Routledge

Social Epistemology A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy

Volume 26, Issue 3-4, 2012

To What Extent Could Social Epistemology Accept the Naturalistic Motto? By Ilya Kasavin

pages 351-364

DOI:10.1080/02691728.2012.719938

Published online: 14 Dec 2012

Ilya Kasavin (Russia). To what extent could social epistemology accept the

naturalistic motto?

Abstract

A certain decline of epistemology today in terms of the “naturalized programs”

(W. Quine, H. Putnam) or the post-modernist discussions (M. Foucault, P.

Feyerabend, R. Rorty) makes us think about the form, in which epistemological

studies in a broad sense of the word are still possible as a sphere of philosophical

analysis. Philosophy of knowledge is nowadays shaken on its throne, which it has

occupied for a long time as a theoretical core of philosophy, and perhaps even

dismissed from it. The partial loss of orientation by those who are professionally

involved in this sphere is the consequence of this state of affairs. This also

concerns social epistemology – which nowadays is balancing between neoclassic

(A. Goldman, 2003) and non-classic (D. Bloor, 1983), normative and descriptive,

veritistic and constructionist approaches. Among all, there are two terminologically

different though in fact similar proposals: naturalization and socialization. Within

social epistemology, both lead to a kind of interdisciplinary imperialism reducing

epistemology to a “positive science” like sociology of knowledge, social history of

science, science and technology studies or social psychology of cognitive process.

We shall call this attitude “strong version” of naturalism keeping in mind the

“strong program of Edinburgh School in the sociology of scientific knowledge” (B.

Barnes, D. Bloor, 1982). How can we save then philosophical epistemology

without indulging into purely transcendental contemplations and at the same time

securing its connections with the empirical sciences which analyze knowledge in

the social context? Can the social epistemology be reduced to anyone or to a set of

special approaches to knowledge (sociological, historical, sociopsychological,

sociolinguistic etc.) in a sense of a complete naturalization program? If not, is the

social epistemology a kind of philosophical epistemology and what is its

differencia specifica? And then how is the social epistemology related to the above

mentioned special approaches to knowledge? A “weak version” of naturalism is

proposed, namely, an idea of the social epistemology based on an interdisciplinary

interaction. Therefore a special analysis of the concepts “interdisciplinarity” and

“context” is required.

1. Interdisciplinarity as a problem

It is widely shared that modern epistemology cannot do without establishing this or

that attitude towards the use of interdisciplinary methods and approaches. Less

evident is that the concept of interdisciplinarity in terms of sciences, on one hand,

and in terms of philosophy, on the other, differs essentially. Edward Mirsky, a

Russian specialist in the social study of science, pointed it out indirectly (Mirsky,

2001, 518). He wrote that the subject of scientific interdisciplinary study should be

formulated so that it could be investigated, modified, transmitted and the research

results could be practically applied by all participated disciplines. It presupposes

that the subject fields and methodological sets of interacting disciplines have to be

defined in a clear form. Further “the genuine scientific results” of interdisciplinary

study, according to Mirsky, should be given for an expertise to the system of

disciplinary knowledge.

I think that this point of view might be correct in terms of some natural and

mathematical sciences but looks like a very strong idealization for the most of

social and human sciences, which disciplinary status is rather vague. At the same

time interdisciplinary dialogue loses its expertise function in case of basic research

in general. The participants of interdisciplinary studies may produce alleged

results, but they cannot judge about their scientific significance as it is identified

with their disciplinary value. And although Mirsky speaks then on the formation of

interdisciplinary construction, which is functionally similar to the construction of a

discipline, it seems hardly applicable to social and human sciences.

All these misunderstandings are based on the selection of the major object of

methodological analysis. This object is explicitly understood as physics and

mathematics – the sciences, which have already forgotten the process of their

historical origin. As it concerns most sciences (biology, geography, history,

economics, law – the list is still open) they keep in themselves their various

historical roots and represent a form of interdisciplinary interaction much more

than strictly disciplinary knowledge. Theoretical foundation of this interaction, of

its language and laboratory equipment is provided by one or another science,

whose level of disciplinary development is relatively higher. There is also a special

case of such sciences as psychology, sociology, archaeology, ethnography,

linguistics – all of them were formed nearly at the same time through the synthesis

of several knowledge fields, whereby some of them had been situated far from any

scientific status at all.

