Month: April 2019

Written by Uskali Mäki

The story of Finnish philosophy of science is often told in terms of sequential generations, expanding from individuals to groups. There was Eino Kaila, logical empiricist, followed by Georg Henrik von Wright and his student Jaakko Hintikka, followed by the latter’s students such as Ilkka Niiniluoto, Raimo Tuomela, and Risto Hilpinen. The generic style of research has been markedly analytic, but the modes of analysis have not been uniform, and the themes addressed have evolved in the course of the past decades. (For a story of Finnish philosophy of science, see e.g. Niiniluoto EPSA Newsletter 2013.)

Among other lines of inquiry, philosophy of the social sciences, broadly conceived, has recently become a major field of group activity, especially at the University of Helsinki. In addition to his many other contributions, G.H. von Wright’s Explanation and Understanding (1971), an exercise in analytic hermeneutics, was an important contribution in its time, even though its major idea – drawing the contrast between natural and social sciences in terms of causal explanation vs practical reasoning — is now largely abandoned, and it has not given rise to an enduring tradition. Raimo Tuomela, professor of philosophy and methodology of social sciences since 1971, has had a long career in developing accounts of collective intentionality and social ontology more generally, becoming one of the leading experts in this area. Tuomela served as an Academy Professor in 1995-2000, which involved resources for him to put together a research group and thereby to coordinate more extensive collective activity on collective action. This has created a notable tradition in the field. Continue reading “TINT in context”