Purpose The purpose of this article is to identify neurophysiological learning needs in tourism education by examining the subjective perspectives of educators and scholars. The study aims to contribute to discussions on how neuroscience-informed approaches can support curriculum development in a practice-oriented discipline without undermining its experiential and contextual foundations. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts Q methodology to systematically explore academic subjectivities. Based on an interdisciplinary concourse, 40 Q statements addressing pedagogical, cognitive, affective and technological dimensions were developed. A forced quasi-normal Q sort was conducted with academics from tourism-related disciplines, and the data were analyzed using principal component analysis with varimax rotation. Findings The findings reveal strong agreement that conventional lecture-based and sedentary teaching methods are inadequate for tourism education, while experiential, field-based and simulation-supported learning approaches are widely endorsed. At the same time, participants express caution toward the direct pedagogical application of certain neuroscientific claims. Four distinct and internally consistent epistemic perspectives were identified through factor analysis. Research limitations/implications The study is limited by its relatively small and discipline-specific sample, which restricts the generalizability of the findings. Nevertheless, it provides important theoretical implications by framing neuroscience-related debates in tourism education as epistemological and by demonstrating the usefulness of Q methodology in interdisciplinary educational research. Practical implications The findings suggest that tourism curricula should prioritize experiential and practice-oriented learning environments while adopting neuroscience-informed insights cautiously and contextually. Rather than promoting prescriptive brain-based techniques, educators and curriculum designers are encouraged to use neuroscientific knowledge as a reflective support tool that complements experiential learning, emotional engagement and disciplinary practice. Social implications By fostering more effective, reflective and learner-centered educational practices, the study contributes to the development of tourism education that is responsive to contemporary cognitive and experiential learning needs. A context-sensitive integration of neuroscience has the potential to enhance student engagement, professional competence and long-term learning outcomes, thereby supporting the social relevance and sustainability of tourism education. Originality/value This article offers original value by systematically mapping plural academic perspectives on neurophysiological learning needs in tourism education. It advances the literature by showing how neuroscience-informed insights can be integrated into curriculum design in a reflective, context-sensitive and evidence-based manner.

ABSTRACT This paper examines the increasing use of leverage in the pension system and explains the limited regulatory response to growing concerns about the implications for financial stability. Our argument is illustrated by analysing the proliferation of liability-driven investment (LDI) strategies in UK defined-benefit pension schemes and the emergence of systemic risk as a regulatory issue. The paper draws on the linked ecologies framework to map how different professional groups assert control over new issues through knowledge production. We attribute the rise of LDI strategies after 2007 to the ability of investment consultants to mediate or arbitrage between pension funds and pension regulators through the development of hinge strategies around derisking and leverage. Next, we explain how the systemic risk of LDI developed as an emergent issue in the gaps or ‘blind spots’ between existing pools of professional knowledge. We argue that regulators’ ability to mitigate these risks was constrained by epistemic pathologies, grounded in professional practices and reputational concerns, which inhibited the co-production of new actionable knowledge. The paper contributes to the development of new epistemic perspectives on pension financialisation and extends important work on macroprudential regulation to a hitherto neglected part of the financial system.

Decolonising pharmacy education: Broadening epistemic perspectives and advancing curricular inclusion.

This paper introduces the Sextuple Helix Innovation Model as an extension of the Quintuple Helix Innovation Model by Carayannis and Campbell. The epistemic perspective considers the understanding of generative AI (GenAI) as a sixth helix of knowledge production in sustainable innovation ecosystems. Accordingly, the knowledge economy of GenAI will be discussed in the context of the innovation processes of cultural and creative industries. While GenAI is largely described in social discourses as a disruptive tool that potentially replaces human creativity and thus destroys jobs, this paper discusses GenAI as an entity with a specific knowledge economy that contributes to creative innovation processes in exchange with the five established helices of science, politics, economy, the media- and culture-based public, and the natural environment of societies. With the help of a scoping review, a comprehensive evaluation of academic literature from the fields of creative industries, cultural policy, and innovation research, based on a constructivist epistemological approach and knowledge economy theory, confirmed that the positioning of GenAI as an epistemic actor in the Sextuple Helix Innovation Model reframes and redefines discourses beyond the prevailing narratives of disruption and regulation.

