Epistemic Position Research Articles

THEORETICAL PREMISES FOR THE STUDY OF EPISTEMIC I-POSITION IN DIALOGICAL DISCOURSE

The given article is devoted to highlighting theoretical premises for the study of epistemic I-position in English dialogical discourse. Since communication is one of the main features of people's social organization, the study of epistemic self-position in dialogical discourse is a relevant task of modern sociolinguistics. The epistemic self-position reflects the subject's knowledge of the world, his worldview, his points of view and his beliefs. It refers to the speaker's knowledge of the subject of speech, the degree of confidence in expression. Modern corpus-oriented studies of discourse are performed in three directions, namely, textual (study of the choice of language units, meanings and models in texts); critical (combination of critical discourse analysis and system functional linguistics); contextual (taking into account situational factors of communication, involvement of the theory of speech acts and pragmatics). Due to the explanatory inflexibility of the existing electronic corpora of the English language, that is the impossibility of a complete analysis of the presented contexts, our own corpus of texts was created to study the epistemic position of a subject in English dialogic discourse. We have singled out and framed the contexts of the use of epistemic verbs (such as, know, think, seem, believe, understand, suppose, guess, expect, hope). The selected contexts of the use of epistemic verbs in artistic dialogic discourse will be analyzed in semantic and pragmatic aspects, namely - the meaning of the studied epistemic markers, such as reliability, faith, confidence, etc., and their pragmatic usage to express strategies and tactics of I-concept. The perspective of this study is a detailed analysis of the semantic and pragmatic features of epistemic markers in artistic discourse.

Anecdotal Pluralism

Anecdotal pluralism (AP) is the claim that, when two individuals disagree on the truth of a religious belief, the right move to make is to engage in a communal epistemic process of evidence sharing and evaluation, motivated by the willingness to learn from each other, understand the adversary's views and how these challenge their own, and re-evaluate their own epistemic position in regards to external criticisms. What I will do in my paper is to provide a presentation of AP and give a few reasons in support. I will begin with showing how pluralism can be promoted by religious experiences inhering in any (historical) tradition. To this regard, my purpose is to analyse such experiences as conducive to the assumption of the two main principles defining any pluralist view. Subsequently, I will construe AP by seven claims, and I will focus my efforts on justifying its superiority both to exclusivism/inclusivism and other varieties of pluralism. My next and final move is to list a few reasons which support my view.

The Decolonial Stance in Mathematics Education: pointing out actions for the construction of a political agenda

In this article, we present a decolonial stance in Mathematics Education, which is not understood as a qualification attributed to particular actions or practices as opposed to others, nor as a tendency that theoretically or methodologically constrains research production, but as a political and epistemic position of permanent transgression and insurgency concerning the patterns of world power established by the myth of Western modernity. From this understanding and towards a political agenda in Mathematics Education, we propose, with no pretensions of totality, a set of situated actions: in Mathematics, in its ontological, epistemological and methodological perspectives, problematizing the naturalization of practices and conceptions on the discipline and its teaching, and setting it in a movement of political-epistemic disobedience; in collective memories linked to Mathematics and Mathematics Education, deconstructing Eurocentric narratives which invibilize bodies, knowledges, and ways of being in the world; in Mathematics teachers’ education processes, incorporating and acknowledging the protagonism of other subjects, territories, and their knowledges.

