Epistemic Approach Research Articles

Shari’ah and economics: a generalized system approach

PurposeThis paper aims to open the gateway of methodological abstraction and its application in an Islamic perspective in a way that has not been carried out before in Islamic literature. That is because of the absence of ontological and epistemological inquiry in Islamic erudition for a long time now. In the case of the Shari’ah and its induction of socioeconomic studies, the span of intellection and application ought to be premised on the ontological, epistemological, phenomenological and continuity attributes derived from the monotheistic law. This takes the formalism of organic inter-causal unity of being and becoming between the complementary good choices of life. The ontological monotheistic law of unity of knowledge is referred to as Tawhid in the Qur’an. Empirical work is done in support of the argument presented in this paper.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is a formal contribution in the direction of developing a model of well-being based on the methodology of unity of knowledge arising from the Tawhidi epistemic foundation. In this regard, a methodologically interrelated theoretical and empirically applied study is accomplished to test the argumentation and hypothesis of endogenous systemic embedding of inter-variable causality between Shari’ah and economic and financial issues.FindingsIn spite of the epistemic approach to explain the embedding model of interrelationship between Islamic law and details of the socioeconomic field, Islamic scholarship and practice in all fields have remained oblivious to its epistemic roots. Consequently, as presently understood, Shari’ah and economics and the various socio-scientific specifics, as of Islamic finance and financial and religious institutions in these areas, could not make a generalized model of social well-being, one that can be simulated by inter-variable causal relations.Originality/valueThe paper conveys a critical conceptual idea to debate the scope and approach of Islamic Law, Shari’ah, on economic matters. The system-oriented approach is used to formulate a systems theory of integration between Shari’ah and economics. The results of the approach implemented in this study constitute a major contribution of this paper to scholarship in general and acts as a critique of traditional Islamic thought with respect to Shari’ah and economics.

The Intrusive “I” in Translations of Italian Librettos

Abstract The modern aesthetic-linguistic code that governs translations of Italian opera librettos is fundamentally rooted in Romanticism. This code clashes to some extent with the code governing the source texts, where Romantic guiding principles fuse over a solid Petrarchan and Arcadian substratum indebted to the Dolce Stil Novo poetry of the late Middle Ages. This substratum is eroded in many translations, principally through a reinforcement of the first person (“I”) at the expense of things (in general) and feelings and vital organs (in particular), which, in the original libretto, are endowed with the capacity to act as independent agents. Accompanying this different epistemic approach to reality and the individual are noteworthy discrepancies in the use of rhetorical devices, marked by: (a) a lesser propensity in translations for circumlocution, personification, and synecdoche; (b) a higher degree of flexibility in Italian in the use of ellipsis; and (c) variatio in original librettos in contrast to uniformity and parallelism in translations.

Clases naturales: una revisión crítica desde la causalidad y la complejidad

RESUMENLas clases naturales tienen un importante valor heurístico que no ha sido explorado a nivel epistémico. Una revisión crítica del concepto de “clase natural” sugerido por la teoría del Cúmulo de Propiedades Homeostáticas (HPC) , desde la complejidad y la causalidad, muestra que es incompatible con las prácticas científicas, en especial las de la biología. Debido a los múltiples problemas que presenta en ese ámbito científico el concepto de ‘clase natural’ debería ser reconfigurado con el fin de estar acorde con las inferencias explicativas y predictivas de la biología. Esto tendría como consecuencia un mejor entendimiento filosófico de los procesos y entidades naturales a la vez que ayudaría a resolver algunos problemas filosóficos y científicos.PALABRAS CLAVECLASE NATURAL, CAUSALIDAD, COMPLEJIDAD, PRACTICAS CIENTÍFICAS, ESPACIOS DE POSIBILIDAD EPISTÉMICOSABSTRACTNatural kinds have an important epistemic value that has not been studied due to the fact that the philosophical research has been focused on both semantics and logical aspects. I propose a critical review from causality and complexity to the concept of «natural kind» advanced by Homeostatic Properties Cluster Theory (HPC) in order to demonstrate that the kinds in the HPC style s are not supported by scientific practices such as biology. I think that a different concept of “natural kind” should be based on scientific practices in order to obtain a better philosophical understanding compared to HPC of both, natural processes and obtaining successful inferences. I hold that this epistemic approach provides us a new characterization of “natural kind” that will be useful as a unifying concept of natural phenomena, as well as for generating new spaces of epistemic possibilityKEY WORDSNATURAL KINDS, CAUSALITY, COMPLEXITY, SCIENTIFIC PRACTICES, EPISTEMIC POSSIBILITY SPACES

