Alternative Philosophy Research Articles

Real and illusionary difficulties in conceptual learning in mathematics: comparison between constructivist and inferentialist perspectives

AbstractDue to the learning paradox, students cannot have real difficulty in understanding a mathematical concept that they have not yet understood. There is a gap between real difficulties, directly experienced by students, and illusionary ones, only observed by researchers. This paper aims to offer a critical reflection on our understanding of the term difficulty in mathematics education research. We start this paper by arguing that a constructivist perspective, which has often been adopted in researches on mathematical task design, can deal with difficulties in solving a mathematical problem, but it cannot theoretically deal with those in understanding a mathematical concept. Therefore, we need the alternative philosophy of Robert Brandom’s inferentialism to capture students’ real difficulties in conceptual learning. From an inferentialist perspective, we introduce the idea of illusionary and real difficulties. The former is defined as what students cannot do, but they are not conscious of what they should do, while the latter is defined as what students cannot do despite their consciousness of what they should do. Through an eighth grade classroom episode, we argue that it is important in mathematics education research to focus not only on illusionary difficulties but also on the transition from illusionary to real difficulties. Researchers are encouraged to design a learning environment in which students become conscious of what they cannot do and to observe their mathematics learning in such an environment.

Disrupting colonisation in the social work classroom: using the Obuntu/Ubuntu framework to decolonise the curriculum

ABSTRACT Social work around the world has been, uncritically, defined from a mostly white western perspective influenced predominantly by the profession’s development in Europe and North America. Western values and epistemologies have been taken as a given. However, with the increasing influence of social constructionism and post-colonialism, there is growing acceptance that epistemologies are cultural constructions and that the White Western perspectives do not reflect values and knowledge systems in other contexts such as the African Obuntu/Ubuntu. Social workers calling for decolonization have drawn attention to the impact of western colonialism and the need to embrace epistemological diversity to decolonize social work curricula. This article aims to disrupt epistemic colonization and articulate alternative philosophies that can underpin social work values and ethical principles beyond the worldviews of a white western colonial dominance. Foregrounding the author’s multi-context experiences of social work education in Uganda, Sweden, and Australia, this article addresses the question of how the philosophical framework of Obuntu/Ubuntu shapes and informs social work values and ethical principles. In Obuntu/Ubuntu social work, the values of hospitality are intertwined with connection and genuine relationship building, a valuing of the power of community, and interconnectedness with the environment.

Adequate enrichment of extracellular vesicles in laboratory medicine

AbstractExtracellular vesicles (EVs) and their clinical applications have been recognized as one of the most fast‐growing and promising fields. Numerous groups including us have expressed their concerns on the idea of isolating “pure” EVs for different purposes, as there are no specific markers to date that can examine the exact EV purity. Typically, major instrument need and EV yielding loss are primary compensations of getting EVs with higher purity. As such, especially in biomarker‐based clinical tests, ceaseless efforts for obtaining more pure EV are worth of discussion. We here propose alternative philosophy to tone down the importance of purity, but to emphasize the significance in clinical laboratory medicine to measure EVs obtained by well‐controlled isolation methods. As a result, EVs are enriched to the adequate degree to meet certain clinical applications such as disease diagnosis and/or prognosis. In this review, we will justify the adequate enrichment rationale with advances of EV definitions, markers and contaminants, EV isolation methods, as well as the conclusions acquired from clinical research using less pure but ease‐to‐operate EV isolation methods.

Martin Buber's Dialogical History: Theopolitics as a Critique of the History of Human Power

This essay explores the relationship between Buber's philosophy of history and his political theory, known also as theopolitics. Buber's first book on theopolitics, Kingship of God (1932), implemented the principle of dialogue as a critique of leadership. Dialogue reconciles the paradox of authoritarian theocracy and absolute freedom of anarchy: it unites the interhuman relationship (religious anarchy) and the divine-human relationship (direct theocracy). Without dialogue, anarchy would become chaotic and theocracy would actually mean the tyranny of the priests (hierocracy). But Buber's theopolitics also revealed a particular understanding of history. As this essay demonstrates, Buber held a notion of dialogical history (contrary to Hegelian dialectic history), which ultimately functioned as a critique of the history of victory and power. Dialogical history criticizes not only secular but also any kind of religious or sacred history claiming to authorize human power by divine justification. Dialogical history, therefore, should be seen as "counter-history," not only because it is based on a rehabilitation of myth (Hasidic tales and biblical myths) but also because it is engaged in an alternate philosophy of history, whose fulfillment is vouchsafed neither by the necessary unfolding of a spirit, nor by "great" historical deeds, but by everyday human agency and responsibility alone.

