Search results

The purpose of this article is to consider the meaning of “reductionism” within the context of renewed efforts to make library and information science philosophy.

This article argues that the question of reductionism, as discussed in other traditions of thought, is relevant to the conversation about development of new library and information science (LIS) philosophy. Based on the viewpoint that one can be opposed to philosophical reductionism yet still be in favour of science, some forms of reductionism are described and links are drawn to library and information science by way of examples.

How reductionism is defined and understood should be addressed in the efforts to make new LIS philosophy.

Being “non‐reductionist” can be a stance in its own right, as evidenced by broader transdisciplinary conversations, but this is yet to be considered at any depth in LIS.

In this paper, the authors contrast complex thinking and reductionism in organizational transformation processes, focusing on enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. ERP has been promoted as a management panacea, and has resulted in immense investments by companies around the globe. Not surprisingly, many implementations fail to match expectations. For those dealing with organizational change, the ERP phenomenon may sound uncomfortably familiar: change theorists and practitioners have witnessed the coming and going of management panaceas for quite some time. This study presents an exploratory survey of 28 implementation experiences and discusses reductionism in the realm of ERP implementations. It is argued that by applying complex thinking we may open new avenues to explain these processes.

This chapter addresses the concern that much theory building in organization and management (OM) research suffers from de-contextualization. The authors argue that de-contextualization comes in two main forms: reductionism and grand theory. Whereas reductionism tends to downplay context in favor of individual behavior, grand theory looks at context only in highly abstract ahistorical terms. Such de-contextualization is problematic for at least two reasons. First, the boundary conditions of theories remain unexplored in ways that threaten scientific validity. Second, de-contextualization limits the potential of OM theory to fully understand the role of organizations in society and thereby address societal grand challenges. These claims are exemplified through critical reviews of four fields in OM research – gender, employee voice, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and institutional logics – and counterpoints that may help to overcome de-contextualized research are presented.

For organizational neuroscience to progress, it requires an overarching theoretical framework that locates neural processes appropriately within the wider context of organizational cognitive activities. In this chapter, we argue the case for building such a framework on two foundations: (1) critical realism, and (2) socially situated cognition. Critical realism holds to the importance of identifying biophysical roots for organizational activity (including neurophysiological processes) while acknowledging the top-down influence of higher-level, emergent organizational phenomena such as routines and structures, thereby avoiding the trap of reductionism. Socially situated cognition connects the brain, body, and mind to social, cultural, and environmental forces, as significant components of complex organizational systems. By focusing on adaptive action as the primary explanandum, socially situated cognition posits that, although the brain plays a driving role in adaptive organizational activity, this activity also relies on the body, situational context, and cognitive processes that are distributed across organizational agents and artifacts. The value of the framework that we sketch out is twofold. First, it promises to help organizational neuroscience become more than an arena for validating basic neuroscience concepts, enabling organizational researchers to backfill into social neuroscience, by identifying unique relations between the brain and social organization. Second, it promises to build deeper connections between neuroscience and mainstream theories of organizational behavior, by advancing models of managerial and organizational cognition that are biologically informed and socially situated.

According to Whitman, Hayek’s conception of MI pertains just to the relationship of individual psychology and the social sciences, and is neutral on broader questions about reductionism in other scientific domains. Since hypotheses of group selection frequently concern organisms that are taken to be mindless (e.g. viruses and social insects), it is clear that they do not come into contact with MI thus construed. And even when group selection hypotheses make claims about human evolution, as do the hypotheses we discuss in Chapters 4 and 5 of Unto Others, there is, once again, a relationship of mutual irrelevance. The reason is that MI addresses what biologists call the question of proximate mechanism, whereas hypotheses about natural selection are part of the project of ultimate explanation (Mayr, 1961). An example used in Unto Others helps to illustrate this distinction. If one asks why sunflowers turn towards the sun, there are two ways in which this question might be understood. One might wish to understand how the machinery inside of each plant causes the plant to exhibit phototropism. Or one might want to understand the evolutionary processes that caused this behavior to evolve. Both types of understanding are important, and there is no conflict between them. By the same token, when a human society exhibits some property – e.g. the type of egalitarianism among adult males that Boehm (1999) argues is characteristic of nomadic hunter-gatherers – we might seek both a proximate and an ultimate explanation of that arrangement. MI constrains the former problem; it asserts that a group’s having that property must be understood in terms of the beliefs and desires of the individuals in the group (with properties of the physical environment brought in where necessary). But even if the question of proximate mechanism gets answered in the way that MI insists, the question is left open as to whether the group phenotype is the result of natural selection, and if it is, whether group selection was involved. MI says nothing about the form that an evolutionary explanation must take; it concerns proximate explanation only.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical appraisal of the theme of zulm (injustice/exploitation) in light of the Islamic finance literature and the general attitude and approach of the Islamic finance industry and its advocates.

