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Philosophy Case Studies Samples For Students

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Do you feel the need to examine some previously written Case Studies on Philosophy before you get down to writing an own piece? In this open-access database of Philosophy Case Study examples, you are granted an exciting opportunity to explore meaningful topics, content structuring techniques, text flow, formatting styles, and other academically acclaimed writing practices. Adopting them while composing your own Philosophy Case Study will definitely allow you to finish the piece faster.

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Modern day managers who care less about employee motivation and satisfaction do so at the business’s peril. It is imperative that the business managers put in place strategies to maintain low staff turnover by placing value not only on clients but also on the employees (Grant, 1984). Fullerton and Toossi (2001) assert that doing this assures the business of continuity and gives it a competitive edge over its competitors. The case of a Peter Gibbons working for Initech exemplifies this issue by contrasting the working conditions at Initech to those at Coffee Beans.

Peter’s achievement orientation

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The issue of free will (freedom) versus determination has been around for a long time. It has continued to be a puzzle for philosophers ever since. Philosophers face such trouble with the issue of freedom versus determination because without freedom morality would be unheard of among the humankind; and such there would be no good, no wrong, or evil. All of humankind’s behavior would be priory determined, and; therefore, man would be left with no choice or creativity (Fischer 1994).

Introduction

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In the contemporary world, the concept of religion is more specialized and diverse among varied religious affiliation. Therefore, various forums for philosophical discussion have come up with dissimilar ideas centered on religion. The intent of this thesis is to respond to a series of questions concerning religion.

- What is the doctrine of divine simplicity?

The doctrine of divine simplicity God is simply outlined as a supreme being that lacks distinct metaphysical parts, constituents, or properties. Rather, God is given special attributes such as holiness, goodness, merciful, etc. Therefore, God is divine hence can only be attributed to his greatness, power, and wisdom.

- Can we make sense of the idea that perfect goodness is identical to perfect power?

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Question 1: The four core tools for service excellence delivery include taking care of the employee needs simultaneously. This could include provision of good and right training for employees, providing employees with a good compensation that is proportionate with the work done, retention of employees through provision of job security and lastly hiring the right employees to do the right job based on their skills. All these components must be implemented simultaneously. These could be illustrated as below:

Question 2: A service philosophy is the

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Introduction Globalization has complicated the management process. As such, for one to be an effective manager, that individual needs to understand the global context of the management process. Fundamentally, one needs to appreciate the role of culture in the management process (Luthans & Doh, 2014). As such, the paper shall examine several features of the Chinese society and evaluate the ways they will affect the management process.

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There have been increased awareness on ethical business and environmental degradation within the recent decades. Just like human, organizations are held responsible for their actions. This paper explores the ethical theories and concepts as they apply to the case study of the OK Tedi Copper Mine. The new CEO of BHP, Paul Anderson had just come in office and faced with the task of managing what people had referred to as the world’s greatest ongoing “environmental disaster” (Velasquez, 2012).

Utilitarianism

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Management is a task that brings together the various aspects of the roles of managers. In particular, the tasks performed by managers in organizations are quite huge because it is essential that a person is courageous enough to deal with the various views and characteristics of people that make up the workforce of the organization (Rice, 2013). Therefore, the analysis of the effects of the management theories on the management roles of managers is a timely analysis that requires adequate time and resources for the investigation of the various aspects of the subject.

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Integrity and ethical values Integrity and ethical values can be seen to be well present in XYZ. All the staff members are well cooperative and there is an atmosphere of trust and reliability among the staff notably among Tim, Bill and Day. Everybody has a clear perspective of the ethical values and follow the company systems properly. There is a moderate control environment on the basis of integrity and ethical values among the members of XYZ.

Commitment to competence

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Table of Contents

Introduction.2

Mission and Goals2 Situation Analysis3 Corporate Level Strategy..10 Business Level Strategy11

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Decision maker and responsibilities 3 Issues and significance 4 Reasoning for current issue and decision maker involvement 5 Timeline and urgency 6 Exhibits analyze 7 Second Step: Analyzing the Case 8 Defining the issue 8 Analyzing the data of the case 8 Genearting alternatives 8 Selecting decision criteria 9 Analyzing and evaluating alternatives 10 Selecting the preferred alternative 10 Developing an action/implementation of plan 10

References 12

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The exercise is designed to help one manage other people more effectively by putting in practice the diagnosis of the differences in their styles, values, and attitudes. To complete the exercise, an analysis of four successful managers with different values, interpersonal and change orientations and learning styles was done. The managers were then ranked in descending order in the following categories; emotional intelligence, values maturity, tolerance of ambiguity, and core self-valuation.

Emotional Intelligence

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Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and Kanban control systems are one of the most prominent production planning and inventory control systems of today. These systems are the most popular implementations of push and pull strategies respectively. Speaking of MRP, it is a material control system that tries to maintain adequate inventory levels to ensure that the required materials are available, when needed. MRP is used where there are multiple items with complex bills of materials. It is not suited for continuous processes that are tightly linked.

The major objective of an MRP system is to simultaneously:

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An case study examples on philosophy is a prosaic composition of a small volume and free composition, expressing individual impressions and thoughts on a specific occasion or issue and obviously not claiming a definitive or exhaustive interpretation of the subject.

Some signs of philosophy case study:

• the presence of a specific topic or question. A work devoted to the analysis of a wide range of problems in biology, by definition, cannot be performed in the genre of philosophy case study topic.
• The case study expresses individual impressions and thoughts on a specific occasion or issue, in this case, on philosophy and does not knowingly pretend to a definitive or exhaustive interpretation of the subject.
• As a rule, an essay suggests a new, subjectively colored word about something, such a work may have a philosophical, historical, biographical, journalistic, literary, critical, popular scientific or purely fiction character.
• in the content of an case study samples on philosophy , first of all, the author’s personality is assessed - his worldview, thoughts and feelings.

The goal of an case study in philosophy is to develop such skills as independent creative thinking and writing out your own thoughts.

Writing an case study is extremely useful, because it allows the author to learn to clearly and correctly formulate thoughts, structure information, use basic concepts, highlight causal relationships, illustrate experience with relevant examples, and substantiate his conclusions.

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PLATO is pleased to launch a student ethics case writing project. Any middle or high school student in the United States can participate.

The goal is to create an open-access library of case studies focusing on ethical dilemmas relevant to middle and high school students that can be used in middle and high school classrooms and in other ethics forums.

Accepted cases will be published on PLATO’s website, with credit to the writers, and students will receive $100 for each published case. A team of graduate students will review and edit the cases before publication.

All published cases become the property of PLATO.

Description of Ethics Cases

Guidelines: Each case should focus on an ethical issue, current or perennial, relevant to middle and/or high school students. The case must consider the ethical issue from at least two viewpoints presented fully and generously, so that the complexity of the case is made clear. If you have suggestions for study questions for students analyzing the case, please include them.

Length: 300-500 words

Sample case: “ Standing for the National Anthem .”

Authorship: Cases can be written by individuals or a group of students (all contributors will be credited).

Judging Criteria

All submissions will be anonymously reviewed by a committee of five judges according to the following criteria:

• Does the case clearly articulate the ethical issue and its ethical complications?
• Does the case explicitly consider at least two viewpoints in a balanced way?
• Is the case well-written and clearly organized?

DEADLINE: Submit cases online by completing the form to the right (or below on mobile), by 5 pm Monday, August 14, 2023.

Writers of accepted cases will be notified in September 2023.

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If you would like to change or adapt any of PLATO's work for public use, please feel free to contact us for permission at [email protected] .

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Videos Concepts Unwrapped View All 36 short illustrated videos explain behavioral ethics concepts and basic ethics principles. Concepts Unwrapped: Sports Edition View All 10 short videos introduce athletes to behavioral ethics concepts. Ethics Defined (Glossary) View All 58 animated videos - 1 to 2 minutes each - define key ethics terms and concepts. Ethics in Focus View All One-of-a-kind videos highlight the ethical aspects of current and historical subjects. Giving Voice To Values View All Eight short videos present the 7 principles of values-driven leadership from Gentile's Giving Voice to Values. In It To Win View All A documentary and six short videos reveal the behavioral ethics biases in super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff's story. Scandals Illustrated View All 30 videos - one minute each - introduce newsworthy scandals with ethical insights and case studies. Video Series

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Case Studies

More than 70 cases pair ethics concepts with real world situations. From journalism, performing arts, and scientific research to sports, law, and business, these case studies explore current and historic ethical dilemmas, their motivating biases, and their consequences. Each case includes discussion questions, related videos, and a bibliography.

A Million Little Pieces

James Frey’s popular memoir stirred controversy and media attention after it was revealed to contain numerous exaggerations and fabrications.

Abramoff: Lobbying Congress

Super-lobbyist Abramoff was caught in a scheme to lobby against his own clients. Was a corrupt individual or a corrupt system – or both – to blame?

Apple Suppliers & Labor Practices

Is tech company Apple, Inc. ethically obligated to oversee the questionable working conditions of other companies further down their supply chain?

Approaching the Presidency: Roosevelt & Taft

Some presidents view their responsibilities in strictly legal terms, others according to duty. Roosevelt and Taft took two extreme approaches.

Appropriating “Hope”

Fairey’s portrait of Barack Obama raised debate over the extent to which an artist can use and modify another’s artistic work, yet still call it one’s own.

Arctic Offshore Drilling

Competing groups frame the debate over oil drilling off Alaska’s coast in varying ways depending on their environmental and economic interests.

Banning Burkas: Freedom or Discrimination?

The French law banning women from wearing burkas in public sparked debate about discrimination and freedom of religion.

Birthing Vaccine Skepticism

Wakefield published an article riddled with inaccuracies and conflicts of interest that created significant vaccine hesitancy regarding the MMR vaccine.

Blurred Lines of Copyright

Marvin Gaye’s Estate won a lawsuit against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams for the hit song “Blurred Lines,” which had a similar feel to one of his songs.

Bullfighting: Art or Not?

Bullfighting has been a prominent cultural and artistic event for centuries, but in recent decades it has faced increasing criticism for animal rights’ abuse.

Buying Green: Consumer Behavior

Do purchasing green products, such as organic foods and electric cars, give consumers the moral license to indulge in unethical behavior?

Cadavers in Car Safety Research

Engineers at Heidelberg University insist that the use of human cadavers in car safety research is ethical because their research can save lives.

Cardinals’ Computer Hacking

St. Louis Cardinals scouting director Chris Correa hacked into the Houston Astros’ webmail system, leading to legal repercussions and a lifetime ban from MLB.

Cheating: Atlanta’s School Scandal

Teachers and administrators at Parks Middle School adjust struggling students’ test scores in an effort to save their school from closure.

Cheating: Sign-Stealing in MLB

The Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scheme rocked the baseball world, leading to a game-changing MLB investigation and fallout.

Cheating: UNC’s Academic Fraud

UNC’s academic fraud scandal uncovered an 18-year scheme of unchecked coursework and fraudulent classes that enabled student-athletes to play sports.

Cheney v. U.S. District Court

A controversial case focuses on Justice Scalia’s personal friendship with Vice President Cheney and the possible conflict of interest it poses to the case.

Christina Fallin: “Appropriate Culturation?”

After Fallin posted a picture of herself wearing a Plain’s headdress on social media, uproar emerged over cultural appropriation and Fallin’s intentions.

Climate Change & the Paris Deal

While climate change poses many abstract problems, the actions (or inactions) of today’s populations will have tangible effects on future generations.

Cover-Up on Campus

While the Baylor University football team was winning on the field, university officials failed to take action when allegations of sexual assault by student athletes emerged.

Covering Female Athletes

Sports Illustrated stirs controversy when their cover photo of an Olympic skier seems to focus more on her physical appearance than her athletic abilities.

Covering Yourself? Journalists and the Bowl Championship

Can news outlets covering the Bowl Championship Series fairly report sports news if their own polls were used to create the news?

Cyber Harassment

After a student defames a middle school teacher on social media, the teacher confronts the student in class and posts a video of the confrontation online.

Defending Freedom of Tweets?

Running back Rashard Mendenhall receives backlash from fans after criticizing the celebration of the assassination of Osama Bin Laden in a tweet.

Dennis Kozlowski: Living Large

Dennis Kozlowski was an effective leader for Tyco in his first few years as CEO, but eventually faced criminal charges over his use of company assets.

Digital Downloads

File-sharing program Napster sparked debate over the legal and ethical dimensions of downloading unauthorized copies of copyrighted music.

Dr. V’s Magical Putter

Journalist Caleb Hannan outed Dr. V as a trans woman, sparking debate over the ethics of Hannan’s reporting, as well its role in Dr. V’s suicide.

East Germany’s Doping Machine

From 1968 to the late 1980s, East Germany (GDR) doped some 9,000 athletes to gain success in international athletic competitions despite being aware of the unfortunate side effects.

Ebola & American Intervention

Did the dispatch of U.S. military units to Liberia to aid in humanitarian relief during the Ebola epidemic help or hinder the process?

Edward Snowden: Traitor or Hero?

Was Edward Snowden’s release of confidential government documents ethically justifiable?

Ethical Pitfalls in Action

Why do good people do bad things? Behavioral ethics is the science of moral decision-making, which explores why and how people make the ethical (and unethical) decisions that they do.

Ethical Use of Home DNA Testing

The rising popularity of at-home DNA testing kits raises questions about privacy and consumer rights.

Flying the Confederate Flag

A heated debate ensues over whether or not the Confederate flag should be removed from the South Carolina State House grounds.

Freedom of Speech on Campus

In the wake of racially motivated offenses, student protests sparked debate over the roles of free speech, deliberation, and tolerance on campus.

Freedom vs. Duty in Clinical Social Work

What should social workers do when their personal values come in conflict with the clients they are meant to serve?

Full Disclosure: Manipulating Donors

When an intern witnesses a donor making a large gift to a non-profit organization under misleading circumstances, she struggles with what to do.

