Epistemology Of Complexity Research Articles

Navigando tra le (attuali) filosofie dell'educazione : prospettive meta-teoriche e decantazione della struttura, del senso, della funzione della pedagogia

The Author analyses the philosophical models of Twenty Cenrtury and reads some perspectives of philosophy of education. This essay is an important contribution to the interpretation of epistemological complexity of pedagogy as a science.

Comment on Keith Augustine's article.

This commentary responds to Keith Augustine's article on the hallucinatory nature of near-death experiences (NDEs). It draws attention to his misreading of an important point made in my book Religion, Spirituality and the Near-Death Experience (Fox, 2003) regarding claims made by some NDErs to have traveled into outer space, reinforces the need for a thorough consideration of the epistemological complexities involved in asserting or denying a "common core" to NDEs, and ends by supporting the point made by Augustine that there is a pressing need for more crosscultural studies of the "core" phenomenon itself.

The social construction of clinical knowledge – the context of culture and discourse. Commentary on Tonelli (2006), Integrating evidence into clinical practice: an alternative to evidence‐based approaches. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 12, 248–256

Clinical knowledge evolves from interpretative action and interaction – matters involving human interaction, mind and experiences. My own attention has so far primarily been drawn to the microlevel of evidence construction in the encounter between doctor and patient. I have previously discussed clinical reasoning as multilayered processes of social interaction and human interpretation of bodily signs, for the purpose of coming to an understanding with the patient about what is wrong and what is to be done (Malterud 2001; Malterud 2002). On this level, the epistemological complexity of understanding and decision making first and foremosts demonstrates the inadequacy of a confined biomedical approach, where only questions and phenomena that can be controlled, measured and counted are regarded as valid.

Appraising Perfection

This research examined the relationship between types of perfectionists and differences in post-adolescent intellectual development. University students completed the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (Slaney, Rice, Mobley, Trippi, & Ashby, 2001) and the Scale of Adult Intellectual Development (Newman & Martin, 1999). The results revealed significant differences in the cognitive complexity and epistemic sophistication obtained by adaptive, maladaptive, and nonperfectionists. Nonperfectionists endorsed a less complex personal epistemology than either maladaptive or adaptive perfectionists, while maladaptive perfectionists demonstrated a more relativistic epistemology than either adaptive perfectionists or nonperfectionists. Implications for college counselors and therapists who encounter individuals broadly labeled as “perfectionists” are discussed.

Os problemas epistemológicos da realidade, da compreensibilidade e da causalidade na teoria quântica

No presente trabalho apresentamos uma discussão epistemológica sobre os problemas da Realidade, da Compreensibilidade e da Causalidade no contexto de algumas das questões suscitadas pela teoria quântica, discussão essa que se reflete também num combate à concepção positivista de ciência. Argumentamos em prol de uma maior aproximação entre a epistemologia complexa de Bachelard, a filosofia popperiana do racionalismo crítico e a concepção lakatosiana de programas científicos de pesquisa. Argumentamos, outrossim, em prol de ambas: da necessidade de se levar mais a sério a complexidade do diálogo teoria/experimento e da cautela redobrada em relação à idéia de 'experimentos cruciais' notadamente quando esses são lidos tanto na ótica do positivismo quanto na do realismo ingênuo.

The Ghosts of Knowing Commentary on Janice Haaken's Pillar of Salt

In Pillar of Salt, Janice Haaken makes an ambitious attempt to examine what has become a passionate, contentious debate about recovered memories of childhood abuse. Haaken examines several—sometimes conflicting—perspectives on recovered memory syndrome, which themselves yield diverse interpretations of the status of knowledge and the implications of multiple, even oppositional positionalities. The least ambiguous aspect of Haaken's argument is that women have found their voices and identities in the cultural Zeitgeist of sex abuse discourse. Although Haaken's social constructionist view is broad, I am concerned about the ways in which the therapeutic structure of retrieval misrepresents and flattens the epistemological complexities that shape these discussions, while remaining largely unacknowledged.

As emoções como caminho para uma epistemologia complexa da psicologia

A partir do estudo das emoções são desenvolvidas reflexões que apontam para a marcante influência do paradigma simplificador no estudo de objetos complexos da subjetividade humana, como também nos diversos momentos de construção do conhecimento. Os movimentos dominantes da terapia familiar apresentam-se como momentos importantes dessa discussão por apresentarem ao mesmo tempo potencialidades e limitações para a construção de uma epistemologia complexa. Diante disso, a partir das contribuições provenientes de diversas propostas epistemológicas além dessas, busca-se promover um conjunto de articulações iniciais para uma epistemologia complexa da psicologia que abranja não apenas uma compreensão das emoções e do cenário da construção do conhecimento, mas principalmente a integração da subjetividade do cientista como um momento fundamental da construção da ciência.

