Epistemic Basis Research Articles

Empresas sociais e a privatização de novo tipo da educação básica: Um estudo sobre a relação público-privada em cidades de Minas Gerais-Brasil

O texto apresenta o resultado da investigação sobre as chamadas parcerias público-privadas na educação básica do Brasil. Analisamos como se processa a relação entre poder Executivo municipal e organizações privadas na oferta da educação pública em municípios de Minas Gerais. Investigamos municípios polos de mesorregiões do estado: Uberlândia, Governador Valadares, Juiz de Fora e São João del-Rei. Adotamos como base epistêmica o materialismo histórico-dialético e como metodologia a análise documental. Constituímos corpus empírico com documentos da aparelhagem estatal e das organizações da sociedade civil contratadas por entes públicos. Constatamos que a educação infantil é a etapa em que o processo de privatização de novo tipo está mais avançado. Somente um dos municípios apresentou iniciativa de privatização de novo tipo no ensino fundamental. Identificamos que: (i) as relações público-privadas são a expressão da privatização de novo tipo da educação; (ii) os mecanismos de gestão seguem preceitos da administração pública gerencial; (iii) as organizações contratadas pelo poder público foram refuncionalizadas por preceitos gerencialistas como empresas sociais. Concluímos que a nova relação público-privada ressignifica a ideia de espaço público, desestabiliza a gestão democrática, atualiza a divisão de trabalho na educação entre setor público e organizações privadas e fragiliza o direito à educação pública.

Desde la enfermería basada en evidencia: patrones de conocimiento: mirando su narrativa: fenómeno del cuidado

Introducción. Desde la enfermería basada en evidencia, como procesos cognitivos que ponen en marcha frente a cada situación hacen evidente al proceso de Enfermería como herramienta fundamental para la dirección del cuidado. En el fenómeno de cuidado, surge la situación de enfermería como herramienta científica que permite poner en evidencia los patrones de conocimiento enfermero propuestos por Barbara Carper, los elementos del metaparadigma, así como las fases del proceso de enfermería. Para la operacionalización del mismo, se utilizó la taxonomía de diagnósticos propuestos por la NANDA, así como los resultados esperados (NOC) y las intervenciones sugeridas (NIC). Metodología. Para precisar la realidad, se abordó desde el equipaje etnográfico focalizado como metodología analítica explorando desde el aspecto antropológico del cuidado, la enfermería basada en evidencia, patrones de conocimiento desde la narrativa del cuidado como base epistémica para los dominios y taxonomías, teniendo en cuenta la adecuación teórico-epistemológica fundamentada en el paradigma cualitativo-interpretativo a través del interaccionismo simbólico. Resultados y discusiones. La enfermería basada en evidencia, surge como el nuevo paradigma emergente, a través de los patrones de conocimiento, hacen parte de la enseñanza y de la práctica de enfermería, de tal forma que aumentan su complejidad y su diversidad epistemológica. Por lo tanto, cada patrón da una orientación de los problemas y las preguntas de la disciplina, reconociendo que los cambios son inherentes al desarrollo del conocimiento en enfermería. Propuestas metodológicas. El fenómeno del cuidado, emerge como necesidad la simbiosis entre el proceso de enfermería y su transcendencia en la investigación científica a través de la enfermería basada en evidencia, vista como un proceso único, individualizado de la práctica de enfermería a través de la narrativa, usando las herramientas de los patrones de conocimiento, teniendo en cuenta que las repuestas de salud-enfermedad de los seres humanos, forman parte del núcleo central del relato y de los significados que las personas les otorgan.

Foucault y las prisiones en movimiento: sobre el enclaustramiento en los buses de Lima

The objective of this article is to show what happens at the heart of daily life in Lima —buses, passengers and characters—, a situation which is ignored. The epistemic basis consists of the concepts of Foucault extrapolated to the moving universe of transportation, the city of Lima and its peoples’ identity. For this purpose, concepts such as “city”, “bus”, “passenger” and “prison” are defined. Moreover, a brief typology that reflects and sets in motion their dynamics and redefinitions is developed “on the fly”.

Masyarakat Multikultural: Konsepsi, Ciri dan Faktor Pembentuknya

Abstract: Indonesia is widely known as a plural society in addition to popularly being a multicultural nation. Not only does it have the wealth of natural resources, but also it has the most vibrant socio-cultural wealth in the world. This cultural diversity becomes an inevitable reality. Thus looking at the concept of multicultural society, it is as relevant as an epistemic basis that Indonesian people could live together, but at the same time have the potential for possible "civil war". This paper discussed the characteristics of multicultural societies having become the social reality of Indonesia in addition to explaining the formation of multi-cultural society. This study also found that multiculturality of the community was formed due to such factors as geographical, influences on foreign cultures, different climatic conditions, diversity of ethnic groups, and religious and racial diversity.Keywords: Multiculturalism, socio-cultural wealth, racial diversity

What Makes Epistemic Injustice an “Injustice”?

