World view

Worldview Worldview Michael F Mascolo Merrimack College Mascolo, M F (2014) Worldviews In Teo, T (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology www.springerreference.com/docs/html/chapterdbid/307018.html Worldview Introduction A worldview consists of a generic set of presuppositions and about the fundamental nature of the physical and social world At its most basic level, a worldview serves as a kind of organizing structure The concept of worldview is founded on the epistemological principle that observation of the physical and social world is a mediated rather than direct process From this view, understanding does not occur by fixing the spotlight of attention onto a prestructured reality Instead, observation proceeds as the active process of interpreting and organizing the world in terms of some sort of already existing system or conceptual framework Without such existing frameworks, observation is simply unintelligible Definition A worldview consists of a comprehensive set of philosophical presuppositions, beliefs and values about the nature of physical and social world The term worldview is used to refer to refer to at least four different types of global conceptual systems These include: (a) scientifically-derived models of the physical world (Dewitt, 2004); (b) philosophical belief systems that pre-figure and guide scholarly inquiry (Pepper, 1942); (c) religious systems that are unconstrained by scientific activity (Peterson, 2001); and (d) personal and socio-cultural (Note, et al., 2010) belief systems about the physical and social world A complete worldview should be composed of least three components: ontological assumptions about the nature of what exists; epistemological principles about what and how it is possible to know; and axiological beliefs about what is good, moral or valuable (Goldberg, 2009) History Worldview The origins of Weltanschauung in German thought* The concept of worldview has its origins in the German concept of Weltanschauung The first use of the term appears in Kant’s (1724-1804) Critique of Pure Reason Kant argued that if the human mind is nonetheless to be able even to think the given infinite without contradiction, it must have within itself a power that is supersensible, whose idea of the noumenon cannot be intuited but can yet be regarded as the substrate underlying what is mere appearance, namely, our intuition of the world (emphasis in original) In this passage, Kant asserts that human experience would be incomprehensible without the capacity to invoke some sort of a priori framework for organizing o e’s e perie e of the orld After Kant, scholars elaborated different conceptions of Weltanschauung Hegel (17701831) invoked the concept of worldview in his characterization of history as the progressive transformation of A solute (mind or spirit) over time History progresses through as a series of dialectical movements (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) that register and synthesize contradictory elements of the collective human experience, ultimately resulting in an integrated unity Each historical period in the unfolding of absolute spirit is defined by a particular Weltanschauung – a particular form of consciousness – that pulses through the life of both nations and individual persons I o trast to Hegel’s a struse idealis , Dilthe -1911) invoked the concept of orld ie as a tool for ou teri g the a ar h of philosophi al s ste s a d orki g to ard an objective epistemology for the human sciences Dilthe ’s historicist analyses brought him to three worldviews: naturalism (reality as body), idealism of freedom (reality as mind or spirit), and objective idealism (the integration of mind and body) I o trast to Dilthe ’s sear h for Worldview intellectual grounding, Nietzsche (1844-1900) organized his conception of worldview around the relativist notion of perspectivism Building upon the naturalism and historicism of his day, Nietzsche held that people were products of tightly organized systems of cultural belief and values (Weltanschauung) Through the pris metaphors, meto of orld ie s, truth e o es a o ile ar of s a d a thropo orphis s Nietzsche, 1873/2010) In a world that lacked the luxury of a deity, worldviews provide the tools with which individuals interpret the world and create their lives In the twentieth century, scholars continued their attempt to navigate through the shifting tides of absolutism, historicism, and relativism Recoiling against both the relativism of historicism and the materialism of naturalism, Husserl (1859-1938) rejected the concept of worldview In an attempt to develop a precise approach to phenomenology, Husserl advanced the concept of epoche, the procedure of bracketing all assumptions in order to examine the essence of experience In contrast, Jaspers (1883-1969) sought to develop a conception of worldviews that incorporated su je ti e attitudes a d o je ti e orld pi tures ) aspects of life within a larger life perspective the life of the spirit In his Psychology of Worldviews, Jaspers (1919) held in o fro ti g ulti ate situatio s e.g., o fli t, guilt, death , people develop ways to cast off seemingly self-evident truths and replace them with alternative i terpreti e shells However, in rejecting the possibility of achieving an integrated u it of opposites , Jaspers approach gravitates closer to relativism than progressivism Heidegger’s approa h to the otio of orld ie refle ted his reje tio ot o l of the proliferation of worldviews in philosophy, but also of the subject-object dichotomy implicit in Jaspers’ ork Heidegger’s offers the concept of Dasein (literally ei g there ) as the Worldview fundamental category of human existence In his Being and