Learning Experience Design in the Light of Design Knowledge and Philosophy

Instructional design has been dominated by a philosophy focused on efficiency, effectiveness, and appeal. Learning Experience Design (LXD), emerging recently, offers a different set of values with the potential to enhance and evolve the practice of design for teaching and learning. Using the concepts of knowledge and philosophy from the literature on design theory, we challenge the notion that LXD is a discrete new field separate from instructional design and instead identify LXD as an alternate philosophy of design. We conclude with the opportunity to recognize additional philosophies in the field and consider the impacts of philosophy on knowledge-building practices.

Superior resolution through multiparameter FWI imaging: A new philosophy in seismic processing and imaging

Seismic processing and imaging workflows have been refined over many decades to attenuate aspects of the recorded wavefield which would be improperly mapped into the image domain by legacy migration algorithms such as Kirchhoff prestack depth migration. These workflows, which include techniques such as deghosting, designature, demultiple, and regularization, have become increasingly complex and time-consuming due to the sequential fashion in which they must be tested and applied. The single-scattering (primary-only) preprocessed data are then migrated and used in extensive model building workflows, including reflection residual moveout tomography, to refine low-frequency subsurface models. Obtaining optimal results at each stage requires subjective assessment of a wide range of parameter tests. Results can be highly variable, with different decisions resulting in very different outcomes. Such workflows mean that projects may take many months or even years. Full-waveform inversion (FWI) imaging offers an alternative philosophy to this conventional approach. FWI imaging is a least-squares multiscattering algorithm that uses the raw field data (transmitted and reflected arrivals as well as their multiples and ghosts) to determine many different subsurface parameters, including reflectivity. Because this approach uses the full wavefield, the subsurface is sampled more completely during the inversion. Here, we demonstrate the application of a novel multiparameter FWI imaging technique to generate high-resolution amplitude variation with angle reflectivity simultaneously with other model parameters, such as velocity and anisotropy, directly from the raw field data. Given that these results are obtained faster than the conventional workflow with a higher resolution, improved illumination, and reduced noise, we highlight the potential of multiparameter FWI imaging to supersede the conventional workflow.

The Comparison of Pipe Thickness Selection Method Using Full Flange Rating and non-Full Flange Rating of Cryogenic Services in an LNG Plant Construction

Significant growth of gas demand as a source of power generation for domestic use and industries, mainly in the developed countries, has forced the effort to secure the gas supplies located thousands of miles away across the sea as an economical way of gas transportation instead of transporting by pipeline. LNG technology was created as the solution. Natural gas is refrigerated below its boiling point (-160oC to -162oC), known as cryogenic temperature or cryogenic service. Material of Construction (MOC) selection report showed that 304/304L and 316/316L Stainless Steel pipe could withstand and be suitable for this type of service. However, the SS pipe price could be much more costly than the CS pipe. An alternative philosophy to the full-flange rating is introduced in this paper to reduce SS pipe thickness without sacrificing safety issues and proper engineering practice. The philosophy of the pipe wall-thickness calculation method utilized in this paper showed no impact on the class 150 rating due to the selected thicknesses being equal or higher. However, the class 300 rating successfully reduced pipe selected thickness for pipe sizes larger than 24 inches ranging from 20,15% to 31,1%, and for class 600 rating successfully reduced the thickness ranging from 6,28% to 16,55% for pipe sizes 10 inches and larger. The overall pipe thickness reduction reduced pipe weight for cryogenic services by approximately 91,84 tons. The philosophy of the pipe wall-thickness calculation method for cryogenic services can be extended to all other services in the entire LNG production train to gain maximum cost savings for the pipe purchasing cost.