ФУНКЦІОНУВАННЯ ЕПІСТЕМІЧНОГО ДІЄСЛОВА TO KNOW У ТВОРАХ Д. Г. ЛОУРЕНСА

The given article is devoted to highlighting the functions of the epistemic verb to know as a marker of the self-position of the subject in the artistic dialogic discourse on the material of the works by D.H. Lawrence. The epistemic self-position reflects the subject’s knowledge of the world, his worldview, his points of view and his beliefs. It refers to the speaker’s knowledge of the subject of speech, the degree of confidence in expression. Modern corpus-oriented studies of discourse are performed in three directions, namely, textual (study of the choice of language units, meanings and models in texts); critical (combination of critical discourse analysis and system functional linguistics); contextual (taking into account situational factors of communication, involvement of the theory of speech acts and pragmatics). Due to the explanatory inflexibility of the existing electronic corpora of the English language, that is the impossibility of a complete analysis of the presented contexts, our own corpus of texts was created to study the epistemic position of a subject in English dialogic discourse. It has been illustrated by the example of the works by David Herbert Lawrence, one of the key English writers of the early twentieth century. We have singled out and framed the contexts of the use of epistemic verbs (such as, know, think, seem, believe, understand, suppose, guess, expect, hope). The selected contexts of the use of epistemic verbs in artistic dialogic discourse will be analyzed in semantic and pragmatic aspects, namely – the meaning of the studied epistemic markers, such as reliability, faith, confidence, etc., and their pragmatic usage to express strategies and tactics of I-concept. The perspective of this study is a detailed analysis of the semantic and pragmatic features of epistemic markers in artistic discourse.

Models of rhetorical relations in Russian blogging as an indicator of interlocutors’ information behavior

Russian blog texts are characterized by the fact that the respondent expresses opinions in order to convince the author of the effectiveness of certain ideas that cover his/her private life and professional activities. The respondent presents arguments in favor of his/her opinion, introduces the rationale for it, and at the same time indicates that the point of view previously expressed by the blogger is also relevant in the contextual situation under discussion. Rhetorical relations project conflict-free development of easy communication. As a result, the points of view put forward by the blogger and the respondent complement each other. It turns out that the same situation potentially generates both positive and negative emotions, and this is emphasized in the virtual communication based on the implementation of the phatic function of language. Rhetorical relations within the blog text help to combine different epistemic positions expressed by the interlocutors. In this regard, an urgent problem of linguistic research of Russian blog texts is to determine whether the interlocutors who exchange opinions and assessments form integral models of dialogic communication, based on which means of linking the stimulating and reacting messages are connected. This problem has not yet received proper empirical analysis in Russian studies and general language theory, although its solution, as we believe, contains significant implications for detailing the pragmatic specifics of blog communication. The aim of the study is to implement a structural and pragmatic analysis of rhetorical relations in blog texts, which involves identifying the dominant markers of these relations, their basic model and its variants. The goal stated in the article is realized through the following research methods: (1) the method of observation and interpretation of blogging while analyzing the peculiarities of the linguistic means of implementing connectivity; (2) descriptive-analytical (contextual) method-direct analysis of blog text fragments as a linear sequence; (3) a method for modeling rhetorical cause-and-effect relationships between segments of a single replica and at the level of integral dialogic unity in the blog text. It is concluded that rhetorical relations fix national and cultural stereotypes, which, in turn, determine the material and ideal scope of the degree of relevance of the addressees evaluation activity. When implementing such speech actions, the interlocutors take into rigid consideration not only the frequent and dominant cultural scripts of dialogic axiological performance, but also the relevant stereotypes of such activities that are set by the language system. The rhetorical relations between stimulating and reacting messages in the context of computer-mediated communication generate facilitate the processes of decoding the informative and emotional content of the jointly generated text and its implications.

OH + OKAY in informing sequences: On fuzzy boundaries in a particle combination

AbstractThis study explores fuzzy boundaries, or weak cesuras, in the particle combination OH + OKAY as used in informing sequences in ordinary English talk-in-interaction. The focus is on the third position in such sequences, where OH + OKAY responds to information that has been solicited by the speaker in a prior turn. Based on a collection of approximately 45 instances of OH + OKAY in recent American English telephone and face-to-face interactions, this study adopts the methodology of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics to examine the prosody and phonetics of OH + OKAY as a feature of turn design. It asks: (i) when does the speaker use a combination of OH and OKAY in the third position rather than a simple OH or OKAY? and (ii) to what extent does the prosodic–phonetic delivery of OH + OKAY contribute to an interpretation of what the turn is doing? The study finds that (i) OH + OKAY is used when responding to a solicited informing that not only supplies information but also accomplishes another action with consequences for the recipient and (ii) if OH + OKAY is delivered with a strong cesura between its parts, its actions are distributed in separate turn-constructional units, creating a multi-unit turn that proposes sequence closure. If the cesura in OH + OKAY is weak, the component parts are fused into a compound particle that can preface more talk by the same speaker. Weak boundaries between OH and OKAY can be exploited by participants for the purposes of turn construction and epistemic positioning.