Por uma dimensão também conceitual da educação em linguagem: uma abordagem vigotskiana

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1984-8412.2016v13n4p1587Este artigo tematiza a apropriação conceitual na educação em linguagem, na busca por responder a duas inquietudes: ‘O que é educar em linguagem?’ e ‘O que é apropriação conceitual na educação em linguagem?’. Para tanto, configura-se como abordagem qualitativa, mobilizando dados empíricos que compõem unidades documentais do Grupo de Pesquisa Cultura Escrita e Escolarização. A análise desses dados tem como base principal as ‘Obras Escogidas’ de L. S. Vygotski, na tradução do russo para o espanhol. A discussão resulta na argumentação em favor de (se rea)haver a mencionada apropriação conceitual na educação em linguagem, sob um configuração que efetivamente faculte dar-se na e para a intersubjetividade. No delineamento argumentativo, problematizam-se: (i) abordagens taxionômicas e/ou normativistas travestidas de práticas sociais; (ii) percursos de objetificação dos gêneros do discurso; (iii) encaminhamentos cientificistas no tratamento gramatical; e (iv) denegação desse mesmo tratamento sob qualquer perspectiva. O foco vigotskiano coloca-se na filiação a uma base epistêmica nas lides da educação em linguagem e, por implicação, na compreensão de que o tensionamento entre conceitos cotidianos e conceitos científicos é questão nodal no processo de autorregulação da conduta nos usos da língua.

Apresentação | A relevância da perspectiva histórico-cultural vigotskiana para profissionais ocupados com educação escolar em linguagem

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1984-8412.2016v13n4p1533A edição temática da Fórum Linguístico propõe-se a discutir o modo como a perspectiva histórico-cultural, no que respeita sobremodo ao pensamento vygotskiano, pode se mostrar relevante para profissionais ocupados com educação escolar em linguagem, quer seja como objeto de ensino, quer seja como objeto de pesquisa, em diferentes níveis de escolaridade. A relevância dessa discussão decorre do momento atual na história em que o enfoque epistêmico é posto em xeque, suscitando complexas problematizações acerca do papel da educação escolar.

Analysis of the treatment of intertextuality in the Italian translations of the works by P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) in the light of the epistemic approach

Research on Humour and Translation studies requires instruments capable to appreciate their complex nature. We present here the epistemic approach, a tool especially devised to analyse the translation of humour instances in written fictional text. This approach focuses on the role knowledge plays in creative production and in the process of translating, allowing both translators and researchers to recognize the functions of the stylistic devices employed to convey humour, and to guide and evaluate their rendering in translation. The stylistic device investigated in this study is intertextuality in the works of humourist writer P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975). By means of a case study, its treatment in translation is analysed, comparing five translations of the same novel into Italian, published between 1931 and 1994.

LIBERTY AGAINST PROGRESS

Abstract:The epistemic approach to liberalism not only clarifies some of the core features of progress-based arguments for liberty. For two reasons it provides grounds for doubting those arguments’ persuasiveness. The first reason emerges from the epistemic liberal explanation of economic recessions and of social regress as necessary consequences of our enjoying the individual liberty to adapt to our circumstances. Precisely because it secures personal choice with respect to the ends of life and the means to pursue them, liberty must be construed as at best necessary for the imperfect and costly realization of the interest individuals may have in personal advancement. Second, and in revealing the underlying logic of the economic and cultural processes that liberty makes possible, epistemic liberalism shows that it is to the notion of complex adaptation that we must look when seeking to evaluate the overall or aggregate results of liberty. Crucially, however, this means rejecting the notion of progress as fit to perform this ethico-historical evaluative role.