The Motivation Problem: Jamieson, Gardiner, and the Institutional Barriers to Climate Responsibility

ABSTRACT After decades of institutional failure to address climate change, the need for ethically-motivated collective action is clear. It is equally clear that this issue is not widely perceived as an ethical problem. As founders of climate ethics research, Dale Jamieson and Stephen Gardiner offer compelling accounts to explain why. Nevertheless, questions of ethical motivation in the face of institutional failure arguably mark an impasse in these otherwise essential contributions. This essay identifies the philosophical limits of Jamieson and Gardiner’s accounts of ethical motivation while advancing an alternative philosophy of motivation that reframes the institutional barriers to climate responsibility.

Fall Detection Using Multi-Property Spatiotemporal Autoencoders in Maritime Environments

Man overboard is an emergency in which fast and efficient detection of the critical event is the key factor for the recovery of the victim. Its severity urges the utilization of intelligent video surveillance systems that monitor the ship’s perimeter in real time and trigger the relative alarms that initiate the rescue mission. In terms of deep learning analysis, since man overboard incidents occur rarely, they present a severe class imbalance problem, and thus, supervised classification methods are not suitable. To tackle this obstacle, we follow an alternative philosophy and present a novel deep learning framework that formulates man overboard identification as an anomaly detection task. The proposed system, in the absence of training data, utilizes a multi-property spatiotemporal convolutional autoencoder that is trained only on the normal situation. We explore the use of RGB video sequences to extract specific properties of the scene, such as gradient and saliency, and utilize the autoencoders to detect anomalies. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that man overboard detection is made in a fully unsupervised manner while jointly learning the spatiotemporal features from RGB video streams. The algorithm achieved 97.30% accuracy and a 96.01% F1-score, surpassing the other state-of-the-art approaches significantly.

Pragmatism, critical realism and the study of value

ABSTRACT This paper examines the relationship between pragmatism and critical realism, first as alternative philosophies for the social sciences in general, and second, as an illustration, in the social study of monetary valuation. The paper argues that both traditions are internally diverse. Hence, the relations between the two are complex, with both substantial overlaps and real differences revealed in encounters between them. Perhaps the most significant difference is pragmatism’s distrust of invocations of structural power in social explanations, whereas realism encourages them, in interaction with other explanatory elements. The paper problematizes claims that recent work in the study of value is predominantly pragmatist. Nevertheless, it argues that pragmatist influence has encouraged valuation studies to focus on the micro level at the expense of the macro. From a realist perspective, however, there is much to be gained from an approach that embraces both micro and macro levels and the relations between them.

Balthasar, the Sublime, and the Avant‐Garde

AbstractFollowing Cyril O’Regan’s suggestion of possible Balthasarian reflections on the sublime and the avant‐garde, this article argues that actualizing these possibilities could contribute fruitfully to Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theological‐aesthetic resistance to Hegelian economy (mastery of all meaning and value through scientific reason) and to postmodern alternative philosophies to Hegel. The article expands the Balthasarian notion of “form” to open new partnerships between Balthasarian aesthetics and artistic currents that share his project of resisting economy. The article examines Balthasar’s early rejection of avant‐garde and modern art in historical and cultural context. It effects a critical dialogue between Balthasar and two prominent postmodern precedents for thinking about the sublime and avant‐garde art (Jean‐François Lyotard and Jean‐Luc Nancy). It constructs a different, Balthasarian perspective on the sublime and the avant‐garde, emphasizing the ontological sublime (Goethe, Scheeben) and Christus deformis (Augustine, Bonaventure). Then it sets the Balthasarian sublime in conversation with contemporary artist Sarah Sze to discover new counter‐economic possibilities for the Balthasarian Gestalt.

