Hacking (2007) - reading assignment Flashcards
(9 cards)
Explain why Hacking doesn’t want to write about certain classifications e.g. race and gender
Race and gender have always had particular meanings assigned to it, even before the
rise of science. No matter which culture, there were always theories about what it means to be a man or a woman, what it means to have a particular skin color and not belong to the main group. Note that this does not mean that race and gender are not humanly constructed categories! They just exist longer than science and Hacking in this article particularly focuses on the categories constructed through science
Which kind of classifications are the focus of Hacking? Which disciplines does he focus on?
New classifications that are produced in the human sciences. The human sciences are all disciplines that ‘say’ something about human beings, ranging from anthropology to
psychiatry and biology.
What is looping effect?
the dynamics between the classification and the people it applies for
The classification may change the behavior of the people who receive this
classification, which then again changes the classification
What is making up people?
the process of how the human sciences can create a new classification that did not exist before
Give an example of looping effect for the case of high functioning autism
At first there was no autism classification at all.
Only after that classification was introduced it became possible for people to experience themselves as “having autism”. This also made it possible that people were diagnosed with autism but then developed in a
way that we call high-functioning (acquiring social skills, live unproblematically). So these people no longer recognized themselves in the description of autism and thus required the expansion of the category so that it can also include people who are high-functioning. As a response the classification changed and now you also have “high functioning autism” which became a way of being. As such, there is looping going from the classification of autism to how people experience themselves
and how that requires adaptations of the classification, which again leads to new ways of experiencing themselves.
What is the purpose of Hacking’s engines of discovery? How they contribute to meaning of human classification?
The engines of discovery (simply put, the types of studies and methods we use and apply) also give meaning to classifications.
For example, If we choose to do fmri studies to analyse the neural correlates of depression, we basically say that we believe that
depression must also have a neural component which is a change from seeing
depression as psychological.
Consider the following two sentences about the fugue (a transient mental
illness that peaked late 19th century and faded after 1909).
1) There was no fugue before 1887; there were many people with fugue
in 1900.
2) In 1887, this was not a way to be a person, people did not experience
themselves in this way, they did not interact with their families, friends, employers, in this way, but in 1900, this was a way to be a
person, to experience oneself, to live in society.
According to Hacking, which sentence(s) is (are) true? Explain
They both are true for Fugue (though sentence 1 is a bit simplistic), since this disease
only occurred for a particular period. That is, statement (1) is true because fugue is a so-called “transient illness”. Before 1887, and after 1909, there were no people with fugue
If these sentences were about anxiety disorder, which one(s) would be true?
Explain?
Then sentence 1 would be false, since we assume that feelings of anxiety is something that has always existed (and thus is not a transient disease, it does not only exist in a specific period of time and place). However, Sentence 2 is true for anxiety disorder: before anxiety disorder had a definition, it was not a way to be a person. So introducing
the diagnosis/DSM category has introduced specific ways of experiencing yourself and
interacting with families, friends etc
Hacking considers his philosophy a specific type of nominalist philosophy.
Explain.
This is dynamic nominalism. Dynamic nominalism has to do with how names and the
named are interacting and thus also changing (as opposed to static)