Time, Heidegger (1962) defines Dasein as that entity which in its Being has this er Bei g as a issue p 68) Dasein is a kind of self- o s ious e perie e of ei g i the orld I su h a o eptio , e perie e, orld, a d self- o s ious ess are o e “elf-consciousness – that aspe t of ei g that has this er ei g as a issue – is constituted by a Weltanschauung that is a part of the process of Dasein Through Dasein, the concept of worldview transcends antinomies between subject and object; experience and world; and consciousness and self-consciousness From worldviews to scientific paradigms Tho as Kuh ’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions marked a major turning point in the philosophy of science Kuhn (19221996) advanced that idea that theory revision in science is not a linear result of hypotheses disconfirmation According to Kuhn, in any given historical period, scientists operate within the context of shared paradigms – pre-theoretical systems of assumptions, beliefs, rules and values that specify the parameters of theory making, methodology, interpretation and acceptable forms of data Normal science occurs as scientists work to address questions that arise within a particular paradigm Paradigms are recalcitrant systems; scientific evidence that is inconsistent with established paradigms not prompt their immediate transformation Instead, scientists continue to work within existing paradigms until the accumulation of disconfirming evidence indicates a paradigmatic anomaly A period of revolutionary science begins in which anomalous assumptions are overthrown as a new paradigm takes shape Kuhn held that different paradigms are incommensurable in the sense that their basic terms, concepts or implications cannot be directly compared or translated from one to another Worldview Examples of paradigm shifts include the Copernican revolution in astronomy and the shift from Newtonian to quantum physics Scholars after Kuhn have extended the concept of paradigm in diverse ways Some suggest that paradigmatic shifts imply that science not progressive Instead, paradigm shifts simply reflect changes from one structure of knowing to another In rejecting this idea, Lakatos (1922-1974) proposed the idea of research program as an alternative to the concept of paradigm Research programs consist of more precisely definable core principles shared by scientists working on a given problem Progressive research programs generate new questions and findings; degenerative research programs protect unsuccessful core principles and fail to generate new questions and findings In contrast, postmodern (e.g., Foucault), social constructionist (e.g., Gergen) and sociology of science approaches (e.g, Latour) question the progressive nature of science in their analyses of how social, political, economic and cultural processes frame the construction and constitution of scientific knowledge Traditional Debates Traditional psychology proceeds from the view that scientific progress is a largely cumulative process of testing theoretical assertions against theory-neutral facts From this view, the most basic question concerns whether worldviews (and related pre-theoretical systems) are relevant to the process of psychological research Much psychological research proceeds without clearly referencing the need to understanding how foundational assumptions inform theory making and research Nonetheless, traditional psychology has invoked the concept of worldview in several ways Worldview Use of worldview as an individual difference variable In recent decades, psychologists have invoked the concept of worldview as a psychological variable (de Zavala & Van Bergh, 2007) One notable example includes terror management theory, which builds on the work of Becker (1973) As self-aware beings, humans are aware of their mortality To protect themselves from fear of death, humans construct cultural worldviews that provide answers to the riddle of existence and identify the circumstances for achieving happiness In support of this view, a large body of research conducted in recent decades suggests that events that produ e i sta ilit i a perso ’s orld ie are asso iated with a rise in death anxiety (Schimel, Hayes, Williams & Jahrig, 2007) Differentiating worldviews from everyday schemes Koltko-Rivera (2004) differentiated the more comprehensive concept of worldview from the more local concept of scheme in terms of their structure and scope In particular, schemas are structured representations about concrete everyday events and objects that are abstracted from everyday action and social experience In contrast, worldviews are more abstract culturally-mediated meanings systems that are less grounded in everyday experience As a result, worldviews are more difficult to disconfirm and modify than everyday schemas The consequences for disconfirming everyday schemas are minimal, whereas the effects of disconfirming broad-based worldviews are more encompassing, ranging from the catastrophic to the transformative depending upon the nature of the disconfirmation and the opportunities for constructive revision Critical Debates Given its continued reliance on positivist epistemology, the very assertion that worldviews frame scientific activity reflects a critical stance toward traditional psychology Worldview Psychology continues to operate as a pre-paradigmatic (or multi-paradigmatic) science, without consensus about foundational issues This state of affairs is reflected in the ways in which (a) different traditions in psychological theory and research are founded upon different worldviews; and (b) culturally indigenous psychologies call into question foundational assumptions of Western psychological science Worldviews