth (...) century. In the late nineteenth century, social reformmovements claimed expert knowledge. As the social sciences entered the university, however, the forms of influence changed. Under the influence of the Rockefeller philanthropies, social science became more ‘realistic’ and the emphasis shifted to creating professions dependent on academic knowledge and certification. Think tanks and other forms of knowledge intervention developed which relied on academic social science. Public intellectuals, however, speaking not to professions or bureaucrats, remained important. (shrink)

Explaining Norms is a work in philosophy of social science aspiring to provide an account of norms, their general character, their kinds ðformal, legal, moral, and socialÞ, what they can explain, and what explains their dynamic ðemergence, persistence, and unravelingÞ. The authors engage with various positions in ethics, political philosophy, and ðto some extentÞ the philosophy of law. The discussion is rewarding and inventive—it provides distinctive and intriguing views on several topics ðe.g., on the distinction between moral and social normsÞ. (...) There are a lot of ideas here. Perhaps this is predictable, given that the work is a product of four capable minds. What is surprising is the range of ideas and arguments on which the authors manage to agree and out of which they construct one reasonably cohesive account. Given the wide range of literatures discussed, readers are likely to find much of interest. Not surprisingly, some related literatures do seem to be underplayed—treated in a few footnotes and somewhat by the way, with little development of systematic connections. There are thriving literatures in comparative psychology/ ethology, moral psychology, and cultural anthropology that are devoted to how we humans manage to cooperate and coordinate as we do. While there are footnotes to some of this literature ðsee the index for, e.g., Boyd, Bowles, Camerer, Gintis, and HenrichÞ, many readers would have benefited from a discussion that more fully related the position developed in Explaining Norms to that work in experimental economics and anthropology. Discussing the relationships with work in moral psychology and ethology would also have been appreciated ðHaidt, de Waal, and Tomasello are not mentionedÞ. Still, there is very much to like about what is treated here. The authors seek conceptually individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for being a norm. On the account provided, norms are something on the order of normative principles accepted in some group ð3–4Þ. Thus, norms involve some normative principle, possessing “a certain generality of scope and application.” These principles need not be objectively correct or fitting, and they may be objectively “simply awful” ð3Þ. The central questions have to do with what is involved in some group accepting these normative principles. The authors locate their position in two dimensions. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 11, November 2024, Page 24-26.

This text addresses the problems of complex systems in understanding natural phenomena and the behaviour of systems related to human activity, from a science and humanities perspective. It discusses molecular behaviour and structures, and offers examples of ecological and environmental modelling.

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works of (...) Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

This volume is a unique contribution to the philosophy of the social sciences, presenting the results of cutting-edge philosophers' research alongside critical discussions by practicing social scientists. The book is motivated by the view that the philosophy of the social sciences cannot ignore the specific scientific practices according to which social scientific work is being conducted, and that it will be valuable only if it evolves in constant interaction with theoretical developments in the social sciences. With its (...) unique format guaranteeing a genuine discussion between philosophers and social scientists, this thought-provoking volume extends the frontiers of the field. It will appeal to all scholars and students interested in the interplay between philosophy and the social sciences. (shrink)

In _Sciences from Below_, the esteemed feminist science studies scholar Sandra Harding synthesizes modernity studies with progressive tendencies in science and technology studies to suggest how scientific and technological pursuits might be more productively linked to social justice projects around the world. Harding illuminates the idea of multiple modernities as well as the major contributions of post-Kuhnian Western, feminist, and postcolonial science studies. She explains how these schools of thought can help those seeking to implement progressive social projects refine their (...) thinking to overcome limiting ideas about what modernity and modernization are, the objectivity of scientific knowledge, patriarchy, and Eurocentricity. She also reveals how ideas about gender and colonialism frame the conventional contrast between modernity and tradition. As she has done before, Harding points the way forward in _Sciences from Below_. Describing the work of the post-Kuhnian science studies scholars Bruno Latour, Ulrich Beck, and the team of Michael Gibbons, Helga Nowtony, and Peter Scott, Harding reveals how, from different perspectives, they provide useful resources for rethinking the modernity versus tradition binary and its effects on the production of scientific knowledge. Yet, for the most part, they do not take feminist or postcolonial critiques into account. As Harding demonstrates, feminist science studies and postcolonial science studies have vital contributions to make; they bring to light not only the male supremacist investments in the Western conception of modernity and the historical and epistemological bases of Western science but also the empirical knowledge traditions of the global South. _Sciences from Below_ is a clear and compelling argument that modernity studies and post-Kuhnian, feminist, and postcolonial sciences studies each have something important, and necessary, to offer to those formulating socially progressive scientific research and policy. (shrink)