Gaming the System: The VA Scandal

The Veterans Administration’s incentives were meant to spur more efficient and productive healthcare, but not all administrators complied as intended.

German Police Battalion 101

During the Holocaust, ordinary Germans became willing killers even though they could have opted out from murdering their Jewish neighbors.

Head Injuries & American Football

Many studies have linked traumatic brain injuries and related conditions to American football, creating controversy around the safety of the sport.

Head Injuries & the NFL

American football is a rough and dangerous game and its impact on the players’ brain health has sparked a hotly contested debate.

Healthcare Obligations: Personal vs. Institutional

A medical doctor must make a difficult decision when informing patients of the effectiveness of flu shots while upholding institutional recommendations.

High Stakes Testing

In the wake of the No Child Left Behind Act, parents, teachers, and school administrators take different positions on how to assess student achievement.

In-FUR-mercials: Advertising & Adoption

When the Lied Animal Shelter faces a spike in animal intake, an advertising agency uses its moral imagination to increase pet adoptions.

Krogh & the Watergate Scandal

Egil Krogh was a young lawyer working for the Nixon Administration whose ethics faded from view when asked to play a part in the Watergate break-in.

Limbaugh on Drug Addiction

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh argued that drug abuse was a choice, not a disease. He later became addicted to painkillers.

U.S. Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte’s “over-exaggeration” of an incident at the 2016 Rio Olympics led to very real consequences.

Meet Me at Starbucks

Two black men were arrested after an employee called the police on them, prompting Starbucks to implement “racial-bias” training across all its stores.

Myanmar Amber

Buying amber could potentially fund an ethnic civil war, but refraining allows collectors to acquire important specimens that could be used for research.

Negotiating Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy lawyer Gellene successfully represented a mining company during a major reorganization, but failed to disclose potential conflicts of interest.

Pao & Gender Bias

Ellen Pao stirred debate in the venture capital and tech industries when she filed a lawsuit against her employer on grounds of gender discrimination.

Pardoning Nixon

One month after Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency, Gerald Ford made the controversial decision to issue Nixon a full pardon.

Patient Autonomy & Informed Consent

Nursing staff and family members struggle with informed consent when taking care of a patient who has been deemed legally incompetent.

Prenatal Diagnosis & Parental Choice

Debate has emerged over the ethics of prenatal diagnosis and reproductive freedom in instances where testing has revealed genetic abnormalities.

Reporting on Robin Williams

After Robin Williams took his own life, news media covered the story in great detail, leading many to argue that such reporting violated the family’s privacy.

Responding to Child Migration

An influx of children migrants posed logistical and ethical dilemmas for U.S. authorities while intensifying ongoing debate about immigration.

Retracting Research: The Case of Chandok v. Klessig

A researcher makes the difficult decision to retract a published, peer-reviewed article after the original research results cannot be reproduced.

Sacking Social Media in College Sports

In the wake of questionable social media use by college athletes, the head coach at University of South Carolina bans his players from using Twitter.

Selling Enron

Following the deregulation of electricity markets in California, private energy company Enron profited greatly, but at a dire cost.

Snyder v. Phelps

Freedom of speech was put on trial in a case involving the Westboro Baptist Church and their protesting at the funeral of U.S. Marine Matthew Snyder.

Something Fishy at the Paralympics

Rampant cheating has plagued the Paralympics over the years, compromising the credibility and sportsmanship of Paralympian athletes.

Sports Blogs: The Wild West of Sports Journalism?

Deadspin pays an anonymous source for information related to NFL star Brett Favre, sparking debate over the ethics of “checkbook journalism.”

Stangl & the Holocaust

Franz Stangl was the most effective Nazi administrator in Poland, killing nearly one million Jews at Treblinka, but he claimed he was simply following orders.

Teaching Blackface: A Lesson on Stereotypes

A teacher was put on leave for showing a blackface video during a lesson on racial segregation, sparking discussion over how to teach about stereotypes.

The Astros’ Sign-Stealing Scandal

The Houston Astros rode a wave of success, culminating in a World Series win, but it all came crashing down when their sign-stealing scheme was revealed.

The Central Park Five

Despite the indisputable and overwhelming evidence of the innocence of the Central Park Five, some involved in the case refuse to believe it.

The CIA Leak

Legal and political fallout follows from the leak of classified information that led to the identification of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

The Collapse of Barings Bank

When faced with growing losses, investment banker Nick Leeson took big risks in an attempt to get out from under the losses. He lost.

The Costco Model

How can companies promote positive treatment of employees and benefit from leading with the best practices? Costco offers a model.

The FBI & Apple Security vs. Privacy

How can tech companies and government organizations strike a balance between maintaining national security and protecting user privacy?

The Miss Saigon Controversy

When a white actor was cast for the half-French, half-Vietnamese character in the Broadway production of Miss Saigon , debate ensued.

The Sandusky Scandal

Following the conviction of assistant coach Jerry Sandusky for sexual abuse, debate continues on how much university officials and head coach Joe Paterno knew of the crimes.

The Varsity Blues Scandal

A college admissions prep advisor told wealthy parents that while there were front doors into universities and back doors, he had created a side door that was worth exploring.

Providing radiation therapy to cancer patients, Therac-25 had malfunctions that resulted in 6 deaths. Who is accountable when technology causes harm?

Welfare Reform

The Welfare Reform Act changed how welfare operated, intensifying debate over the government’s role in supporting the poor through direct aid.

Wells Fargo and Moral Emotions

In a settlement with regulators, Wells Fargo Bank admitted that it had created as many as two million accounts for customers without their permission.

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What is a case study?

I will assign one of the Ethics Bowl cases where it is unclear whether or not a course of action described in the case is or would be morally right. You will be asked to evaluate the action in the story in light of one or more of the moral normative theories we've discussed this semester. As an example, consider the following case:

Ms. Jane Bradely is a successful commercial real estate agent. She is 41 years old, recently divorced, and is the mother of a 4 year old son who has Down's Syndrome. She has sole custody of her son, Algernon. Like most people with Down's Syndrome, Algernon is typically good natured, apparently very happy, and is mentally retarded. Ms. Bradely retains the services of a nanny to help take care of Algernon.

Ms. Bradely very much wants to have a healthy child. Towards that end, she opts for artificial insemination. Her physician warns her that the incidence of Trisomy-21 (the chromosomal aberation which results in Down's Syndrome) increases with the age of the mother. Understanding the risk, Ms. Bradely decides to go ahead with the procedure.

After several attempts, Ms. Bradely becomes pregnant. Unfortunately, karyotyping after amniocentesis reveals that the fetus has Trisomy-21. Ms. Bradely is deeply troubled by the news. She is now three months pregnant.

Having carefully evaluated her options, she decides to get an abortion.

After aborting her pregnancy she fully intends to try again in a few months.

Is it morally right for Ms. Bradely to have an abortion?

This case asks us to evaluate the morality Ms. Bradely's action of aborting her pregnancy. Of course the story is complicated, much as actual stories are complicated. There is a great deal to consider in such a case as this. But then there's a great deal to consider in the "real-world" as well.

You are asked to think about the case at length. Is her action right or wrong? Of course, we can't simply say right or wrong. We have to say right or wrong based on some particular conception of what it means for an action to be right or wrong. In other words, you need to select one of the theories we have discussed and reason, on the basis of that theory, about whether her action is right or wrong. Be sure that the theory you assume is defensible. CER, for example, would be a poor choice at this stage. It might be tempting to give an argument like:

Assuming CER, and given that Ms. Bradely is a member of the American Culture, it follows that it is morally right for her to abort her pregancy since she is in the first trimester and abortion is always permissible in the first trimester in the American Culture given the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade.

This is a well-put argument, clearly stating as it does the assumptions and clearly stepping as it does from the assumptions to the moral permissibility of her action. But just because the argument can be clearly stated does not mean that it is a good argument. In particular, this argument is obviously unsound. CER is one of the theories our Standards of Evaluation rejected. CER is self-contradictory and has implications which are absolutely unacceptable. Thus the person who put forward this argument would open themselves up to these and other criticisms, which is surely something to be avoided as much as possible.

Indeed, as we work through the theories we will discover a number that are critically unusuable in light of the assumptions they make. It will only be later that we find usuable theories. Nevertheless, it is important to learn how to apply indefensible theories so as to understand them better.

A further point should be made. The theories we consider should in no way be considered decision boxes where you plug in the facts of the case in the theory spits out an answer--"this action is morally wrong" or "this action is morally right". Ethics, as many of you will note, is never so clear-cut or straightforward. We must wrestle with extremely complicated issues. In the above case, for example, we have added the complication that Ms. Bradely's fetus has Down's Syndrome. The theories serve to make precise a particular conception of what it is for an action to be morally right or morally wrong. That does not mean that they suddenly make it black-and-white or even easy to see whether a particular action is right or wrong. All we can do in studying these often complicated issues is, naturally enough, the best we can. We try to make our assumptions clear and defensible. In particular, we try to make our conceptions of ethics clear and defensible by formulating them into theories which have a chance at passing our pre-established Standards. But then it is up to us to argue back and forth about what is in fact implied by a particular understanding of ethics. Sometimes it is obvious what follows, but sometimes it is not. Perhaps it would be nice if everything were straightforward and mechanical. But would any of us really want it that way? After all, it's nothing less than our lives and how we should live them that we're talking about here.

That said, let us describe each of the three sections in a Case.

The first section is the Argument :

Here you will assume a theory and argue, on the basis of that theory, to a conclusion. Your conclusion will be either "the act of __ is morally right" or "the act of __ is morally wrong". So, for example, in the above case your conclusion will either be "the act of Ms Bradely's aborting her pregnancy is morally right" or "the act of Ms. Bradely's aborting her pregnancy is morally right", whichever conclusion you think best follows from the theoretical assumption you've made. Then you will actually give an argument, preferably in paragraph form, to show that the conclusion does follow from the theory you've assumed. Presumably you will give the best argument you can.

The second section is the Critical Analysis :

Here you have the opportunity to criticize each other's arguments. You will be paired off with a partner and you will exchange your arguments. It is open to you to criticize any of the steps in your partner's argument and any of the assumptions your partner makes--either explicitly or implicitly and including the theory she or he has assumed. It is not open to you to criticize your partner. You are encouraged to see me if you do not understand the difference. You must state your criticisms clearly and carefully and provide appropriate justification.

The third and final section is the Response :

Here you have the opportunity to respond to your partner's criticisms. Your responses should be to show that (and how) your partner's criticisms fail, or to show that a better argument can be made for your conclusion which does not have the same problems as your first argument.

So that's the content of your case. The format should be followed precisely as the following outline.

Following the format precisely means that everything in your email should appear exactly as it does above, except, of course, what is in parentheses. Thus, "ARGUMENT" should be in all-caps and should be preceded by a series of dashes to demarcate the section.

Finally, some students find it odd or disconcerting that their case will include some of their partner's work - i.e., the Critical Analysis. They go to great lengths to include their own critical analysis, which only confuses me. I am very easily confused, so please do not include your critical analysis. A case should read like a point/counterpoint/counter-counterpoint debate. Your partner will include your critical analysis with her case, and you will be duly credited for your work.

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The Case Study Method in Philosophy of Science: An Empirical Study

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 26th Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association in Seattle, Washington (November 1–4, 2018) and the Workshop on Experimental Philosophy of Science at Aarhus University in Denmark (October 15–16, 2019). I thank Samuel Schindler for inviting me to the workshop and the audience for their helpful comments. I am also grateful to two anonymous reviewers of Perspectives on Science for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Special thanks as well to the Editor, Alex Levine.

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Moti Mizrahi; The Case Study Method in Philosophy of Science: An Empirical Study. Perspectives on Science 2020; 28 (1): 63–88. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00333

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There is an ongoing methodological debate in philosophy of science concerning the use of case studies as evidence for and/or against theories about science. In this paper, I aim to make a contribution to this debate by taking an empirical approach. I present the results of a systematic survey of the PhilSci-Archive, which suggest that a sizeable proportion of papers in philosophy of science contain appeals to case studies, as indicated by the occurrence of the indicator words “case study” and/or “case studies.” These results are confirmed by data mined from the JSTOR database on research articles published in leading journals in the field: Philosophy of Science , the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science ( BJPS ), and the Journal for General Philosophy of Science ( JGPS ), as well as the Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association ( PSA ). The data also show upward trends in appeals to case studies in articles published in Philosophy of Science , the BJPS , and the JGPS . The empirical work I have done for this paper provides philosophers of science who are wary of the use of case studies as evidence for and/or against theories about science with a way to do philosophy of science that is informed by data rather than case studies.

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The Use of Examples in Philosophy of Technology

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• Published: 27 September 2021
• Volume 27 , pages 1421–1443, ( 2022 )

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This paper is a contribution to a discussion in philosophy of technology by focusing on the epistemological status of the example. Of the various developments in the emerging, inchoate field of philosophy of technology, the “empirical turn” stands out as having left the most enduring mark on the trajectory contemporary research takes. From a historical point of view, the empirical turn can best be understood as a corrective to the overly “transcendentalizing” tendencies of “classical” philosophers of technology, such as Heidegger. Empirically oriented philosophy of technology emphasizes actual technologies through case-study research into the formation of technical objects and systems (constructivist studies) and how they, for example, transform our perceptions and conceptions (the phenomenological tradition) or pass on and propagate relations of power (critical theory). This paper explores the point of convergence of classical and contemporary approaches by means of the notion of the “example” or “paradigm.” It starts with a discussion of the quintessential modern philosopher of technology, Martin Heidegger, and his thinking about technology in terms of the ontological difference. Heidegger’s framing of technology in terms of this difference places the weight of intelligibility entirely on the side of being, to such an extent that his examples become heuristic rather than constitutive. The second part of the paper discusses the methodological and epistemological import of the “example” and the form of intelligibility it affords. Drawing on the work of Wittgenstein (standard metre), Foucault (panopticism), and Agamben (paradigm), we argue that the example offers an alternative way of understanding the study of technologies from that of empirical case studies.

