Ron Amundson
Biographic Data
| ID | 1060460 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ron Amundson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ron |
| FAMILY NAME | Amundson |
| SIGNATURE | AMUNDSON R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Hawaii at Hilo |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 43 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Quality of Life, Disability, and Hedonic Psychology: Quality of Life, Disability, and Hedonic Psychology
The Changing Role of the Embryo in Evolutionary Thought: Roots of Evo-Devo
In this book Ron Amundson examines two hundred years of scientific views on the evolution-development relationship from the perspective of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). This perspective challenges several popular views about the history of evolutionary thought by claiming that many earlier authors had made history come out right for the Evolutionary Synthesis. The book starts with a revised history of nineteenth-century evolution…
Darwins for everyone
Our Lives and Ideologies: The Effect of Life Experience on the Perceived Morality of the Policy of Physician-Assisted Suicide
The opposition to a public policy of physician-assisted suicide from within the disability-rights community seems to be surprising to academics who are supporters of other civil rights movements. Physician-assisted suicide is seen by them as a part of a progressive political agenda, akin to abortion rights and the civil rights of minorities. Many disability-rights advocates see physician-assisted suicide as quite the opposite—an example of discri…
Against normal function
Two Concepts of Constraint: Adaptationism and the Challenge from Developmental Biology
The so-called “adaptationism” of mainstream evolutionary biology has been criticized from a variety of sources. One, which has received relatively little philosophical attention, is developmental biology. Developmental constraints are said to be neglected by adaptationists. This paper explores the divergent methodological and explanatory interests that separate mainstream evolutionary biology from its embryological and developmental critics. It w…
On the Threats That Do "Not" Face Educational Research
On the Threats That Do Not Face Educational Research
Gary Cziko's 1992 Educational Researcher article is in large part a revision and extension of the attack on mainstream educational research he began in this journal in 1989, to which we published a rebuttal in 1990. Cziko appears to find our 1990 criticisms of little value, but nevertheless abandons most of his earlier bases for criticism. He presents new reasoning to support his old conclusions that mainstream research is futile. We will argue t…
Dictionary of Concepts in the Philosophy of Science . Paul T. Durbin
The unknown epistemology of E. C. Tolman
E. C. Tolman has been widely recognized for two distinct contributions to psychology. One was his methodological account of the ‘intervening variable’, understood as an operationally respectable method of introducing theoretical terms into behaviourist psychology. The second was his use of ‘purposive’ concepts in his substantive theorizing ‐ concepts such as the cognitive map. Two distinct and mutually antagonistic groups of critics have argued t…
Clark Hull, Robert Cummins, and Functional Analysis
Robert Cummins has recently used the program of Clark Hull to illustrate the effects of logical positivist epistemology upon psychological theory. On Cummins's account, Hull's theory is best understood as a functional analysis, rather than a nomological subsumption. Hull's commitment to the logical positivist view of explanation is said to have blinded him to this aspect of his theory, and thus restricted its scope. We will argue that this interp…
E. C. Tolman and the Intervening Variable: A Study in the Epistemological History of Psychology
E. C. Tolman's ‘purposive behaviorism’ is commonly interpreted as an attempt to operationalize a cognitivist theory of learning by the use of the ‘Intervening Variable’ ( IV ). Tolman would thus be a counterinstance to an otherwise reliable correlation of cognitivism with realism, and S-R behaviorism with operationalism. A study of Tolman's epistemological background, with a careful reading of his methodological writings, shows the common interpr…
Science, Ethnoscience, and Ethnocentrism
The conventionalist epistemology of cultural anthropology can be seen to be embedded in the methods of ‘cognitive anthropology’, the study of folk conceptual systems. These methods result in indiscriminately depicting all folk systems as conventional, whether or not the systems are intended by the native to represent objective features of the world. Hypothetical and actual ethnographic situations are discussed. It is concluded that the anthropolo…
Against normal function
Two Concepts of Constraint: Adaptationism and the Challenge from Developmental Biology
The so-called “adaptationism” of mainstream evolutionary biology has been criticized from a variety of sources. One, which has received relatively little philosophical attention, is developmental biology. Developmental constraints are said to be neglected by adaptationists. This paper explores the divergent methodological and explanatory interests that separate mainstream evolutionary biology from its embryological and developmental critics. It w…
Our Lives and Ideologies: The Effect of Life Experience on the Perceived Morality of the Policy of Physician-Assisted Suicide
The opposition to a public policy of physician-assisted suicide from within the disability-rights community seems to be surprising to academics who are supporters of other civil rights movements. Physician-assisted suicide is seen by them as a part of a progressive political agenda, akin to abortion rights and the civil rights of minorities. Many disability-rights advocates see physician-assisted suicide as quite the opposite—an example of discri…
Quality of Life, Disability, and Hedonic Psychology: Quality of Life, Disability, and Hedonic Psychology
On the Threats That Do Not Face Educational Research