Epistemic justice as a virtue in hermeneutic psychotherapy

The value turn in epistemology generated a particularly influential new position - virtue epistemology. It is an increasingly influential epistemological normative approach that opts for the intellectual virtues of the epistemic agent, rather than the truth-value of the proposition, as the central epistemic value. In the first part of this article we will attempt to briefly explain the value turn and outline the basic aspects of virtue epistemology, underlining the diversity of epistemic attitudes associated with this approach and their positive impact on expanding epistemological horizons. The second part will be focused on the virtues of epistemic responsibility and epistemic justice as particularly appropriate for evaluating social processes such as, for example, testimony and conversational practices in general. In the third section we will show how the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic communicational act can be more efficiently analyzed and evaluated from the perspective of the virtue of epistemic justice, than from the traditional epistemic approach based on a monist concept of truth. The fourth and fifth section synthesize the discussion by introducing the concept of hermeneutic psychotherapy as a therapeutically and epistemically favorable framework for evaluating communicational acts in psychotherapy.

The Buddha and the numen: postmodern spirituality and the problem of transcendence in Buddhism

The Western world has seen a significant shift in the epistemic values of spiritual seekers in the past quarter of a century; many have referred to the new epistemic approach as postmodern spirituality. Among the attributes unique to this growing cultural force are the prominence of mystery, enchantment, and the prehension of a numinous other (which need not be a theistic other) as key means of both valuing and validating any system of belief and practice. But postmodern spirituality is not the syncretism of New Age religion; its adherents seek an authentic path, not an eclectic, superficially fused path. How will Buddhism fare in the face of this new phenomenon? Much depends on whether Buddhism is understood by postmoderns to contain mystery, ineffability, and transcendence. Buddhism's first two centuries of significant contact with the West have occurred in the shadow of Western Enlightenment, modernity. Concurrent with this fact, and probably in response to it, there has been a Buddhist apologia which demystifies Buddhism. But desacralized religion, along with the other hallmarks of modernity—scientism, individualism, materialism, and rationalism—are precisely the cultural elements to which postmodern spirituality is a reaction. This piece argues that historical Buddhism does, in fact, contain transcendence and mystery and that it is quite capable of taking a seat at the open table of postmodern spirituality. The analysis applies a predominantly Eastern hermeneutic and examines relevant sacred texts alongside the arguments of both Eastern and Western scholars, pro and con.

Maruyama Mindscapes, Myers-Briggs Type Indicators and Cultural Agency Mindset Types

In this paper we introduce the concept of the normative personality bedded on ideas from psychology and social psychology develop, and explains how it can be effectively characterised. There are a variety of approaches that attempt to represent personality types, but few have any substantive theory, and even fewer adopt an epistemic basis. It is explained that one of the more powerful ways of identifying personality types is through Maruyama’s Mindscape theory, a little known but powerful epistemic approach that can anticipate an agency’s patterns of behaviour and demands. It is also a construct from which coherent sets of behavioural mind-sets can emerge, though its major drawback is its lack of generic transparency. From the principles of Mindscape theory, this paper then develops Mindset theory. This has generic transparency, extends personality types beyond the capacity of Mindscape theory, and is derived from a well-endowed empirical base. Mindset Theory is based on the Sagiv-Schwartz (2007) cultural values study from which 8 Mindset types are generated that individually or in combination can characterise personality and anticipate behaviour. Mindset theory is also superior to other personality the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory schema since it has a well-developed theory, is empistemically based, and establishes a means by which patterns of behaviour can be anticipated.

Against selfless assertions

Lackey’s (Nous 41(4):594–626, 2007) class of “selfless assertions” is controversial in at least two respects: it allows propositions that express Moorean absurdity to be asserted warrantedly, and it challenges the orthodox view that the speaker’s belief is a necessary condition for warranted assertibility. With regard to the former point, I critically examine Lackey’s broadly Gricean treatment of Moorean absurdity and McKinnon’s (Am Philos Q 50(2):121–135, 2013; The norms of assertion: truth, lies, and warrant. Palgrave MacMillan, London, 2015) epistemic approach. With regard to the latter point, I defend the received view by supporting the knowledge account (KA), on which knowledge is the necessary condition for warranted assertion. After examining two defenses of KA, by Montminy (Perspectives in pragmatics, philosophy and psychology, Springer, Berlin, 2013) and Turri (Epistemic norms: new essays on action, belief, and assertion. OUP, Oxford, 2014), I propose two alternative approaches. Although I remain neutral between them, I develop in more detail the view which classifies “selfless assertions” as “presentations”, a type of assertives distinct from genuine assertions. This account is motivated further by allowing for the expansion of the normative approach to other assertives, a feature we may be interested in, in the light of a recent wave of normative accounts of speech acts.