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1 Introduction: Classical and Contemporary Philosophy of Technology

Heidegger once remarked that Dasein , human being, is ontically closest to itself, but ontologically we are farthest removed from our being. Does not something similar hold for examples, that we give them all the time but do we know what they are? In Philosophical Investigations , Wittgenstein draws attention to a curious artifact that is not an example of something but an example as example:

There is one thing of which one can neither say that it is one metre long, nor that it is notone metre long, and that is the standard metre in Paris.— But, this is, of course, not to ascribe any extraordinary property to it, but only to mark its peculiar role in the language-game of measuring with a metre-rule (Wittgenstein, 1953 , 21, emphasis in original).

A few lines later we read: “It is a paradigm in our language-game: something with which comparison is made. And this may be an important observation; but it is nonetheless an observation concerning our language-game.—our method of representation” (ibid., 22). The standard metre rule (the physical object) is as mundane as it is extraordinary, or rather, it is extraordinary not because of some intrinsic quality of this specific platinum bar but for the very reason that it is treated as a paradigm . It is extraordinary in that we cannot attribute length to it in meters as such for the very reason that it renders intelligible what length in meters is (of course, nowadays, it does not fulfill this role anymore, given the transition to a definition based on lightspeed in vacuum, and has gone from paradigm to relic). The objective of this article is to understand the relevance of the structure of such artifacts for the philosophy of technology.

Of the various developments that have taken place over the last 30 years or so in the emerging, inchoate field of philosophy of technology, the empirical turn (Achterhuis, 2001 ) stands out as having left the most enduring mark on the trajectory contemporary research takes (Brey, 2010 ). Footnote 1 Roughly, the “empirical turn” is an umbrella term for a collection of approaches aimed at bringing philosophy of technology into dialogue with the well-developed body of literature in the sociology of science and technology, or what is generally referred to as “science and technology studies” (STS). A chief methodological tenet of empirically oriented philosophy is its adherence to case-study research (Gerring, 2007 ; Yin, 2013 ) and a constructivist outlook. Footnote 2 Whether it is politics (Winner, 1986 ) that is under investigation, or the technical mediation of experience (Ihde, 1993 ), or the reproduction of capitalist hegemony (Feenberg, 2002 ), empirically oriented philosophy of technology tends to highlight the contingency of technology, its development, its use, placing itself at a critical distance from earlier “substantive” theories. Bringing philosophy of technology into debate with STS is the position taken by representatives of empirically oriented thinkers such as Verbeek ( 2015 ), who believes that substantive theory adheres to outdated conceptions of human-society-technology relations, whereas Feenberg ( 1999 ) maintains the position that his main sources of inspiration (Marx and critical theory) can learn from the insights of (social) constructivism in terms of its study of particular cases, be it that Feenberg is much more reluctant to let go of “macro-concepts”. While case-study research has many controversies surrounding it and its methodologies, another way of putting it is that the empirical turn is a turn to things in concrete (Coeckelbergh, 2018 ), as opposed to concepts in abstract, and perhaps more of an attitude than a methodology in the strict sense.

The empirical turn in the philosophy of technology has in many respects brought about what Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions did a few decades earlier in the philosophy of science: just as historians and sociologists of science found that social practice was constitutive of scientific rationality, philosophers of technology came to see the practical factors implied in the formation of technical artifacts, and as philosophers of science started studying the intricacies of specific sciences as opposed to science as such, philosophers of technology began to recognize the specificities of technologies. Instead of understanding science and society as two separate realms only intersecting and interacting in terms of cause and effect, a discourse emerged that stressed the co-construction or co-evolution of science and society (i.e., how “external” social and economic factors influence science, and how science in a sense takes place within these relations), which, mutatis mutandis , was taken up and appropriated by philosophers of technology.

To be sure, this analogy only goes so far: the sociological turn in philosophy of science transformed the discipline from a prescriptive one (Popper, Vienna Circle) into a descriptive one. The stakes of the empirical turn in philosophy of technology are less clear. Achterhuis ( 2001 ) speaks of a difference in approach between “classical” philosophy of technology (Heidegger, Marcuse, Ellul, Jonas) and contemporary theory. Footnote 3 The distinction is made on the basis of the former’s preoccupation with transcendental and historical conditions and the latter’s with “real” empirical technologies. Feenberg ( 1999 ) distinguishes his own “critical constructivism” from Heidegger’s essentialism by taxing Heidegger with a view which reduces technology to pure functionality, one that has Heidegger overlooking the social meanings of technologies, and how technology emerges from social relations. Feenberg’s execution of the empirical turn, however, retains an element of transcendental discourse in its dual layer instrumentalization theory, in which the layers of function and meaning make up the a-historic essence of technology and empirical case studies reveal how instrumentalization is concretized.

Ihde’s ( 2000 ) postphenomenological pluralism rejects transcendentalism and essentialism tout court , preferring to describe the effects of technologies on experience instead of the monolithic, reificatory character ascribed to technology by classical thinkers, arguing, for example, that Marcuse analyzed Technology with a capital “T” (1990, 6), or rather techniques . According to Van Den Eede et al. ( 2015 ), the chief virtue of classical philosophy of technology lay in the destruction of the neutrality thesis, sometimes called “instrumentalism,” and that the empirical turn is the reinterpretation of real technologies having dispensed with the image of technology as a mere means to an end.

The empirical turn is not without its detractors, however, such as Scharff ( 2011 ), who argues that philosophy of technology has lost track of abstraction by venturing too much into the concrete. The reliance on case-study research at the micro-level, as practiced in STS, may reveal nuances and details, but case-study research is equally bad at what grand theory excels at, such as the elucidation of systematic technological developments, or, a fortiori , the relations between technology and modernity as such. Accordingly, there has been a call for a bridging of the gap between technology studies and modernity theory, and indeed, some steps have been taken in that direction (e.g., Misa et al., 2003). Nevertheless, the discarding of the transcendental perspective has met with considerable hostility, ranging from warnings about how the empirical turn “carries the danger of turning ‘philosophy of technology’ into a shallow and uncritical field, parasitically dependent on developments in industry” (Smith, 2014 , 15) to assertions about “the necessity of a ‘transcendental (re)turn’” (Lemmens, 2015 , 4).

This ungenerous assessment is unwarranted insofar as empirically oriented philosophy of technology does not, in fact, advocate a wholesale abolition of philosophical abstraction, but, rather, desires to set out from the empirical description of actual technologies—aiming to determine the transformative character of technologies with regard to such philosophical fields such as politics or ethics. (Verbeek, 2015 ). One way of putting the matter differently is that there is no hard divide between “empirical” thinkers, who only make context-dependent claims and “transcendental” thinkers, who only engage in characterizations of technological epochs. Another way of making the same point is that the difference between the two schools of thought is not so much “real” as it is rhetorical or even “polemical”. Footnote 4 For example, Feenberg ( 1999 , 2002 , 2010 ) construes his critical theory/critical constructivism by engaging with Marx, the Frankfurt school, and social constructivism, but is at the same reluctant to let go of macro-concepts, such as (the technical code of) capitalism, class/formal bias and its counter-hegemony in democratic rationalization, while not shying away from concrete analysis (user appropriation of the Minitel as an exemplary case). Put differently, the claim that “empirically” oriented philosophy of technology only engages with the concrete, and empirical, and neglects abstraction is a more difficult position to maintain. In that sense, the analysis that follows is akin to and indebted to the work of Borgmann ( 1984 ), who in fact gives an analysis of the contemporary technological era in a very Heideggerian spirit, but is methodically more difficult to put in one category or the other: in fact his analysis of the “device paradigm” is an “ontical” rewriting of Heideggerian insights by more supple concepts such as pattern, example, and paradigm.

Our own inclination in this debate is follow up on this style of analysis: the empirical turn has brought about a more nuanced and evenhanded view on the particularities of specific technologies in comparison to more classical thinkers and a more direct link to technology development, and has been helpful when one is interested in fields such as ethics and politics, but that it is more difficult to see how the repetition of case studies brings us closer to a philosophy of technology. In a certain sense, philosophy of technology is in an aporia, having to choose between the general form of the transcendental and the particular content of the empirical. Thus, we would ask, how can we rethink the opposition between the transcendental and the empirical within philosophy of technology? Indeed, can the empirical and the transcendental meet? Is there a point of convergence where the two intertwine and become indistinguishable? Thus, is there a possibility of a philosophical approach to technology studies that starts off from “actual technologies” but does not treat them as empirical givens? In the following we will argue that the notion of the “paradigm” can cast the debate in a different light: empirically oriented philosophers may argue that transcendentalists should get out of their armchair, whereas the latter uphold the view that empirical philosophy is an oxymoron; the aporia resorts to polemics as to whether philosophy has its own proper object or is more or less in line with the sciences (such as STS). Footnote 5 Put simply, we argue that the empirical turn is a turn to examples of technologies, but in a very specific way, namely, by the formation of empirical case studies. In this paper we explore how the notion of “paradigm” can shed light on the philosophical meaning of technologies without treating them as empirical givens.

Any mention of “paradigm” will immediately evoke associations with, and cannot bypass, the aforementioned Thomas Kuhn’s seminal work on the paradigmatic character of the development of the natural sciences. Though notoriously equivocal, Footnote 6 in Structure the notion of paradigm has at least two distinct meanings. First, paradigm is a disciplinary matrix or “the constellation of group commitments” (Kuhn, 1962 , 182) that signifies the theories, beliefs, methods, and convictions upheld by and defining a community of scientists. This is indeed the meaning that paradigm has in common parlance, for example, when we say that Marxism was the dominant paradigm in technology studies in the 1970s, whereas nowadays it is STS. The second meaning, which Kuhn ( 1962 , 187) considered to be “the most novel and least understood aspect” of his book, is that of shared example, or exemplar . Kuhn’s own example is Newton’s second law of motion, and his point is probably well known to any freshman in natural sciences. Becoming a scientist consists less in rational reflection, let alone in falsification or verification, than that it does in the repetition of such exemplars. Instead of understanding science as a rule-based enterprise, Kuhn’s depiction emphasizes the normative character of exemplars, which need to be mastered in order to count as an accepted member of a scientific community.

Kuhn’s interest in paradigms sprang from their guiding scientists’ normative behavior; ours here lies in their ontological, epistemological and methodological import. This paper has a two-fold structure. First, we start off by looking at Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, which has been described as too abstract, too gloomy, and lacking practical insight. Without wishing to settle these matters, we interpret his thinking in a particular way: as against thinking in paradigms, and as thinking in terms of being , making his examples in the end heuristic rather than constitutive ; our main reason for discussing Heidegger is not so much to give a new interpretation of his work, but rather to show how his thinking, and in this context, his use of examples, has given rise to a turn away from the type of analysis he engages in. The second part of this paper contains its positive contribution through readings of Wittgenstein, Foucault, and Agamben. In Wittgenstein’s analysis of the standard metre we find an ontology of paradigms vis-à-vis the Platonist metaphysical tradition (Sect.  3 ). In Sect.  4 , we show that Foucault’s analysis of the panopticon and panopticism , his most directly relevant contributions to the philosophy of technology, offer him a methodological way of evading the empirical/transcendental distinction he finds so problematic in the “Age of Man.” Finally, we draw on the work of Agamben and his notion of example/paradigm as a generalization of Foucault’s methodology, making explicit and systematic Foucault’s epistemological and methodological relevance for the notion of analogy for philosophy of technology. The relation between the authors is thus a move from ontology (Wittgenstein), through exhibition (Foucault), towards systematization as method (Agamben). In the end our aim is to raise new questions about philosophical thinking about technology: the empirical turn has brought about a very fruitful and worthwhile turn towards things, and allows for a way about thinking about the meaning and ontology of the technological age, not so much in terms of abstract concepts such as “Enframing” or “Total mobilization,” but we want to draw attention to singularities, which are at the basis of our technological age: in biotechnology we can think, for example, of the Arabidopsis plant (as a concrete paradigm), in computer science of the Turing Machine (as the standard metre of computationality); these remarks will however be preliminary, setting the stage for a research agenda. Accordingly, the paper does not end with conclusion perse, but rather as a question on how paradigm/analogy can raise overlooked questions in philosophical thinking about technology.

2 The Interior of Beings and the Exterior of Being: Heidegger and the Hydroelectric Plant

The difference between the transcendental and the empirical, as Achterhuis ( 2001 ) uses it, goes back to Kant, who employs it in an epistemic context, i.e., the conditions under which pure mathematics, physics, and metaphysics as a science are possible, and defines it as a mode of cognition “that is occupied not so much with objects but rather with our mode of cognition of objects insofar as this is to be possible a priori” (Kant, 1998 , 133). In Critique of Pure Reason , Kant regards this project as too comprehensive to complete and limits himself to spelling out the necessary conditions of possibility for objects of experience, viz., the forms of intuition of space and time and the twelve categories of understanding. In the strict technical sense, an argument is transcendental when a given premise cannot be thought without assuming a nonobvious presupposition without which the premise cannot be thought (Rorty, 1971 ; Stroud, 1968 ); when reduced to its bare essentials, however, the difference between the transcendental and the empirical arguably boils down to a way of developing a more sophisticated jargon serving to rephrase the form/content dichotomy. That is to say, Kant finds in the form of the transcendental structures of experience a transhistorical basis that is exempt from the contingency of the content of that very experience. In philosophy of technology, more recently, there is no a consensus view on what to make of this distinction within the field. Lemmens ( 2021 ), for example, argues for a return to the transcendental in the historical technological sense, in effect arguing for a Stieglerian view in which technics is the transcendental, but also more generally, he argues that philosophy of technology needs to reckon with totality in view of the planetary crisis, or more popularly: the Anthropocene. Besmer ( 2021 ) argues that philosophy of technology also needs a turn away from the empirical but perhaps not towards the transcendental, in fact arguing that the very distinction is not very useful from the outset. Zwier et al. ( 2016 ), on the other hand, argue for the continuing relevance of Heideggerian questioning for thinking about technology. Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, as elaborated in The Question Concerning Technology , is often regarded as the most pregnant instantiation of a “classical, transcendental” approach, if only for the fact that it does not analyze technology in terms of technical artifacts or systems but identifies the essence of technology with something that “is by no means anything technological” (Heidegger, 1977 , 4). This “something” is being.