Complexidade e auto-ética

A complexidade associa conceitos de ordem, desordem e organização, incorpora o princípio da incerteza e aborda as noções de sujeito e homo sapiensdemens em sua relação com a auto-ética. Este texto procura refletir sobre a epistemologia da complexidade, como compreendida por Edgar Morin, a partir de idéias que se relacionam entre si, de maneira interdependente e complementar.

ERPs and Domain Specificity: Beating a Straw Horse

We discuss the import, validity and implications of the identity thesis: the idea that the P600 component of the scalp recorded event-related brain potential is identical with the P3b, a domain-general component elicited by improbable task-relevant events. We point to data reported in Coulson, King and Kutas (1998), as well as more recently published findings, which suggest that the P600 component is sensitive to domain-general factors of probability, salience and task relevance. Exploring the epistemological complexities of the issue, we suggest what the identity thesis does and does not imply about the existence of a modular parser.

An organizational learning perspective on academic development: A strategy for an uncertain future

This paper takes as a starting point the interest in organization theory in the idea of ‘learning organizations’ and the practical implications for conceptualizations of academic development. In doing so, it analyses epistemological and methodological complexities associated with the concept of academic development from a perspective that focuses on organizational learning. The contention of the paper is that an appropriate theoretical basis for academic development in the current times is provided by a broad organizational learning perspective. It is argued that an organizational learning methodology for the practice of academic development has the potential to provide powerful learning and feedback structures well‐suited to institutional inquiry and adaptation that will assist universities to meet the turbulence and challenges of an unpredictable future. A vignette from The University of Melbourne describes a prototype for such a methodology.

Reaching the Unreachable: Technology and the Semantics of Asymptotes

This work is part of a larger attempt to explore the nature of symbolic understanding involving graphic technology. This study describes learning advanced mathematics that occurs through constructing qualitative reasoning methods using graphic technology. Data was gathered from a precalculus class who, for a few weeks, investigated and explored asymptotic behavior of rational functions. The analysis is based on observations of group discussions and written works. Learning about asymptotes using software which serves as tool box for numerical evaluation and graphic representation amplifies epistemological complexities related to the infinity concept. Using the software to watch examples of rational functions, generated by symbolic and graphic operations between polynomial functions, enabled students to leave their own traces on the formalization of asymptotes – on its definition, its symbolic structure, and its computational procedures. The discrepancy between technology as a support for visual perception but a tool that cannot support theconception of approaching infinities, makes the study of asymptotes an intriguing domain for investigating what is being manipulated with software and how.

The shaping of rationality in science and religion

In this paper the focus is on the extreme epistemological complexity of the relationship between religion and science as two dominant forces in our culture today. This complexity is aggravated by a seemingly conflictual postrnodern, pluralist challenge to a culture that already reveals itself as decidedly empirically-minded. For theology and science a meaningful dialogue becomes possible only if both modes of reflection are willing to move away from overblown foundationalist epistemologies and, for theology at least, from the intellectual coma of fideism. The paper finally argues for a postfoundationalist epistemology where theo-logy and science, although very different modes of reflection, do share the richness of the resources of human rationality. In so doing it attempts to answer three crucial questions: i) are there good reasons for still seeing the natural sciences as our clearest available example of rationality at work? ii) If so, does the rationality of theological reflec-tion in any way overlap with scientific rationality? iii) Even if there are impressive overlaps between these two modes of rationality, how would the rationality of science and the rationality of religious reflection differ?

Reading the “Key”: George Eliot and the higher criticism

ABSTRACT While the problem of Victorian “relativism” exists in both Darwinian and Idealist cultural discourses, it is the higher criticism of the Bible which explicitly takes human testimony and the problems of textual interpretation as its subject. Drawing on work by Strauss and Feuerbach, whom George Eliot translated, this paper argues that the formal and epistemological complexity of Middlemarch has its philosophical analogue in the discourse of the higher critics, which provides a nineteenth‐century model for the understanding of narrative, testimony, and interpretive fictions.

A terceira margem da saúde: a ética natural

Este trabalho pretende discutir a pertinência de uma ética natural complexa para o campo da saúde, em particular em saúde pública, escapando das principais disjunções herdadas da tradição moderna, tais como sujeito/objeto, público/privado, valor em si/valor por si. Considera-se, portanto, as contribuições trazidas pela epistemologia da complexidade que, ao conceber a constelação conceituai do vínculo e da possibilidade - que se delineia entre 'primeira natureza' (bioecológica) e 'segunda natureza' (sócio-cultural) nos humanos -, permite o diálogo entre os dois princípios fundamentais que norteiam os debates em bioética: o Princípio da Sacralidade da Vida e o Princípio da Qualidade da Vida. A ética natural considera tais princípios como sendo co-necessários para uma ética do nosso tempo, dividido entre o inevitável politeísmo de valores e normas decorrente da secularização do mundo tardomodemo - caracterizado pela tolerância e o pluralismo - e os necessários fundamentos para este tipo de 'sociedade aberta', que não podem se reduzir ao mero ceticismo epistemológico do vale tudo (anything goes) nem ao ceticismo moral corrosivo da lei do mais forte e do seu corolário da ética do salve-se-quem-puder (lifeboat ethics).

