In this episode of Philosophy Voiced, Olli Lagerspetz, Giuseppina D’Oro, Leonidas Tsilipakos, and Jonas Ahlskog discuss their workshop 'Idealism and Realism in the Human Sciences: Collingwood, Winch, and Beyond' which took place in Pardubice, Czech Republic September 22 and 23, 2022.
About the workshop: R.G. Collingwood and Peter Winch were central contributors to the debate on the question of the autonomy of the human sciences (social sciences and the humanities) in the mid- 20th century. Other participants in that debate were Donald Davidson, Charles Taylor and G.H. von Wright. According to von Wright's formulation, the aim of the human sciences was "understanding" rather than "explanation", whereas Davidson argued, on the contrary, that explanation of action in terms of reasons must, in the last analysis, presuppose that reasons have causal efficacy. The debate was not resolved, one reason being the general philosophical shift in the late 20th century. Due to that shift, ontology again entered mainstream analytical philosophy as a topic. With this development, naturalism and scientific realism gained currency as the philosophical paradigm in English-speaking philosophy. In the light of that development, it became customary to view Collingwood and Winch as idealists and/or relativists. The aim of the workshop is to explore connections between views on the epistemological status of the human sciences and general underlying issues on the nature of philosophical research.
More about Doc. Olli Lagerspetz's project:
Philosophy as Cultural Self-Knowledge: R. G. Collingwood, Peter Winch and the Human Sciences (WC-Cult)
Podcast editor: Patrick Keenan
Podcast photo by Leonidas Tsilipakos.