Verstehen Naturalized
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2019
Keywords
Weber, Simmel, Verstehen, understanding, mirror neurons, Edith Stein, naturalism, Barsalou
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1177/0048393119847102
Abstract
Verstehen, understanding another human being through some form of empathy, is a natural process with the involvement, probably in a complex way, of the brain. There is a temptation to describe Verstehen in a way that mystifies it, or to collapse it into more general considerations about mind reading. The social science tradition, however, points in a different direction. Both Max Weber and Georg Simmel, and later Edith Stein, commenting as a phenomenologist on the same issues in the human sciences, provide accounts which lend themselves more directly to naturalization. Their issues involve navigating the social world through such things as typifications, heuristics, and the recognition of patterns in social situations. It is suggested that these recognitions, studied by Lawrence W. Barsalou, provide a naturalized form of understanding sufficient for the explanatory purposes of social science.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, v. 49, issue 4, p. 243-264
Scholar Commons Citation
Turner, Stephen, "Verstehen Naturalized" (2019). Philosophy Faculty Publications. 328.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/phi_facpub/328
