Functional Contextualism

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Functional Contextualism

• Steven C. Hayes
• University of Nevada

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What is Philosophy of Science?

• Philosophy is a process of specifying your
  assumptions, detecting inconsistencies among
  them, and acknowledging their implications

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Why Does it Matter?

• Concepts unplugged from their orienting
  assumptions lose vitality
• Incoherence can lead to dead ends
• Assumptions provide coherent measures of progress

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Stephen C. Pepper

• We are not so cognitively advanced that we can
  deal with complexity without the guidance of
  underlying root metaphors, drawn from common
  sense

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Why Contextualism?

• The unit The situated, historical, purposive act
• Truth criterion successful working
• Why? This is when behaviorism became radical

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Types

• Descriptive a personal experience of the
  participants in the whole
• Functional prediction and influence with
  precision, scope, and depth

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The Weirdest Feature

• A-ontological multiple language games are
  possible
• It is an essential part of contextualism and of
  radical behaviorism
• Necessary to the truth criterion

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The Weirdest Feature

• Descriptive contextualists have used it to tear
  down science
• But that is a kind of ontology

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How Do You Know?

• The mind demands an answer
• But there is more to us that the answer why
• Consider values

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Where it Goes in Functional Contextualism

• Keeps us focused on what works, not who is right
• Keeps us flexible
• Grounds knowledge in experience
• But most of all

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Helps Us Shut Up

• When we have nothing useful to say beyond
  experience itself