In this paper, we introduce and theorize the concept of toxic experts as individuals who, by virtue of their perceived or actual expertise, systematically engage in behaviors characterized by professional and intellectual vices. Despite maintaining an appearance of legitimacy, toxic experts exploit public trust by disseminating unsubstantiated, misleading, or harmful claims for personal and commercial gain. Drawing on a multidisciplinary framework, we integrate diverse insights to explain how toxic expertise emerges and persists. Specifically, we combine ethical and epistemic perspectives that distinguish genuine expertise from opportunistic misrepresentation. We analyze how social and institutional recognition shapes expert authority. Then we examine how structural transformations of work erode professional integrity and identify cognitive mechanisms that sustain trust in unverified claims. Using the case of the longevity biotechnology business, we develop a multilevel relational theoretical framework that identifies: (i) the historical and socio-cultural preconditions that enable toxic experts to emerge, (ii) the social and cognitive processes through which they gain and maintain legitimacy, and (iii) prevention strategies centered on cascaded accountability reforms. Our contextualized perspective challenges the depiction of toxic experts as isolated deviant individuals, revealing them instead as products of broader social, institutional, and ideological conditions. We argue that mitigating their influence requires cascaded regulatory interventions at societal and institutional levels to restore public trust and prevent toxic outcomes.

The study of aesthetics proceeds along many lines, containing both the theory of beauty and the theory of art, and investigating both aesthetic objects and aesthetic experiences, employing description, prescription, analysis, and explanation.

This article analyzes how the communicative practices of Shuar Arutam youth in the Ecuadorian Amazon are configured and what meanings they generate amid the expansion of the digital regime, the coloniality of development, and ongoing territorial disputes. Far from approaching technology as a technical or neutral phenomenon, the study interrogates its symbolic, affective, and political dimensions through the situated uses that emerge from the conflict. Adopting a methodology of circular co-theorization—which weaves together critical discourse analysis, life stories, and ethnography —this research enacts a process of collaborative inquiry that allows thinking with the territory, rather than about it. Fieldwork was conducted between December 2024 and March 2025 in the Tiwintza canton, with a special focus on the tensions experienced by youth around memory, connectivity, and technological reappropriation. The corpus includes institutional, corporate, and media discourses, as well as experiential narratives and ethnographic records from community spaces. The findings reveal that, far from passively reproducing digital devices, Shuar youth creatively repurpose them, transforming technology into tools for mutual care, territorial alert, and identity affirmation. From these margins, communication ceases to be a mere channel and becomes a site of contestation, world-making, and everyday sovereignty. The article offers critical insights for rethinking the intersections of technology, power, and resistance from a Southern epistemic perspective rooted in the body, language, and collective modes of inhabiting the present.

Online violence and abuse pose significant challenges to public discourse, as it exacerbates existing power structures and marginalizes diverse epistemic perspectives. In this context, this study examines the epistemological consequences of hateful and toxic speech in online news comment sections, conceptualizing it as a form of epistemic violence—an effort to erase particular ways of thinking. Examining a dataset of toxic and hateful comments from The Conversation Canada, our findings emphasize four mechanisms of epistemic violence: insulting, labelling, ridiculing, and dehumanizing. These mechanisms function to delegitimize alternative epistemic positions and reinforce ideological conformity. Furthermore, these mechanisms disproportionately target those with marginalized identities along racial, gender, and political lines, further entrenching hegemonic power structures. Our research contributes to scholarship on digital epistemologies and platformized violence, highlighting the need for strategies that foster epistemic pluralism rather than simply suppressing toxic discourse.