BEYOND HISTORICISM AND UNIVERSALISM: EPIC, HISTORY, AND MEMORY

ABSTRACTIn The Concept of History, Dmitri Nikulin rehearses an alternative philosophy of history, thus accompanying a certain revival of interest in this discipline since the end of the twentieth century. Conceptualizing an alternative philosophy of history is of fundamental relevance in the context of the global problems that deepen every day in our contemporary world. Undoubtedly, philosophy must be attentive to the present demands and interests of representing the past, whether by the sectors of power or by various dissident collectives, for failing to reflexively address questions of substantive philosophy of history surely leaves room for the (unacknowledged) validity of the teleological‐universalist narrative. The historical trajectory delineated by the modern conception of history is centered on the uniqueness and unity of history and establishes a divide between historical and nonhistorical (or prehistoric) peoples. Nikulin, by contrast, seeks to produce a pluralistic conception of multiple histories, for which he elaborates a notion of “the historical” present in every time period and human culture (oral and written). A central distinction to be established from the beginning, according to Nikulin, is between “the historical” and “history.” The historical is nothing other than lists of names, things, actions, and facts to be preserved, and we can find these lists in any culture in any time and place. Such lists are governed by some organizing principle that determines what not to forget. Chapters 3 (“The Epic of History”), 4 (“The Homer Galaxy”), and 5 (“The Logos of History”) are, in my view, the most novel and stimulating parts of the book. There, “the historical” (those detailed and organized lists) comes with a narrative (fabula). The historical/fable dyad constitutes the structure of history, which is instantiated in multiple histories but which, in itself (as a structure), is not historical but invariant in each and every history. The seven chapters that make up The Concept of History run through various examples of reflections on and problems related to the subject in ancient history, a period in which Nikulin himself is a recognized specialist. The centrality of ancient Greek history in this study does not imply a commitment to the thesis that history emerged in Greek culture. According to Nikulin, where there are human beings, there is history.

Boosting welfare sustainability by solidarity: Opportunities resulting from circular social economy in Portugal

Aims: To analyze welfare and sustainability concepts framed by United Nations 2030 Agenda highlighting its commitment towards poverty and hunger; to discuss the concept of circular economy exploring the dimensions of sustainability to which it is associated; to analyze the relationship between the circular economy and the social economy, and to distinguish practices based on the assumptions of the circular economy with an inclusive impact at the level of confronting situations of vulnerability/poverty in Portugal.
 Method: This is a theoretical reflection based on a review of current literature, documentary analysis and searching on websites, on the opportunities of the social economy embedded in solidarity sector to foster welfare (social) sustainability by pursuing circular economy principles.
 Findings: The issues of poverty and hunger are central to understand the welfare concept and occupy a pole position in the agenda of human sustainability. The circular economy approach has been distinguished mainly as an alternative philosophy of growth (focusing on business) and (environmental) sustainability. Social economy anchored in solidarity organizations reveals the (neglected) social dimension of circular economy due to circular economy principles that they adopt connected to their mission.
 Conclusions: The opportunities of circular economy to address welfare sustainability, especially for responding to multiple social needs (e.g., basic needs) coming from the circular social economy stakeholders must be reinforced in discourses and political agendas. Also, that opens space to reconfigure the concept of circular economy widening its scope and focus on a complete approach committed to sustainability, being this a direction, that research can deepen.

Subtle Differences in the Representation of Consumer Dynamics Have Large Effects in Marine Food Web Models

Projecting ocean biogeochemistry and fisheries resources under climate change requires confidence in simulation models. Core to such models is the description of consumer dynamics relating prey abundance to capture, digestion efficiency and growth rate. Capture is most commonly described as a linear function of prey encounter or by rectangular hyperbola. Most models also describe consumers as eating machines which “live-to-eat,” where growth (μ) is limited by a maximum grazing rate (Gmax). Real consumers can feed much faster than needed to support their maximum growth rate (μmax); with feeding modulated by satiation, they “eat-to-live.” A set of strategic analyses were conducted of these alternative philosophies of prey consumption dynamics and testing of their effects in the StrathE2E end-to-end marine food web and fisheries model. In an experiment where assimilation efficiencies were decreased by 10%, such as might result from a change in temperature or ocean acidity, the different formulation resulted in up to 100% variation in the change in abundances of food web components, especially in the mid-trophic levels. Our analysis points to a need for re-evaluation of some long-accepted principles in consumer-resource modeling.

Ecophilosophy and the Ambivalence of Nature: Kierkegaard and Knausgård on Lilies, Birds and Being

Abstract In The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air (1849), Kierkegaard presents a succinct critique of Romantic aesthetics, in line with contemporary critiques of ecocriticism and ecophilosophy, e.g. by Timothy Morton. Whereas Romantic poets see nature as a mirror of their inner thoughts and pathos, thereby divinising themselves and their creativity, Kierkegaard emphasises the authority of the Creator and the exteriority of nature. He identifies the consequences of such Romantic self-infatuation on all levels of discourse: aesthetics, ethics, epistemology and ontology, and seeks to formulate an alternative. I argue that the discourses thus represent an alternative philosophy of nature, revealing an immediate joy for the gift of being-there. Being human thus means being dependent on and embedded in nature. This makes Kierkegaard a highly relevant interlocutor for contemporary ecophilosophy and ecocriticism, as revealed by Knausgård’s novel Morgenstjernen (2020).