Gary Cziko's 1992 Educational Researcher article is in large part a revision and extension of the attack on mainstream educational research he began in this journal in 1989, to which we published a rebuttal in 1990. Cziko appears to find our 1990 criticisms of little value, but nevertheless abandons most of his earlier bases for criticism. He presents new reasoning to support his old conclusions that mainstream research is futile. We will argue t…
E. C. Tolman and the Intervening Variable: A Study in the Epistemological History of Psychology
E. C. Tolman's ‘purposive behaviorism’ is commonly interpreted as an attempt to operationalize a cognitivist theory of learning by the use of the ‘Intervening Variable’ ( IV ). Tolman would thus be a counterinstance to an otherwise reliable correlation of cognitivism with realism, and S-R behaviorism with operationalism. A study of Tolman's epistemological background, with a careful reading of his methodological writings, shows the common interpr…
Darwins for everyone
Clark Hull, Robert Cummins, and Functional Analysis
Robert Cummins has recently used the program of Clark Hull to illustrate the effects of logical positivist epistemology upon psychological theory. On Cummins's account, Hull's theory is best understood as a functional analysis, rather than a nomological subsumption. Hull's commitment to the logical positivist view of explanation is said to have blinded him to this aspect of his theory, and thus restricted its scope. We will argue that this interp…
Science, Ethnoscience, and Ethnocentrism
The conventionalist epistemology of cultural anthropology can be seen to be embedded in the methods of ‘cognitive anthropology’, the study of folk conceptual systems. These methods result in indiscriminately depicting all folk systems as conventional, whether or not the systems are intended by the native to represent objective features of the world. Hypothetical and actual ethnographic situations are discussed. It is concluded that the anthropolo…
E. C. Tolman and the Intervening Variable: A Study in the Epistemological History of Psychology
E. C. Tolman's ‘purposive behaviorism’ is commonly interpreted as an attempt to operationalize a cognitivist theory of learning by the use of the ‘Intervening Variable’ ( IV ). Tolman would thus be a counterinstance to an otherwise reliable correlation of cognitivism with realism, and S-R behaviorism with operationalism. A study of Tolman's epistemological background, with a careful reading of his methodological writings, shows the common interpr…
Clark Hull, Robert Cummins, and Functional Analysis
Robert Cummins has recently used the program of Clark Hull to illustrate the effects of logical positivist epistemology upon psychological theory. On Cummins's account, Hull's theory is best understood as a functional analysis, rather than a nomological subsumption. Hull's commitment to the logical positivist view of explanation is said to have blinded him to this aspect of his theory, and thus restricted its scope. We will argue that this interp…
The unknown epistemology of E. C. Tolman
E. C. Tolman has been widely recognized for two distinct contributions to psychology. One was his methodological account of the ‘intervening variable’, understood as an operationally respectable method of introducing theoretical terms into behaviourist psychology. The second was his use of ‘purposive’ concepts in his substantive theorizing ‐ concepts such as the cognitive map. Two distinct and mutually antagonistic groups of critics have argued t…
Dictionary of Concepts in the Philosophy of Science . Paul T. Durbin
On the Threats That Do "Not" Face Educational Research
On the Threats That Do Not Face Educational Research
Gary Cziko's 1992 Educational Researcher article is in large part a revision and extension of the attack on mainstream educational research he began in this journal in 1989, to which we published a rebuttal in 1990. Cziko appears to find our 1990 criticisms of little value, but nevertheless abandons most of his earlier bases for criticism. He presents new reasoning to support his old conclusions that mainstream research is futile. We will argue t…
Two Concepts of Constraint: Adaptationism and the Challenge from Developmental Biology
The so-called “adaptationism” of mainstream evolutionary biology has been criticized from a variety of sources. One, which has received relatively little philosophical attention, is developmental biology. Developmental constraints are said to be neglected by adaptationists. This paper explores the divergent methodological and explanatory interests that separate mainstream evolutionary biology from its embryological and developmental critics. It w…
Against normal function
The Changing Role of the Embryo in Evolutionary Thought: Roots of Evo-Devo
In this book Ron Amundson examines two hundred years of scientific views on the evolution-development relationship from the perspective of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). This perspective challenges several popular views about the history of evolutionary thought by claiming that many earlier authors had made history come out right for the Evolutionary Synthesis. The book starts with a revised history of nineteenth-century evolution…
Darwins for everyone
Our Lives and Ideologies: The Effect of Life Experience on the Perceived Morality of the Policy of Physician-Assisted Suicide
The opposition to a public policy of physician-assisted suicide from within the disability-rights community seems to be surprising to academics who are supporters of other civil rights movements. Physician-assisted suicide is seen by them as a part of a progressive political agenda, akin to abortion rights and the civil rights of minorities. Many disability-rights advocates see physician-assisted suicide as quite the opposite—an example of discri…
Quality of Life, Disability, and Hedonic Psychology: Quality of Life, Disability, and Hedonic Psychology
Epistemology (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (7 works) · Political science (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology (3 works) · Cognition (3 works)