A tacit presupposition of those misunderstandings is an idea of disciplinary

structure of science as a natural norm whereas interdisciplinarity is treated as a

deviation from norm, as a transitory status of science on the way to a new type of

disciplinarity. It can be denoted as a classical view on interdisciplinarity. I would

insist on the opposite, non-classical position, which better fits the modern situation

in science and beyond. It is just the interdisciplinary interaction that represents a

natural state of science. Even more, this interaction demands no strong boundaries

for each involved discipline. There are extreme cases, which result in the relatively

strict disciplinary structures. Still their boundaries are determined not so much by

the knowledge systems as by their institutional forms. Besides all, this non-

classical view allows a more realistic picture of the history of epistemology and

philosophy of science in the 20th

century.

The 20th

century is marked by the rise of different interdisciplinary approaches in

philosophy. Informational approach, system approach, activity approach,

evolutionary approach, synergetic approach to consciousness and knowledge – all

these methodological strategies led to a number of essential novelties already in the

so dogmatically restricted school as dialectical materialism, not mentioning

another philosophical trends. The interdisciplinary interaction of physics, biology,

computer sciences, psychology and philosophy now produce different

methodological approaches and programs on the edge of the emerging disciplines.

This gives epistemology and philosophy of science new impulses, opens new

prospects. Sometimes it causes global shifts, so called turns like anthropological,

linguistic, cognitive, sociological turns in epistemology. These turns have been

inspired by the new special scientific movements, which investigation of the

cognitive processes outside philosophy allowed then a valuable contribution to it.

Nevertheless it is too early to speak about correspondent separate disciplines or

even theories – either in philosophy or outside it. This situation is also hardly

possible to be presented as a solution of epistemological problems by means of the

special sciences.

And now I would like to emphasize one the main points of the paper.

Interdisciplinary interaction relevant for epistemology and philosophy of science is

not as a rule a simple philosophical borrowing of some well-established

disciplinary results from the more developed (or aggressive) sciences though it is a

normal case in the history of natural sciences. Quite on the contrary, philosophy

eagerly assimilates some marginal results, such ideas and methods, which

problematize the status quo in science and philosophy and further hardly lead to

the stable disciplinary structures. It concerns above all the scientific results and

other cultural resources building the empirical basis of epistemological studies.

2. Interdisciplinarity and empirical basis for philosophical study

The contemporary philosophy identifies itself as a discipline and activity, which

has no intention to investigate the reality by empirical means but uses the results of

concrete empirical sciences. More than that, the philosophers fight against the

misbalance in favor of the natural sciences and try to assimilate the whole variety

of the social and human sciences as well. At the same time philosophers acquire

more critical position towards any empirical results. Now they always have a right

to state a question: why these or those sciences, theories or problems should be

involved into philosophical discourse? Actually why and what for should

philosophy be limited by science at all, if we deal with epistemological discourse

and not with the scientific one?

We know that every concrete science regards a complex phenomenon (earthquake,

genome, political system, speech act, computer program or religious cult) in a one-

dimensional way, according to one’s own aims and methodological means.

Philosophy focusing on some phenomenon implements on the contrary a kind of

interdisciplinary and cultural synthesis. It cannot do without epistemological

analysis, which draws the difference between various sciences, articulates an

integral cognitive interest, and creates a picture of holistic cognitive process,

putting every analyzed phenomenon into a broader social and cultural context.

Let us take the following example of an epistemologist who is trying to grasp the

phenomenon of paradigm change. First, he addresses himself to the logical means

and describes this process as a procedure of deductive generalization, inclusion or

unsolvable contradiction. In order to select one of these models he appeals then to

the semantic analysis of scientific language, to the meaning of scientific terms

whereby the pure logical methods are insufficient due to the historical alteration of

the whole system of scientific concepts. Now the history of science can contribute

to the solution of this problem. However it will be soon cleared up that the

historical reconstruction of the transition, say, from mechanicism to evolutionism,

should be completed by the socio-psychological analysis of the correspondent

scientific communities. Nevertheless it provides no understanding of the

emergence of new knowledge. Therefore the shift to the psychology of creativity is

needed, and even further – to the biographical study of creative laboratory of a

particular scientist. Now the whole scope of the cognitive disciplines is involved,

whereby the inevitable gaps in the reconstruction are filled with the help of artistic

fantasy taking into account wider and wider range of ideas and influences outside

science.