Epistemic injustice and epistemic positioning: towards an intersectional political economy

This article introduces the concept of epistemic positioning to theorize the relationship between identity-based epistemic judgements and the reproduction of social inequalities, including those of gender and ethnicity/race, in the academia. Acts of epistemic positioning entail the evaluation of knowledge claims based on the speaker’s stated or inferred identity. These judgements serve to limit the scope of the knowledge claim, making it more likely speakers will be denied recognition or credit. The four types of epistemic positioning – bounding (reducing a knowledge claim to elements of personal identity), domaining (reducing a knowledge claim to discipline or field associated with identity), non-attribution (using the claim without recognizing the author) and appropriation (presenting the claim as one’s own) – are mutually reinforcing. Given the growing importance of visibility and recognition in the context of increasing competition and insecurity in academic employment, these practices play a role in the ability of underrepresented groups to remain in the academic profession.

Colloquium 1 Dialectic, Persuasion, and Science in Aristotle

Abstract What is dialectic and what is it for, in Aristotle? Aristotle’s answer in Topics 1.2 seems surprisingly lacking in unity. He seems to imply that insofar as dialectic is an expertise (τέχνη), it is a disposition to three (possibly four) different kinds of productive achievement. Insofar as dialectic is a method, it is one whose use is seemingly subject to multiple, differing standards of evaluation. The goal of the paper is to resist this problematic “multi-tool” view of Aristotelian dialectic, by explaining how dialectic’s contributions to training, encounters, and the philosophical sciences are of the same kind. What unifies them, I argue, is the kind of reasoning that improves the epistemic position of the person that engages with it. The kind of reasoning-based practices in which dialectic is the expertise are, at heart, tools of inquiry, tools for improving people’s understanding. This is why dialectic is beneficial for persuasive encounters: it is an expertise that enables its possessor to persuade by improving the understanding of their participants.

An African response to the philosophical crises in medicine: Towards an African philosophy of medicine and bioethics


 
 
 In this paper, I identify two major philosophical crises confronting medicine as a global phenomenon. The first crisis is the epistemological crisis of adopting an epistemic attitude, adequate for improving medical knowledge and practice. The second is the ethical crisis, also known as the “quality-of-care crisis,” arising from the traditional patient-physician dyad. I acknowledge the different proposals put forward in the quest for solutions to these crises. However, I observe that most of these proposals remain inadequate given their over-reliance on the Western biomedical tradition (WBT) and the medical hegemony that underpins the proposals themselves. Contrary to the approach employed in these proposals, I propose medical pluralism as a viable platform for resolving the philosophic crises in medicine, by critically engaging non-Western medical traditions (NMTs) and thought systems. Ultimately, I make a push for the deliberate inauguration of an African philosophy of medicine and bioethics (APMB) and other context-specific or indigenous philosophies of medicine and bioethics that will ensure continuous investigations into NMTs and their contribution to global medical issues.
 
 

Hope, Worry, and Suspension of Judgment

AbstractIn this paper, I defend an epistemic requirement on fitting hopes and worries: it is fitting to hope or to worry that p only if one’s epistemic position makes it rational to suspend judgment as to whether p. This view, unlike prominent alternatives, is ecumenical; it retains its plausibility against a variety of different background views of epistemology. It also has other important theoretical virtues: it is illuminating, elegant, and extensionally adequate. Fallibilists about knowledge have special reason to be friendly to my view; it can help them explain why it can be unfitting to hold on to hope and worry in the face of overwhelming evidence, and it can also help them explain the sense in which knowledge that p and hope that –p are in tension with one another.

P, but you don\u2019t know that P

Unlike first-person Moorean sentences, it’s not always awkward to assert, “p, but you don’t know that p.” This can seem puzzling: after all, one can never get one’s audience to know the asserted content by speaking thus. Nevertheless, such assertions can be conversationally useful, for instance, by helping speaker and addressee agree on where to disagree. I will argue that such assertions also make trouble for the growing family of views about the norm of assertion that what licenses proper assertion is not the initiating epistemic position of the speaker but the (potential) resulting epistemic position of the audience.