L’essai d'Albino Lanciani s'intitule « phénoménologie et sciences cognitives » mais l’on se serait satisfait d’un tout autre titre : « phénoménologie versus sciences cognitives », ou peut-être même plus légitimement, « Albino Lanciani contre les sciences cognitives ». Il ne s’agit en effet pas là d’une simple revue des points de désaccord entre approches cognitiviste et phénoménologique, mais d’un véritable bombardement du champ cognitiviste d’où la réflexion phénoménologique semble totalemen...

Hermann's Weyl Das Kontinuum has inspired several studies in logic and foundations of mathematics over the last century. The book provides a remarkable reconstruction of a large portion of classical mathematics on a predicative basis. However, diverging interpretations of the predicative system formulated by Weyl have been proposed in the literature. In the present work, I analyze an early formalization of Weyl's ideas proposed by [Casari, E. 1964. Questioni di Filosofia Della Matematica, Milano: Feltrinelli] and compare it with other, more (...) well-known, accounts, such as those proposed respectively by Feferman and Avron. In this way, I fill a gap in the literature on Weyl's predicative mathematics by shedding light on an interpretation that has never been studied. Moreover, Casari's work is plausibly the first systematic reconstruction of Weyl's system. In particular, I highlight the different insights about predicativity that can be found in Weyl's work. Casari's reconstruction focuses on the logical and mathematical processes described by Weyl in the first part of his book. Through the analysis of this unexplored perspective, I shed light on fundamental aspects of Weyl's work and elucidate the alleged ambiguities it presents. In particular, in line with Avron's most recent reconstruction of Weyl's ideas, this analysis supports a stronger conception of predicativity than what is commonly attributed to Weyl in the literature. As a result, this work not only provides an analysis of a neglected interpretation of Das Kontinuum, but also contributes to elucidating Weyl's classical conception of predicativity. (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 2, February 2025, Page 80-82.

(1994). Annex: The survey questionnaires. World Futures: Vol. 39, The Evolution of European Identity: Surveys of the Growing Edge A Report by the European Culture Impact Research Consortium (EUROCIRCON), pp. 161-164.

Partant d'une reconstruction des transformations paradigmatiques qui ont lieu dans les sciences sociales et humaines au début du 20e siècle, l'ouvrage explore les oeuvres de Simmel, Freud et Saussure. Il met en évidence le changement qu'elles initient dans l'ordre de l'ontologie et l'impulsion donnée par leurs théorisations de la valeur et de son échange. Prenant le relais de la théorie saussurienne de l'articulation verbale, le travail ouvre des perspectives inédites sur l'ensemble des phénomènes articulatoires. Il ébauche une théorie générale (...) de la médialité conçue à partir du phénomène de la résonance du sens. Le sens apparaît ici comme l'effet de la déstabilisation d'un fond par des événements qui ont lieu sur sa surface et qui prennent la forme d'articulations exprimant l'être-affecté d'un être-dans-le-monde. (shrink)

This book constitutes the strictly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Computer Science Logic, CSL '97, held as the 1997 Annual Conference of the European Association on Computer Science Logic, EACSL, in Aarhus, Denmark, in August 1997. The volume presents 26 revised full papers selected after two rounds of refereeing from initially 92 submissions; also included are four invited papers. The book addresses all current aspects of computer science logics and its applications and thus presents the state (...) of the art in the area. (shrink)

