Abstract
Interests are basic social phenomena. What we do as individuals, and what we do as societies, is largely a function of what our interests are, or what we take them to be. Thus one might expect the concept of an interest to play a fairly crucial role in the conceptual structure of theories within the social sciences. Surprisingly enough, however, it does not. Take down any dictionary in the social sciences and you are hardly likely to find any conceptual entry under ‘interest’ (with the exception of compound terms like ‘public interest’1 or ‘interest groups’2)3.And most philosophers of science continue to ignore the topic.
An interest is that by virtue of which reason becomes practical - that is, becomes a cause determining the will.
I. Kant
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References
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Mittelstrass, J. (1989). Interests. In: Butts, R.E., Brown, J.R. (eds) Constructivism and Science. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 44. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0959-5_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0959-5_12
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