Perhaps there is no other being beyond what has been enumerated, but perhaps, as in the German idiom for “there is,” ( es gibt literally, it gives), still something else is given . Even more. In the end something is given which must be given if we are able to make beings accessible to us as beings and comport ourselves towards them, something which, to be sure, is not but which must be given if we are able to experience and understand any beings at all. We are able to grasp beings as such, as beings, only if we understand something like being (Heidegger, 1982 , 10, emphasis in original).

From the outset, Heidegger’s questioning is guided by his self-professed most profound contribution to philosophy, i.e., the ontological difference , the difference between beings (entities, the ontic) and that on the basis of which beings can show themselves as such, being (the ontological):

It is a distinction which is first and foremost constitutive for ontology. We call it the ontological difference —the differentiation between being and beings. Only by making this distinction—krinein in Greek— not between one being and another being but between being and beings do we first enter the field of philosophical research (Heidegger, 1982 , 17, emphasis in original).

In this context, a few things stand out regarding the ontological difference. Being precedes, or more precisely, is concomitant with any showing of beings; being is “no class or genus of entities” but “ the transcendens pure and simple ” (Heidegger, 1962 , 62); being is the “object” proper of philosophy. In the traversal of the pathway of his thinking, Heidegger would gesture more and more towards being, to such an extent that beings would drop out of sight. In Being and Time , Heidegger tackles the question of the meaning of being by interrogating an “exemplary being”— lest we say paradigm—, i.e., human being, or, more precisely, the being that we are ourselves and to whose constitution a pre-understanding of being belongs and which has questioning itself as a mode of being.

Heidegger’s ontology takes the form of a revealing or unveiling of being (to which concealing necessarily belongs) by means of the passing over of the implicit pre-understanding of Dasein of the being of beings into explicit understanding (Heidegger, 1962 , 61, 188–94). This essentially circular interpretation rests on the distinction between implicit/explicit, or showing/not-showing; it is, in brief, phenomenological (Derrida, 1982 , 126), relating not to the empirical what of things, but to their how (Heidegger, 1962 , 50). Crowell and Malpas ( 2007 ) observed, the extent to which this involves the transcendental in the Kantian sense is unclear, as witnesses this passage:

We also call the science of being, as critical science, transcendental science . In doing so we are not simply taking over unaltered the concept of the transcendental in Kant, although we are indeed adopting its original sense and its true tendency, perhaps still concealed from Kant. (Heidegger, 1982 , 17) Footnote 7

It is clear that Heidegger wants to remove the transcendental from the epistemic context used by Kant and from its subjectivist conception. On a subtler note, Heidegger’s reinterpretation of the Kantian project consists in the fact that his conception of the transcendental does not signify the a priori of an object of experience but rather the hermeneutic conditions under which a being can show itself as the being that it is ( as an tool of practical circumspection, as an object of objective contemplation) (Carman, 2003 ).

In fact, it was only until 1930 that Heidegger would explicitly associate himself with transcendental philosophy and a conception of philosophy as a science, claiming in his lectures that philosophy is no science but something “ comparable with nothing else in terms of which it could be positively determined. In that case, philosophy is something that stands on its own , something ultimate ” (Heidegger, 1995 , 2, emphasis in original). Heidegger’s essays on technology belong to his post-1930s work, after the so-called “turning,” in which he would no longer interrogate the meaning of being through the pre-understanding of Dasein but would venture into the historical destining of being.

Whether or not Heidegger’s later work still adheres to the principles of phenomenology is unimportant here, Footnote 8 for the irreducible play between implicit/explicit, showing/not-showing, light/dark, concealment/unconcealment remains firmly intact. Heidegger enters the field of technological research equipped with the ontological difference—or, put differently, the question concerning technology was never a question concerning technologies; Heidegger’s question concerning technology may have as its impetus the ever more pervasiveness of ontic technologies in the modern age, but he tackles this question at the level of being, not that of beings. Nevertheless, Heidegger does not shy away from analyzing an example of a modern technology that, at face value, exhibits archetypical exemplarity, the hydroelectric plant. Of the hydroelectric plant Heidegger writes:

The hydroelectric plant is set into the current of the Rhine. It sets the Rhine to supplying its hydraulic pressure, which then sets the turbines turning. This turning sets those machines in motion whose thrust sets going the electric current for which the long-distance power station and its network of cables are set up to dispatch electricity. In the context of the interlocking processes pertaining to the orderly disposition of electrical energy, even the Rhine itself appears as something at our command. The hydroelectric plant is not built in the Rhine River as was the old wooden bridge that joined bank with bank for hundreds of years. Rather the river is dammed up into the power plant. What the river is now, namely a water supplier, derives from out of the essence of the power station. (Heidegger, 1977 , 16)

For Heidegger, the construction and functioning of the hydroelectric plant challenges the Rhine to deliver energy, which is “unlocked,” and “what is unlocked is transformed, what is transformed is stored up, what is stored up is, in turn, distributed, and what is distributed is switched about ever anew” (ibid.). This challenging character derives from, but does not have its ground in, the calculations of modern natural science, Heidegger alleges, and this is provocative about this assertion, that modern science is ontologically dependent on technology, pace the historical priority of the scientific revolution to the industrial one; challenging was not present in traditional, pre-modern technology. In the case of a windmill, for example, the wind was merely utilized, as something serviceable; its sails are “left entirely to the wind’s blowing. But the windmill does not unlock energy from the air currents in order to store it” (ibid., 14). This contrast between modern industrial technology and traditional, artisanal technologies is expressed several times in the Question , such as in the peasant taking care of his land and the modern transformation of agriculture into a food industry (ibid., 15).

It is tempting to read Heidegger’s differentiation between pre-modern and modern technology as the juxtaposition of two lists consisting of “good” traditional technologies on the one hand and “bad” modern ones on the other. But this would not do justice to his ontologizing of technology. To be sure, Heidegger does want to differentiate between pre-modern and modern technology, but on the level of being, and not of beings. The differentiation between the relationship with the manifest of the ancient Greeks and ours resides in a prior revealing , captured in the word aletheia , truth. Footnote 9 Technology, or techne , is rooted in such revealing and is a way of revealing. In Greek times, Heidegger alleges, such techne was intrinsically intertwined with poiesis , with bringing-forth (see also: Heidegger, 1993 , 184).

Somewhat simplified, Heidegger points here to the phenomenon well known in popular culture by Michelangelo’s remark that every stone has a statue inside it and the task of the sculptor is to dis-cover it. This poiesis brings-forth in such a manner that it brings-something-into-presence. In the epoch of modern technology, the poetry of technology has been lost. Modern technology brings-forth in such a manner that it does not bring beings-into-presence, but covers them over. Heidegger’ name for the prior revealing that is at the basis of this kind of bringing-forth is enframing ( das Gestell ) (1977, pp., 19, 19). Enframing reveals reality, and, indeed, humanity itself as standing-reserve ( Bestand ), as a resource to be ordered, exploited and transferred at will. The character of enframing is to totalizing: “it drives out every possibility of revealing” (ibid., 27). The world as such shows itself as standing-reserve.

Heidegger’s approach remains influential in contemporary technology studies and philosophical thinking about technology, but mostly through eliciting antagonism; his work on enframing usually functions as a good lesson on how not to do philosophy of technology. Two “continental” approaches representative of the empirical turn, Don Ihde’s “postphenomenology” and Andrew Feenberg’s “critical constructivism,” share the assumption that Heideggerianism is an intellectual dead-end street. Ihde ( 1993 , 106) speaks of Heidegger’s nostalgic preference for artisanal technologies in favor of modern ones, while Feenberg ( 2010 , 24) thinks that the ontological difference “may have once seemed more interesting than it does today,” and that Heidegger “literally cannot discriminate between electricity and atom bombs, agricultural techniques and the Holocaust” ( 1999 , 187), since they “[a]ll are merely different expressions of the identical ‘enframing’,” Footnote 10 and that he “cannot take the notion of technological reform seriously because he reifies modern technology as something separate from society, as an inherently contextless force aiming at pure power” ( 2010 , 25).

Both Ihde’s and Feenberg’s critiques are interesting because they assume that we can differentiate between atom bombs and agricultural techniques, between a windmill and a power plant. However, if we take Heidegger’s claim seriously that ontology does not consist in any “cataloguing of the furniture of the universe” (Brandom, 1983 , 388) and that enframing does not “mean the general concept of such resources” (Heidegger, 1977 , 29), then talk of ontic technologies being “expressions” of “enframing” or “preferences” for one ontic technology in favor of the other becomes idle. Put differently, the hydroelectric plant is not a paradigm of enframing, but rather, the example belongs to the interior of beings and the exterior of being . Footnote 11 The point here is as follows: whereas in Being and Time it is clear that the understanding of being of Dasein is grounded ontically in its being ontological, or put differently: the difference between Dasein and the categories in Being and Time is to be understood in terms of the mode of being and understanding of being of Dasein (Brandom, 1983 ). In the Question this ontic rooting of ontology is much less clear, as observed by “empirical turner” Verbeek ( 2005 , 63): “[Heidegger’s] words reveal that, for him, what is happening is not that the construction of an electrical generating plant has brought about the transformation of the Rhine into standing-reserve, but rather the other way around—that the unlocking of the Rhine as standing-reserve has brought about the construction of an electrical power plant in it. This is underscored by his remark about the tourist industry[.]”.

3 What is a Paradigm: Wittgenstein and the Standard Metre

Heidegger’s ontological difference, by definition, precludes the possibility of a being coming-into-presence prior to any clearing of being; Heideggerian phenomenological showing is the showing of this prior clearing. In this section we argue, however, that Heidegger was not sensitive to another type of showing than of an object of hermeneutics, i.e., in terms of the prior disclosure of the whole from which a part is understood. We look for a different type of non-empirical showing in terms of a para-showing of the part towards the whole. In his early work Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus , indebted to Kantianism and associated with logical positivism, Wittgenstein also struggled with the transcendental and showing/not-showing, declaring that “What can be shown, cannot be said” and that “Logic is transcendental” (Wittgenstein, 2001 , 31, 78, emphasis in original). True or false (scientific) propositions belong to the realm of the sayable, but their form, the ground of the sayable, eludes enunciation, it is transcendental. By the time of his later work, of which such books as Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty are the precipitates, and in some sense close to post-structuralism (e.g., Staten, 1984 ), Wittgenstein would neither use metaphysical jargon such as “transcendental” nor entertain the belief that scientific propositions are the only bearers of genuine meaning, nor that logical form is the ground of the sayable:

But if someone were to say: “So logic too is an empirical science” he would be wrong. Yet this is right: the same proposition may get treated at one time as something to test by experience, at another as a rule of testing. (Wittgenstein, 1969 , 15)

Nevertheless, Wittgenstein’s interest in finding the grounds of the sayable and the role showing plays in it did not wane (McGinn, 2001 ), to which his analysis of the meter rule attests. The standard metre is an empirical phenomenon but at the same time it is not: it is a material artifact that renders intelligible what a meter is . In this instance, talk of transcendental or empirical are problematized because we are dealing with a phenomenon the content of which expresses its own form. Wittgenstein’s remark surfaces in his rejection of what might be called a Platonist treatment of universal categories, “the great sources of philosophical bewilderment: a substantive makes us look for a thing that corresponds to it” (Wittgenstein, 1958 , 1), or the “indestructibles”(Wittgenstein, 1953 , 24). There is no-thing that corresponds to length just as there is nothing that corresponds to the color red as such. The Platonist solution to this problem is idealism : the universals belong to a realm ontologically distinct from that of the empirical, the sensible. Footnote 12 Wittgenstein’s position, however, is a problematization of this very distinction: the ideal here appears as the empirical and vice versa.

As a fundamentally anti-theoretical thinker (McGinn, 1997 ), Wittgenstein was never one to generalize his insights into a theory of paradigmatic intelligibility, but from his scattered remarks we can deduce that the standard metre is not the only artifact instantiating this structure. Thus, for example, we could imagine patches of colors in an archive, of which we would then not be able to say whether they were of the colors in question. Thus, there is a sense in which we cannot say that the standard metre is one meter long nor that it is; it is the “meter” that is not a meter. Footnote 13 In order to be able to determine the truth or falsity of such statements, we need a standard, a yardstick according to which this we make the determination, which is ex hypothesi impossible in the case when it is the yardstick that makes any determination of (in)correctness possible. The standard meter rule, in this sense, is beyond truth or falsity, it resides on the plane of what in deconstruction is called the undecidable , that is, the implosion of the basis of any criteria on the basis of which a rational decision can be made.

Derrida’s (e.g., 1988, 116) deconstruction, indeed, accounts for the existence of groundless undecidables by a generalization of undecidability, to wit, by a number of “non-concepts,” such as différance (1982, 1–27), iterability (1988), and pharmakon (1981, 61–172),all of which have an irreducible double entendre implying constitution and de-constitution (differing/deferring, repetition/alteration, cure/poison). Deconstruction replaces transcendental and/or empirical discourse by that of “quasi-transcendental” discourse (Derrida, 1988 , 127; see also Bennington & Derrida, 1993 ; Rorty, 1989 ): it takes, for example, the structure of empirical writing, which is repeatable in the absence of its originator and always possible to be misunderstood, and turns it into a transcendental structure, which stops being transcendental for the reason that it is infected by the empirical and both a condition of possibility and of impossibility, of understanding and misunderstanding. For deconstruction, there is the structural possibility that a paradigm misfires; when someone points at the standard metre and exclaims “meter,” there is the structural possibility that one’s interlocutor understands this as “platinum,” or as “straight.” Wittgenstein is well aware of this skeptical possibility, Footnote 14 but doesn’t seem to be bothered: “What has to be accepted, the given, is—so one could say— forms of life ” ( 1953 , 192).