What happens then with the initial problem of the paradigm shift? It is tacitly

substituted by the set of particular tasks, which solution non-philosophical theories

and facts contribute to. The problem is settled down into the context of

interdisciplinary interaction and grows to the general panorama of particular

situation. This panorama does not reproduce the mechanism of the paradigm

change but rather demonstrate a picture of various significant and fancifully

interlaced factors. It thereby induces the knowing agent to the creative thinking for

self-orientation and identification in the given situation. According to this

approach, an empirical basic of epistemology is composed less from the scientific

theories and data relevant for the understanding of definite problems. Much more

it is a kind of virtual critical discussion between different cognitive disciplines –

logic, history, psychology and sociology of science, psychology of creativity,

biographical analysis – all this initiated by epistemologist. Empirical data building

the foundation of epistemology are not identical with the simple borrowings of

facts and concepts from the concrete sciences. It is rather a communicative space

of interchange and competition of the different knowledge types which particular

example the interdisciplinary interaction is. A level to which our epistemologist is

engaged in the dialogue between different knowledge types and scientific

disciplines, the quality of his abilities to organize such a dialogue represent a

measure of empirical justifiability of his philosophy.

3. Interdisciplinarity as a danger for philosophy?

The above approach to interdisciplinary study as form of philosophical

communication is essential to the non-classical social epistemology, which tries to

find a meaningful alternative to the negating and neglecting of epistemology today.

At the same time it represents a position in the controversy concerning the

scientific status of epistemology. Interaction of epistemology with the sciences

does not produce automatically a scientific epistemology. More often the opposite

result takes place – a number of scientistic metaphors being imposed upon

philosophy provoke a strong drive back. It leads to the withdrawal of science from

the philosophical Weltanschauung, which instead tends to be occupied by the

chaotic variety of cultural and social images. Thus extrascientific resources begin

to dominate over criticism, truth and rationality, and philosophy is gradually

reduced to an intellectual game with such concepts as “narrative”, “discourse” and

“text”.

So epistemology is now in search for a new social consensus, new social contract

that should give it a legal and worthy place in the contemporary culture. Under

these conditions the interdisciplinary tendency acquires a form of two different

though equally dangerous challenges. The first is a naturalistic ideology

demanding that epistemology should be substituted by the particular sciences; the

second is a new eclecticism that equally appeals to rationality and religion, to truth

and image making, to scientific method and sexual satisfaction. Interdisciplinary

approaches widen the sphere and limits of epistemology so that any boundaries

flow and disappear beyond any thinkable horizon.

I would like to underline that philosophy can play a meaningful role in

interdisciplinary interaction if and only if it retains its own peculiarity. Neither

philosophers nor scientists are interested in epistemology, which puts on a mask of

science or any other of the so-called cognitive practices. It is worth remembering

how various and rich the intellectual resources of philosophy are – they are much

richer than any scientific discipline can provide. It manifests itself particularly in

the inner interaction between philosophy and the history of philosophy, which is

absolutely unique and atypical for the sciences. And outside philosophy as well, in

the context of interdisciplinary interaction, in the interrelation between science and

non-science, philosophy still remains if not the only one than at least the most

suitable form of intellectual communication.

Taking a risk for this very general definition, I suppose that philosophical analysis

essentially consists in contextualizing the problems and problematizing the

contexts. This thesis is certainly in need of a special clarification.

4. Context and its problems

The notion of context occupies a unique place among other concepts relevant for

the social epistemology1. An oversimplified image of what the social epistemology

is often appears as an analysis of knowledge (consciousness, language) in the

social/cultural context. It has been already mentioned however that there are plenty

of other disciplines like sociology of culture, history of science, sociolinguistics,

social psychology, social anthropology which research purposes are evidently

much the same. Although we have no interest to draw sharp demarcation lines

between the social epistemology and the related social and human sciences it

would be very important to clarify the situation and to show the peculiarity of

philosophical approach to context.

