Identity and Existence in the Study of Human Traditions

T HIS paper is not designed as a historical survey of past folkloristic scholarship. Instead, my task is one of epistemological criticism. I intend to work through a specific logical problem with which students of human tradition are confronted when they attempt to speak consistently and in detail about the phenomena which they study. Many of the examples I will be using in this discussion will revolve around stories. However, I intend for my remarks to have a wider application. I suspect that the issues and problems I shall examine will be relevant to most of the kinds of phenomena that students of human tradition consider. I shall be discussing the problems at hand in a way which will bring a recourse to themes which have been common in philosophy. I do not want this procedure to be interpreted as an 'appeal to philosophy' in which the putative purpose is to make philosophers legislators to social scientists, for that is not what is involved here. Instead, since the issues encountered in understanding the bases of any science are epistemological in nature, it is only normal that procedures arising from philosophy be employed in discussing a science's foundational concepts, assumptions and methods. My arguments should stand on their own merits (if any), independent of what their source may be

Aesthetics · Analytic philosophy · Appeal · Contemporary philosophy · Criticism · Epistemology · Identity (music · Philosophy of science · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Suspect · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Law · Philosophy

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  Open Access•Simon J Bronner•Journal of Ethnology and…•2022

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