However, the undecidable character of the paradigm is no “extraordinary property” but a sign of “its peculiar role in the language-game of measuring with a metre-rule” (Wittgenstein, 1953 , 21). Its peculiar role is derived from the fact that in order to function as a paradigm it must be treated-as such. This connects with the distinction Wittgenstein ( 1953 , 168) makes between seeing and seeing-as . Whereas seeing refers to the objective properties an entity-within-the-world possesses, seeing-as refers to something neither wholly subjective nor objective, but to the very relation a subject entertains with regard to its object: Positivism , and its emphasis for stating the facts , elevates the report of objective properties to the status of the only true form of knowledge . But we need to keep in mind that “the concept of ‘seeing’ (…) is tangled ” (Wittgenstein, 1953 , 170). The sort of seeing involved in seeing the standard metre as a paradigm is comparable to seeing the duck-rabbit as a duck or as a rabbit; in order to indicate what one sees the ambiguous picture as , one cannot refer to the picture itself. Likewise, there is no objective property that differentiates the standard meter rule from other bars of the same length. The constitution of its paradigmatic character belongs solely to the practice of our treating it as such: “‘Seeing as….’ is not part of perception. And for that reason it is like seeing and again not like” (Wittgenstein, 1953 , 168).

In a more systematic fashion Wittgensteinian paradigms display the following characteristics: (1) they function as yardsticks on the basis of which particular cases can be judged, but are at the same time outside of these particular cases; (2) paradigms need to be agreed upon by a community that employs them; (3) it is impossible to determine whether the concept they render intelligible is applicable to them or not, they are undecidables (Luckhardt, 1978 ); (4) we do not relate to paradigms as we do to empirical phenomena, they reside in the limbo between the subjective and the objective; (5) the paradigm does not refer to the concept it renders intelligible, but rather it shows it.

4 The Hidden Standard Metre of Power: Foucault and the Panopticon

Anti-Platonism also animated the work of a thinker whose endeavors, at face value, were quite tangential to Wittgenstein’s, Michel Foucault:

Let’s suppose that universals do not exist (…) My reasoning, my method, was not to examine whether history gives me or refers me to something like madness, and then to conclude, no, it does not, therefore madness does not exist. This was not the argument, the method, in fact. The method consisted in saying: Let’s suppose madness does not exist (…) starting from the decision that universals do not exist, asking what kind of history we can do. (Foucault, 2008 , 3)

In The Order of Things (subtitled An Archaeology of the Human Sciences ) Foucault signaled a problematic within the human sciences, which characterizes the modern episteme, the Age of Man. Footnote 15 This problematic, which Foucault calls the analytic of finitude, is as simple as it is profound: ‘[M]an appears in his ambiguous position as an object of knowledge and as a subject that knows’ (Foucault, 1989b , 312). This ambiguous position gives rises to a number of doubles: the empirical/transcendental, the cogito/unthought, and the retreat/return of the origin. We focus here on the empirical/transcendental.

Kant’s differentiation between the empirical and the transcendental is based on a conception of man as both fact and condition of knowledge. Kant, however, relegates all contingency to the empirical and conceives of the transcendental as the a-historic, cross-cultural fundament. Immediately, however, we can question how empirical contingency influences the transcendental apparatus of cognition. This is indeed the path taken by naturalism. In the history of analytic philosophy, Quine ( 1969 , 69–90) argued for “naturalizing epistemology” by turning philosophical epistemology into cognitive psychology. Marxism, on the other hand, historicizes the transcendental by referring to an eschatological truth in which man fulfills his history, communism. These ways of finding a discourse that validates its own truth, the positivist’s and the eschatologist’s, are two sides of one and the same uneven coin:

[A]ttempting to be both empirical and critical [it] cannot but be both positivist and eschatological; man appears within it as a truth both reduced and promised. Pre-critical naïveté holds undivided rule (Foucault, 1989b , 349).

Phenomenology, which studies lived experience and its constitutive moments, is “a discourse whose tension would keep separate the empirical and the transcendental, while being directed at both” (Ibid.); in both Husserl’s and Heidegger’s versions of phenomenology the empirico-transcendental double emerges, respectively in the transcendental ego/natural attitude and the ontico-ontological privilege, as a tension not to be sublated but to be accepted. Foucault’s famous thesis in The Order of Things that man is about to disappear from Western humanistic discourse finds its counterpart in his assertion that the ever subtler, and convoluted, ways of formulating the relations between the empirical and the transcendental show that this discourse is at an impasse.

According to Dreyfus and Rabinow ( 1982 , 79–100), however, Foucault’s archaeological method, developed in the 1960s books The Order of Things and The Archaeology of Knowledge , still remains caught within the difficulties he signals with the analytic of finitude. Foucault elaborated a highly-sophisticated account of discursive formations that nevertheless have a distinctly Kantian ring to them through the spelling out the transcendental a priori rules of discursive formations within a given episteme. Footnote 16 It was thus, as Dean ( 2012 ) explains, that the paradigmatic method grew, coming to fruition in the 1970s genealogies of Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality :

Foucault develops this interpretation—and this we claim is his most original contribution—by pointing to agreed-upon examples of how a domain of human activity should be organized. (…) He is now proceeding through a description of discourse as the historical articulation of a paradigm, and approaching analytics in a manner that is heavily dependent on the isolation and description of social paradigms and their practical applications. For Foucault the analysis of discourse is no longer systematized in terms of the formation of rules of the episteme (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982 , xxvii, 199).

The relevance of this method for philosophy of technology is best recognized in Foucault’s analysis of Bentham’s circular prison-design, the panopticon. In the archives, Foucault finds what might be called the hidden standard metre of power in modern society. The example of the panopticon is well known, and perhaps worn, in sociology and philosophy of technology as well as in surveillance studies (Galič et al., 2016 ; Kaplan, 2009 ). A popular way of reading this analysis is one along the lines of what Winner ( 1986 ) calls the politics of artifacts or what Feenberg ( 2002 ) calls the technical code of capitalism, i.e., that technological development takes place within relations of power, which are incorporated into the design of technical artifacts and systems that propagate and reproduce these relation of domination. It is equally tempting to interpret the panopticon more metaphorico , as Foucault figuratively claiming that Western society is a “big Panopticon”.

One of Foucault’s best-known critics, Steven Lukes, indeed, makes the claim that Foucault’s method is not empirical but rather focused on understanding phenomena, such as power, in their ideal form: “One reason for this one-sidedness is doubtless that Foucault was, characteristically, not investigating actual disciplinary practices but their design . His purpose was to portray their idealized form—describing not how they work, or ever worked, but an ideal type of how they are meant to work” (Lukes, 2005 , 93).

Lukes’ remark is certainly correct, but “ideal form” can be interpreted not only in the sense of “non-empirical” but also in a paradigmatic way in its most technical sense (Agamben, 2001 , 2009 , 16–17), that is, as an example as example that elucidates a more general problematic: panopticism . It is clear that Foucault denies neither the existence of class nor that of class struggle (Foucault, 1977 , 223; see also Deleuze, 1988 , 22–23) but is out to give an interpretation of their formation differing from the Marxist one, or “at least a certain contemporary conception that passes for the Marxist conception” (Foucault, 2003 , 13). Marx, while discussing the role of the use of machinery in the capitalist mode of production, gives pride of place to empirical description of the deployment of the steam engine and its pivotal position in the development of the productive forces (Marx, 1976 , 594–603). As Foucault notes, “it must be recognized that, compared with the mining industries, the emerging chemical industries or methods of national accountancy, compared with the blast furnaces or the steam engine, panopticism has received little attention (…) But it would be unjust to compare the disciplinary techniques with such inventions as the steam engine or Amici’s microscope. They are much less, and yet, in a way, they are much more” (1977, 224, 225). It is clear that the panopticon is less, since it is an architectural design that never was in fact constructed in the form Bentham envisaged. The way in which it is more is contained in its paradigmatic character. One manner to juxtapose of Foucault’s analysis, over and against for example empirical postphenomenology, is as follows: a popular example in philosophy of technology is Verbeek’s ( 2011 ) analysis of ultrasound in terms of how it mediates human-technology relations, i.e., how the ultrasound transforms the relation a father has to an unborn child, or how it objectifies the mother: this example can be seen as a paradigm to repeat in the Kuhnian sense (as normal science) but differs from Foucault’s analysis in terms of paradigmatic methodology  and the exhibition of analogical relation.

The panopticon is a “machine,” a “diagram,” and “a way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday functioning of men” (Foucault, 1977 , 205). At the very end of the chapter on panopticism Foucault ponders: “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” (Foucault, 1977 , 228). Footnote 17 It would of course be wrong to claim that the panopticon historically, in a literal sense, exercised influence over the architectural design of schools, hospitals, factories and barracks. Rather, the use of the panopticon is methodological: as an abstract paradigmatic machine, it not only draws attention to pre-existing similarities among them on an “ontic” level, as it were, but constitutes their homogeneity as an ensemble at the “ontological” (i.e. the manner the world and beings come in-to-presence) level (Agamben, 2009 , 18; see also De la Durantaye, 2009 , 224). In short, there are analogical relations between prisons, schools, hospitals, and suchlike in the manner in which they produce subjects, captured in the two functions of the pantopticon, aimed at placing subjects under constant surveillance so as to achieve docility and operating as a laboratory in order to attain knowledge about them. The panopticon thus stands for a whole variety of machines that characterize the disciplinary universe of the welfare state: the Machine-prison, the Machine-school, the Machine-hospital, etc. (cf. Deleuze, 1988 , 34).

5 Paradigm as Method: Agamben and the Camp

Agamben’s notions of example/exclusive inclusion/paradigm ( 1993 , 9–12; 1998 , 21–29; 2009 , 9–32) Footnote 18 systematize Wittgenstein’s loose remarks on the functioning of the grammar of language and generalize Foucault’s Footnote 19 use of paradigms as a method for seeing and exhibiting analogies—or, widen the application for a paradigmatology that “methodologizes” what is first an ontological insight; similar to Heidegger’s contention that ontology can only take place through phenomenology (method) (Heidegger, 1962 , 61), or, indeed, that they are one and the same, Agamben takes the curious ontological structure of the paradigm and transforms it into method. But also akin to Adorno’s ( 1982 ) implication that method in the human sciences is inevitably violent by molding the world according to its categories, Footnote 20 thus covering over the unique and singular, the paradigmatic method, is equally a non-method, an against methodology . Our understanding by means of paradigms is a way of escaping this violence, of seeing, thinking, and understanding outside of pre-established frameworks and concepts.

The word “paradigm” has the sense of modelling. Biologists make use of model organisms, such as the Drosophila (fruit fly) and Arabidopsis Thaliana (rockcress) as “both a means to and as a source of knowledge” (Morgan & Morisson, 1999 , 35), where the aim is to integrate a diverse body of knowledge of a single organism (type) into a unique body of knowledge (as an end) in the belief that this knowledge is representative of the functioning of other (similar type) organisms. Gramsci ( 1971 , 277–320) studied the mode of production and consumption of Henry Ford’s car factories as the model for hegemonic American capitalism, coined “Fordism.” The word “paradigm” also has the sense of a pattern, a recurring feature. This is well known in the philosophy of technology through the work of Albert Borgmann ( 1984 ), whose neo-Heideggerian analysis discerns a pattern running through modern techno-commodities in which most modern techno-commodities disengage their users, dubbed the “device-paradigm.” For example, a micro-wave delivers food ready-to-go, whereas a fireplace compels people to actively take care of it, as a so-called focal pratice.

Agamben, however, draws attention to the Greek etymology of the word paradigm, composed of para (alongside) and deiknumai (to show) ( 1993 , 9; 1998 , 22; 2009 , 24). A para - digm thus shows something alongside, in the manner in which parables and allegories illustrate a point—which can still be heard in the German word “ Bei-spiel ” (Agamben, 1993 , 9). What a paradigm shows alongside is “both its own intelligibility and that of the class it constitutes” (Agamben, 2009 , 24). This is indeed the same structure we saw earlier in Wittgenstein: there is a difference between an example of something (a typical example) and an example as example (exemplar, paradigm), just as the standard meter rule renders intelligible what a meter is and simultaneously constitutes a group of measurable things.

For Agamben, the notion of typical example is illustrative of how we experience our experience of language—our being linguistic beings— through language. For example, the word “tree” refers to trees in general and allows us to make general statements about trees. While taking a stroll, I can remark that I took a picture of this tree yesterday and receive the response “You mean this tree here , or a tree of this kind ?” (i.e., which meaning of “tree” does the “this” refer to?). In short, language structures our experience into dichotomies of particular/universal, part/whole.

From a systematic point of view, the two major forms in which we acquire knowledge of the world emerge out of one or the other pole of these dichotomies. Induction consists in finding regularities in the world by means of the enumeration of particular statements so as to arrive at a general statement. Famously, David Hume ( 1978 , 86–94) challenged the justificatory grounds of induction, its being a logic stricto sensu, by declaring it to be no more than a habit of the human mind, imposing causality on a set of heterogeneous experiences. Carnap would place induction in the context of relations between sentences, arguing that Hume’s problem concerned universal inference ( 1950 , 207) and that the object proper of induction is the inference of probabilities. Nevertheless, it is clear that induction aims at stating generalities in the form of a rule. Deduction functions in logic in the formal sense, such as in Aristotelian categorical logic, modern propositional logic, or nth-order predicate logic. Natural deduction , for example, is based on a set of rules of inference (of introduction and elimination) which serve as the basis upon which hypotheses can be postulated and inferences made. The best-known expressions of deductive reasoning are the syllogism (All men are mortal/Socrates is a man/Therefore, Socrates is mortal) and modus ponens (If it rains, then the sidewalk gets wet/It rains/Therefore the sidewalk is wet).