as epistemological frameworks for psychological inquiry Pepper (1942) provided a particularly compelling analysis of the primary world hypotheses that have structured Western thought since antiquity His four world hypotheses consist of formism, mechanism, contextualism and organicism Figure provides a representation of how these worldviews provide the conceptual basis for the development of different traditions in psychological thought Formism adopts the root metaphor of form, class, entity or essence From a formist worldview, psychological inquiry involves the quest to identify the fixed nature, essence or forms of psychological existence Examples of modern incarnations of formism in psychology include trait theories of personality (including the idea of general intelligence) (Cattell, Eysenck, McRae & Costa), the postulation of deeply structured innate knowledge in language and thought (Chomsky, Pinker), and attempts to identify the origins of human behavior in terms of evolutionary adaptive or fixed bio-genetic essences Mechanism is organized around the root metaphor of the world as machine Like machines (e.g., levers; engines; computers), objects in the world are composed of discrete physical parts that operate according to cause-and-effect sequences Mechanism presumes the principles of determinism, positivism and unity of science Determinism holds that events are caused by physical forces and thus are not products of will, goal-directedness, human agency or Worldview chance The principle of unity of science assumes the ultimate reducibility of higher-level sciences to presumably more basic ones Mechanism tends to operate as the default worldview in psychological science Its application is most keenly apparent in traditional behaviorism, computer-based versions of information processing psychology, behavioral genetics, and in reductionistic forms of neuroscience and connectionism Figure 1: Worldviews in Psychology Contextualism embraces the metaphor of the world as an historic act or event The principle categories of contextualism are change and novelty Within contextualism, event are composed of multiple strands that lie within a context Changes context can produce changes in events; change in any single strand can modify the quality of events As such, there are no Worldview 10 fixed, decontextualized or universal laws Contextualism advances the idea that observer is an important part of the context within which scholarly inquiry occurs Contextualism thus calls for sustained reflexivity about the ways in which concepts and categories of the observer inform scholarly inquiry Current versions of contextualism include critical psychology; discursive psychology; narrative psychology; social constructionism; socio-cultural psychology; some versions of life-span psychology; and postmodernism The root metaphor of organicism is the developing organism Like an organism, the world is composed of organized systems, which are themselves organized into systems and subsystems, all of which, like the human body, work together in the service of a unified whole Within organicism, change in the world is organized with reference to some sort of endpoint, goal state or telos The world functions as a grand ecosystem that tends toward equilibrium Development occurs as organized systems move toward higher levels of organization to form increasingly perfect versions of themselves In psychology and philosophy, organismic thinking has been reflected in the work of Maslow, Piaget, Rogers, Werner, and more recently in neoPiagetian and organismic-developmental theory Worldviews as reflected in indigenous psychologies Traditionally, the practice of scientific psychology has presumed the universal applicability of Western conceptions of psychological functioning In studying the role of culture in human behavior, Western researches tend to adopt an etic approach which seeks to establish a common metric for the quantitative comparison of psychological activity across national groups The major problem with etic approaches is that they presume that the constructs accepted as basic in one culture are universally applicable in all cultures Thus, advocates of etic analyses study cultural Worldview 11 variation in dimensions that are assumed to be universal This occurs, for example, when Western researchers presume the universal applicability of Western concepts like self-esteem, authoritative parenting, or autonomy Using this approach, the idea that there may be cultural variation in the very constructs that frame and mediate psychological activity not considered Arguing against etic approaches in which cultural comparisons are framed using Western constructs, advocates of indigenous psychology have argued for the necessity of understanding cultures on their own terms (Allwood & Berry, 2006) Indigenous psychologies seek to articulate psychological principles based upon the social and cultural beliefs and premises of a local culture In this way, indigenous psychologies are reflections of the unique worldviews shared by particular cultural groups The study of indigenous worldviews draws upon emic methods that seek to identify the unique meaning systems employed within the local culture No assumption is made of the direct translatability of terms; instead, the goal is to extract a worldview based on meanings that arise and develop from within a given cultural group Indigenous psychologies have been active throughout Asia, Africa, India the Middle East, and South America International Relevance, Practice and Future Directions We live in a technologically hyper-connected world in which instantaneous connection is the rule rather than the exception Clashes among conflicting worldviews