Morgan’s Minimalism: An Epistemic Approach to Contract Law

ABSTRACTLawyers tend to fall into two categories. Some argue that the law should reflect our moral duties to each other. Seen that way, law is a form of applied ethics, and the social sciences should play only a very limited role in the reasoning of legal scholars. Others argue that the law should be developed consistently with the conclusions of social science, arguing, for example, that the task of the law is to maximize economic efficiency, such that law must conform to economists’ conclusions about which rules are the most efficient. Jonathan Morgan rejects both of those approaches. He does not think that the law should mimic our moral duties, but he is also skeptical about the utility of social sciences in predicting the effects of law. He also argues that courts are not institutionally competent to deal with social-science evidence. However, he does not conclude that the social sciences must be rejected by legal scholarship. He himself uses them to establish that law is generally not needed to govern ongoing commercial relationships, that it is required only when such relationships break down, and that courts should focus on resolving such breakdowns as simply and predictably as possible. Based on those considerations, he sketches a minimalist vision of contract law and argues that it is the best we can hope for.

La interseccionalidad: una aproximación situada a la dominación

The definitions, uses and theoretical, methodological and political scope of intersectionality in feminist theory constitute the focus of this article. This text establishes a genealogy of intersectional approaches, including the contributions of feminist thought produced in various historical and geopolitical contexts. It identifies some of the main lines of the debate on intersectionality in order to show their scope and limits, linked largely to their broad dissemination. It also shows how the intersections of race and gender, and class and gender, are experienced, demonstrating the consubstantiality of these relationships for the social groups involved, and examining both my own research and that of other authors. The text concludes with the political importance of the concept, emphasizing the contributions of black feminism, color feminism and Latin American feminism as decolonizing epistemic approaches. This analytical assessment is used to highlight the theoretical and critical scope of a localized, contextualized intersectional approach.

An auto-critique of TWAIL’s historical fallacy: sketching an alternative manifesto

Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) has been impactful in international law scholarship. However, many of its epistemic approaches, especially its active historicising, have often turned counterproductive to its objective of securing freedom for the peoples of the Third World. Moreover, pursuing the colonial past through weighty polemics has rendered TWAIL a discourse that engenders anti-Western sentiments. Further, TWAIL’s dialectic means of resistance and opposition to a past-influenced present ingrained in international law and systems, which are at the disposal of the West, have the reverse effect of dialectically imposing a Western otherness on TWAIL. Hence, an alternative manifesto is sketched, which, while it disagrees with the exclusion of the West in social production, refuses to privilege the West through a Hegelian dialectic of otherness. The alternative manifesto proposes an alternative dialectic wherein the otherness is a ‘universal’ in the self-consciousness of the subjects. It is a dialectic of inclusion and open participation. The article also attempts to situate the new dialectic in international law.

Aristotle and the Judgment of the Many: Equality, Not Collective Quality

Aristotle’s “doctrine of the wisdom of the multitude” (DWM) has become a canonical reference for political theorists, particularly supporters of epistemic approaches to democracy. Yet the excessive focus on the collective capacity of the many has obscured a more promising defense of democracy within Aristotle’s work. Despite Aristotle’s infamous arguments defending unequal merit and hierarchical relationships, his account of citizenship is strikingly egalitarian: he argues that citizenship, properly distributed, reflects an equal capacity for judgment. On this basis, an Aristotelian justification of democracy emerges, one quite distinct from the DWM-inflected defense of collective judgments.