Practitioners of science can go about their business well in the absence of explicit rules—or, more strongly, as Thomas Kuhn ( 1962 , 44) observed, “the existence of a paradigm need not even imply that any full set of rules exist,” likening paradigmatic understanding to Wittgenstein’s ( 1953 , 27–28) notion of family resemblances (that such concepts as “game” cannot be defined in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, but are formed by a network of crisscross similarities among members of a class). For Agamben, paradigmatic understanding consists of freeing singularity “from the false dilemma that obliges knowledge to choose between the ineffability of the individual and the intelligibility of the universal” ( 1993 , 1)—from the canon of rules—by performing a double deactivation of its empirical givenness. Footnote 21 The clearest case of such deactivation is when one teaches someone, for example, what a performative is by exclaiming the words “I hereby name this ship the Pacific Princess”; my very uttering of these words does not function as a performative but suspends its performativity by standing as an example for the class of performative utterances. Example/paradigm is thus an “exclusive inclusion” (Agamben, 1998 , 21). It not only suspends its normal usage by exhibiting its exemplarity, but, by this very act, it stands, so to speak, next to, or outside of, the class it is the paradigm of. A paradigm is both excluded (as paradigm) and included, insofar as its exclusion shows that it belongs to the class it constitutes, it is apart and a part: “It is thus impossible to clearly separate an example’s paradigmatic character—its standing for all cases—from the fact that it is one case among others” (Agamben, 2009 , 20).

The mirror image of the paradigm is indeed that of the exception. Footnote 22 It is the “inclusive exclusion” (ibid.), which, as exception, does not belong to the class it is the exception of, an exclusion that can only be exhibited within that very class (through inclusion). To the extent that an example is exceptional and an exception is exemplary the two concepts are correlative and only distinguishable in terms of emphasis. Agamben’s most notorious technical paradigm is that of the concentration camp (Agamben, 1998 , 20, 119–188; 2002 , passim): whereas Foucault’s prison-paradigm remains caught within the sphere where juridical sovereignty holds sway, the camp is for Agamben is the place where fact and law become indistinguishable; characteristic of our current epoch, he argues, is the state of exception, where the suspension of the norm (law) becomes the norm (fact).

In the fairly simple case of linguistics, a paradigm can stand for the rule of the class it stands for, but Agamben ( 2009 , 21) is interested in cases where “the impossibility of the rule” is implied. The clearest case of such impossibility is aesthetic judgement, for example, when I stand in front of a tree and utter the words: “ This is beauty!”.

The rule (if it is still possible to speak of rules here) is not a generality preexisting the singular cases and applicable to them, nor is it something resulting from the exhaustive enumeration of specific cases. Instead, it is the exhibition alone of the paradigmatic case that constitutes a rule, which as such cannot be applied or stated. (ibid.)

Grasping the knowability of paradigms “implies the total abandonment of the particular-general couple as the model of logical inference” (ibid.). Over and against classical either/or logic and its law of the excluded middle (it rains or it does not), the logic of the paradigm is one of neither/nor. Drawing upon the work of Aristotle and Melandri, Agamben defines the logic of the paradigm as one of analogy —defined by Hegel as identity in difference (in a sense, the mirror image of Wittgenstein’s family resemblance, a difference in identity). This is a logic that does not move from the universal to the particular (as in deduction), or from the particular to universal (as in induction), but rather from the singular to the singular ( 2009 , 19, 28). This logic, however, is no longer a logic in the strict sense, but a manner in which our seeing and understanding are engaged. As Wittgenstein ( 1953 , 165, emphasis in original) had already pointed out, there are.

[t]wo uses of the word “see”. The one: “What do you see there?”—“I see this ” (and then a description, a drawing, copy). The other: “I see a likeness between these two faces”—let the man I tell this to be seeing the faces as clearly as I do myself. The importance of this is the difference of category between the two ‘objects’ of sight.

In the former case, one files a phenomenon under a general category (a bird, a human, a mammal), whereas in the latter, two phenomena, perhaps seemingly disjunctive even, are placed in a relation of kinship to each other, which is nevertheless not a kinship in terms of genus and species, but something pertaining to the manner in which one wants to engage the seeing of one’s interlocutor.

Becker, writing in the context of social scientific research, develops the notion of reasoning from analogy , “treating one case you know well as a model that will explain what you don’t understand about another one, or at least point you in the right direction, and put you on the road to discover a general mechanism common both” ( 2014 , 65). Suppose, for example, that one is interested in the phenomenon of how power-relations within pop bands shift, and is quite familiar with the manner in which Mick Jagger ousted Brian Jones as the leader of the Rolling Stones (Jones’ drug use, “wrong friends,” apathy, waning compositional skills and the presence of an ambitious lieutenant waiting to take over). Then, when one tries to understand how power-relations within the Beatles shifted (from Lennon towards McCartney), the case of the Rolling Stones does not offer you full certainty, but a sharp eye regarding what to look for (drug use, apathy, etc.).

Moreover, reasoning by analogy may also shed light on phenomena that at face value do not belong to the same group. In a manner similar to Foucault, Becker argues that, in their mechanism and effects, schools can resemble prisons, and prisons can resemble schools (ibid., 49–50). To the extent that the analogy works, the grouping is made (here, for example, the analogy groups as common the functioning of state institutions, as opposed to the different functions of educating children, punishing offenders, etc.). Exhibiting analogical relations among paradigms and singularities is a manner in which new, homogenous groupings (or ensembles) can arise, without, however, trying to fit these singularities in new, rigidly, reified categories or frameworks (Meskin & Shapiro, 2015 ).

The importance of paradigms’ going from singularity to singularity lies in the fact that they never leave singularity, they never become (just) a part, or example, of a pre-constituted prior whole. Above all, paradigms are singularities that try to make intelligible a historical problematic context, exhibiting kinships between prima facie distinct phenomena. Alluding to Heidegger, Agamben even goes so far as to relate paradigms to being (Agamben, 2009 , 32; see also Campbell, 2011 , 45).

6 Between an Empirical Philosophy of Technology and Philosophical Thinking About Technology from Examples

In this essay we sketched a phenomenology of the manner in which examples can be used and its relevance for philosophical thinking about technology, or, more particularly, that the question concerning the debate about the transcendental vs. the empirical in “philosophy of technology” is to an extent a question concerning the epistemological and methodological status of examples. While the ‘empirical turn’ in philosophy of technology does not represent a monolithic block and is marked by internal opposing methodologies such as postphenomenology, critical theory, and more rigid science and technology studies, and is to a certain extent characterized by what it is against (transcendentalism) than that it shares one unifying methodological assumption , the kind of questions it raises are of a particular kind, namely the relating of philosophical abstraction to concrete case study.

We have tried to explore how the distinctions between abstract/concrete are more problematic than is usually presumed in philosophy of technology and that, at least in the case of paradigms such as the standard metre, panopticon, and concentration camp, can collapse; what this means for philosophy of technology is that distinctions between “abstract” classical theory and “concrete” contemporary theory are more problematic than they appear at face value, indeed, that their very problematization is a core issue to bring the inchoate field further. Nevertheless, our aim here is to set a research agenda that tackles philosophical issues concerning technology with a difference of emphasis than most empirical theory does without wishing to set the philosophical clock back to Heideggerianism. What we believe is that what this affords is twofold: the notion of paradigm allows use to look for and recognize the source that lies at the basis of our technological life-world. Put differently: contemporary philosophy of technology has focused much on epoch-defining technologies such as smartphones or medical devices, but to a lesser extent on the paradigms that form the basis for information technology as such (e.g., a Turing Machine, in a sense the standard metre of computationalism), or the Arabidopsis plant in biology. But also, a shift in paradigms (from the standard metre to lightspeed) is another underdeveloped topic philosophy of technology can tackle in the future. Second, the related notion of analogy raises questions as to how we can recognize similarities and symmetries, perhaps come to novel categorizations, and map new relations between distinct fields of technological development (e.g. agricultural technology and IT) without reducing them to abstract concepts such as enframing.

During a certain passage in Being and Time , Heidegger cryptically remarks that it is not a matter of avoiding the hermeneutic circle, but of entering it in the right manner. In The Question Concerning Technology , he laments how modern technology has lost its poetic origins. Taking these together, might we not wonder whether today’s task in philosophical thinking about technology is to retrieve the poetics of the example?

Mitcham ( 1994 ) makes a useful distinction between the “humanities” philosophy of technology, focused on the “external” relations that technology entertains with society and subjectivity, and “engineering” philosophy, which is concerned with the “internal” relations of technology as such; roughly, this difference coincides with the continental/analytic divide in philosophy. Accordingly, there have been two empirical turns in philosophy of technology at both sides of the specter, although in this article the weight lies on the continental side, without in any downplaying the insight and worth of analytical work. For a good and more complete overview than presented here see Lemmens and Hui ( 2021 ).

Constructivism comes in many guises. Bijker et al. ( 1987 ), for example, advocate a social constructivism, in which social agents shape technology. Latour ( 2005 ) opts to drop the epithet and defends constructivism plain and simple, with no difference in kind between human and non-human actors. The critical constructivism endorsed by Feenberg ( 1999 ) is based on instrumentalization theory , in which an analytical difference exists between the functionality of technology and its social meaning. The common denominator in these approaches lies in the belief that technological development and design— pace whig theory—do not follow a linear, teleological path, but emerge out of competing, often mutually exclusive, options. Put differently: trivially, of course, technology is “man-made,” but naive commonsense might uphold the belief that there is a strict separation between socio-logic and techno-logic.

Cressman ( 2014 ) observes that “classical” is used as code for “obsolete”; while hardly agreeing that the questions raised by Heidegger or Marcuse are obsolete, we may recognize that any classification of intellectual epochs implies a degree of rhetorical exaggeration (within this framework, for example, where would one place the work of Simondon, who “generationally” certainly belongs to the classical category yet can hardly be accused of not paying attention to the empirical?).

Earlier versions of this article gravitated towards seeing the distinction as “real”. We owe this oversight to one of the anonymous reviewers of this article.

The question as to whether philosophy still has a proper object of study is a broader problematic within academic philosophy. One answer is: No, philosophy of language is fundamental linguistics, political philosophy abstract sociology, continental metaphysics literary sciences, and logic a branch of computer science, and precise disciplinary categorizations are a matter of administration. Another is the Heideggerian stance in which science is better at explaining reality and philosophy has being as its proper “object”. In this broader philosophical context, we argue that perhaps this is a false dilemma.

Masterman ( 1970 ) identifies 22 distinct meanings in which Kuhn uses the word.

Note that in his lectures Heidegger ( 1982 , 27–76) sees the ontological difference not as presaged in Kant’s distinction between the transcendental and the empirical but in Kant’s dictum that being is not a real predicate (i.e., determination) of a being; in Being and Time , moreover, Heidegger wants to rob theoretical, disinterested contemplation, implied in empiricism, of its privilege in favor of the primacy of practice and lived, engaged experience; and the concept of phenomenology does not equate the given with the empirical what but with the phenomenological how (Heidegger, 1962 , 50).

In Being and Time Heidegger differentiates between a pre-discursive hermeneutic level of understanding and an apophantic discursive level. This differentiation is less clear in in his later work.

Cf. Heidegger ( 1962 , 256–273; (1993, 138–212). A-letheia as un-concealment is the privation, but not the negation, of concealment, wherein the concealed is momentarily unconcealed. Wrathall ( 1999 ) denies that Heidegger ever regarded this conception of truth to be applicable to propositional truth, as argued for by Tugendhat ( 1992 ) in his influential interpretation, and that Heidegger’s conception of propositional truth is fairly conventional to the extent that Heidegger regards correspondence as a benign but obfuscating metaphor, if only for the fact that correspondence implies a subject whose mental contents are in agreement with an object out there.

Feenberg ( 2000 ) responds to Thomson’s ( 2000 ) critique of this fragment that enframing is not a genus by arguing that enframing is akin to Hegel’s notion of a concrete universal, universal categories which only exist in their enactments, such as language in speech, or culture in practices. In this way Enframing essences itself in technologies, e.g., how the hydraulic plant changes the meaning of the river compared to Hölderlin’s poem. But for Feenberg this signifies that “[an] impoverished general theory is here reflected in an impoverished understanding of particulars” (Feenberg, 2000 , 448). It is beyond the scope of this article to settle these matters; we position Heidegger as a thinker of being and not of paradigms.

While we position Heidegger as a thinker adverse to paradigms, his views on science approximate Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis: “[I]t makes no sense whatsoever to suppose that that modern science is more exact than that of antiquity. Neither can we say that the Galilean doctrine of freely falling bodies is true and that Aristotle’s teaching, that light bodies strive upward, is false; for the Greek understanding of the essence of body and place and the relation between the two rests upon a different interpretation of beings and hence conditions different kinds of seeing and questioning of natural events” (Heidegger, 1977 , 117).

Derrida ( 1982 , 209) points out that the word sensible is ambiguous: it refers not only to the senses of empirical experience, but also to sense as in meaningful. We return to this ambiguity shortly.

The most famous objection to Wittgenstein’s position is that of Kripke ( 1980 , 54–57), who argues that we can say whether the meter rule is one meter or not. Kripke’s position is a sophisticated form of Platonism in that it regards names as “rigid designators,” as pointing to a specific (in this case immaterial) object. The meter rule thus functions as preliminarily saying that the stick-at-this-temperature refers to the Platonic entity “one meter long”, which might be proven false in the future. The current definition of the meter is based on the distance traveled by light in 1/299 792 458 of a second, and could thus be argued to approximate a meter better. For a defense of Wittgenstein’s position, see Luckhardt ( 1977 ), who argues that Wittgenstein’s target here is Platonism tout court .

