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Further Reflections on the âPostmodern Turnâ in the Social Sciences: A Reply to William Outhwaite
I am immensely grateful to William Outhwaite for commenting on my book The âPostmodern Turnâ in the Social Sciences (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). I should stress at the outset that I agree with most of the points he makes in his commentary, which I find very insightful, thought-provoking, and constructive. Hence, any reader expecting to be entertained by a cockfight between book author and book reviewer will be disappointed. Let me take this opportunity to reflect on some of the main issues raised in Outhwaiteâs inspiring review
Maternal smoking during pregnancy and offspring overweight : is there a doseâresponse relationship? An individual patient data meta-analysis
We want to thank the funders of the individual studies: the UK Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust (Grant ref: 102215/2/13/2) and the University of Bristol, the Danish National Research Foundation, Pharmacy Foundation, the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, the Augustinus Foundation, and the Health Foundation, the US NICHD (contracts no. 1-HD-4-2803 and no. 1-HD-1-3127, R01 HD HD034568), the NHMRC, the CNPq (Portuguese acronym for the National Research Councilâgrant 523474/96-2) and FAPESP (Portuguese acronym for the SĂŁo Paulo State Research Councilâgrant 00/0908-7). We would like to thank the participating families of all studies for the use of data. For the ASPAC study, we want to thank the midwives for their help in recruiting families, and the whole ALSPAC team, which includes interviewers, computer and laboratory technicians, clerical workers, research scientists, volunteers, managers, receptionists, and nurses. This work was supported by the Deutschen Forschungsgesellschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG) [KR 1926/9-1, KU1443/4-1]. Dr. Gilmanâs contribution was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.Peer reviewedPostprin
Sharing the Background
In regard to the explanation of actions that are governed by institutional rules, John R. Searle introduces the notion of a mental âbackgroundâ that is supposed to explain how persons can acquire the capacity of following such rules. I argue that Searleâs internalism about the mind and the resulting poverty of his conception of the background keep him from putting forward a convincing explanation of the normative features of institutional action. Drawing on competing conceptions of the background of Heidegger and Wittgenstein, I propose to revise Searleâs conception. The background of institutional agency can only provide a convincing explanation if it includes the context of actions and intersubjective structures of a shared life-world. I suggest that a further development of this idea would lead to the identification of the background with a web of social recognition