Science Teachers’ Conceptions About the Importance of Teaching and How to Teach Western Science to Students from Traditional Communities

We discuss the results of a qualitative research with science teachers that serve students from traditional communities. The aim is to analyze their conceptions on the importance of teaching and how to teach Western science to students from these communities. Data collection is carried out through semi-structured interviews with four teachers who work in a public school in the state of Bahia, Brazil. The analysis starts from the construction of narratives, generating thematic categories and epistemic positioning of teachers’ conceptions. The results indicate that, for those teachers, teaching Western science to students from traditional communities is important for the expansion of their knowledge and their active participation in different sociocultural environments, through methods that include intercultural dialogue. However, their answers have contradictions, which allow us to infer that their conceptions transit into the four epistemic positions on science teaching and cultural diversity: Epistemological Pluralism, Interculturalism, Multiculturalism, and Universalism, with the first two being the most emphasized. This reveals a dilemma between what they conceive as goals and links for science education, and what they practice as teachers, which is possibly influenced by school pedagogy provided by public policies of national education. We consider implications of these conceptions and positions for teacher education and science teaching sensitive to cultural diversity.

On Epistemic Justice

The paper deals with the concept of epistemic justice and analyses two types of epistemic injustice - testimonial and hermeneutical. The latter is given priority due to the fact that any individual inteгaction involves an individual as а member of а certain social group or community. This requires а study into collective epistemic attitudes, first of all - collective prejudices which Ыосk epistemic resources required for understanding and discussing personal and collective experience. The paper also looks into two related topics - the proЬlem of expertise and the phenomenon of post-truth. S. Fuller's charitaЫe interpretation of post-truth helps to show that this approach can solve the main proЬlem of epistemic justice - that of unequal epistemic status of knowers. However, the price of such levelling-down is too high and would require а complete overhaul of the expertise system.

“Eurowhite” Conceit, “Dirty White” Ressentment: “Race” in Europe

This paper offers tools to rethink global critical insights on “race” in the contemporary structural transformation of European identity politics from the perspectives of postcolonial global historical sociologies. “Race” regimes rest on the following background assumptions: (1) The claim that humankind consists of a finite number of disjunct (non‐overlapping) “groups,” “populations” or, in the extreme, “races”; (2) The presumption that it is valid to arrange those “groups,” “populations” or “races” in a system of moral super‐ and subordination; (3) The contention that the resulting moral hierarchy forms a single constant, irrespective of socio‐historical contexts, criteria, or purposes of comparison; (4) Insistence that single, ahistorical/decontextualized hierarchy can be mapped on to body shape, skin pigmentation or other epiphenomenal “features” of “groups,” “populations,” or “races,” such that (5) “Whiteness” is always already at the top, “Blackness” is always already at the bottom of that hierarchy. This paper focuses on the workings of “Whiteness” as a moral‐geopolitical superiority claim, whose defining element is an ahistorical/decontextualized claim, indeed demand, for unconditional global privilege. “Whiteness” is an unfounded, un‐found‐able—hence eminently unstable and contested—identity category. It is a relational category whose core is fixed as a constant, inaugurating the “White” subject’s relations (“superiority”) to its constitutive outside. I introduce two conceptual innovations: “eurowhiteness”—result of an internal structuring of the category of “Whiteness” whose purpose is separating an even more exalted, even more superior “cultural” —“racial” distinction within the universe of “Whiteness” and “dirty whiteness”—to capture the epistemic position of quantitative undervalued, positions within the moral quasi‐community of “White” claims for global privilege, especially in their east European variants.