I would like to recall how the classical epistemology formulated the idea of the

roots of knowledge2. According to it, knowledge is determined by three factors: the

object, which is situated in the focus of research interest; the agent with his/her

cognitive abilities; and finally, the sociocultural conditions of knowledge. The

truth content of knowledge was related to the object, and hence knowledge and

truth for the classical epistemology were the same. The agent appeared mostly as

1 Contextualism is broadly discussed also beyond the social epistemology in a narrow sense. Three conferences

among all are worth mentioning: "Epistemological Contextualism" (2004, University of Stirling in Scotland),

"Contextualism in Epistemology and Beyond" (2002, UMass, Amherst, published in Philosophical Studies, Vol. 119

"Issue 1-2, May 2004"), and “Contextualism” (2004, Bled, Slovenia).

2 The definition of what the classical epistemology is represents a separate and rather complex problem, so I will

simply take I. Kant, F. Engels and R. Carnap as representatives of its different historical versions.

an obstacle for knowing though sometimes as a creative instance (I. Kant) whose

operation remains not sufficiently clear. As it concerns the social conditions of

knowing, so they were considered up to the 20th century as mostly negative

instance which gives rise for delusions and prejudices. The history of the social

determination of knowledge in the 20th century is rather well-known. At the

beginning, the problem was related to the social sciences only, then the turn came

for the natural sciences, and the accent shifted gradually from the negative

significance of sociality to its positive, creative influence. Nowadays at least four

main models of knowledge existence in the sociocultural context can be

distinguished. Each is influenced by the method of analysis and therefore by a

certain philosophical trend or scientific approach. There are: a

commucative/semiotic, a cultural/anthropological, a social/institutional and a

cognitive/naturalistic models. Their difference is relative so far relative is the

boundary between those scientific disciplines which serve for this or that

epistemological insight: linguistics, social anthropology, sociology and

neurophysiology. The first model to which sources L. Wittgenstein, H.-G.

Gadamer and M. Bakhtin belong, deals with language as a specific system

representing the sociality and culture. The proponents of the second model – J.

Mead, A. Schutz, C. Geertz and H. Garfinkel – underline the significance of

informal and nonverbal communication, of the tacit presuppositions hiding in them

the mystery of sociality. In the model for which E. Evans-Pritchard, R. Merton, N.

Luhmann and D. Bloor are responsible, the main attention is delivered to the

analysis of knowledge as a subsystem of society whereby the content of knowledge

expresses the main parameters of the latter. And finally, the forth model describes

the sociality and culture as certain psycho-biological explanatory models. It is

either the psychic inhibition causing the otherwise unexplainable deviations in the

functioning of the neuron structures or a certain instrumental explanation of human

behavior, or a form of determination of knowledge by the natural evolution (R.

Rorty, D. Dennett, T. van Dijk, R. Dokins).

Given the differences of the models, they are united by the non-classical way of

problematizing and research prospects of the knowledge existence. The

presupposition basic for all of them consists in that epistemologist studies neither

the agent nor the object nor the social conditions of knowledge but various media,

or texts (natural or artificial) containing knowledge which can be extracted from

them. And the classical question about the sources of knowledge is shifted to the

question of intertextual relations which symbolize and embody the

interdisciplinary interaction. At least five types of texts can be separated here.

Firstly, there are texts which present one’s research results. Secondly, there are

biographical texts internally describing the knowing agent and forms of his activity

and communication with the surrounding. Thirdly, there texts of sociologists,

psychologists, anthropologists who give an external picture of the knowing agent

and his cultural community. Fourthly, there are texts containing the laboratory

results of the brain studies and computer models of the cognitive processes. And

finally, there are philosophical texts presenting and criticizing the cultural

universals related to knowledge and its analysis. Quite naturally the concept of

context originates in terms of this intertextual picture of human knowledge as a

consequence of the well-known linguistic turn. “Context” originally meant “co-

text”, that is a text which follows one another text and builds his surroundings. In

the intertextual relation, texts and contexts are distinguished due to a focus of

research purpose and interest. For example, the Bible gives a linguistic context to

the contemporary texts of the Pope, and at the same time the latter express the

social/cultural context of the Bible. So in order to draw the difference between text

and context the typology of contexts is needed; correspondingly the most

influential theories of context should be revised.

