Epistemic Level Research Articles

Book Symposium: <i>"Why Delusions Matter"</i>

This Symposium aims to contribute to the discussion on "Why Delusions Matter" by Lisa Bortolotti (2023), published by Bloomsbury. In her book, Bortolotti attempts to decouple delusions from pathology, and argues that delusions should not be dismissed as meaningless, because engaging with them at an epistemic level fosters a deeper understanding of the speaker’s perspective and agency. The Symposium opens with a précis of the book (Bortolotti, 2024a), followed by four commentaries that critically engage with Bortolotti’s argument. Bacchi (2024) suggests that insights from the authenticity debate in psychiatry could support Bortolotti’s claim that delusions could foster agency. Drawing from the literature and from her own lived experience with delusions, Russel (2024) explores the ways in which some delusions can be epistemically valuable. Williams (2024) challenges the implication that popular, non-clinical delusions deserve a more positive reputation. Vintiadis (2024) links Bortolotti’s work to the discussion on comforting delusions in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. The Symposium concludes with a reply from Bortolotti (2024b).

Global Models, Victim Disconnect and Demands for International Intervention: The Dilemma of Decoloniality and Transitional Justice in Sri Lanka

Abstract This article uses Sri Lanka as a case study to impel engagement of decoloniality with transitional justice. It identifies gaps in the literature critical of transitional justice, specifically structural interpretations of power hierarchies, state-centrism and disregard of ethnicity and religion. It thereby uses a decolonial analytical lens on empirical findings from Sri Lanka’s failed transitional justice process to identify and understand continuing colonial power structures, including epistemic coloniality. The empirical findings offer three new insights. First, an ideational, structural and procedural disconnection between victims and the global transitional justice model is noted. The article traces how victim positioning and this disconnection were disregarded in favour of an internationally authoritative, credible and universal model of transitional justice. Second, the ethno-religious challenges to transitional justice, which include its reliance on the state as a neutral provider of justice, are highlighted. The third finding, however, on victim demands for greater international involvement, presents a dilemma to future decolonial consideration of transitional justice. Despite only using decoloniality as an analytical tool, the article nevertheless demonstrates the need for deeper reform, including at the epistemic level, for transformation to occur within the field.

Judgments vs Propositions in Alexander of Aphrodisias' Conception of Logic

This paper stresses the importance of identifying the nature of an author's conception of logic when using terms from modern logic in order to avoid, as far as possible, injecting our own conception of logic in the author's texts. Sundholm (2012. “‘Inference versus consequence” revisited: Inference, conditional, implication’, Synthese, 187, 943–956) points out that inferences are staged at the epistemic level and are made out of judgments, not propositions. Since it is now standard to read Aristotelian sullogismoi as inferences, I have taken Alexander of Aphrodisias's commentaries to Aristotle's logical treatises as a basis for arguing that the premises and conclusions should be read as judgments rather than as propositions. Under this reading, when Alexander speaks of protaseis, we should not read the modern notion of proposition, but rather what we now call judgments. The point is not just a matter of terminology, it is about the conception of logic this terminology conveys. In this regard, insisting on judgments rather than on propositions helps bring to light Alexander's epistemic conception of logic.

Honouring Indigenous knowledges: planetary health (curriculum+) obligations in teacher education, sport education, health education and health and physical education

ABSTRACT This paper documents historical and contemporary evidence of the HPE field’s honouring Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing – and argues that much more needs to be done. Underpinning this is our philosophical belief that honouring Indigenous knowledges ultimately contributes to planetary health. We begin the paper with the positioning of ourselves within the context of this work. Extrapolating this, we introduce our particular contexts, to help convey the complexity of socio-historical and political influences. Following this, we document a series of events in our field of HPE that convey working towards honouring Indigenous knowledges and illustrate examples of Indigenous ways in educational institutions. The final section introduces the other papers of this special issue. The issue captures a moment in time where practices associated with racism, specifically towards First Peoples, at systemic, institutional, embodied and epistemic levels, are being challenged and countered, yet still require further dismantling. We regard the movement towards obligations of not just acknowledging, but also engaging with and for First Peoples, as still not strong enough to claim our field is inclusive or honouring. Such movements signal important opportunities not just for HPE curricula, but also for the pedagogies, topics, partnerships and research for planetary health more widely.