What Makes Epistemic Injustice an “Injustice”?

El método de diseño aplicado al diseño publicitario, una mirada desde los sistemas complejos

El diseño gráfico es una disciplina con una trayectoria sucinta y una base epistémica aún en consolidación. En ella como en su práctica, los métodos son un factor fundamental para la obtención de productos gráficos capaces de satisfacer las demandas para los cuales son requerido; factor que, sin embargo, suele ser poco valorado. La investigación explora los métodos de diseño y sus alcances en el contexto de la actual sociedad red desde dos enfoques, la tradicional postura causal y simplista frente a la de los sistemas complejos, encontrando divergencias entre ambas. Dichos alcances son aplicados al diseño publicitario, dada su preponderancia e impacto en el actual contexto social, cultural, tecnológico y comercial, delineándose desde los sistemas complejos una posible ruta de aplicación prospectiva de sus métodos.

Learning from multiple informants: Children’s response to epistemic bases for consensus judgments

Consensus has both social and epistemic value. Children conform to consensus judgments in ways that suggest they are sensitive to the social value of consensus. Here we report two experiments providing evidence that 4-year-old children also are sensitive to the epistemic value of consensus. When multiple informants gave the same judgment concerning the hidden contents of a container, based on the observation of one of their members, children’s own judgments tended to align with the consensus judgment over the judgment of a lone character, whose observation received no endorsements. This tendency was reduced, however, when children were shown that the group consensus lacked epistemic warrant. Together, the findings provide evidence that young children are sensitive to the epistemic basis of consensus reports.

Consciousness for AGI

Abstract AI can think, lthough we need to clarify definition of thinking. It is cognitive, though we need more clarity on cognition. Definitions of consciousness are so diversified that it is not clear whether present-level AI can be conscious – this is primarily for definitional reasons. To fix this would require four definitional clusters: functional consciousness, access consciousness, phenomenal consciousness, hard consciousness. Interestingly, phenomenal consciousness may be understood as first-person functional consciousness, as well as non-reductive phenomenal consciousness the way Ned Block intended [1]. The latter assumes non-reducible experiences or qualia, which is how Dave Chalmers defines the subject matter of the so-called Hard Problem of Consciousness [2]. To the contrary, I pose that the Hard Problem should not be seen as the problem of phenomenal experiences, since those are just objects in the world (specifically, in our mind). What is special in non-reductive consciousness is not its (phenomenal) content, but its epistemic basis (the carrier-wave of phenomenal qualia) often called the locus of consciousness [3]. It should be understood through the notion of ‘subject that is not an object’ [4]. This requires a complementary ontology of subject and object [5, 6, 4]. Reductionism is justified in the context of objects, including the experiences (phenomena), but not in the realm of pure subjectivity – such subjectivity is relevant for epistemic co-constitution of reality as it is for Husserl and Fichte [7, 8]. This is less so for Kant for whom the subject was active, so it was a mechanism and mechanism are all objects [9]). Pure epistemicity is hard to grasp; it transpires in second-person relationships with other conscious beings [10] or monads [11, 12]. If Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is to dwell in the world of meaningful existences, not just their shadows, as the case of Church-Turing Lovers highlights [13], it requires full epistemic subjectivity, meeting the standards of the Engineering Thesis in Machine Consciousness [14, 15].

Estrategias didácticas para la formación en investigación social en América latina. La construcción de marcos teóricos y pensamiento epistémico