This volume, Applied Social Sciences: Philosophy and Theology, provides the reader with an important set of essays related to the two aforementioned fields of study. Aesthetics plays a key role in contemporary philosophy and several authors examine its various aspects, such as the question of identification of works of art; the concept of â oesocial aestheticsâ ; the social therapeutic function that art can have; and the relationships among hermeneutics, aesthetics and communication sciences. Other papers deal with ethical (...) issues, such as the role of human values in applied ethics and moral determinations in public life. The meaning and role of postmodernism in philosophy and society is examined at length in various contributions to the volume, and the same is true for phenomenology at large. Even the theoretical seduction and practical failure of Marxism is addressed, while anthropological issues are studied with reference to truth and other key philosophical concepts. John Searleâ (TM)s theory of intentionality is seen as a factor for creating social institutions, and the real meaning of â oeglobalizationâ is investigated in another article. Many essays deal directly with theological and religious topics. For instance the alleged â oeillusionâ of religion versus its persistency is analyzed, along with the current relations between Church and civil government in Romania, the presence of different forms of Christianity in the Romanian nation, the dialogue between social theology and anthropological research, and the antinomic nature of the Church. All papers included in the volume are original and open new perspectives on the many issues addressed by the authors. Even the philosophical styles are different: hermeneutics, analytic philosophy, historical approach, postmodernism, communication theory and linguistic approach. Some papers are theoretical and others have a more empirical or historical flavour. There is however an underlying unity because they all purport to provide new ideas to professionals involved in the socio-humanistic field. The information is divided into chapters in order to help readers to form by themselves an image of the issues that are studied. However, the volume is not addressed only to specialists, and is accessible to a wider public interested in an interdisciplinary approach. (shrink)

In recent years, social scientists have turned their critical lens on the historical roots and contours of their disciplines, including their politics and practices, epistemologies and methods, institutionalization and professionalization, national development and colonial expansion, globalization and local contestations, and their public presence and role in society. The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass offers current social scientific perspectives on this reflexive moment in the social sciences. Examining sociology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, legal theory, and religious studies, the (...) volume's contributors outline the present transformations of the social sciences, explore their connections with critical humanities, analyze the challenges of alternate paradigms, and interrogate recent endeavors to move beyond the human. Throughout, the authors, who belong to half a dozen disciplines, trace how the social sciences are thoroughly entangled in the social facts they analyze, and are key to helping us understand the conditions of our world. Contributors. Chitralekha, Jean-Louis Fabiani, Didier Fassin, Johan Heilbron, Miriam Kingsberg Kadia, Kristoffer Kropp, Nicolas Langlitz, John Lardas Modern, Álvaro Morcillo Laiz, Amín Pérez, Carel Smith, George Steinmetz, Peter D. Thomas, Bregje van Eekelen, Agata Zysiak. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

Le statut des savoirs et des connaissances en sciences humaines et sociales, tel qu'il commençait à être élaboré par les précurseurs et les fondateurs de ce qu'il était convenu d'appeler la sociologie, à laquelle vint s'ajouter l'anthropologie, pose aujourd'hui problème tant au niveau des sacralisations maintenues qu'à celui des modernisations s'accomplissant et accomplies. À partir d'ouvrages inventoriés sur une longue période, principalement les trente dernières années, l'épistémologie des sciences sociales s'interroge sur elle-même, sur ce qu'elle produit : des (...) traces d'objectivation, mais aussi de réflexion. Cet ouvrage est destiné aux chercheurs et enseignants chercheurs, mais aussi à tous ceux, et ils seront de plus en plus nombreux, qui, à l'écart des parti-pris et des dogmatismes, tentent de tracer leur chemin à des légitimations sociales et politiques en train de se faire. Mais, dès maintenant, elles tracent le chemin contre des illégitimations et des illégitimités globales advenues, dont la toute puissance serait apparemment le gage de leur pérennité. (shrink)

Proceedings of the First Conference of the International Society for Hermeneutics and Science.

An important obstacle to lawhood in the special sciences is the worry that such laws would require metaphysically extravagant conspiracies among fundamental particles. How, short of conspiracy, is this possible? In this paper we'll review a number of strategies that allow for the projectibility of special science generalizations without positing outlandish conspiracies: non-Humean pluralism, classical MRL theories of laws, and Albert and Loewer's theory. After arguing that none of the above fully succeed, we consider the conspiracy problem through the (...) lens of our preferred view of laws, an elaboration of the MRL view that we call the Better Best System (BBS) theory. BBS offers a picture on which, although all events supervene on a fundamental level, there is no one unique locus of projectibility; rather there are a large number of loci corresponding to the different areas (ecology, economics, solid-state chemistry, etc.) in which there are simple and strong generalizations to be made. While we expect that some amount of conspiracy-fear-inducing special science projectibility is inevitable given BBS, we'll argue that this is unobjectionable. It follows from BBS that the laws of any particular special or fundamental science amount to a proper subset of the laws. From this vantage point, the existence of projectible special science generalizations not guaranteed by the fundamental laws is not an occasion for conspiracy fantasies, but a predictable fact of life in a complex world. (shrink)