Complaint formulation and negotiation: The use of zenme-interrogatives in e-commerce service encounters

In Mandarin Chinese, zenme-interrogatives serve a dual purpose. First, they can be employed to inquire about the precise cause or reason for an occurrence, as in the case of causal zenme (“how come”). Second, they can be applied to seek information about the specific method for performing a task, as in the case of manner zenme (“how do you”). Drawing on data from Taobao (a prominent Chinese online shopping platform), this study investigates the application of causal zenme in the formulation and negotiation of customer complaints during Chinese e-commerce service encounters. It also conducts a nuanced analysis of the normative practices that underlie customer complaints. The analysis reveals that zenme-interrogatives are frequently employed to highlight deviations from normative business practices at the epistemic and deontic levels. At the epistemic level, these interrogatives are used to challenge agents’ asserted epistemic authority, or they point to agents’ disregard for customers’ entitlement to necessary information. At the deontic level, they are used to infringe upon customers’ deontic authority in receiving compensation or benefiting from other remedial actions. Overall, the findings contribute to our comprehension of how zenme-interrogatives are utilized to convey negative evaluations and emotions rather than simply solicit information or explanations.

Different yet complementary: A systematic literature review on data journalism in visualization research and journalism studies

This article surveys and compares literature on data journalism from two areas of inquiry: journalism studies and visualization research. As digital interfaces become an important access point for news, journalism and visualization scholars have begun to share a common research interest: data journalism. Given their radically different traditions and histories, these areas follow very different rules in how the topic is approached. The result is two parallel scholarships on data journalism with little points of contact. Arguably, developing research space for encounters and exchange of the two is an opportunity for expanding the academic discourse on data journalism. This study aims at opening this space of exchange through a systematic literature review. 121 articles, published between 2010 and 2023, are analyzed. Findings show that the two areas of research approach data journalism with very different aspirations. In relation to data journalism, journalism studies and visualization research could be compared with Lazersfeld’s distinction between critical and administrative research. These aspects cause various differences at an epistemic level, namely what, how and when knowledge about data journalism is produced.

AGAMA EKLOGIS DAN WACANA NON-HUMAN TURN

This article discusses the difference between posthuman discourse and nonhuman discourse in the context of ecological religion. Unlike posthuman discourse, which has teleological elements, nonhuman discourse emphasizes that humans interact with nonhuman entities without seeking the transformation of humans into non-humans. The article proposes that it is important to understand the relationship between humans and nature as a nonhuman agency, rather than merely as nonhuman entities. This is aimed at reconstructing the ontological basis of ecological religious discourse to avoid being trapped in an anthropocentric paradigm. This research adopts the conceptual frameworks of Actor-Network Theory and the Politics of Things developed by Bruno Latour to view the relationship between humans and nature in a broader and non-teleological context. The analytical methods used in this research are philosophical approaches and literature review. Both approaches are used to find the philosophical foundation of ecological religious discourse and its correlation with the Non-human Turn. The research results show that at the epistemic level, human subjectivity is crucial in determining attitudes toward the conceived reality. However, at the ontological level, there is a space untouched by human thought and consciousness, implying a postponement/suspension of moral judgment that is not final. In particular, in moral consensus, the actors involved also include non-human entities. Consequently, the understanding of the ideal attitude toward nature should use a phenomenological approach that focuses on the consequences of the objectification of the subject toward the world beyond itself.

The quantitative paradigm and the nature of the human mind. The replication crisis as an epistemological crisis of quantitative psychology in view of the ontic nature of the psyche.