Convergence research, as defined by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is characterized by problem-driven inquiry and deep integration across disciplines to tackle pressing societal needs. This collection of 10 manuscripts advances both theoretical frameworks and practical applications of convergence research, drawing primarily from the work of the Intermountain West Transformation Network and other teams funded by NSF’s Sustainable Regional Systems program. Manuscripts examine how convergence research differs from related fields like transdisciplinary research and team science, while exploring the role of community engagement and integration across diverse knowledge systems. Several papers focus on theoretical frameworks, including the Guided Transformation approach that combines social-ecological-technological systems theory with resilience theory to translate knowledge into action. Others present practical tools for convergence, such as the fuzzy SETS framework and systems thinking methods that help integrate diverse epistemic perspectives, as well as art-science collaborations that broaden participation in research. Case studies demonstrate convergence research applications across various contexts, from addressing social inequities in U.S.-Mexico border water planning to analyzing economic interconnections in Western U.S. regional communities. The collection highlights the importance of expanding convergence beyond STEM disciplines to include social sciences, humanities, and community-rooted knowledge systems. As convergence research continues to evolve, these contributions emphasize that successful approaches must embrace epistemological plurality, prioritize reciprocity with communities, and develop methodologies that translate across disciplinary boundaries. In doing so, convergence research can generate transformative approaches to our most pressing societal challenges.

The ongoing debate surrounding patet theory in Sundanese karawitan reveals a clear divergence in epistemic perspectives between formal music education and artistic practice. Within academic settings, patet is positioned as a theoretical foundation for performing the pelog-salendro gamelan system. However, many practitioners argue that the concept does not manifest explicitly in lived musical practice. This study re-examines the theoretical construction of patetthrough an ethnomusicological lens, drawing on practice theory (Bourdieu; Reckwitz) and the concept of embodied musical knowledge (Brinner; McKerrell). Findings demonstrate significant differences regarding nada pangaget and pancer: academics tend to codify both as fixed elements, whereas artists interpret them relationally, guided by musical intuition and performative context. The analysis confirms that patet continues to shape tonal orientation, dominant tones, and affective musical space. This study argues that patet should be understood as a dual concept, normative in academic discourse yet flexible in artistic practice, bridging theoretical frameworks and Sundanese karawitan performance.

Abstract Perspectivism about reasons is commonly understood as the view that normative reasons depend on an agent’s epistemic perspective: a fact counts as a reason only if it is epistemically accessible to the agent. This paper argues that perspectivists’ near-exclusive focus on an agent’s epistemic perspective obscures another important dimension of perspective dependence – namely, that reasons can also depend on an agent’s rational perspective. Specifically, I propose that, in addition to epistemic accessibility, a further necessary condition for a fact to qualify as a reason is its rational accessibility – that is, the agent must have decisive reason to access the fact. Recognizing the rational accessibility of reasons offers considerable theoretical leverage: it substantially improves the two leading perspectivist accounts, with notable implications for the broader dialectic, and it promises to illuminate central normative phenomena, such as key instances of normative latitude.

This article proposes a review of the right to free, prior and informed consultation of indigenous peoples from an epistemic perspective, with a main focus on the Mayan people of Yucatan and local environmental policies. Based on a review of literature and recent experiences at the local level, it is argued that this right should not be limited to a unilateral legal procedure, but should be conceived as a mechanism for the recognition of indigenous knowledge and real and inclusive participation in the construction of public policies. In this sense, it is affirmed that when the right to consultation is exercised in an epistemically fair manner, an authentically democratic dialogue is achieved, with legitimate results that are aimed at achieving real environmental justice. Therefore, prior consultation is of fundamental importance as a mechanism to achieve a true consensus between indigenous ancestral knowledge, current knowledge, public practice, and environmental policy.