5. Context theories

The notion of context became the stock-in-trade of epistemology, linguistics, social

anthropology, psychology, history of science, cognitive science, history of

philosophy and even theology. We may, accordingly, speak of various types of

contextualism that correlate and interact with each other. However, their analysis

shows that the notion of context is far from being clarified completely. The

inconspicuousness of the notion of “context” becomes the focus of theoretical

attention only when we draw a distinction between the specifically scientific

theories of context and the philosophic problematization of that notion. The object

of context theories is constituted by various types of integrity and relations of the

phenomenon studied, its inclusion into language, into the current activity and

communication situation, into the local and universal culture. At the same time, as

soon as the notion of “context” is handled by philosophy, it encounters the

following questions.

Firstly, the correct understanding of a word involves taking into account its various

contexts. If so, its meaning, at the most, is in fact a conglomerate of loosely

interconnected sense elements. How then can we preserve the meaning’s identity,

when the word in question turns out to be so vague and multivalent? How can we

ensure the validity and coherence of comprehension and mutual understanding?

Besides, the genesis and functioning of a certain cultural phenomenon (in art,

religion, science, etc.) is defined by a number of determinants, or contexts.

However, the phenomenon in question is also characterized by its own identity, by

its difference from its contexts. What then are the boundaries of reductionism in a

contextual explanation? Can we reduce the expounded phenomenon to a sum of

contexts—e.g., can science be reduced to the historical conditions of its formation?

Lastly, let us assume that every theory depends on the cognitive, social and cultural

context proper to it. Are different theories, including ones widely distant

historically and culturally, comparable then? Is their independent, true appraisal,

their rational choice possible?

Discussion of these questions enhances our understanding of eternal philosophical

problems hidden behind such terms as “sense,” “explanation” or “truth”; it is also

conducive to the elucidation of major methodological dilemmas confronting

concrete sciences.

Context in Hermeneutics

The methodological program of philosophical hermeneutics became an expression

of the linguistic turn in epistemology. It is organized around the notions of

understanding and interpretation that are clarified by addressing the notion of

“context.” Yet the notion of context receives no explicit thematization within the

framework of hermeneutics. However, the problems of the individuality of the

speaking and comprehending agent (F. Schleiermacher), the history, tradition and

language of hermeneutical experience (H.-G. Gadamer) and all similar concepts

articulate the contexts of the hermeneutical agent; despite all their differences, they

are analogous to certain concepts of theoretical linguistics.

According to Schleiermacher, every act of understanding is a reversal of speech

act. The aim of hermeneutics is to demonstrate how various senses of words, given

at the level of a language, are being concretized in the process of their use in

speech, turning into meanings. Schleiermacher distinguishes two processes of

interpretation. The “grammatical” (or “objective”) interpretation consists of

linguistic analysis of the language form of a text, of the correct use of a word; it

involves revealing the author’s true meaning. The “technical” (“psychological,”

“subjective”) interpretation is aimed at uncovering the author’s personality, with

all its specifics, at explaining his style as a wholeness of his language and his

ideas; it seeks to “transform” the interpreter into the author. Depending on the

interpreter’s standpoint, the contexts of the first order are specific conditions and

prerequisites proper to him (his personal knowledge, language abilities, his talent

for understanding human character). The contexts of the second order become

uncovered in the very process of interpretation, which is aimed at understanding

the elemental force of language in the vortex of the whole and its parts through the

study of language’s external relations—and vice versa. It is in language that the

immediate contexts of a text are constructed, and it is by means of language that its

indirect prerequisites and contexts are reconstructed. Contexts alone, creating a

text’s meaning, reveal the text as such.

Gadamer formulates the notion of a hermeneutical situation and the principle of

history’s influence (Wirkungsgeschichte); these express the historicity of contexts

which makes understanding possible. He defines his Wirkungsgeschichte as a clash

between the traditions of the object and the interpreter’s individual historicity. A

situation appears as a location that restricts one’s vision. That which can be seen is

a horizon, a range of sight that includes and delimits everything visible from this

specific vantage point. Language, according to Gadamer, is the basis of all

experience. The historicity and finality of language determine more than just our

access to the universe: in language, traditions (in which we encounter historicity of

any kind) and hermeneutical situations (in which we are “built-in”) are given a

well thought-out image. “Existence open to understanding is language” (Gadamer

1975: 450). To sum up: tradition, history’s influence, horizon, hermeneutical

situation, language are those contexts in which meanings are produced and

hermeneutical experience (or the process of cognition of cultural phenomena) takes

place.