For example: “Now one can ostensively define a proper name, the name of a colour, the name of a material, a numeral, the name of a point of the compass and so on. The definition of the number two, “That is called ‘two’”—pointing to two nuts—is perfectly exact.—But how can two be defined like that? The person one gives the definition to doesn’t know what one wants to call “two”; he will suppose that “two” is the name given to this group of nuts!— He may suppose this; but perhaps he does not. He might make the opposite mistake; when I want to assign a name to this group of nuts, he might understand it as a numeral. And he might equally well take the name of a person, of which I give an ostensive definition, as that of a colour, of a race, or even point of the compass. That is to say: an ostensive definition can be variously interpreted in every case. (…) Any definition may be misunderstood” (Wittgenstein, 1953 , 11–12, emphasis in original).

“Episteme” refers to Foucault’s short-lived notion in The Order of Things and The Archaeology of Knowledge that signifies the historical a priori in the sciences of natural life, labor, and language and is defined as follows: “By episteme , we mean, in fact, the total set of relations that unite, at a given period, the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures, sciences, and possibly formalized systems (…); it is the totality of relations that can be discovered, for a given period, between the sciences when one analyses them at the level of discursive regularities” (Foucault, 1989a , 211).

Han ( 2002 ) argues that throughout his career Foucault would struggle to find the correct terms suitable for his blend of Nietzscheism and Kantianism, always keen to avoid anything such as a Husserlian phenomenological ego as the grounds for the transcendental, but that his endeavors remained aporetic in the end. Her interpretation is perhaps a more exegetically loyal reading of Foucault’s method than that of Agamben we discuss in the next section, but our context is not that of Foucault studies, but that of philosophy of technology.

The full title of Bentham’s book, indeed, is Panopticon, or the Inspection House: containing the idea of a new principle of construction applicable to any sort of establishment, in which persons of any description are to be kept under inspection; and in particular to Penitentiary Houses, Prisons, Houses of Industry, Work-houses, Poor-houses, manufactories, hospitals, mad-houses, and schools: with a Plan of Management adapted to the principle: in a series of letters, written in the year 1787, from Chrecheff in White Russia, to a friend in England (Bentham, 1995 , 29).

Agamben uses “paradigm” and “example” interchangeably: colloquially, one is inclined to say that all paradigms are example, but not all examples are paradigms. In this section we follow Agamben’s use, and regard it mostly as a terminological issue.

For a good overview of Agamben’s controversial use of Foucauldian concepts, see Snoek ( 2010 ).

One can argue that positivism shares this critique but doesn’t take it to its extreme, since it still imposes the form on the world that it consists of facts .

The deactivation of empirical givenness also animates Husserl’s ( 2014 ) phenomenology in the form of the phenomenological reduction, which “brackets” the empirical existence of intentional objects so as to attain the proper phenomena of intentional consciousness.

Again, there is a similarity with Kuhn: an anomaly is an exceptional case that normal science cannot account for.

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This research was funded by the Science for Global Development programmes, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO-WOTRO) through its integrated project titled Open source and commons in India and the Netherlands: New perspectives for development . Further thanks to Andy Hilton, Joost Jongerden, and five anonymous reviewers for suggesting improvements.

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Bantwal Rao, M. The Use of Examples in Philosophy of Technology. Found Sci 27 , 1421–1443 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-021-09819-9

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1 The Method of Cases

• Published: August 2017
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Many areas of philosophy rely on the method of cases: Philosophers consider actual or hypothetical situations (which cases or thought experiments describe) in order to determine what facts hold in these situations and to bring them to bear on philosophical controversies. Surprisingly, however, the characterization of the method of cases is controversial. Chapter 1 defends a particular characterization of the method of cases and identifies some of the roles it plays in contemporary philosophy. Alternative characterizations, which appeal to notions such as metaphysical or epistemological analyticity, conceptual competence, or intuition, are rejected. Only a minimalist characterization, according to which cases elicit everyday judgments, is philosophically adequate—it does not rely on empty notions or on notions useless to characterize the method of cases—and descriptively adequate—it captures how philosophers really use cases.

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Research Philosophy & Paradigms

Positivism, Interpretivism & Pragmatism, Explained Simply

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Reviewer: Eunice Rautenbach (DTech) | June 2023

Research philosophy is one of those things that students tend to either gloss over or become utterly confused by when undertaking formal academic research for the first time. And understandably so – it’s all rather fluffy and conceptual. However, understanding the philosophical underpinnings of your research is genuinely important as it directly impacts how you develop your research methodology.

In this post, we’ll explain what research philosophy is , what the main research paradigms  are and how these play out in the real world, using loads of practical examples . To keep this all as digestible as possible, we are admittedly going to simplify things somewhat and we’re not going to dive into the finer details such as ontology, epistemology and axiology (we’ll save those brain benders for another post!). Nevertheless, this post should set you up with a solid foundational understanding of what research philosophy and research paradigms are, and what they mean for your project.

Overview: Research Philosophy

• What is a research philosophy or paradigm ?
• Positivism 101
• Interpretivism 101
• Pragmatism 101
• Choosing your research philosophy

What is a research philosophy or paradigm?

Research philosophy and research paradigm are terms that tend to be used pretty loosely, even interchangeably. Broadly speaking, they both refer to the set of beliefs, assumptions, and principles that underlie the way you approach your study (whether that’s a dissertation, thesis or any other sort of academic research project).

For example, one philosophical assumption could be that there is an external reality that exists independent of our perceptions (i.e., an objective reality), whereas an alternative assumption could be that reality is constructed by the observer (i.e., a subjective reality). Naturally, these assumptions have quite an impact on how you approach your study (more on this later…).

The research philosophy and research paradigm also encapsulate the nature of the knowledge that you seek to obtain by undertaking your study. In other words, your philosophy reflects what sort of knowledge and insight you believe you can realistically gain by undertaking your research project. For example, you might expect to find a concrete, absolute type of answer to your research question , or you might anticipate that things will turn out to be more nuanced and less directly calculable and measurable . Put another way, it’s about whether you expect “hard”, clean answers or softer, more opaque ones.

So, what’s the difference between research philosophy and paradigm?

Well, it depends on who you ask. Different textbooks will present slightly different definitions, with some saying that philosophy is about the researcher themselves while the paradigm is about the approach to the study . Others will use the two terms interchangeably. And others will say that the research philosophy is the top-level category and paradigms are the pre-packaged combinations of philosophical assumptions and expectations.

To keep things simple in this video, we’ll avoid getting tangled up in the terminology and rather focus on the shared focus of both these terms – that is that they both describe (or at least involve) the set of beliefs, assumptions, and principles that underlie the way you approach your study .

Importantly, your research philosophy and/or paradigm form the foundation of your study . More specifically, they will have a direct influence on your research methodology , including your research design , the data collection and analysis techniques you adopt, and of course, how you interpret your results. So, it’s important to understand the philosophy that underlies your research to ensure that the rest of your methodological decisions are well-aligned .

So, what are the options?

We’ll be straight with you – research philosophy is a rabbit hole (as with anything philosophy-related) and, as a result, there are many different approaches (or paradigms) you can take, each with its own perspective on the nature of reality and knowledge . To keep things simple though, we’ll focus on the “big three”, namely positivism , interpretivism and pragmatism . Understanding these three is a solid starting point and, in many cases, will be all you need.

Paradigm 1: Positivism

When you think positivism, think hard sciences – physics, biology, astronomy, etc. Simply put, positivism is rooted in the belief that knowledge can be obtained through objective observations and measurements . In other words, the positivist philosophy assumes that answers can be found by carefully measuring and analysing data, particularly numerical data .

As a research paradigm, positivism typically manifests in methodologies that make use of quantitative data , and oftentimes (but not always) adopt experimental or quasi-experimental research designs. Quite often, the focus is on causal relationships – in other words, understanding which variables affect other variables, in what way and to what extent. As a result, studies with a positivist research philosophy typically aim for objectivity, generalisability and replicability of findings.

Let’s look at an example of positivism to make things a little more tangible.

Assume you wanted to investigate the relationship between a particular dietary supplement and weight loss. In this case, you could design a randomised controlled trial (RCT) where you assign participants to either a control group (who do not receive the supplement) or an intervention group (who do receive the supplement). With this design in place, you could measure each participant’s weight before and after the study and then use various quantitative analysis methods to assess whether there’s a statistically significant difference in weight loss between the two groups. By doing so, you could infer a causal relationship between the dietary supplement and weight loss, based on objective measurements and rigorous experimental design.

As you can see in this example, the underlying assumptions and beliefs revolve around the viewpoint that knowledge and insight can be obtained through carefully controlling the environment, manipulating variables and analysing the resulting numerical data . Therefore, this sort of study would adopt a positivistic research philosophy. This is quite common for studies within the hard sciences – so much so that research philosophy is often just assumed to be positivistic and there’s no discussion of it within the methodology section of a dissertation or thesis.

Paradigm 2: Interpretivism

 If you can imagine a spectrum of research paradigms, interpretivism would sit more or less on the opposite side of the spectrum from positivism. Essentially, interpretivism takes the position that reality is socially constructed . In other words, that reality is subjective , and is constructed by the observer through their experience of it , rather than being independent of the observer (which, if you recall, is what positivism assumes).

The interpretivist paradigm typically underlies studies where the research aims involve attempting to understand the meanings and interpretations that people assign to their experiences. An interpretivistic philosophy also typically manifests in the adoption of a qualitative methodology , relying on data collection methods such as interviews , observations , and textual analysis . These types of studies commonly explore complex social phenomena and individual perspectives, which are naturally more subjective and nuanced.

Let’s look at an example of the interpretivist approach in action:

Assume that you’re interested in understanding the experiences of individuals suffering from chronic pain. In this case, you might conduct in-depth interviews with a group of participants and ask open-ended questions about their pain, its impact on their lives, coping strategies, and their overall experience and perceptions of living with pain. You would then transcribe those interviews and analyse the transcripts, using thematic analysis to identify recurring themes and patterns. Based on that analysis, you’d be able to better understand the experiences of these individuals, thereby satisfying your original research aim.

As you can see in this example, the underlying assumptions and beliefs revolve around the viewpoint that insight can be obtained through engaging in conversation with and exploring the subjective experiences of people (as opposed to collecting numerical data and trying to measure and calculate it). Therefore, this sort of study would adopt an interpretivistic research philosophy. Ultimately, if you’re looking to understand people’s lived experiences , you have to operate on the assumption that knowledge can be generated by exploring people’s viewpoints, as subjective as they may be.

Paradigm 3: Pragmatism

Now that we’ve looked at the two opposing ends of the research philosophy spectrum – positivism and interpretivism, you can probably see that both of the positions have their merits , and that they both function as tools for different jobs . More specifically, they lend themselves to different types of research aims, objectives and research questions . But what happens when your study doesn’t fall into a clear-cut category and involves exploring both “hard” and “soft” phenomena? Enter pragmatism…

As the name suggests, pragmatism takes a more practical and flexible approach, focusing on the usefulness and applicability of research findings , rather than an all-or-nothing, mutually exclusive philosophical position. This allows you, as the researcher, to explore research aims that cross philosophical boundaries, using different perspectives for different aspects of the study .

With a pragmatic research paradigm, both quantitative and qualitative methods can play a part, depending on the research questions and the context of the study. This often manifests in studies that adopt a mixed-method approach , utilising a combination of different data types and analysis methods. Ultimately, the pragmatist adopts a problem-solving mindset , seeking practical ways to achieve diverse research aims.

Let’s look at an example of pragmatism in action:

Imagine that you want to investigate the effectiveness of a new teaching method in improving student learning outcomes. In this case, you might adopt a mixed-methods approach, which makes use of both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis techniques. One part of your project could involve comparing standardised test results from an intervention group (students that received the new teaching method) and a control group (students that received the traditional teaching method). Additionally, you might conduct in-person interviews with a smaller group of students from both groups, to gather qualitative data on their perceptions and preferences regarding the respective teaching methods.

As you can see in this example, the pragmatist’s approach can incorporate both quantitative and qualitative data . This allows the researcher to develop a more holistic, comprehensive understanding of the teaching method’s efficacy and practical implications, with a synthesis of both types of data . Naturally, this type of insight is incredibly valuable in this case, as it’s essential to understand not just the impact of the teaching method on test results, but also on the students themselves!

Wrapping Up: Philosophies & Paradigms

Now that we’ve unpacked the “big three” research philosophies or paradigms – positivism, interpretivism and pragmatism, hopefully, you can see that research philosophy underlies all of the methodological decisions you’ll make in your study. In many ways, it’s less a case of you choosing your research philosophy and more a case of it choosing you (or at least, being revealed to you), based on the nature of your research aims and research questions .

• Research philosophies and paradigms encapsulate the set of beliefs, assumptions, and principles that guide the way you, as the researcher, approach your study and develop your methodology.
• Positivism is rooted in the belief that reality is independent of the observer, and consequently, that knowledge can be obtained through objective observations and measurements.
• Interpretivism takes the (opposing) position that reality is subjectively constructed by the observer through their experience of it, rather than being an independent thing.
• Pragmatism attempts to find a middle ground, focusing on the usefulness and applicability of research findings, rather than an all-or-nothing, mutually exclusive philosophical position.

If you’d like to learn more about research philosophy, research paradigms and research methodology more generally, be sure to check out the rest of the Grad Coach blog . Alternatively, if you’d like hands-on help with your research, consider our private coaching service , where we guide you through each stage of the research journey, step by step.

Psst… there’s more (for free)

This post is part of our dissertation mini-course, which covers everything you need to get started with your dissertation, thesis or research project. 