Many suggestions for dealing with the so-called replication crisis in psychology revolve around the idea that better and more complex statistical-mathematical tools or stricter procedures are required in order to obtain reliable findings and prevent cheating or publication biases. While these aspects may play an exacerbating role, we interpret the replication crisis primarily as an epistemological crisis in psychology caused by an inadequate fit between the ontic nature of the psyche and the quantitative approach. On the basis of the philosophers of science Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, and Imre Lakatos we suggest that the replication crisis is therefore a symptom of a fundamental problem in psychology, but at the same time it is also an opportunity to advance psychology as a science. In a first step, against the background of Popper's Critical Rationalism, the replication crisis is interpreted as an opportunity to eliminate inaccurate theories from the pool of theories and to correct problematic developments. Continuing this line of thought, in an interpretation along the lines of Thomas Kuhn, the replication crisis might signify a model drift or even model crisis, thus possibly heralding a new paradigm in psychology. The reasons for this are located in the structure of academic psychology on the basis of Lakatos's assumption about how sciences operate. Accordingly, one hard core that lies at the very basis of psychology may be found in the assumption that the human psyche can and is to be understood in quantitative terms. For this to be possible, the ontic structure of the psyche, i.e., its very nature, must also in some way be quantitatively constituted. Hence, the replication crisis suggests that the ontic structure of the psyche in some way (also) contains a non-quantitative dimension that can only be grasped incompletely or fragmentarily using quantitative research methods. Fluctuating and inconsistent results in psychology could therefore also be the expression of a mismatch between the ontic level of the object of investigation and the epistemic level of the investigation.

Cognitive Levels of Pragmalinguistic Typology and German Text Comprehension

Aim. The research aim is to find out the correlation between the comprehension of read texts in German and the different cognitive linking levels such as the propositional, the epistemic and the speech of act level. Methods. In the first phase of the research, we used qualitative content analysis to identify the different cognitive levels in the texts. After that we used a didactic test to determine the text comprehension in German at the A2 language proficiency level. Results. A statistically significant positive relationship was found between reading comprehension performance in German and the propositional level. This means, higher performance in reading comprehension of German texts is manifested if the read texts contain indicators such as indicative sentences and adverbial tenses. Subsequently, we find a tendency correlation between the comprehension of German texts and the level of speech acts. No statistically significant relationship was found in the variable of epistemic level and German text comprehension. Conclusion. Our research showed that the epistemic level indicators and the speech act level indicators made it difficult for the learners to comprehend German texts, for this reason it would be necessary that after mastering the simpler phenomena such as the indicative mood, they should fluently start to deal with the indicators of the above levels. In the educational process, it is necessary to focus on the training of word types, on explaining the meanings of these words or expressions in order to develop and broaden the vocabulary of learners.

„do you really beLIEVE that.“ – Positionierungen von Lehrkräften zu Verschwörungstheorien im Spannungsfeld von Epistemik, Vertextungsform und Institution

Abstract We analyse how teachers position themselves towards conspiracy theories in teaching contexts following the methodology of conversation analysis and positioning theory. For the analysis we selected sequences in which three teachers narrate and comment retrospectively on incidents from their everyday school life in which their students confronted them with conspiracy theories. Since conspiracy theories are seen as a complex and potentially explosive phenomenon in both public and academic discourse, many see it as mandatory to take or at least express a critical stance towards them. In general, however, conspiracy theories make it difficult to take a clear position, as they are often vague and incoherent on evaluative, textual, functional and epistemic levels. These ambiguities are also reflected in the teachers’ positions as evidenced in our data: On the one hand, they emphasise the need to raising students’ awareness of how to identify conspiracy theories and how to adopt a critical stance towards them. On the other hand, the micro-analytical reconstruction of the narrative sequences of concrete classroom situations shows that the teachers do not always act in line with these beliefs. This can be interpreted as a tension between socially conforming positioning acts towards conspiracy theories on the one and the teachers‘ professional self-perception on the other hand.

A Theory of Planetary Social Pedagogy

AbstractThe escalating planetary crises of human‐induced climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and declining biodiversity call for urgent actions to be taken at all levels of society and by the global community. The current political strategy for a sustainable future that emphasizes economic and technological progress is insufficient to bring about the change required; an educational approach based on identities, values, ethics, and new worldviews is also needed. In this article Arto O. Salonen and his coauthors consider the kind of pedagogy that could support a transformation of the human conception of reality into a form that both recognizes the connections and interactions between people, society, and the planet, and imparts an ethical orientation to action that strengthens the health and integrity of all entities. A theory of planetary social pedagogy (PSP) is based on traditional social pedagogy, which provides a theoretical framework for formal, nonformal, and informal education. PSP aims at building a deep holistic understanding of the relationship between the individual, society, and Earth by integrating the fragmented human conception and experience of reality by uniting the three dimensions of a social‐ecological worldview: spatial, temporal, and ethical. Moreover, PSP is a cyclical learning process that alternates between cognitive, metacognitive, and epistemic levels of learning. The ultimate goal of using PSP is to lay the foundation for a fundamental transformation of the ideals, values, and culture that shape human behavior in ways necessary for securing a sustainable future.

ECHO: A hierarchical combination of classical and multi-agent epistemic planning problems

Abstract The continuous interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has brought, among other things, the development of several scenarios where multiple artificial entities interact with each other. As for all the other autonomous settings, these multi-agent systems require orchestration. This is, generally, achieved through techniques derived from the vast field of Automated Planning. Notably, arbitration in multi-agent domains is not only tasked with regulating how the agents act, but must also consider the interactions between the agents’ information flows and must, therefore, reason on an epistemic level. This brings a substantial overhead that often diminishes the reasoning process’s usability in real-world situations. To address this problem, we present ECHO, a hierarchical framework that embeds classical and multi-agent epistemic (epistemic, for brevity) planners in a single architecture. The idea is to combine (i) classical; and(ii) epistemic solvers to model efficiently the agents’ interactions with the (i) ‘physical world’; and(ii) information flows, respectively. In particular, the presented architecture starts by planning on the ‘epistemic level’, with a high level of abstraction, focusing only on the information flows. Then it refines the planning process, due to the classical planner, to fully characterize the interactions with the ‘physical’ world. To further optimize the solving process, we introduced the concept of macros in epistemic planning and enriched the ‘classical’ part of the domain with goal-networks. Finally, we evaluated our approach in an actual robotic environment showing that our architecture indeed reduces the overall computational time.

Against Eurocentric narratives on militarism

ABSTRACT Aspects of the recent scholarship on militarism, especially those who focus on ‘militarization’ as a post-9/11 development, have met with criticism by scholars who have underscored that the violence incurred by everyday people in the hands of the(ir) state – be it in Belfast, Cairo, İstanbul, Paris, or Rio de Janeiro – is not new insofar as military practices of have always impinged upon everyday life. Even as I agree with the critics, I submit that substituting the notion of ‘militarization’ with ‘pacification’ or ‘martial politics’ may not suffice. For, the problem is not (only) with the concept of militarization but with Eurocentric historical narratives on militarism that have informed this conceptualization. Accordingly, I locate the problem with militarism and militarization at an epistemic level: our approaches to militarization have been informed by Eurocentric historical narratives that consider militarism as a problem that belongs to a past world, which incidentally includes our contemporaries outside the ‘West’.

Representation of the universe as dendrogramic hologram empowered with relational interpretation

This is a brief review on the basics of recently established Dendrogramic Holographic theory (DH-theory). This is the special model of the event-universe based on the clustering transformation of experimental data into dendrogram, a finite tree which branches encoding the events. These event-branches are coupled via the hierarchic interrelation determined by the dendrogram. Such relational universe differs from the universe with space-time mathematically described by the real numbers. Dendrogram is endowed with the common root ultrametric. Finite dendrograms correspond to the epistemic level of description; in the limit we obtain an infinite tree providing the ontic description. In the simplest model, the tree is homogeneous, p-adic tree. It can be endowed with the algebraic structure of the ring of p-adic integers. Hence, DH-theory is a part (but very special) of p-adic theoretical physics. In this paper we discuss the foundations of DH-theory and its applications to quantum-classical interrelation including the novel interpretation of the violations of the CHSH-inequality, to general relativity, and to emergence of quantum mechanics from the event-picture of the universe. Since both quantum theory and general relativity can be emergent from DH-theory, creation of the latter can be viewed as a step towards unification of these two fundamental physical theories.

Reclaiming the past and transforming our future: Introduction to the special issue on foundational contributions of Black scholars in psychology.

The contributions of Black scholars to psychology have been erased or marginalized within mainstream, U.S.-centered psychology. As such, psychologists and trainees have little exposure to strengths-based theories and schools of thought that center and humanize the experiences of people of African descent. This special issue intervenes on anti-Black racism at the epistemic level by curating a review of foundational contributions by diverse Black scholars in psychology and related fields. The special issue is organized around five integrative and overlapping themes: (a) Black scholars who have written on topics related to race, racism, and racial identity; (b) schools of thought that embody decolonial, liberation, and African psychologies and the scholars writing within these traditions; (c) scholars who have created new theories and approaches to conceptualizing the mental health of Black children, youth, and families; (d) Black scholars adopting an intersectional lens to research and practice; and (e) Black scholars creating spaces within existing organizations to theorize about and research the experiences of people of African descent. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Uncertainty, Evidence, and the Integration of Machine Learning into Medical Practice.