Context in Analytical Tradition

While originally a hermeneutical one, the problem of context is not restricted to the

continental (German-language) hermeneutical tradition, showing a pronounced

trend towards an interdisciplinary approach. Interpreted as philosophy of language,

hermeneutics becomes also wide-spread in analytical (linguistic) philosophy, for

which the notion of context turns out to be equally significant. Contemporary

analytical discussions of the problem of context are difficult to review in short.

And still they can be seen as derived from the competition between three most

influential concepts. These latter are usually associated with D. Hume (skepticism),

J. Moore (common sense philosophy) and L. Wittgenstein (contextualism).

Contextualism stresses the dependence of sense and meaning of language units on

their inclusion in syntactical, semantic and pragmatical systems, on usage, cultural

and historical situations. Skepticism tends to carry the program of conceptualism to

the extremes of relativism. The philosophy of common sense, on the contrary,

denies the necessity of contextual approach. Thus, contemporary epistemological

contextualism emerged as an answer both to the skeptical denial of a possibility to

know the universe around us and to the simplistic substantiation of such

knowledge. In its contemporary analytical version, contextualism attempts to find

some common ground with skepticism, while demonstrating the validity of

conventional cognition. It is achieved via singling out different contexts of

reasoning and distinguishing epistemological criteria (stronger and weaker ones)

corresponding to them. Thus, the conflict between the three standpoints in question

is imaginary—to be more exact, it is a product of the dynamics of our knowledge

(for details see Black (2002), and the bibliography used.).

Context in Psychology

Karl Bühler was one of the first psychologists to have grasped the significance of

context in cognition. He formulated the “theory of surroundings,” or of linguistic

milieu (Umfeldtheorie): “One does not have to be an expert to understand that the

most important and the most significant environment of a linguistic symbol is

represented by its context; the individual manifests itself in a relationship with its

other counterparts, and this relationship functions in the capacity of surroundings,

full of dynamics and influence” (Bühler 1934/1965: 155). Here Bühler proclaims

his adherence to the Gestalt-theoretical paradigm, according to which individual

elements tend to form mutable whole entities and are experienced in the context of

these latter. The transfer of Gestalt theory from psychology to language theory

(e.g., the notion of Feld, “field,” was borrowed from the theory of color) signified

that individual linguistic phenomena became to be regarded not in isolation from

one another but only in relation to the whole entities that dominate them.

A similar point of view was being defended, roughly during the same period, by L.

S. Vygotsky: “A word takes in, absorbs from the entire context, with which it is

interwoven, intellectual and affective contents; it begins to mean more and less

than its meaning contains when considered by itself and outside its context: more,

because the range of its meanings expands, acquiring a large number of new

spheres filled with new contents; less, because the abstract meaning of the word

becomes limited and narrowed down by that which the word signifies exclusively

in this context... In this respect, the sense of a word is inexhaustible... A word

acquires its sense only in a sentence; the sentence itself acquires its sense only in

the context of a paragraph, the paragraph, in the context of a book, and the book, in

the context of the author’s work in its entirety” (Vygotsky 1956: 370 [in Russian]).

Context in Social Anthropology and Linguistics

Contemporary social anthropology endeavors to explain and realize the entire

social and cultural diversity in of human existence. Its principal method is to locate

individual social phenomena in the framework of a broader comparative context.

The following dimensions of that context can be distinguished:

– setting (social and physical): the social and spatial limits within which various

kinds of interaction take place;

– behavioral (activity and communication) environment: the way in which the

interaction’s participants use their bodies and behavior as resources for the

“framing” and organization of conversation (gesticulation, posture, look);

– extra-situational (culture) context: understanding a verbal exchange requires a

background knowledge which goes far beyond the limits of a topical typical

conversation and immediate setting;

– situational context: a (more or less complete) set of local determinations in

which concrete agents achieve a solution of a special cognitive task;

– linguistic context: the way in which the conversation (or text) itself voices or

produces a context for another conversation or text;

During the 1990s, social sciences experienced an ethnologic turn. The so-called

“qualitative methodology” is a special anthropological innovation in the inventory

of socio-humanitarian knowledge. The purpose of this methodology is to provide

new possibilities for the understanding of cognitive, emotional and behavioral

development, as well as of those problems that characterize contemporary society

at large. Qualitative methods offer a wide choice of means ranging from included

observation to hermeneutical processing of text. Positioning qualitative ethnologic

research at the center of socio-scientific knowledge, anthropologists pointedly

demonstrate the epistemological importance of the notion of context (as well as of

the notions of meaning and subjectivity) in behavioral sciences.