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13 Comments

was very useful for me, I had no idea what a philosophy is, and what type of philosophy of my study. thank you

Thanks for this explanation, is so good for me

You contributed much to my master thesis development and I wish to have again your support for PhD program through research.

the way of you explanation very good keep it up/continuous just like this

Very precise stuff. It has been of great use to me. It has greatly helped me to sharpen my PhD research project!

Very clear and very helpful explanation above. I have clearly understand the explanation.

Very clear and useful. Thanks

Thanks so much for your insightful explanations of the research philosophies that confuse me

I would like to thank Grad Coach TV or Youtube organizers and presenters. Since then, I have been able to learn a lot by finding very informative posts from them.

thank you so much for this valuable and explicit explanation,cheers

Hey, at last i have gained insight on which philosophy to use as i had little understanding on their applicability to my current research. Thanks

Tremendously useful

thank you and God bless you. This was very helpful, I had no understanding before this.

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Behaviourism

How would you solve these behaviour issues without using behaviourist techniques?      

Room Profile

Non-traditional classroom with no desks and a high-risk environment with very expensive equipment and supplies.

Class Profile

• Class of 30 grade 9 students consisting of 6 girls and 24 boys.
• Because it’s a pandemic year, students don’t get their choice of electives so only 3 students actually chose this class as their elective
• 16 designations total
• 6 IEPs - ranging from needing written instructions to having to keep them at your side and a close eye on them for the safety of the student and those in the classroom
• No EA or student aide help
• 2.5 hour class every day for 10 weeks

Description of Behaviours

Every other word uttered by students is a swear and they are incredibly disrespectful toward themselves, each other, the teacher, and the physical environment. One student is so keen on being in the room that they won’t let the teacher talk without interrupting with questions. Three other students keep talking to their neighbours and distracting them regardless of how many times the teacher waits for silence (which ends up about 25 minutes the first time on the first day). Two students refuse to put their phones away claiming they can be on them because of their IEPs; however, they cannot. One student won’t sit down and is physically throwing things around the classroom. This student’s IEP specifies that the teacher has to make sure they are seated very close to them and not to let the student “get away” with anything.

The teacher works on respectful language and discusses code switching, specifically how the classroom has different norms and behavioural expectations than outside of school and students must “switch” to adhere to these expectations when in the classroom. Emails are sent home about language use. The teacher also sits the class down for a minimum of 30 minutes each day to discuss appropriate behaviour and language in class (this continues for the first three weeks of the quarter as behaviour does not change enough to do any curriculum work). The teacher has the class come up with the following list of disciplinary measures increasing in severity:

• 1st offense: Verbal warning
• 2nd offense: Verbal warning and student moved from current location
• 3rd offense: Student sent outside of classroom
• 4th offense: Student sent outside and email home
• 5th offense: Student sent to office and email home
• 6th offense: Student removed from class      

The space is split into two parts, the classroom area and performance area. Students are not to use the performance area due to the pandemic and cleaning load of the janitors. The teacher puts tape lines on the carpet to distinguish the classroom space, but these are ignored. Emails are sent home detailing necessary classroom boundaries for the health and safety of students in the space. Chairs are put up above the lines with signs on them noting the boundaries, but these are also ignored. Emails are again sent home and administration is notified. Despite all these efforts, the behaviour persists.          .

Second week

The principal comes in to talk to the class. The behaviour continues, but the teacher notes that the use of language has gotten better.

The teacher pulls five senior students out of their classes for one day and divides the class into separate, carefully curated, groups. The teacher also arranges for a peer-tutor to come work with one student, and another is sent to the support room. Two other students are sent to the construction shop to work with the shop teacher. Everyone is successful for one hour. However, the behaviour continues when everyone is back in the classroom together. The teacher removes the students from the classroom and goes into library space with the librarian and vice principal present.

Fourth week

The Library is booked this week so the class is moved primarily outside, as it is safer to be outside during the pandemic anyway. Little to no actual classwork has happened so far.

Traditional classroom with table groups, reading area, teacher desk, and three computer stations

• Class of 30 grade 6 students consisting of 10 girls and 20 boys
• 10 designations total
• 6 IEPs - ranging from needing written instructions to having to keep them at your side and a close eye on them for the safety of the student and others in the classroom

Students exhibit a wide array of disruptive behaviours. The majority of the class is running around, yelling at each other, using disrespectful language or derogatory terms to address one another, and throwing papers and materials across the room. When the teacher tries to address the students, only a handful pay attention and listen for instructions. When the teacher asks for silence, some of the students keep talking to each other, while others keep interrupting the teacher and moving around the classroom. One student with a designation refuses to stop playing games on his phone, claiming he can use it because of his IEP accommodations; however, this student’s IEP specifies that the student should be seated very close to the teacher and to not let him “get away with anything.” Despite the teacher’s efforts, the majority of students won't remain silent or still, mocking the teacher whenever they speak. It takes the teacher 25 minutes to get the students' attention and for them to be relatively quiet. The lesson is not effective since most students tend to be distracted and off-task.

The teacher works on respectful language and discusses code switching, specifically how the classroom has different norms and behavioural expectations than outside of school and students must “switch” to adhere to these expectations when in the classroom. Emails are sent home about language use and respectful behaviour. The teacher also sits the class down for a minimum of 20 minutes each day to discuss appropriate behaviour and language in class (this continues for the first three weeks of the quarter as behaviour does not change enough to do any curriculum work). The teacher has the class come up with the following list of disciplinary measures increasing in severity:

Students are not to use the computers due to the pandemic and cleaning load of the janitors. The teacher puts tape lines on the carpet to distinguish the classroom space, but these are ignored. Emails are sent home detailing necessary classroom boundaries for the health and safety of students in the space. Chairs are put up above the lines with signs on them noting the boundaries, but these are also ignored. Emails are again sent home and administration is notified. Despite all these efforts, the behaviour persists.

The teacher pulls five students out of their classes for one day and divides the class into separate, carefully curated, groups. The teacher also arranges for a peer-tutor to come work with one student, and another is sent to the support room. Two other students are sent to the library to work with the librarian. Everyone is successful for one hour. However, the behaviour continues when everyone is back in the classroom together.

The teacher decides to move the class outside as it is safer to be outside during the pandemic anyway. Little to no actual classwork has happened so far.

Behaviourism on Station 12?

Congratulations Earthling!

As one of Earth’s top teacher candidates, you have been selected to take a tour of Station 12, one of the most advanced elementary schools on Mars! As your friendly Martian tour guide, I’ll be showing you how our education system has advanced to be one of the best in the galaxy! In honesty, our progress is all thanks to you, and your fellow Earth-dwellers. You see, about 50 years ago, we received a time capsule from Earth containing tons of interesting information, sounds, and images! In addition to learning about Justin Bieber, apparently one of Earth’s greatest poets, we learned all about Behaviorism and the perils of dehumanizing our young learners through rewards and punishments. Anyways, that’s enough jibber-jabber, where are my Martian-manners! Let’s go check out Station 12 and you can see for yourself!

As you enter Station 12, you immediately notice the absence of any shiny trophy cases that commonly adorn the lobbies of schools on Earth. You think to yourself: “I guess Martians truly don’t offer rewards for certain behaviours, at least in terms of athletics.” Noticing your curiosity, your friendly Martian turns to you and says, “We don’t use any objective forms of rewards or punishments in our classrooms! We understand that if a student receives a reward or punishment for their behaviour, they may not develop intrinsic motivation for learning.”

As you continue to walk through the hallways of Station 12, you get glimpses of different classroom environments and teaching practices. Interestingly, you don’t notice any signs of grades, stars, or points systems being used in the classrooms. On the surface, the students also seem to be completely engaged and intrinsically motivated.

As you round the next corner, your tour guide invites you into a classroom where students are just about to return from recess and continue working on their independent research projects. As the students enter the classroom on time, the teacher is giving them a big, gleaming smile. After the students are settled, you begin walking around the classroom and learning about their projects. You discover that one student is learning about Earth and another about the gravity on the Moon. The students are at different stages of their projects and some are still deciding on their topics. You overhear one student inform the teacher that they have decided to study the constellations closest to Mars. As an avid astronomer, the teacher excitedly says, “I think that is a wonderful choice!” Just then, a student enters the classroom 10 minutes late from recess. The teacher lets out a quick “hmm” and shows the slightest suggestion of a frown. Your Martian tour guide turns to you and says, “Did you see that!? No detention for arriving late to the classroom!” Before you can respond, you notice another student beginning to get distracted from their work. You watch as the teacher walks over to a student sitting beside them and, with a warm smile, says, “Great job! I’m so happy you are working hard today and staying focused. I am so proud!” Interestingly, you notice the distracted student begin working again. Another student approaches the teacher and says, “I’ve decided to change my topic to the gravitational pull of the Moon!” Hearing this, the teacher says, “That's a clever idea!” and offers them a quick wink and a warm smile as the student bounces away, seemingly happy with the interaction. Just as you’re about to leave the classroom, you watch as another student explains to the teacher that they have decided to research Emily Carr and the emotions her paintings surface in both humans and Martians. Just as you exit the classroom, you watch the teacher scrunch their noise ever so slightly and say, “Oh. Okay. That’s a good choice,” before immediately moving their attention to another student.

As you leave the school, your Martian tour guide turns to you and says, “So!? What do you think? Pretty impressive, eh? We learned from the time capsule and don’t use any forms of rewards or punishments!” Before you can respond, you are awoken by one of your friends. You’re in EPSE 308 and it’s your turn to discuss your perspectives on Behaviourism. Good luck, Earth-dweller!

Possible Discussion Questions

• In the classrooms on Station 12, you were informed that there were no objective forms of rewards or punishments for students' behaviour. Did you notice any subtle (maybe even unconscious) forms of behaviourism?
• As a teacher candidate, you may be motivated to cultivate a classroom environment that fits your needs and values as a teacher. In this case study, the teacher did this by encouraging students to attend class on time, stay engaged in their work, and pick topics that they themselves deemed worthy. Are these subtle forms of behaviourism more or less harmful, compared to more tangible and objective rewards and punishments? Explain your reasoning.
• As a future teacher, how might you become more aware of your subconscious values and goals for your classroom? How will you manage them in your classroom?
• What do you see as the pros and cons of behaviourism?

Dear Colleague

I can’t imagine you have an answer to this question, but you seem to have been thinking a lot about how to motivate your students and when it comes to this, I’m at a total loss! I thought I had it all figured out, but no – my plan to motivate my students has totally backfired. Help!

I’m teaching seventh grade language arts for the first time this year, and one goal of mine going into this term was to encourage my students to become independent readers. Well, lucky for me, the school librarian, Ms. Daniels, had a program set up this year to do just that! You see, there’s a new book coming out at the end of the year – it’s the latest in a series of young adult novels that’s all the rage right now. Vampires, wizards, a dystopian world – this series has got it all. Anyway, the school librarian KNOWS that this book will be a hot commodity the moment it’s released. When the last in the series came out, she had about fifty holds on it the second she entered it into the library catalogue!

Ms. Daniels devised a system to encourage independent reading. It’s simple: each time a student reads a book from the library – any book – they fill out a worksheet to reflect on it and show they’ve read it. It's just a few questions, asking for a brief plot summary, something they liked about the book, something it made them think about – things like that. Anyway, each time a student hands in a worksheet on a book they’ve read, they get a point, or points, depending on the length of the book. You get one point if you read a book that’s at least 100 pages, two if you read a book that’s at least 200 pages, three if it’s more than 300 pages – you get the idea. The student in the school who has the most points at the end of the year wins a copy of that new young adult novel that everyone wants. It’s bound to fly off the shelves and be sold out for weeks, so they’ll be one of the first to get it!

Well, since I’m teaching language arts this year, I thought I’d supplement Ms. Daniels' competition with some extra motivation – to really get my students wanting to read. After all, not every student in my class is a fan of this series. So, I told my class that for every reading worksheet they hand in to the librarian, they'll also get a bonus mark they can add to their final assignment for the year. It would never change their grade significantly, but hopefully just enough to get them reading. Simple, right?

It all seemed to be going smoothly at first. In the beginning, Bilal was the student who was gaining the most points. He's a high achiever and has always been an avid reader, so that wasn't surprising. But then I had some unexpected runner-ups. A few students who were otherwise struggling in my class, Andy and Sobiga, started gaining more points, and fast! They were giving Bilal a run for his money.

At first, I was thrilled! But that all changed on Friday afternoon. Bilal and Andy had been close friends all term, but on Friday during class, they seemed to have a falling out. Then Bilal lingered after the bell to talk to me. Bilal declared: "Andy is cheating!" When I asked him what he meant, he explained: "He doesn't actually READ any books! He just looks at summaries online to fill out those worksheets!"

To add to my stress, I heard the next day that students in the neighbouring seventh grade class, taught by Mr. Chu, were complaining that my students had an unfair advantage over them because of the bonus marks I had promised. Mr. Chu has even gotten several calls from parents who felt that my students have an advantage over theirs.

As you can see, my plan to encourage reading has gone totally awry! What should I do now? And, most importantly, how can I motivate my students to read?

Ms. Mahmoud

Potential Reflection Questions

1. Identify and provide examples of the types of behaviourism used in the case study (positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, negative punishment).

2. Going beyond the events described in this scenario, what are possible pros and cons of this teacher’s choice to establish a reward system to encourage reading?

3. What suggestions would have for this teacher and the librarian to encourage reading without relying on behaviourist strategies?

4. Assuming Bilal's allegations about Andy are true, how might you deal with this situation? What might be contributing to Andy's behaviour? How could this issue have been prevented?

Additional resources

• https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/reading-incentives/
• https://www.thisamericanlife.org/713/made-to-be-broken/act-two-11

When re-using this resource, please attribute as follows:

This UBC EPSE 308 Behaviourism Open Case Study was developed by Benjamin Dantzer, Lee Iskander, and Sharmilla Miller and it is licensed under a under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Post Image: Educators .co.uk, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons