1. Functional Contextualism Steven C. Hayes University of Nevada

2. What is Philosophy of Science? Philosophy is a process of specifying your assumptions, detecting inconsistencies among them, and acknowledging their implications

3. Why Does it Matter? Concepts unplugged from their orienting assumptions lose vitality Incoherence can lead to dead ends Assumptions provide coherent measures of progress

4. Stephen C. Pepper We are not so cognitively advanced that we can deal with complexity without the guidance of underlying root metaphors, drawn from common sense

5. Why Contextualism? The unit: The situated, historical, purposive act Truth criterion: successful working Why? This is when behaviorism became “radical”

6. Types Descriptive: a personal experience of the participants in the whole Functional: prediction and influence with precision, scope, and depth

7. The Weirdest Feature A-ontological: multiple language games are possible It is an essential part of contextualism and of radical behaviorism Necessary to the truth criterion

8. The Weirdest Feature Descriptive contextualists have used it to tear down science But that is a kind of ontology

9. How Do You Know? The mind demands an answer But there is more to us that the answer why Consider values

10. Where it Goes in Functional Contextualism Keeps us focused on what works, not who is right Keeps us flexible Grounds knowledge in experience But most of all …

11. Helps Us Shut Up When we have nothing useful to say beyond experience itself