Contextualism

The contextualism is a school of thought in the humanities and social sciences.

The contextualism considered policy and other tasks related to their environment. Class, geography, climate, ethnicity, language, culture, economy, demography, technology, ideology and religion, and finally institutions influence policy, but are not influenced by it. As a result, institutions are independent factors.

Contextualism in the philosophical sense is of the opinion that any decision, action or utterance in a particular context ( context, environment ) takes place and can be understood only in this. For example, the descriptions of regularities to predict human behavior to try (see forecast below social science aspect and prognosis (psychology ) ), always context- specific. The strict interpretation of contextualism also implies that even fundamental concepts such as truth may be only context- specific. Some philosophers argue that this view leads to relativism.

In the field of ethics contextualism is most closely associated with ethical particularism ( situation ethics) and ethical relativism. In epistemology provides contextualism is an attempt to answer the problem of skepticism. The skeptic denies the very possibility of knowledge, and justifies this by pointing out that many situations ( states of affairs ) with any of these views and their justifications are consistent, while these views in themselves but are wrong. In contrast, the contextualist hidden certain states of being ( states of affairs ) in the discussion of knowledge as not relevant for from.