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  1.  61
    Toward pragmatist methodological relationalism: From philosophizing sociology to sociologizing philosophy.Osmo Kivinen & Tero Piiroinen - 2006 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 36 (3):303-329.
    University of Turku, Finland In this article, relationalist approaches to social sciences are analyzed in terms of a conceptual distinction between "philosophizing sociology" and "sociologizing philosophy." These mark two different attitudes toward philosophical metaphysics and ontological commitments. The authors’ own pragmatist methodological relationalism of Deweyan origin is compared with ontologically committed realist approaches, as well as with Bourdieuan methodological relationalism. It is argued that pragmatist philosophy of social sciences is an appropriate tool for assisting social scientists in their methodological work, (...)
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  2.  70
    The relevance of ontological commitments in social sciences: Realist and pragmatist viewpoints.Osmo Kivinen & Tero Piiroinen - 2004 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 34 (3):231–248.
    The article discusses the relevance of ontology, the metaphysical study of being, in social sciences through a comparison of three distinct outlooks: Roy Bhaskar's version of critical realism, a pragmatic realist approach the most renowned representatives of which are Rom Harré and Hilary Putnam, and the authors’ own synthesis of the pragmatist John Dewey's and the neopragmatist Richard Rorty's ideas, here called methodological relationalism. The Bhaskarian critical realism is committed to the heavy ontological furniture of metaphysical transcendentalism, resting on essentialist (...)
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  3.  37
    The evolution of Homo Discens: natural selection and human learning.Osmo Kivinen & Tero Piiroinen - 2018 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 48 (1):117-133.
    This article takes an evolutionary “reverse engineering” standpoint on Homo discens, learning man, to track down the mechanisms that played a pivotal role in the natural selection of human being. The approach is “evolutionary sociological”—as opposed to gene-centred or psychologising—and utilises notions of co-evolutionary organism–environment transactions and niche construction. These are compatible with a Deweyan theory of action, which entails that in action one cannot but learn and one can only learn in action. Special attention is paid to apprentice-like learning-by-doing (...)
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  4.  70
    On the Distinctively Human: Two Perspectives on the Evolution of Language and Conscious Mind.Osmo Kivinen & Tero Piiroinen - 2012 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 42 (1):87-105.
    In this paper, two alternative naturalistic standpoints on the relations between language, human consciousness and social life are contrasted. The first, dubbed “intrinsic naturalism,” is advocated among others by the realist philosopher John Searle; it starts with intrinsic intentionality and consciousness emerging from the brain, explains language as an outgrowth of consciousness and ends with institutional reality being created by language-use. That standpoint leans on what may be described as the standard interpretation of Darwinian evolution. The other type of naturalism, (...)
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  5.  47
    A meaning holistic (dis)solution of subject–object dualism – its implications for the human sciences.Tero Piiroinen - 2018 - History of the Human Sciences 31 (3):64-82.
    This article presents and analyses a social-practice contextualist version of meaning holism, whose main root lies in American pragmatism. Proposing that beliefs depend on systems of language-use in social practices, which involve communities of people and worldly objects, such meaning holism effectively breaks down the Enlightenment tradition’s philosophical subject–object dualism (and scepticism). It also opens the human mind up for empirical research – in a ‘sociologizing’, ‘anthropologizing’ and ‘historicizing’ vein. The article discusses the implications of this approach for the human (...)
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  6. Sociologizing metaphysics and mind: A pragmatist point of view on the methodology of the social sciences. [REVIEW]Osmo Kivinen & Tero Piiroinen - 2007 - Human Studies 30 (2):97 - 114.
    There are realist philosophers and social scientists who believe in the indispensability of social ontology. However, we argue that certain pragmatist outlines for inquiry open more fruitful roads to empirical research than such ontologizing perspectives. The pragmatist conceptual tools in a Darwinian vein—concepts like action, habit, coping and community—are in a particularly stark contrast with, for instance, the Searlean and Chomskian metaphysics of human being. In particular, we bring Searle's realist philosophy of society and mind under critical survey in this (...)
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