Este trabajo analiza los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje en la investigación dentro de los posgrados en las ciencias sociales y las humanidades en América Latina con el fin de ofrecer estrategias didácticas para la construcción de marcos teóricos y pensamiento epistémico, considerando: 1)proliferación de cursos de metodología de la investigación de carácter algorítmico; 2)prevalencia del aprendizaje de técnicas/instrumentos para la investigación social; 3) déficits significativos de habilidades para la problematización de situaciones sociales; y 4)falta de bases epistémicas para construir marcos teóricos y epistémicos necesarios para la teorización y la reflexión en el campo social.En general, la enseñanza de la investigación social en esta región se ha centrado en el manejo de dispositivos algorítmicos y de una racionalidad técnica que favorecen la construcción de protocolos de investigación, cuyo objetivo es la mejora de la eficiencia terminal. Esto limita la conciencia de los estudiantes sobre las bases teóricas y epistémicas de la investigación, la construcción de un pensamiento científico y la sensibilidad necesaria con las comunidades de interés.Nuestro propósito es analizar los aspectos que limitan la construcción de marcos teóricos y epistémicos en la enseñanza de la investigación en posgrados en ciencias sociales en América Latina, y proponer, como una de las posibles alternativas de solución al esquematismo en la enseñanza de la investigación social y a la pobreza del aprendizaje instrumental en este dominio, el desarrollo de los itinerarios categoriales.Utilizamos un paradigma socio-crítico vinculando un sub-paradigma crítico-narrativo, una metodología cualitativa y cuatro estudios de caso. En la investigación se utilizaron entrevistas desestructuradas, grupos focales, un cuestionario general y el análisis crítico del discurso.

Disqualifying ‘disqualifiers’

ABSTRACT In addition to the notion of defeat, do we need to expand the epistemological repertoire used in accounting for the context dependence of justification? It has recently been argued that we ought to admit a hitherto unrecognized fundamental epistemic kind called ‘disqualifiers’. Disqualifiers are taken to be not reducible to any other epistemic notion. Rather, they are meant to be primitive. If this is correct, it is a surprising and novel discovery, and so it is worthy of further epistemological investigation. In this paper I shall first argue that the cases given do not motivate positing the notion of a disqualifier. Conclusions drawn about the existence of disqualifiers do not follow from the considerations advanced. Second, I shall directly argue that an essential core claim of those who would posit disqualifiers, that so-called disqualifiers actually do prevent epistemic bases from conferring justification, is false. In sum, I shall argue that there are no disqualifiers.

How to balance Balanced Reporting and Reliable Reporting

The paper draws on philosophy of science to help resolve a tension between two central journalistic ideals: That of resenting diverse viewpoints (Balanced Reporting) and that of presenting the most reliable testimony (Reliable Reporting). While both of these ideals are valuable, they may be in tension. This is particularly so when it comes to scientific testimony and science reporting. Thus, we face a hard question: How should and be balanced in science reporting? The present paper contributes substantive proposals in a manner that integrates philosophy of science with the recent empirical literature on science communication. Specifically, I articulate and evaluate strategies for balancing Balanced Reporting and Reliable Reporting. First, I provide a diagnosis of the conflict between them that is informed by philosophy of science. On this basis, I provide restrictions of both Balanced Reporting and Reliable Reporting. The restrictions are unified because they are inspired by similar reflections about the epistemic basis of science reporting—namely scientific justification. Moreover, I note some empirical work that supports the restrictions as well as some empirical work that indicates some limitations of them. Thus, the paper exemplifies how an empirically informed philosophy of science may bear on a question of societal concern.

Magicians at Work: Modellers as Institutional Entrepreneurs in the Global Governance of Agriculture and Food Security

Global models of agriculture act as the epistemic basis for quantitative foresight, which guides international policymaking and research on agriculture. With the new political sociology of science as a backdrop, this article studies the actors who develop and use these models through the lens of field theory. Contributing to the dialogue between the neo-institutionalist field theory and its Bourdieusian version, it describes the structure and the dynamics of the strategic action field of modelling organizations, using the Bourdieusian notions of “succession” and “subversion” to refine the characterization of challengers. It also discusses the insights of the Bourdieusian concept of “homology” to analyse the relations between the field of model producers and the field of model users. Whereas Bourdieu provides a primarily descriptive account of homologies, which are close to a “social magic without magicians” for Roueff, the present text describes magicians doing the work of producing homologies. Some modellers use intercomparison to reduce competition and to have their models used in the field of global governance, thus strategically producing homologies, while resolving the main modelling conflict of the field. These actors benefit from the recent change in the modelling field under the influence of climate change, to behave as what Fligstein and McAdam have called “institutional entrepreneurs”. The article concludes that this amended version of field theory makes it possible to describe the co-construction of a range of models developed by competing organizations and the controversial making of global agricultural governance. Doing so, it complements the co-production framework, which often focuses on a given site of expertise production and a site of global governance.

The inferences of common causes reduced to common origins

This paper advocates the reduction of the inference of common cause to that of common origins. It distinguishes and subjects to critical analysis thirteen interpretations of “the inference of common cause” whose conclusions do not follow from their assumptions. Instead, I introduce six types of inferences of common origins of information signals from their receivers to reduce, in the sense of supersede and replace, the thirteen inferences of common causes. I show how the paradigmatic examples of inferences of common cause, as well as a broader scope of inferences in the historical sciences, are better explained by inferences of origins.Inferences of origins from information rich coherences between receivers of information signals both fit more closely and explain better the range of examples that have traditionally been associated with inferences of common causes, as well as a broader scope of examples from the historical sciences. Shannon's concept of information as reduction in uncertainty, rather than physicalist concepts of information that relate it to entropy or waves, simplifies the inferences, preempts objections, and avoids the underdetermination of conclusions that challenge models of inferences of common causes.In the second part of the paper I model inferences of common origins from information preserved in their receivers. I distinguish information poor inferences that there were some common origins of receivers from the information richer inferences of ranges of possible common origins and the information transmission channels by which they transmitted signals to receivers. Lastly and most information rich, I distinguish the inference of the defining properties of common origins. The information transmission model from origins to receivers allows the reconceptualization of the concepts of "independence" as absence of intersections between information channels and "reliability" as the preservation of information from origins in receivers. Finally, I show how inferences of origins form the epistemic basis of the historical sciences.

Economic Freedom and the Harm of Adaptation: On Gadamer, Authoritarian Technocracy and the Re-Engineering of English Higher Education

ABSTRACTThe social democratic state pursued interventionism for positive political freedom, making markets adapt to the needs of a fair democratic society, with the provision of social rights. The Robbins’ Report, which inaugurated the expansion of state-funded higher education in the 1960s, held that access to higher education was a social right and that the ‘cultivation’ produced by higher education was a good in itself and the epistemic basis for a social democratic society. Despite rhetorical appeals to negative political freedom, the neoliberal state is interventionist, but with interventionism to promote the economic freedom of corporations. The state adapts the market to corporate needs and seeks to force individuals to adapt to this market. The current Conservative Government is seeking to re-engineer English higher education to make it adapt more fully to enhancing the economic freedom of corporations, using audit culture and changes to the Research Councils, with the former being presented as neutral-technocratic proxies for market signals. Using Gadamer, and his Humboldtian conception of higher education, which is similar to that argued for in the Robbins Report, it is argued that such changes cause objective harm to our ‘Being’, with this inaugurating an authoritarian technocratic approach to English higher education.

Rethinking Disciplinary Links in Interdisciplinary STEM Learning: a Temporal Model

Despite growing advocacy of interdisciplinary approaches to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), there are persistent concerns about the practical and principled epistemic bases on which this can be justified as a mainstream curricular practice. A major issue concerns the nature of interrelations between the STEM disciplines in interdisciplinary work. In the paper, we argue that the spatial metaphor prevalent in discussions of interdisciplinarity, and boundary crossing, while useful, has limitations in capturing the challenges and possibilities for interdisciplinary STEM in schools and in some respects misconstrues the cultural and historical nature of disciplinary epistemic practices. We argue, as a contribution to a theory of interdisciplinary curricular practice, that key issues for such practice can be productively seen through a temporal metaphor and that a temporal model can usefully inform schools and teachers in framing and supporting student learning in interdisciplinary settings. To illustrate this, we use indicative cases from two major Australian STEM initiatives to examine temporal relations between mathematics, science and technology, at the micro-, meso- and macro-levels, and the implications of this for disciplinary integrity. Finally, we argue that contemporary interdisciplinary advocacy amounts to a challenge to renew epistemic traditions in the STEM subjects.

Epistemic adverbs that can/cannot be embedded under imperatives

This paper analyzes why certain epistemic adverbs are/are not embeddable under imperatives, by adopting Kaufmann’s (2012) modal analysis of imperatives and the assumption that epistemic modal bases are closed. The embeddable adverb is a modal modifier (Anand & Brasoveanu 2009) that expands the quantificational domain of the modal co-occurring with it, but the unembeddable one is a pure epistemic modal whose semantics does not involve an ordering source as in von Fintel & Gillies (2010). Imperative operators lose their contribution when they scope over the latter type adverbs because of vacuous quantification, hence violating a conversational principle proposed by Crniˇc (2011). The account lends support to the modal analysis of imperatives, which competes with Portner’s (2007) To-Do Lists analysis.