Interdisciplinary Research and Disciplinary Toleration: A Reply to Kitty Locker

Professor Locker tells us that to choose a variety of sometimes competing goals--when she writes that need to say 'both/and' not 'either/or'--I understand her to call for a kind of ecumenical disciplinary attitude regarding research in business communication, an attitude that tolerates and even embraces a broad range of research methodologies. Because this ecumenical attitude embodies the best sentiments of our liberal humanist tradition, I suspect that most of us support wholeheartedly Professor Lockers call for scholarly toleration. If I am right in this assessment, then the primary issue raised in Professor Lockers address does not concern the obvious fact that some kinds of research are privileged while other kinds are discounted. Rather, the primary issue, it seems to me, concerns our motivations for privileging some kinds of research over other kinds. Stated a bit differently, Professor Locker challenges us to ponder our motivations when privilege specialized research--generally quantitative research associated with the social sciences--over interdisciplinary research that generally favors qualitative and historical methodologies associated with the humanities. In her address, Professor Locker suggests that our current preference for specialized research is motivated predominantly by epistemological issues. For the most part, Professor Locker describes research in business communication as an epistemological matter, and when she discusses the difficulties associated with interdisciplinary research, she mentions almost exclusively epistemological concerns. She tells us, for example, that tend to avoid interdisciplinary research because we are more likely to make conceptual and methodological mistakes since we will disagree about what kind of data is relevant when employ interdisciplinary research. According to Professor Locker, these epistemological problems occur primarily because researchers frequently inhabit different communities. Early in her address, Professor Locker observes that When work in different paradigms, will disagree about what kind of data is relevant, what kind of analysis is convincing, and indeed what research questions are important. Kenneth Burke employs the term (1945, pp. 59-124) to describe this phenomenon. By this term, he means that our is always circumscribed by our motivations and beliefs, so interpret the world and communicate with others by establishing a circumference within which understanding occurs. In a sense, rationality itself depends on our ability to circumscribe or to frame our utterances in ways that others can comprehend. Of course, once frame our discourse, our utterances naturally take on the character of the frame, as Professor Locker points out. Consequently, when people change frames, they tend to comprehend the world differently. Professor Locker tells us that insights from other fields can enable us to see what know in new ways, reframing it so that it becomes something more than and perhaps other than its original state. Certainly, Professor Locker is correct to stress the epistemological complexities inherent in interdisciplinary research and to suggest that these complexities often motivate us to avoid inter-disciplinary research. However, I want to suggest that another and perhaps more powerful motivation exists for the avoidance of inter-disciplinary research, a motivation that conflicts with the ecumenical disciplinary attitude that Professor Locker rightfully champions. endorse the communitarian epistemological position and accept the claim that knowledge is shaped or socially constructed within communities, become dominated by the scenes in which live. In the scene/agent ratio, to employ Burke's terms once again, the agent's motives are always conditioned by the context or scene in which the agent acts, and Professor Locker clearly places a great deal of emphasis on context or what she calls discourse communities. …

A Future for Peru? Gustavo Gutiérrez and the Reasons for His Hope

AbstractThe growing national crisis of Peru in which death seems to triumph over life, especially for the poor, has not dimmed the hope of Gustavo Gutiérrez and others for the ultimate success of the poor to achieve liberation from poverty and injustice. Hope, for Gutiérrez, is far from wishful thinking. The case for hope results from the application of a complex epistemology which includes social scientific analysis, the “utopian imagination,” and faith in the God of Jesus Christ to the present socio-ecclesial reality of Peru. Among the reasons for hope are the fact of the church's evangelization of the poor, the new spirituality coming to birth among the poor, the rejection of fear in the face of the mounting persecution and martyrdom of Christian believers, and the universal church's adoption of a preferential option for the poor.

Wallace Stevens' Ideas of Order: The Rhetoric of Politics and the Rhetoric of Poetry

S OMEWHERE between 1918 and 1930 the world fell apart, whether as for Willa Gather in 1922 or as for Scott Fitzgerald in the snows of 1929. The process was not abrupt, but certainly for the American sensibility of the 1920'S it became most tragically evident in the social and economic collapse at the end of that decade. In the late summer of 1924, Wallace Stevens published in Measure a poem called Red Loves Kit (OP 30),1 essentially an extension of the themes of Harmonium relating to the vital nature of poetry, and to the nature of the individual self and the individual thing in the complex epistemology of the poetic experience: