Epistemic Domain Research Articles

A Fenomenologia de Husserl perante o problema da compreensão do homem verdadeiro

Taking from the very beginning the question “what is men?” as theoretical basis, our major concern in the present work was to demonstrate that the epistemic gap, which is traditionally opposed to naturalistic models of mind, is not yet everything there is to know when it comes to explain the reasons for our disagreement regarding such models. If we are right, the key criterion that will show how much reductive materialism is unsustainable as a solution for the mind/body problem, is not a dispute in the epistemic domain, but, rather, a criterion that we could entitle as “the comprehension of human”, that is, the particular way we feel as a human. In fact, one must ask if the conception we make of ourselves as such human beings (or as a true men, to evoke the most famous expression of Descartes) can be included in the straightforward presentation of a vast assembly of organs. Furthermore, from an understanding of men as such an organic and material thing (a “pack of neurons”, as Francis Crick suggested), one can establish the idea of a Corporeal I (a Korper, according to the terminology of Husserl’s Ideen II), but that’s precisely the one which rules out the possibility on some kind of inner experience, that is, of an “auto-perception” or “inner-perception”: it will be, at the end, a body, but not consciousness of having such body, given that to consider this very last possibility of inner-perception requires the reintroduction of the difference – and therefore, of the relation – between minds and bodies, quite that particular distinction that was neglected by the reductive materialism as the only approach capable of circumvent the dualistic thesis for the mind-body relation.

Replies to Wright, MacFarlane and Sosa

The main impetus for my book came from the widespread acceptance of relativistic views about truth and knowledge within the Academy, especially within the humanities and the humanistic social sciences. In its introductory sections, though, I noted that there is one discipline within the humanities in which the influence of relativistic views is quite weak?namely, within analytic philosophy itself. Ironically, no sooner had the ink dried on the final version of my manuscript sometime in mid-2005?although, of course it had been in the works for a number of years prior to that?than I began to become aware of a huge interest in certain kinds of relativistic views that was beginning to build within analytic philosophy. That interest?which is ongoing as I write?has been fueled to a considerable extent by the work of a younger generation of philosophers including John MacFarlane, Max K?lbel and Peter Lasersohn. ' Now, as we shall see, the sort of relativistic view that has been attracting attention of late?the sort that Crispin Wright mischievously dubs "New Age" relativism?is different from the sort of view that I was criticizing. I do not just mean that the relativisms at issue concern different domains (though that might also be true); but rather that New Age relativism uses a different template for generating a relativistic view of a given domain than I do. And this naturally raises the question whether my critical arguments against a relativistic view of the epistemic domain would continue to be effective were such a view given a New Age (NA) formulation rather than the formulation I gave it.

Quinean social skills: empirical evidence from eye-gaze against information encapsulation

Since social skills are highly significant to the evolutionary success of humans, we should expect these skills to be efficient and reliable. For many Evolutionary Psychologists efficiency entails encapsulation: the only way to get an efficient system is via information encapsulation. But encapsulation reduces reliability in opaque epistemic domains. And the social domain is darkly opaque: people lie and cheat, and deliberately hide their intentions and deceptions. Modest modularity [Currie and Sterelny (2000) Philos Q 50:145–160] attempts to combine efficiency and reliability. Reliability is obtained by placing social skills in un-encapsulated central cognition; efficiency by having the social system sensitive to encapsulated socially tagged cues. In this paper, I argue that this approach fails. I focus on eye-gaze as a plausible example of a socially significant encapsulated cue. I demonstrate contra modest modularity that eye-gaze is subject to influence from central cognition.

PUTTING PARTICULARISM IN ITS PLACE

Abstract:The point of this paper is to undermine the support that particularism in the domain of epistemic reasons might seem to give to particularism in the domain of practical reasons. In the epistemic domain, there are two related notions: truth and the rationality of belief. Epistemic reasons are related to the rationality of belief, and not directly to truth. In the domain of practical reasons, however, the role of truth is taken by the notion of objective rationality. Practical reasons are directly relevant to this objective notion, and therefore the reasons to expect holism and particularism in the epistemic domain do not transfer to the domain of practical rationality.

The intellectual positioning of science in the curriculum, and its relationship to reform

This study first offers a defence of the view that natural science has transcultural intellectual characteristics relevant to its educational purposes and examines those characteristics under their ontic, epistemic, and value‐related aspects. While the epistemic domain has been most prominent in relation to the science curriculum and its reform, it is the ontic stance of science that is its most distinctive characteristic. Science stands in an attenuated relationship to forms of human valuing, but curriculum reform has attempted to bring value‐related, and particularly ethical, matters into its remit. Science curriculum reform can be understood as an intellectual repositioning in relation to these three domains. This study relates this repositioning to the educational purposes of science, focusing particularly on a tension between liberal and instrumental purposes. Reform of the science curriculum is most coherently based on its distinctive ontic and epistemic characteristics, within a broader curricular framework.

Beliefs About Knowledge and Knowing: Integrating Domain Specificity and Domain Generality: A Response to Muis, Bendixen, and Haerle (2006)

In their review of the empirical research, Muis, Bendixen, and Haerle (2006) bring closure to the debate between domain specificity and domain generality of epistemic beliefs and provide a framework for future research. In response to their review, this article comments on issues that remain for those who wish to examine the nature of the interaction between epistemic domain specificity and domain generality and its relation to learning. These issues include methodological concerns, philosophical contributions, terminology, epistemology beyond academic domains, and educational implications.

Narrazione e conoscenza

Narrative meta-cognition is the device composed by formal model and structural ingredients typical of narrations, a device which is established in the mind of those who enter narrative universes and which enables those who have it to recognise and understand the narrative texts while organising knowledge in narrative form. Therefore, narrative meta-cognition is a device which connects: it connects symbolic and cognitive ingredients through story-telling; it connects each subject to real and imaginary words shaped through story-telling, it connects different subjects sharing these experiences. In contrast with other meta-cognitive devices, often limited to other and more specific epistemic domains, narrative meta-cognition enables the subjects who possess it structurally to store up and elaborate very different symbolic and cultural data; therefore, such data can become ingredients of the personal identity (autobiographic consciousness) and devices of representation and judgement (representations and visions of the world). For these reasons, the narrative meta-cognitive device appears to be a truly phenomenological paradigm: thanks to it, real events and symbolic constructions which could simply accumulate in an undifferentiated and incoherent cognitive universe, can instead develop potentialities for interconnection and meaning thanks to the narrative forms through which they get organised and ordered. As narrations, these levels of order and meaning are never established once and forever; instead, they are characterised by processing, dynamism and continuous re-negotiation.

Toward the Development of an Integral Approach to Social Work

The social work profession has often struggled with how to achieve the conceptual unity and coherence sought in theory, practice, policy, and education. This struggle has often included paradigmatic debates that serve to articulate the broader metatheoretical backgrounds and systems (epistemic domains) from which we understand human behavior. Integralism represents an approach that can potentially transcend social work's dialectical dilemma inherent within the debates between modern and postmodern influences. By combining the epistemological insights and value awareness of the various schools of postmodernism with the methodological and conceptual achievements of modernism, and the partial truths and insights of premodernism, a transcendent or integral approach is conceptualized.

Italian children's understanding of the epistemic and deontic modal verbs dovere (must) and potere (may).

This study assesses children's understanding of the Italian modal verbs dovere (must) and potere (may) in their dual function of qualification of the speaker's beliefs (epistemic modality) and behaviour regulation (deontic modality). 192 children and 60 adults participated in the experiment. Children aged 3;0 to 9;2 were presented with two tasks: one assessed their understanding of modal expressions in the epistemic domain--looking for an object by following the information contained in a sentence; the other assessed their understanding of modal expressions in the deontic domain--acting according to obligations, permissions and prohibitions in the context of a game. Half of the subjects carried out the tasks in a single-sentence format and half carried out the tasks in a double-sentence format. In the single-sentence format the subjects had to follow the directions supplied by a modalized sentence; in the double-sentence format they had to follow the directions supplied by the sentence containing the stronger modal verb. Our results show that the understanding of deontic modal forms precedes the understanding of epistemic modal forms and that a full understanding of the strength of different modal forms is achieved only at eight years.

Preference-Based Arguments for Probabilism

Both Representation Theorem Arguments and Dutch Book Arguments support taking probabilistic coherence as an epistemic norm. Both depend on connecting beliefs to preferences, which are not clearly within the epistemic domain. Moreover, these connections are standardly grounded in questionable definitional/metaphysical claims. The paper argues that these definitional/metaphysical claims are insupportable. It offers a way of reconceiving Representation Theorem arguments which avoids the untenable premises. It then develops a parallel approach to Dutch Book Arguments, and compares the results. In each case preference-defects serve as a diagnostic tool, indicating purely epistemic defects.

Young children's comprehension of modal expressions

The present study assessed children's knowledge of how speakers use modal auxiliaries such as might and have to to indicate their degree of belief in the truth of their statements (epistemic modality), and to socially regulate behavior (deontic modality). We also considered whether modals comprise a semantic system that is progressively attained in a way similar to other semantic systems. Children aged 3 to 5 years were given two tasks: one that assessed comprehension of modal expressions for the epistemic domain (here, the spatial location of objects), and one that assessed comprehension of such expressions for the deontic domain (i.e., permission for the restrictions on behavior). Results showed that even 3year-olds comprehend partial aspects of meaning of epistemic expressions considered individually. Development occurred primarily between the ages of 3 and 4 in the ability to make judgments of the relative strength and synonymy of pairs of modal expressions. These results, which show a progressive attainment of the meaning of modals, indicate metacognitive and social cognition ability not usually attributed to preschoolers.