This study employs multimodal conversation analysis to examine the precursors of resistance displays during Reminiscence Therapy (RT) sessions, the format of the resistance exhibited by Chinese older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and the ways it was managed by caregivers. It is found that older adults with MCI display resistance through behaviors like initiating repair, denying question premises, changing topics, refusing overtly, being silent, laughing, and giving minimal responses. Non-verbal cues such as gestures, head movements, averted gaze, and facial expressions are also employed to convey their resistance. In response, caregivers employ various facilitative practices to counter this resistance. Resistance occurs when the assumptions embedded in the caregiver’s question conflict with what the older adults have access to, or the question may infringe on the older adult’s epistemic rights. Our findings also highlight the dynamic and collaborative construction of power through negotiation of resistance and facilitation from epistemic perspective. These insights offer valuable guidance for enhancing the effectiveness of RT and fostering a more collaborative relationship between participants during RT sessions.

Medical expertise is traditionally understood through two main epistemic perspectives: propositional-cognitive knowledge, which emphasizes scientific and theoretical understanding, and practical-experiential knowledge, which is rooted in experience and tacit skills. Existing models often focus on one of these dimensions, failing to capture the full complexity of medical expertise. This study proposes a hybrid expertise (HE) framework that integrates both forms of knowledge, offering a more comprehensive characterization of how expertise is acquired and applied in medical practice. This study employs a theoretical-analytical approach, drawing from established distinctions in epistemology, such as know-how vs. know-that, tacit vs. explicit knowledge, and declarative vs. procedural knowledge. This perspective aligns with related concepts such as adaptive expertise (AE) and interdisciplinary expertise (IE). Additionally, we challenge the assumption that all medical students can become experts with proper training, arguing that expertise requires exceptional performance beyond mere competence. This perspective has important implications for medical education, emphasizing the need for curricula that balance theoretical instruction with experiential learning. These insights contribute to a more nuanced understanding of expertise, with potential applications in medical training, policy-making, and healthcare practice.

Abstract This paper distinguishes the drug-centered view of psychedelics (DCP) and the drug-assisted view of psychedelics (DAP). While these approaches differ conceptually, both rely on the methodology of evidence-based medicine, using randomized controlled trials to validate therapeutic efficacy. Using MDMA-assisted psychotherapy as a case study of DAP, we reconstruct the causal reasoning underlying its proposed therapeutic effects, identify two key causal assumptions, and critically examine them. Our analysis shows that the DAP community’s reliance on evidence-based medicine is not merely methodological, but also reflects questionable epistemological assumptions inherited from the empirically supported therapy tradition. We conclude by proposing value-based practice as a complementary methodology better suited to the relational and value-laden dimensions of DAP.

This study seeks to present a complex critical vision regarding the reality of Islam through three opposing epistemic perspectives: the Orientalist discourse, which portrays Islam as a closed, unoriginal religious system; the Islamist discourse, or what is called political Islam, which imagines Islam as a system of statehood and seeks to transform the Sharia into a project of an ideological state governed by the mechanisms of modern power; and Wael Hallaq’s reading, which offers a third alternative based on Sharia as a historical, functional, moral–legal system.Thus, this paper concludes that Islam cannot be reduced either to political-ideological molds or to Orientalist representations. This conclusion is based on Hallaq’s project, which seeks to lay new foundations for the essence of Islam and Sharia, wagering that Islamic Sharia is a moral system that seeks to organize social life and produce the moral self, not merely coercive legal systems. The attempt to impose modern state models upon it inevitably produces structural, moral, and political contradictions that destroy the Sharia no less severely than the distortions practiced by Orientalism.

Abstract The article introduces two modalities representing knowledge about the subjective and objective current moment of time. It provides formal semantics of these modalities, shows that the modalities are not definable through each other, and gives a sound and complete axiomatisation of their interplay. The axiomatisation contains an unusual Insertion inference rule generalising the Necessitation rule. The article proves that the Insertion rule is not derivable from the other axioms and inference rules.