There’s Something about Mary: Challenges and Prospects for Narrative Theodicy

This paper explores the constraints of narrative theodicy to account for the misery of the powerless and uses Mary of Bethany as a case study as evaluated through the early modern theodical writings of Mary Astell and Mary Hays. Eleonore Stump has pointed out that Mary of Bethany’s misery is interesting because it is so personal; it results from losing her heart’s desire. But, Mary of Bethany’s case fails as narrative theodicy because it cannot (unlike other cases, such as Job) sufficiently demonstrate the power of God in situated expressions of suffering, speak to plight of the powerless, nor put the sufferer in a stronger epistemic position. Astell and Hays provide a solution for the problem of lived experiences of systemic oppression for the project of narrative theodicy (it must be for and about suffering), and in so doing, remind us of the continued significance of their work to the philosophical canon. To succeed, narratives used for theodicy must speak directly to the plight of those who suffer, and must allow the powerless, miserable, unprivileged, and oppressed to have access to religious knowledge of the relationship between God and the one in misery, the one powerless.

‘Answer in any way you want’: Discursive tensions in conversations of a citizen participation process

This paper contributes to empirical knowledge of citizen participation as a communicative event, by analyzing discursive tensions in interviews between civil servants and citizen-parents, that are part of a participatory process on how to mitigate violence in a suburban area in Sweden. Citizen participation events are increasingly initiated by public institutions in Western societies. Research, however, shows that goals of participatory processes often conflict with formal decision-making structures and institutional boundaries. Yet, how such tensions play out on the level of interaction is little researched. This study therefore analyzes discursive practices deployed by civil servants and how these construct characteristic tensions for the interviews. Three practices are identified: (1) pursuing the initial question, (2) cueing an institutional frame, and (3) epistemic positioning of the parents. These practices, being guided by an institutional agenda, create tensions both to the parents’ lifeworld and for the ideals of the participatory method itself.

A heterodox defense of the actualist higher-order thought theory

I defend the actualist higher-order thought theory against four objections. The first objection contends that the theory is circular. The second one contends that the theory is unable to account for the alleged epistemic position we are in with respect to our own conscious mental states. The third one contends that the theory is unable to account for the evidence we have for the proposition that all conscious mental states are represented. The fourth one contends that the theory does not accommodate the intimacy we have with our own conscious mental states. To some extent, my defense will be heterodox, in the sense that I will show that some objections are satisfactorily answerable even if we concede to the objectors a point that higher-order theorists do not seem to be willing to concede, that is, that the theory is the result of conceptual analysis.

Dr Livingstone, I Presume?

AbstractPresumption is often discussed in law, less often in epistemology. Is it an attitude? If so where can we locate it within the taxonomy of epistemic attitudes? Is it a kind of belief, a judgment, an assumption or a supposition? Or is it a species of inference? There are two basic models of presumption: judgmental, as a kind of judgment, and legal, taken from the use of presumptions in law. The legal model suggests that presumption is a practical inference, whereas the judgmental model suggests that presumption is an epistemic attitude. I argue that presumption is neither a practical inference nor a merely epistemic attitude: it involves both, within the category of what we may call the inquiring attitudes.

Acculturation Coalesce Between Islamic Leadership with Minangkabau Local Wisdom

The Minangkabau community has a long history of Islamic culture. This historical fact is assisted by the Minangkabau natural Tambo which contains philosophy, goals, ideals, normativity, regulations, and proverbs that presuppose consensus as to the goals of society. The purpose of this study, using the perspective of Jurgen Habermas, which is based on the theory of communicative action, the researcher is helped in studying the forms of deliberation from the democratic system of the Minangkabau natural society. Qualitative research is the research method used. The critical paradigm is the chosen solution. In this study, which is combined with the concepts of shari'a associated with communication theory, Habermas’ critical hermeneutic theory will be used. The results of this study show the discursive decision-making process in the Nagari, which is then questioned with the lareh dualism that gave birth to the Tuah sakato democracy. Then from a long study related to how the deliberation process in the Minang realm has the potential to be epistemic in the post-secular era, the researchers also found that the IKM regional organizations as developers of these potentials were outside the realm and had an impact on the Minang realm itself. The results of this study can trigger further researchers to participate in cultural studies and human resources related to the importance of epistemic attitudes in the post-secular era.

Just looking: The innocent eye in neuroscience

Since the early days of neuroscience, students have been instructed to "just look" at their data with innocent eyes, and more recently with innocent algorithms. I argue that this epistemic attitude obscures the ubiquitous role that theory plays in neuroscience.