Based on an expanding theoretical and empirical knowledge base about Islamic finance and banking movement, and the emerging understanding about the role of profit and corporate behavior, a critical analysis of the role of riba, interest and profit in widespread injustice and exploitation is presented.

On the basis of the behavior of the Islamic finance industry, it seems that the industry's current practices are either neutral to the issue of injustice/exploitation or mirrors the tendencies of the conventional finance. Furthermore, when comparing the exploitative role of interest and profit, the latter seems to be more consequential than generally understood and acknowledged.

Islamic economics/finance literature should have more empirical research in identifying and understanding the nature of exploitation in the contemporary world and in how the current practices or tendencies are minimizing or abetting the challenge of exploitation.

The larger goal of the Islamic finance and banking movement should be to be in harmony with the maqasid of Islam to minimize zulm (injustice/exploitation) in the society.

The larger goal of the Islamic finance and banking movement should be to be in harmony with the maqasid of Islam to minimize zulm (injustice/exploitation) in the society.

While the literature of Islamic economics and finance is rather robust, this might be the first work that critically examines the riba‐interest reductionism, especially to focus on its implication for attention of the industry being away from exploitation in general and the relationship between profit and exploitation in particular.

Humans tend to rely on beliefs, assumptions and cognitive rules‐of‐thumb for making judgments and are biased against taking more uncertain alternatives. Such inertia has implications for client organizations' decision making about innovations, which are inherently more uncertain than conventional alternatives. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to furthering the understanding of barriers to overcoming inertia in client decision making in new‐build.

A descriptive behavioural decision‐making perspective is combined with an organizational information‐processing perspective. To identify and discuss individual and organizational barriers that potentially distort clients' decision making on innovation, the analysis addresses aggregated data from four studies. The analysis focuses on inferences and interpretations made by decision makers in Swedish client organizations, their information‐processing practices and the subsequent impacts on perceived meanings and judgments about industrialized multi‐storey, timber‐framed building innovations, which are perceived by Swedish clients as new and different building alternatives.

Cognitive and organizational barriers maintain status‐quo decisions. Clients are inclined to make biased judgments about industrialized‐building alternatives because non‐applicable cognitive rules‐of‐thumb, based on their experiences of conventional‐building alternatives, are used. Furthermore, client organizations' information‐processing practices do not allow different meanings to surface, interact and potentially suggest different conclusions, at odds with established beliefs.

The paper's conclusions highlight how inertia is sustained in client decision making in new‐build. They illustrate the limitations of a common engineering approach, i.e. supporting decision making about innovations by focusing on providing more information to the decision maker in order to reduce uncertainty, as well as managing multiple meanings by reductionism.

This study aims to define the main characteristics and possibilities of ontological approaches to research in architecture by considering content, methodologies and subject position in this type of research and questions if there is a future for this type of research or not.

The primary data collection method of this research is based on the ethos of the author who has taught research courses for many years. This research has also been questioned through the discussions made within a related PhD course.

Results of this research reveal that the spontaneous ideology of architecture might have influenced the neglection of the ontological approaches in academic research in architecture.

Architecture has an interesting position towards reductionism because architectural thinking has ontological characteristics. The ontological approaches to academic research seems to be more applicable to architecture. However, research in architecture does not necessarily have this ontological character.