The humanities and social sciences (HSS) are being turned upside down by advances in artificial intelligence (AI), and their very existence could be threatened. These sciences are being profoundly destabilised by a dual process of naturalisation of social phenomena and fetishisation of numbers, accentuated by the development of AI (part 1). Both STM (science, technology, medicine) and HSS are facing major epistemological challenges, but for the latter they carry the risk of marginalisation (part 2). The humanities and social (...) sciences remain the best equipped to question the social construct represented by the development of AI. However, this essential approach is not enough. We need to ask ourselves: how can the HSS reintroduce interpretation when they have less and less control over how data is put together? Only a balanced partnership between STM and HSS is likely to meet all these challenges (part 3). Using the case of education, which has long been at the forefront of developments in other sectors of social life, we would like to show how and on what priority issues such a partnership can be built (part 4). (shrink)

Starting from the naturalistic program and within the framework of cognitive sciences, issues such as the representation of knowledge, the role of technology, the relationship between theory and experiment and the theoretical burden of observation have been addressed. In any of these analyses, the idea is to contrast the philosophical proposal with some of the theories and results of the cognitive sciences, with the purpose of seeing to what extent they reinforce each other, one reinforces the other but (...) not the other way around, or they are irrelevant. The objective of this work is to place design at the center of philosophical analysis from the perspective of cognitive science. However, the cognitive approach has been applied much less to the analysis of design sciences, despite the fact that its possibilities are not less when it comes to addressing the challenges involved in the application of scientific knowledge to the transformation of the world. The starting hypothesis is that there are implications between design sciences and motor cognition; therefore, they are not irrelevant. The degree of connection and neurocognitive foundation of the design sciences will be elucidated as the analysis progresses in order to draw conclusions, both for the design processes and for the cognitive approach in general. (shrink)

L'Encyclopedie des sciences philosophiques de Hegel est la premiere, mais aussi la derniere pensee totale de la realite qui fonde sa necessite sur l'identite de l'identite a soi rigoureusement respectee de la pensee et de la difference d'avec soi consretement exploree de la realite; concept et experience triomphent ici conjointement. Cette premiere partie de l'ouvrage - la science de la logique - qui deploie dialectiquement toutes les significations organiquement enveloppees dans la pensee la plus simple qui soit, celle de (...) l'etre vise en toute affirmation, elle atteste l'immense pouvoir de l'esprit et par la fortifie en lui le courage de la verite. (shrink)

Dialectics, especially Engels’s dialectics of nature, is nowadays mostly held in low esteem, even by Marxist scholars because of its Stalinist dogmatisation over the past century. The aim of this comparative review is to show some stakes and prospects, in Marxism and for Marxism, of the debate: the two reviewed books show how the dialectics of nature could, and why it should be considered in a renewed materialist approach to the natural sciences, and provides the reader with complementary outline (...) from the cognitive sciences to physics, via mathematics. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Traditional health sciences (including nursing) paradigms, conceptual models, and theories have relied heavily upon notions of the ‘person’ or ‘patient’ that are deeply rooted in humanistic principles. Our intention here, as a collective academic assemblage, is to question taken‐for‐granted definitions and assumptions of the ‘person’ from a critical posthumanist perspective. To do so, the cinematic works of filmmaker David Cronenberg offer a radical perspective to revisit our understanding of the ‘person’ in nursing and beyond. Cronenberg's work explores bodily transformation (...) and mutation, with the body as a fragile and malleable vessel. Cronenberg's work allows us to interrogate the body in all its complexity, contingency, and hybridity and provides avenues of rupture within current understandings of ‘the person’. Reinventing the definition of what it means to be human, critical posthumanism offers opportunities to both critique humanist theories and build affirmative futurities. Also drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, specifically, their concept of becoming, we propose a critical posthumanist alternative to the conceptualization of the person in the health sciences, that of the becoming‐mutant, so frequently explored in Cronenberg's films. Such a conceptualization permits the inclusion of various technological interventions of the contemporary subject: The postperson. This position offers the health science disciplines a radical reconceptualization of the conceptual and theoretical approaches, extending beyond those trapped within the quagmire of humanistic principles. (shrink)

The authors consider the nature of explanatory models in the social sciences in order to suggest ways in which conceptual systems differ. They suggest that, in many cases, theorists, researchers and clinicians can utilize insights from rival models in building their own models, without sacrificing the integrity of their own work.