Professor of Philosophy
State University of New York College at Brockport
"What's
Wrong with Anthropological Explanations?"
Wednesday, May 7, 2008--4:00 p.m.
Edmund J. Cain
Hall, Room 108H
Philosophy Department Classroom
University of Nevada, Reno
One of the most common
ways of explaining human behavior is in terms of norms, customs, and culture. I
argue, here, that there are very good reasons to think that most such
explanations are mistaken. Norms and customs, I will argue, are not the sorts of
things that can cause anyone to do anything. Calling a behavior a norm may be a
true description of it, but the fact that such a behavior is the norm can’t
explain why anyone engages in it. If we look carefully at what norms are, and
use some common ideas about the role of disjunction in explanation, we’ll see
that it’s unlikely that norms can explain what we do.
When Todd Jones was writing his senior thesis in anthropology, his
adviser told him, “I don’t think you are really interested in
anthropology, you are interested in philosophy. Three years later
when Todd was nearly finished a PhD in anthropology at the
University of Illinois, his department chair told him “I don’t
really think you are interested in Anthropology,” and canceled his
fellowship. So he enrolled in a PhD program in Cognitive Science at
the University of California, San Diego. Many years later Todd has
somehow ended up the chair of the Philosophy Department at that
University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He’s been trying to get back at the
social sciences ever since. Most of Todd’s research work is about
the relationship between anthropology, cognitive science, and
philosophy.
Sponsored by
The Philosophy Department, UNR, 784-6846
and
The Leonard Endowment
http://www.unr.edu/philosophy
Lecture Flyer in pdf (Acrobat Reader) format
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