However, in its ideas of context, contemporary social anthropology proceeds from

time-honored traditions of the British school of “contextualism” that emerged in

the works of B. Malinowski and J. Firth in the 1930s. That school summed up

certain ideas, which had already been expressed by W. von Humboldt and F. de

Saussure, and foreshadowed the object that later became the focus of special

attention of interpretative anthropology and sociolinguistics (functional

linguistics).

At first, B. Malinowski believed that the dependence of a language on the sphere

of its use is a feature peculiar to primitive or prehistoric languages. However, he

later changed his standpoint: “the true understanding of words is always, in the

long run, derived from the experience of activity in those aspects of reality to

which these words refer” (cf.: Malinowski 1935: 58). This is what may be termed

“context of situation.” Beyond it, lies that which may be called “cultural context”;

a word’s definition partly consists in attributing it to the context of culture.

Language, as a system of the lexicon and grammar, refers to the context of culture;

instances of language use—special texts and their elements—refer to the context of

situation. The both contexts are beyond the boundaries of language.

Linguists—though never giving a clear-cut formulation of “situational context”—

have been gradually shifting to an understanding of its necessity, since the term

“text” ceased to be confined to the written word and no longer described primarily

the results of work of long-dead authors; so they turned to oral language, to the

study of dialects. Here they had to take into account such factors the relation of

speech to the speaker’s personality, objects and events within his sphere of

attention (the linguistic definition of an extra-linguistic situation is “exophoric

deixis” – see Dirven, 2004: 186). Thus, to quote M. Halliday, a linguist of note,

“situation was likened to a text surrounding the span of the discourse being

spoken” (Halliday 1999: 4). This quotation contains important analytical

differentiation between text and context, between live speech (connected to its

contexts and the process of its making directly and obviously, and independently of

the observer) and text (existing only on its media, separately from extra-linguistic

contexts and from the process of its creation). (On the distinctions between the

terms “discourse” and “text” also see: Kasavin2 2004.)

The notion of language’s cultural context as a system was, on the other hand,

articulated much more completely by Sapir and Whorf. Without using the actual

expression “context of culture,” Sapir effectively interpreted language as an

expression of the speaker’s mental life. Proceeding from this, he and Whorf

developed their concept of interaction between language and culture (the “Sapir-

Whorf hypothesis”). According to that hypothesis, language (since it developed as

part of any human culture) functioned as a primary means by which the basic

perceptions and inter-subjective experience of individuals were being confirmed

and translated into social reality. In this sense, culture offers a linguistic context in

which words and grammatical systems are interpreted. The systems of meanings

that hide deep beneath the surface of grammatical structures and can be discovered

only by means of a thorough grammatical analysis were called by Whorf

“cryptotypes.”

The two principal traditions of the contextual study of language—the British and

the American ones—complement one another substantially. The former focuses on

situation as a context of language in the capacity of text; language is regarded here

as a form of activity, as the realization of social relations and processes. The latter

focuses on culture as a context of language in the capacity of system; language is

understood here as a form of reflection, as the incorporation of experience into

theory or model of reality.

6. The limits of context

Context theories, as presented in a number of humanities, are bound to fail on

account of contexts and situations being countless. Context appears then in no way

a primary phenomenon objectively forming a certain empirical basis for theoretical

generalizations and meaningful concepts. It is rather a secondary construction

provided by the conceptual choice of a number of relevant situations. D. Bloor

refers to one Wittgenstein’s phrase, emphasizing these two different ways of using

context: “first, the role of context in giving meaning to our mental states, and

second, the performative and self-referencing process by which the context is itself

made up” (Bloor, 2002, 49). It means that epistemological position doesn’t limit

itself to the belief in context as universal means. Rather, epistemology and social

epistemology in particular is a critique of context. This is clearly shown in Steve

Fuller’s approach to “knowledge society” and “university” as integral contexts of

knowing activity of nowadays (Fuller 2009). And here we can venture a

reformulation of well-known Duhem-Quine thesis (Stanford, 2009) about

underdetermination of theory by data. As it refers to the problem of context, it will

take the following form: “knowledge is underdetermined by its context”. The

typical example of this is presented in C. Geertz’s interpretive anthropology. It

offers no more than a typological frame that, in the process of textual analysis,

demands of the interpreter concretization defined by the specifics of contextual

relations. This means that no theory of context as a closed system is possible.