In light of recent advances in machine learning for medical applications, the automation of medical diagnostics is imminent. That said, before machine learning algorithms find their way into clinical practice, various problems at the epistemic level need to be overcome. In this paper, we discuss different sources of uncertainty arising for clinicians trying to evaluate the trustworthiness of algorithmic evidence when making diagnostic judgments. Thereby, we examine many of the limitations of current machine learning algorithms (with deep learning in particular) and highlight their relevance for medical diagnostics. Among the problems we inspect are the theoretical foundations of deep learning (which are not yet adequately understood), the opacity of algorithmic decisions, and the vulnerabilities of machine learning models, as well as concerns regarding the quality of medical data used to train the models. Building on this, we discuss different desiderata for an uncertainty amelioration strategy that ensures that the integration of machine learning into clinical settings proves to be medically beneficial in a meaningful way.

Global Health and Decolonisation in Higher Education: Examining the Attitudes, Perceptions and Possibilities of Educators

Abstract Globally, there have been numerous calls to decolonise Global Health, most of them focusing on research-related practices while less attention has been given to Global Health education. The aim of this paper is to explore the perceptions and the meanings attributed to the decolonisation of Global Health education by Global Health educators from higher education institutions in both the Global North and Global South. To do so, we used a descriptive cross-sectional study using a mixed-method design approach. An online structured questionnaire was sent out in the second half of 2022 to 18 Global Health educators from both the Global South and the Global North to understand what the decolonisation of Global Health education means to practising educators, and what pedagogical practices should be recommended. In total, sixteen respondents filled out the survey. We used thematic analysis for the first question and found four sub-themes that we divided into the epistemic level (knowledge and its validation) and the ontological level (the nature of being). At the ontological level, we found that while the concept of decolonising Global Health was perceived as valuable and relevant; it was also seen as new and evolving, and lacking common direction. We found respondents saw the decolonisation of Global Health in education as a means of challenging power structures and colonial legacies, as well as a means of attaining innovation through reciprocity and equity. We end the discussion with recommendations for the Continuous Professional Development (CPD) of Global Health educators.

Toward a Renewed Theological Culture: Introduction

AbstractThis article introduces a series of articles analysing the current state of theology and inquiring about the possibilities of a renewed theological culture (not least within secular societies). It places theology, and more precisely, the conditions of a possible renewal thereof, in several fields of tension. Paradigmatic for secular societies is the tension between theology and the natural sciences. It is argued that theology and the natural sciences cultivate different modes of reasoning on different epistemic levels and that no competition between them has to be construed if one is not caught up in the premises of secularism. A brief summary of each of the contributions follows these initial remarks.

The English Text Types Applied In English Textbooks For Students of Islamic Education Department

This research aims at describing the English text types applied in English Textbooks for students of Islamic Education Department. The teaching must be relevant with the students� needs and the purpose of language teaching. One of the purposes is for understanding the different text types. Moreover, the college students should be in epistemic level. In this level, they are expected to be able to use English in transforming knowledge. The findings reported that there are ten text types applied in the textbooks. The dominant text is Information Report while the least is News Item. Almost the materials contain information related to Islamic knowledge. It also integrates the knowledge of how to use language for different purposes and functions, how to produce and understand different text types, and what the common linguistic features of each text type.

Doing mathematics with music – Creating epistemic environments

It is rare to turn music into a mathematical object in an educational context, although the benefit of the articulation between mathematics and music is recognized. The present study focuses on the epistemic environment created for students to do maths with music. The methodological approach had two components: an exploratory one to study the relationships between the epistemic environment experienced by students and the epistemic levels at which they do mathematics, and a quasi-experimental one to assess the effectiveness of intervention in student learning. Three groups took part in the study. The “doing maths with music” approach is more effective than conventional ones whether, or not, students have in-depth musical knowledge. On the other hand, educational artefacts used by students allowed them to deal with music at various epistemic levels, with relevant relationships between the quality of students’ epistemic activity and the profile of epistemic levels.