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems increasingly claim “human-level” or “superhuman” performance, foundational assumptions about intelligence remain under-theorized. Existing AI safety and alignment discourses often frame intelligence as disembodied, universal, and measurable-reinforcing Western-centric benchmarks such as logical reasoning, linguistic proficiency, and computational speed. This narrow framing risks legitimizing a technocratic model of alignment that excludes diverse cultural and epistemic perspectives. This paper investigates how dominant imaginaries of intelligence are constructed and contested within contemporary AI governance. Drawing on a mixed-methods design, the study combines critical discourse analysis of foundational texts from leading AI labs (OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic) with twenty semi-structured interviews involving AI researchers, ethicists, and interdisciplinary scholars. The analysis reveals that the prevailing conception of “superintelligence” privileges optimization, prediction, and control-while marginalizing moral reasoning, relational understanding, and embodied or situated forms of knowledge. In response, the paper proposes a pluralistic reframing of machine intelligence grounded in cognitive diversity, cultural epistemology, and participatory governance. It argues for expanding benchmarks, safety protocols, and alignment frameworks to reflect diverse values and cognitive styles. Concrete pathways for operationalizing this shift include care-aligned safety audits, epistemically diverse evaluation metrics, and polycentric governance structures. By decentering dominant techno-scientific paradigms, the paper contributes to a more inclusive and socially grounded vision of AI governance. This reframing holds significance for increasing public trust, mitigating epistemic injustice, and developing alignment strategies that are not only safe, but also equitable and contextually relevant on a global scale.

This ethnoliterary-oriented educational research analyzes a hypertextual corpus of fanfiction produced by secondary school students from an epistemic perspective on reading and writing didactics. This corpus combines creative and critical strategies, updating the heritage of traditional stories in new narrative spaces of popular cyber-affinity. Since the field of ethnoliterature allows for the exploration of this hypertextual praxis in its mixtures and anthropological journeys between tradition and avant-garde, and argues that its imagery expresses cultural problems and ethical solutions, the narrative symbolism of this corpus, referring to the relevance of the theme of violence in human experience, has been deciphered. Specifically, it has been analyzed according to Wladimir Propp's functions, focused on stereotypes of violence and their connection to the narrative transmodalization carried out. The corpus chosen comes from a purposive sample of 41 Spanish secondary school students, based on realistic criteria, and a qualitative content analysis methodology was used, implementing two structural specification matrices. The discussion of the results reveals the students' tendency to significantly invent their fanfic, choosing only hypotexts popularized by the media industry and intensifying the direct and cultural violence that normalizes sexism and punishment in dystopias without redemption. Therefore, the conclusion emphasizes the importance of educationally strengthening civic prosumption by resorting to the critical-creative spaces of fandom.

ABSTRACTThe quest for significance and mattering (QSM), defined as the need to have social worth and to be treated with dignity, is a fundamental human need and motivation with vast epistemic, moral, and catalytic potential. From an epistemic perspective, QSM plays a crucial role across (a) the lifespan, (b) domains of life, and (c) a wide variety of psychosocial phenomena, ranging from attachment to aggression and deaths of despair at the personal level to joining terrorist groups, believing in conspiracy theories, and wars at the social level. From a moral point of view, QSM can provide a new definition of justice. While psychologists, philosophers, and political scientists have identified unique forms of (in)justice, such as distributive, procedural, and restorative, it is possible that at the root of all these manifestations of fairness is a violation of the elemental need to matter. From a catalytic point of view, it is possible to leverage QSM to prevent the loss and promote the gain of significance in individuals, groups, organisations, communities, and nations through a culture of positive regard.Public Significance StatementThe quest for significance and mattering (QSM) fulfils the need to have social worth and to be treated with dignity. QSM is a fundamental human motivation that plays a crucial role across developmental stages and domains of life. The lessons from QSM can be applied to promote justice and a culture of positive regard in families, groups, workplaces, communities, nations and international relations.