Jan Bransen

The truth belongs to all of us Ever since their inception, the social sciences have struggled with their methods and explanatory models. For what are the building blocks of social reality and in what sense is this reality a social one? And how are observations of and descriptive statements about this social reality possible? Here, the so-called ‘dramaturgical model of human behaviour’ makes visible the normativity of social reality, and also the inability of the social sciences to deal with the everyday presence of second and first persons in social reality. Thus, the role available to social scientists in social reality turns out to be problematic. If we move beyond the knowledge society, we will have ways to come to terms with truth claims; but it remains to be seen whether there will then still be a role for the social sciences as an institution.

In the debate leading up to the EU referendum in the United Kingdom, the British politician Michael Gove declared that "people in this country have had enough of experts". In the 2016 Presidential campaign in the United States, Donald Trump waged a war against the very idea of expertise. Yet if you are worried about your child's behaviour, don't know which laptop to buy, or just want to get fit, the answer is easy: ask an expert. Where do we draw the line? Why do we appear to know more and more collectively, yet less and less individually? Has expertise painted itself into a corner? Can we defend both science and common sense? In this engaging and much-needed book Jan Bransen explores these important questions and more. He argues that the rise of behavioural sciences has caused a sea change in the relationship between science and common sense. He shows how - as recently as the 1960s - common sense and science were allies in the battle against ignorance, but that since then populism and chauvinism have claimed common sense as their own. Bransen argues that common sense is a collection of interrelated skills that draw on both an automatic pilot and an investigative attitude where we ask ourselves the right questions. It is the very attitude of open-minded inquiry and questioning that Bransen believes we are at risk of losing in the face of an army of experts. Drawing on fascinating examples such as language and communication, money, the imaginary world of Endoxa, domestic violence, and quality of life, Don't be Fooled: A Philosophy of Common Sense is a brilliant and wry defence of a skill that is a vital part of being human.

When we first anticipated the research project concluded with this special issue, about 8 years ago, it seemed timely and appropriate to investigate the opportunities and the challenges of self-management in mental health care. At the time self-management was well on the rise in general health care, offering both empowerment to patients and efficiency and cost-effectiveness to the health care system. It seemed a most promising approach in an era that celebrates individualistic self-reliance. And we were sure about our insight that self-management in mental health care would deserve comprehensive investigation because “the self” that was supposed to do the management would itself be the core problem in psychiatric...

This paper argues that there are practical problems of such a kind that neither impartial morality nor rational choice theory can provide us with comfort and guidance in our attempt to make the right choice if confronted with such a problem. It argues that both morality and rational choice theory are bound to misconstrue problems of this kind. Appreciating the limits of both morality and rational choice theory, as currently discussed in the literature, enables us to identify the features of these particular practical problems, and allows us to elaborate the idea of an alternative of oneself, which is crucial to a proper understanding of the kind of practical problem the paper draws attention to.

‘Kijk. Mijn kasteel heeft het overleefd!’ roept mijn zoon enthousiast. We zijn hier gisteren ook aan het strand geweest en er is inderdaad nog iets te herkennen van het bouwwerk dat hij hier toen gemaakt heeft. Het hoge water heeft nog niet alle sporen uitgeveegd, maar om nu te zeggen dat de vage contouren in het zand de uitroep rechtvaardigen dat ‘het kasteel’ het ‘overleefd’ heeft… Dat rekt óf het begrip kasteel óf het begrip overleven toch een heel eind verder op dan we normaal gesproken acceptabel zullen vinden. Maar op vakantie zijn we niet zo streng en al zeker niet over de woorden van een kind. Ik begrijp heel goed wat hij bedoelt en ik zie het zelf ook. Inderdaad, hier waren we gisteren en het kasteel van mijn zoon heeft de nacht overleefd.

The paper addresses the problem of authenticity from a point of view that diverges from the more usual social, political, or moral approaches, by focusing very explicitly on the internal psychological make-up of human agents in an attempt to identify the conditions that would enable us to use the colloquial phrase 'being true to ourselves' in a way that is philosophically tenable. First, it is argued that the most important and problematic condition is the requirement that agents can be the source of normative constraints which they themselves should attempt to respect. In the main part of the paper an argument is developed against a more or less Humean interpretation of this crucial requirement, according to which agents can be the source of normative constraints because they have desires, and a more or less Kantian interpretation, according to which agents can be the source of normative constraints because they have the capacity to judge. The Humean account is unsatisfactory, because it fails to make sense of the normativity of the content of desires, and because it cannot account on its own for what makes a person's desires her own. The Kantian account is also unsatisfactory, because, although it can account for the difference between being true to someone else and being true to certain principles, it is unable to account for the difference between being true to oneself and being true to principles. In the final part I shall suggest a way out of this impasse by claiming that the intelligibility of the phenomenon of being true to oneself crucially depends on the, yet to be explored, possibility of developing an account of self-respect that involves both de se attitudes and the idea of ourselves being valuable entities.