Evaluating epistemic negation in answer set programming

Epistemic negation not along with default negation ¬ plays a key role in knowledge representation and nonmonotonic reasoning. However, the existing epistemic approaches such as those by Gelfond [13,15,14], Truszczynski [33] and Kahl et al. [18] behave not satisfactorily in that they suffer from the problems of unintended world views due to recursion through the epistemic modal operator K or M (KF and MF are shorthands for ¬notF and not¬F, respectively). In this paper we present a new approach to handling epistemic negation which is free of unintended world views and thus offers a solution to the long-standing problem of epistemic specifications which were introduced by Gelfond [13] over two decades ago. We consider general logic programs consisting of rules of the form H←B, where H and B are arbitrary first-order formulas possibly containing epistemic negation, and define a general epistemic answer set semantics for general logic programs by introducing a novel program transformation and a new definition of world views in which we apply epistemic negation to minimize the knowledge in world views. The general epistemic semantics is applicable to extend any existing answer set semantics, such as those defined in [26,27,32,1,8,12,29], with epistemic negation. For illustration, we extend FLP answer set semantics of Faber et al. [8] for general logic programs with epistemic negation, leading to epistemic FLP semantics. We also extend the more restrictive well-justified FLP semantics of Shen et al. [29], which is free of circularity for default negation, to an epistemic well-justified semantics. We consider the computational complexity of epistemic FLP semantics and show that for a propositional program Π with epistemic negation, deciding whether Π has epistemic FLP answer sets is Σ3p-complete and deciding whether a propositional formula F is true in Π under epistemic FLP semantics is Σ4p-complete in general, but has lower complexity for logic programs that match normal epistemic specifications, where the complexity of world view existence and query evaluation drops by one level in the polynomial hierarchy.

Of Distributive Politics and Pork Barrel System: Why Not Epistemic Governance Approach?

ABSTRACTThe paper attempts to situate distributive politics in the context of epistemic governance. The paper also seeks to analyze the various structures and systems, actors, agents and stakeholders, and norms and behaviors involved within the realm of theory and praxis in distributive politics. It borrows from the epistemic work targets espoused by Alasuutari and Qadir (2014), namely the environment, actors and virtues. Finally, the paper proposes an epistemic governance as policy approach in distributive politics as it tries to argue the shift of power from the hands of the political elites to the hands of the politically astute epistemes.

On the prospect of an experimental account of argumentation. Commentary: Toward an experimental account of argumentation: the case of the slippery slope and the ad hominem arguments.

On the prospect of an experimental account of argumentation. Commentary: Toward an experimental account of argumentation: the case of the slippery slope and the ad hominem arguments.

Voting turnout, equality, liberty and representation: epistemic versus procedural democracy

Some epistemic approaches to democracy evince an exclusivistic approach to voting participation whereby high turnout elections are thought to produce adverse outcomes. On this view, high turnout introduces greater input from less politically competent citizens which, in turn, leads to bad governance. I challenge these claims from both an empirical and normative perspective by defending procedural democracy against epistemic democracy. I argue that it is mistaken to privilege epistemic considerations over other values that democracy is meant to serve, in this case, political equality, liberty and representativeness. Further, it is not clear that high voter turnout leads to worse government. In sum, (electoral) epistemic democracy is hard to justify given that (a) even in theory it is unconvincing as a form of democracy and (b) even on its own terms it is not demonstrably better than procedural democracy at ‘performing’ democracy.

Compromise Despite Conviction: Curbing Integrity’s Moral Dangers

Integrity looks dangerous. Passionate willpower, focused devotion and driving self-belief nestle all-too-closely to extremism, narcissism and intolerant hubris. How can integrity skirt such perils? This question opens the perennial issue of whether devout, driven devotees can guard themselves from antisocial extremes. Current proposals to inoculate integrity from moral danger hone in on integrity’s reflective side. I argue that this epistemic approach disarms integrity’s dangers only by stripping it of everything that initially made it worthwhile. Instead, I argue that integrity contains substantive moral principles serving to surgically target the dangers the trait would otherwise pose. The person of integrity avoids extremism not by questioning whether her values are right, but by recognizing that in a social world whether her values are right is not the only factor that bears on how she should act. Normatively, the proposed account allows integrity to retain its intuitive allures of willpower, direction and unified character. Descriptively, it explains the surprising capacity for principled compromise displayed by canonical figures of integrity. Ultimately, integrity empowers us to be fit for society, even as we are true to ourselves.