Otherwise than Epistemology

Can one claim authoritative knowledge regarding the Other? What is the epistemic basis of a discursive practice that lays claim to knowledge of the Other? And more importantly, can such epistemological claims to knowledge, authoritative or otherwise, be the basis for an engagement with the Other? These are a few questions that this current piece returns to by means of reflection, meditation, analysis and argument. In doing so, I focus on questions of representation within critical and imaginative discourses as a means of access to and knowledge about the Other. I begin by reflecting on Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), a work that is often received as having inaugurated a critique of representationality within an anglophone, Euro-American academic context. Following subsequent iterations of such critiques in works by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and responses to the same in the works of Dorothy Figueira, while also exploring the bases for such critiques in the work of previous scholars such as Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, I explore the complex relations between discursive representations of alterity and the functionings of power. Concluding with an analysis of Frantz Fanon’s critique of Octave Mannoni’s “ethnopsychology” of the colonized Malagasy peoples, I propose that an epistemic or epistemological basis for engaging the Other is insufficient.

Otherwise than Epistemology

Can one claim authoritative knowledge regarding the Other? What is the epistemic basis of a discursive practice that lays claim to knowledge of the Other? And more importantly, can such epistemological claims to knowledge, authoritative or otherwise, be the basis for an engagement with the Other? These are a few questions that this current piece returns to by means of reflection, meditation, analysis and argument. In doing so, I focus on questions of representation within critical and imaginative discourses as a means of access to and knowledge about the Other. I begin by reflecting on Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), a work that is often received as having inaugurated a critique of representationality within an anglophone, Euro-American academic context. Following subsequent iterations of such critiques in works by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and responses to the same in the works of Dorothy Figueira, while also exploring the bases for such critiques in the work of previous scholars such as Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, I explore the complex relations between discursive representations of alterity and the functionings of power. Concluding with an analysis of Frantz Fanon’s critique of Octave Mannoni’s “ethnopsychology” of the colonized Malagasy peoples, I propose that an epistemic or epistemological basis for engaging the Other is insufficient.

The Idea of Precaution: Ethical Requirements for the Regulation of New Biotechnologies in the Environmental Field.

The rapid emergence of new biotechnologies for selectively altering genetic material—so-called genome editing—has sparked public controversy about how their development and application in the environmental fields are to be regulated. Since the use of these new technologies harbors not only considerable potential but also risks of serious damage whose occurrence is uncertain due to their application in complex environmental systems, many national and international legal authorities are currently adhering to policies of precaution. According to critics, however, precautionary measures and the legal principle of precaution on which they are based are unduly restrictive in the case of the new biotechnologies, hindering advancements in both research and various fields of application. At the same time, legal notions of precaution are highly ambiguous within and across different national and international formulations, thereby further complicating the controversy about their implications. This paper goes beyond the concept of precaution as found in environmental law by examining the ethical significance and the ethical justification of precautionary measures in the environmental field. In particular, it clarifies the criterion of potential damage, disambiguates different types of epistemic bases in precaution decisions, and considers the relevance and implications of different ethical risk theories as to their response to epistemic uncertainty and vagueness. The two main conclusions are that, first, irrespective of the ethical risk theory embraced, there is an ethical obligation to take precautionary measures whenever serious damage is possible and the probability of damage occurring epistemically uncertain or vague. Regarding the risk assessment, it is argued that the burden of proof lies not with those who fear the occurrence of serious environmental damage. Rather, it is up to those whose actions give rise to such fears to demonstrate that serious damage is extremely improbable or scientifically absurd. Second, the moral responsibility to determine precaution situations and to specify appropriate precautionary measures is attributed not only to state authorities but also to industrial players as well as research communities. Based on these two conclusions, recommendations are given as to how the precautionary principle should be incorporated in political and legal decision-making.

CSR - the Cuckoo’s Egg in the Business Ethics Nest

Corporate/collective moral responsibility is a thorny topic in business ethics and this paper argues that this is due a number of unacknowledged and connected epistemic issues. Firstly, CSR, Corporate Citizenship and many other research streams that are based on the assumption of collective and/or corporate moral responsibility are not compatible with Kantian ethics, consequentialism, or virtue ethics because corporate/collective responsibility violates the axioms and central hypotheses of these research programmes. Secondly, in the absence of a sound theoretical moral philosophical foundation, business ethicists have based their ideas on legal and political epistemologies, yet still claim to be ethics-based. Thirdly, research is often driven by an intention to prove that a specific social goal is right, not by open and critical inquiry. Finally, today, corporate/collective moral responsibility is widely accepted as the Truth as most researchers are unaware of any issues because they are untrained in philosophy. The paper identifies the confusion about the epistemic basis as a major impediment for delivering a thick concept of the role of corporations as moral agents. Thus, the paper does not argue against corporate or collective agency as such, but points out an obvious but forgotten paradox: corporate and collective personhood cannot, at the moment at least, be epistemologically grounded in the field in which business ethics claims to operate: moral philosophy.