are the inevitable outcome of such interconnectedness and interdependence The question of how to approach the strangeness of the Other is a perennial one in social science and socio-political activity Conflict amongst diverse worldviews is not itself a problem; problems arise from how conflict is managed between individuals or social groups In an increasingly interconnected world, the Worldview 12 problem of managing conflicting worldviews has never been more pressing This is an area for serious theory and research Traditionally, when confronting questions about conflicting worldviews, scholars have assumed positions along an absolutism/relativism dimension One extreme involves advocating an omnibus worldview that describes the physical, social or moral world as it is (or should be); the other involves tolerating, embracing or otherwise living within conflicting views that are seen as more-or-less equal In eschewing the possibility of grand narratives, the postmodern response has been to embrace the juxtaposition of opposites and to work pragmatically toward lo al solutio s to lo al pro le s Atte pts to ide tif idra ge positio s along this dimension tend to yield murky outcomes An alternative approach one that has its origins in both liberalism and postmodernism involves attempts to synthesize novel conceptual frameworks through open-ended, dialectical engagement and integration of opposites (Goldberg, 2009; Note, et al., 2010) Such approaches offer the possibility of producing novel conceptual systems – however local – that transcend and coordinate opposing aspects of alternative worldviews In psychology, there is movement in some circles toward the synthesis of novel metatheoretical systems that transcend (in a non-eclectic way) conflicts between opposing worldviews Recent theorists (e.g., Overton, 2012) have suggested that variations of systems theory (dynamic systems theory, relational-developmental theory; epigenetic systems theory; embodied and enactive approaches to mind-as-action, etc.) reflect a worldview that integrates and resolves tensions between contextualist and organismic (and even some aspects of formist) worldviews The promise of such a novel framework demonstrates the feasibility of Worldview this general project Nonetheless, its elaboration is unlikely to achieve universal consensus, even within Western psychology, where the mechanistic worldview maintains its hold on the discipline * This section draws heavily on Naugle (2002) 13 Worldview 14 References Allwood, C., & Berry, J (2006) Origins and development of indigenous psychologies: An international analysis International Journal of Psychology, 41(4), 243-268 Becker, E (1973) The denial of death New York: Simon & Schuster Dewitt, R (2004) Worldviews: An introduction to the history and philosophy of science Blackwell de Zavala, G., A., & Van Bergh, A (2007) Need for cognitive closure and conservative political beliefs: Differential mediation by personal worldviews Political Psychology, 28(5), 587608 Goldberg, R M (2009) How our worldviews shape our practice Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 26(4), 405-431 Kim, U., Yang, K., & Hwang, K (2006) Contributions to indigenous and cultural psychology: Understanding people in context In U Kim, K Yang, K Hwang (Eds.) , Indigenous and cultural psychology: Understanding people in context (pp 3-25) New York, NY US: Springer Scien Koltko-Rivera, M E (2004) The psychology of worldviews Review of General Psychology, 8(1), 3-58 Naugle, P (2002) Worldview: The history of a concept Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Nietzsche, F (1863/2010) On truth and lies in a nonmoral sense In T Carman (Ed.), On truth and untruth: Selected writings (T Carman, trans.) (pp 15-50) New York, N.Y.: Harper Collins Worldview 15 Note, N., Fornet-Betancourt, R., Estermann, J., Aerts, D (Eds.) (2010) Worldviews and cultures: Philosophical reflections from an intercultural perspective New York: Springer Overton, W F (2012) Evolving scientific paradigms: Retrospective and prospective In L L’A ate Ed , The role of paradigms in theory construction (pp 31-65) New York: Springer Pepper, S (1942) World hypotheses Berkeley, CA: University of California Press Peterson, G (2001) Religion as orienting worldview Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 36(1), 5-19 Schimel, J., Hayes, J., Williams, T., & Jahrig, J., (2007) Is death really the worm at the Core? Converging evidence that worldview threat increases death-thought accessibility Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(5), 789-803 Worldview 16 Online Resources Beyond Intractability Website devoted to principles for resolving intractable conflict, including conflicts between worldviews http://www.beyondintractability.org Philosophy of Social Science Webpage devoted to interpretive and methodological issues in philosophy of social science www.iep.utm.edu/soc-sci Stephen C Pepper Website devoted to the work of Stephen C Pepper www.people.sunyit.edu/~harrell/Pepper/Index.htm Task Force on Indigenous Psychology www.indigenouspsych.org/ Terror Management Theory www.tmt.missouri.edu ... invoked the concept of worldview in several ways Worldview Use of worldview as an individual difference variable In recent decades, psychologists have invoked the concept of worldview as a psychological.. .Worldview Introduction A worldview consists of a generic set of presuppositions and about the fundamental nature of the physical and social world At its most basic level, a worldview. .. about what is good, moral or valuable (Goldberg, 2009) History Worldview The origins of Weltanschauung in German thought* The concept of worldview has its origins in the German concept of Weltanschauung