Because of this, contemporary linguists often declare the notion of context trivial

and even meaningless, since (as they reason) there is no single sentence that can be

endowed with meaning outside its context. There remains only constructing

models of the process of interpretation, in which context plays a major part, and

deducing from that some results for the theory of language acts. The critically

minded linguists who realize the limits of theorizing in their domain come exactly

to this skeptical conclusion. Maintaining a balance between science and art

remains, therefore, the inevitable strategy of contextual reconstruction. Its

methodology is far from being algorithmic—it is rather situational.

For a meaningful epistemological use of the term “context,” we have to create its

typological definition based on the various forms in which language manifests

itself and on the various forms of social relations. This is a special task which is

still far from completion. It is probable that a philosophic notion of context might

be formulated not so much through summing up the linguistic, anthropological and

psychological meanings of that term as by means of its contextual definition in the

system of such notions as text, discourse, knowledge, culture and sociality.

While engaged in socio-cultural interpretation of a certain element of knowledge,

the epistemologist is inspired by those diverse meanings with which that element

becomes intertwined, being transformed from an epistemological abstraction into a

cultural object. However, he forgets that any contextualization is localization, a

transition from the potential diversity of senses to their actual limitedness, a

transition from the general to the specific. Applied by itself, this method leads one

from philosophical generalization to specialized academic, interdisciplinary

description—viz., to that which is, in theory, to be philosophic reflection’s point of

departure and which becomes its involuntary, albeit not final, result. The glamour

of contextualism needs a philosophic context, the latter being an appeal to the

absolute. Philosophy as such is a thought against the background of the absolute.

Attention to context, in its turn, makes it possible for us to demonstrate that the

absolute is more than just a spirit moving in “topos noetos”—it is filled with

human, cultural and historical content. And still it always seeks to transcend its

own contextual borders, to expand into the broader space of intercultural and

intertheoretical discourse.

Thus facing contemporary naturalization programs we should not forget that it is

philosophy that represents a unique method of understanding of knowledge and

consciousness that could be hardly reduced to any scientific theory. Nobody except

philosophers has been interested already since ancient times in the complex,

dynamic, human-dimensional phenomena, which only recently have been

discovered by the sciences. Nobody except philosophers does cultivate in an

explicit way a tendency towards universal synthesis, even if it appears sometimes

in inadequate forms. It is only philosopher who so vividly, with fear and

admiration, experiences the infinite starlit sky over the head or the moral law

inside the heart, the actual limitation and potential infinity of human knowledge.

So the cases of interdisciplinarity and contextualism can be seen as the modern

challengers for epistemology and philosophy in general that can lead either to its

next crisis or to its new rise. To my opinion the progress is possible through

elaboration of the weaker version of social epistemology (Kasavin, 2003) based,

first, on the non-classical view of interdisciplinarity; second, on interchange of

contextualism and its philosophical problematization; and third, on epistemic

values of reflexive, critical and creative thinking about the very foundations of

human intelligence. This allows us to practice a peculiar, controversial, boundary

discourse that transcends any boundaries.

References

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Bloor, D. (2002) Wittgenstein, Rules and Institutions. Routledge.

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Black, T. (2002) A Moorean response to brain-in-a-vat skepticism // Australasian Journal of Philosophy, V.80, № 2,

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Russian].

Ilya Kasavin

Ordinary Professor, Doctor of Philosophy Habilitus, Correspondent Member of the

Russian Academy of Sciences, Head of Dept. for Social Epistemology of the

Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Editor-in-Chief of

“Epistemology & Philosophy of Science”

Office: Volkhonka 14, Moscow 119992, Russia

Telephone number: +74956979576

E-mail: itkasavin@gmail.com