Review: Black Rights / White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism, by Charles W. Mills

Review: Black Rights / White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism, by Charles W. Mills

Aligning Teacher Preparation, Professional Development and Evaluation: The Orthodoxy of TAP Teachers and Teaching

This paper looks at one of the most popular teacher accountability systems in the USA, TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement, which is a comprehensive program that meets the requirements of multiple large federal grants schemes. The paper shows that, after consortia in Arizona and Texas won multimillion-dollar grant awards, thousands of teachers in these states have become engrossed within a TAP circuit that shapes multiple domains of their professional identity and growth. TAP's ubiquitous presence helps build system alignment, but it also means that teachers are increasingly limited in their exposure to alternative philosophies, practices, or measurements of teaching. Therefore, I challenge the assumptions of alignment and illustrate how such alignment flattens and overly-simplifies the plurality and complexity of teaching, even though present times require adaptability within schools. What I ultimately argue is that the precise and comprehensive alignment of this system enforces and reinforces TAP as the orthodox reality of what it means to be and become a teacher.

Kinematic alignment in total knee arthroplasty

Kinematic alignment (KA) is an alternative philosophy for aligning a total knee replacement (TKR) which aims to restore all three kinematic axes of the native knee.Many of the studies on KA have actually described non-KA techniques, which has led to much confusion about what actually fits the definition of KA.Alignment should only be measured using three-dimensional cross-sectional imaging. Many of the studies looking at the influence of implants/limb alignment on total knee arthroplasty outcomes are of limited value because of the use of two-dimensional imaging to measure alignment, potentially leading to inaccuracy.No studies have shown KA to be associated with higher complication rates or with worse implant survival; and the clinical outcomes following KA tend to be at least as good as mechanical alignment.Further high-quality multi-centre randomized controlled trials are needed to establish whether KA provides better function and without adversely impacting implant survival.Cite this article: EFORT Open Rev 2020;5:380-390. DOI: 10.1302/2058-5241.5.200010

Spatio-temporal adversarial learning for detecting unseen falls

Fall detection is an important problem from both the health and machine learning perspective. A fall can lead to severe injuries, long-term impairments or even death in some cases. In terms of machine learning, it presents a severely class imbalance problem with very few or no training data for falls owing to the fact that falls occur rarely. In this paper, we take an alternate philosophy to detect falls in the absence of their training data, by training the classifier on only the normal activities (that are available in abundance) and identifying a fall as an anomaly. To realize such a classifier, we use an adversarial learning framework, which comprises of a spatio-temporal autoencoder for reconstructing input video frames and a spatio-temporal convolution network to discriminate them against original video frames. 3D convolutions are used to learn spatial and temporal features from the input video frames. The adversarial learning of the spatio-temporal autoencoder will enable reconstructing the normal activities of daily living efficiently, thus rendering detecting unseen falls plausible within this framework. We tested the performance of the proposed framework on camera-sensing modalities that may preserve an individual’s privacy (fully or partially), such as thermal and depth camera. Our results on three publicly available datasets show that the proposed spatio-temporal adversarial framework performed better than other baseline frame-based (or spatial) adversarial learning methods.

Life's Returns: Hylozoism, Again

In the midst of the earth's sixth mass extinction, there has been a turn to the redemptive power of biological life in various new materialisms, neoanimisms, neovitalisms, and affirmative biopolitics. In this essay I outline a series of historical and conceptual cautions against staking our lives or others' on such reconsiderations of life. Exploring the fascination with hylozoism (the theory that all matter is alive) in turn-of-the-twentieth-century biology, philosophy, and fiction, I demonstrate a recurring link between theories of universal life and eugenic racism that troubles any attempts to base political and ethical norms on supposedly biological ones. An examination of Mark Twain's “Three Thousand Years among the Microbes” reveals an alternative philosophy of life that uncouples hylozoism and imperialism but does so at the cost of a deadening nihilism. Such examples suggest that we look elsewhere than to life for our animating principles.