The “ontological approach to academic research” covers a larger set of research than the method of ontology, which is used to discuss the categories, limitations in research. Thinking on ontological approaches to research is needed because there is a considerable increase in the use of mixed research methods, which combine qualitative and quantitative research. The second reason for this is the criticisms about the unethical reductionism directed towards contemporary science by philosophers. However, there is no sufficient literature on the ontological approaches to research. This is true also for the academic research in architecture.

Neuroscientists act as proxies for implied anthropomorphic signal-processing beings within the brain, Homunculi. The latter examine the arriving neuronal spike-trains to infer internal and external states. But a Homunculus needs a brain of its own, to coordinate its capabilities – a brain that necessarily contains a Homunculus and so on indefinitely. Such infinity is impossible – and in well-cited papers, Attneave and later Dennett claim to eliminate it. How do their approaches differ and do they (in fact) obviate the Homunculi?

The Attneave and Dennett approaches are carefully scrutinized. To Attneave, Homunculi are effectively “decision-making” neurons that control behaviors. Attneave presumes that Homunculi, when successively nested, become successively “stupider”, limiting their numbers by diminishing their responsibilities. Dennett likewise postulates neuronal Homunculi that become “stupider” – but brain-wards, where greater sophistication might have been expected.

Attneave’s argument is Reductionist and it simply assumes-away the Homuncular infinity. Dennett’s scheme, which evidently derives from Attneave’s, ultimately involves the same mistakes. Attneave and Dennett fail, because they attempt to reduce intentionality to non-intentionality.

Homunculus has been successively recognized over the centuries by philosophers, psychologists and (some) neuroscientists as a crucial conundrum of cognitive science. It still is.

Cognitive-science researchers need to recognize that Reductionist explanations of cognition may actually devolve to Homunculi, rather than eliminating them.

Two notable Reductionist arguments against the infinity of Homunculi are proven wrong. In their place, a non-Reductionist treatment of the mind, “Emergence”, is discussed as a means of rendering Homunculi irrelevant.

This study evaluates cross-national differences in public beliefs about the causes of health and the role of these beliefs in shaping attitudes regarding health policy.

The study uses data from the 2011 International Social Survey Program, which includes questions on health and health care, asked in 29 countries. Respondents were asked about four specific causes of poor health (i.e., genes, behavior, the environment, and poverty). Respondents were also asked about their attitudes regarding three aspects of health policy: their support for government-provided care, the perceived fairness of income disparities in medical treatment, and their support for providing health care to noncitizens.

The study has three findings. First, the study reveals the global reach of a multicausal view. The four beliefs about the causes of poor health are positively correlated in all countries. However, there is considerable cross-national variation in the average support for specific causes. Although in some countries proximate causes, such as genes, are endorsed more frequently than distal causes, such as poverty, this is by no means a uniform pattern. Support for genetic causes is high, but genetic reductionism is rare. Second, the study reveals that health beliefs are fundamentally political beliefs. The single most important determinant of beliefs about the causes of health is the country in which the respondent resides, exceeding in influence religion, education, and even personal experiences with health and health care. Third, the study reveals that the political connotations of health beliefs vary between countries, especially beliefs regarding genes. In general, those who endorse behavioral arguments favor less government involvement in health care and are more accepting of income disparities in the quality of care. Those who endorse the environment and poverty, meanwhile, tend to support a stronger role of government. Yet, the magnitude of these associations varies and, in the case of genetic arguments, even the direction of the association varies. Genetic arguments are frequently associated with support for a stronger role of government, but genetic arguments also are occasionally associated with support for the exclusion of noncitizens from the health care system.

International survey research is valuable for exploring the scope of patterns revealed in a limited set of countries, but it is difficult to pinpoint the source of cross-national differences.

The study demonstrates the importance of national context in shaping health beliefs, as well as the role of beliefs regarding the causes of health in setting the stage for public receptivity to government-provided care. The study also illustrates the value of thinking about beliefs about genes as reflecting larger projects of biocitizenship, at least in some countries.