Epistemic Potential Research Articles

Enseñar geografía física en la carrera de turismo a través de un género discursivo del campo profesional

A partir de los noventa, en el ámbito de la educación superior en Argentina, se reconoce la importancia que tiene enseñar las formas discursivas propias de las disciplinas científicas durante la formación. En este trabajo, presentamos una propuesta didáctica basada en géneros discursivos para la enseñanza de la materia Geografía Física del primer año de la carrera de Turismo de la Universidad Nacional de Tierra del Fuego, Antártida e Islas del Atlántico Sur. El interés de esta asignatura es que reúne variados campos del conocimiento como geología, climatología, geomorfología y cartografía, y persigue el objetivo de que los estudiantes adquieran herramientas para observar e interpretar los elementos físicos que forman los espacios geográficos en los que la actividad turística se desarrolla. Aquí, proponemos una estrategia de enseñanza que explota el potencial epistémico y la función social de la escritura para promover la construcción de conocimientos y de identidad profesional dentro de este dominio disciplinar a través de un género específico del turismo: la guía descriptiva en las revistas de viajes. Así, la presente contribución desarrolla una secuencia didáctica centrada en la unidad del programa vinculada al paisaje glacial y se despliega a través de múltiples actividades y desempeños. De esta forma, se busca favorecer la articulación de los contenidos disciplinares en un género discursivo del ámbito profesional para ejercitar la comunicación turística que es un aspecto central en el perfil del egresado de la carrera y fundamental para la actuación en dicho ámbito, pero hasta ahora poco atendido en la formación.

Los pobres y la praxis de lucha popular como lugar epistémico-político

Presento, en este trabajo, desde una valoración del potencial político y epistémico de los aportes del Cristianismo de Liberación y de la Teología y Filosofía de la Liberación, una mirada sobre algunos de sus conceptos claves cuyo análisis puede servir actualmente en nuestra región latinoamericana para el diálogo entre los movimientos populares y para el debate de las Ciencias Sociales que se comprometen con ellos. Estos conceptos son los de pobre, pueblo y praxis y sabiduría popular. También planteo tres diálogos dentro de la gran multiplicidad de posibilidades: con el Socialismo Indoamericano de Mariátegui; con el Peronismo Revolucionario; y con las propuestas del Papa Francisco. Concluyo destacando algunos de los temas claves para estos diálogos contenidos en la profunda actualidad de estos planteos de liberación.

Lectura y escritura epistémicas: movilizando aprendizajes disciplinares en textos escolares

El texto escolar es objeto de promoción en políticas públicas educativas porque operacionaliza el currículum escolar. Sin embargo, predominan actividades expositivas y reproductivas con escasa atención al potencial epistémico de la lectura y la escritura para promover aprendizajes en las disciplinas. Siguiendo la perspectiva de Escribir para aprender y Aprender a escribir, el propósito de este artículo es presentar una propuesta didáctica fundamentada, sistemática y replicable de enseñanza de la lectura y la escritura en Matemáticas, Ciencias Naturales y Ciencias Sociales de educación básica, materializada en 107 cápsulas didácticas que se incluyeron en 24 libros de texto chilenos entre 2015 y 2017. Se identifica la riqueza y diversidad de géneros discursivos a través del currículum, se seleccionan actividades situadas de libros de texto que incluyan leer o escribir esos géneros, y se construyen secuencias didácticas con socialización de expectativas, modelamiento de proceso y facilitación de recursos y procedimientos lingüísticos.

Epistemic Neglect

ABSTRACT In most testimonial transactions between adults, the hearer’s obligation is to accord the speaker a level of credibility that matches the evidence that what she is saying is true. When the speaker is a child, however, the adult must often respond by extending a level of trust greater than that warranted by the evidence of past epistemic performance. Such trust, which I call ‘hopeful trust,’ is not extended on the basis the child’s extant credibility, but on the basis of their epistemic potential. Hopeful trust communicates to the speaker that she has reason to trust her own epistemic capacities and thereby enables her to do so. Extensions of hopeful trust are thus a method of causal construction; by treating individuals as if they are reliable, hopeful trust enables those individuals to become reliable. While not all adults bear the responsibility to extend hopeful trust to children, those who occupy positions of educational authority do. Failure to discharge this responsibility constitutes a distinct kind of epistemic injustice that can take both transactional and structural forms.

What’s wrong with an epistocratic council?

Epistemic justifications of democracy affirm the comparative quality of democracies’ decisions. The challenge faced by those who endorse such views is to explain why we should prefer standard democratic institutions to some sort of epistocracy or rule of the wisest. This article takes up this challenge by assessing the epistemic potential of an epistocratic council, as imagined by Jason Brennan. Members of such council would be selected through competency exams, the required competencies being defined by the whole population. The argument defended in this article is that the potential gain in instrumental rationality that such an institution could offer under certain questionable conditions would be outweighed by the increased risks of misrule and involuntary biases if such council has decision-making or veto power. In comparison with the existing literature, this argument stresses the importance of moral rightness, here defined as impartiality, in the epistemic assessment of democracy and its alternatives. The article then ends with a qualified assessment of purely epistemic justifications of democratic inclusion, which could be insufficient to reject implausible but imaginable forms of epistemically justifiable disenfranchisement.

Effect of argumentative goals in the quality of argumentative dialogue and written argumentation / Efecto de la consigna argumentativa en la calidad del diálogo argumentativo y de la argumentación escrita

The inclusion of argumentative practices in classrooms as an epistemic tool to foster learning and reasoning has become widespread. However, studies on argumentation show that not all kinds of argumentation are equally effective in fostering this potential, and that argumentative goals are determining factors in the argumentative discourse — in particular, persuasive and deliberative goals, the latter posited as being the ones with the greatest epistemic potential. Eighty students in the Master in Secondary Teacher Training took up positions on an energy dilemma and wrote two argumentative texts, before and after a dialogue with a classmate who defended the opposite thesis. Of the total of 40 dyads, 21 conversed with a persuasive goal and 19 with a deliberative goal. The results show that the dialogue had a positive effect on the argumentative quality under both conditions. However, in the consensus group, the bias of the post-text diminished while meta-statements and counterarguments increased. A case study of one dyad under each condition illustrates these differences.

The optical unconscious of Big Data: Datafication of vision and care for unknown futures

Ever since Big Data became a mot du jour across social fields, optical metaphors such as the microscope began to surface in popular discourse to describe and qualify its epistemological impact. While the persistence of optics seems to be at odds with the datafication of vision, this article suggests that the optical metaphor offers an opportunity to reflect about the material consequences of the modes of seeing and knowing that currently shape datafied worlds. Drawing on feminist new materialism, the article investigates the optical metaphor as a material-discursive practice that actively constitutes the world, as metaphors imply modes of thinking, knowing and doing that have material enactions. Expanding visual culture theories, the notion of ‘optical unconscious’ is taken up to discuss the tensions between displacement and persistence of optics within datafied worlds, that is, how optical vision is displaced but also mobilised and repurposed by data-driven knowledge. In dialogue with feminist science and technology studies and speculative ethics, I suggest that the datafication of vision offers a chance to reconceptualize the sense of sight towards a sensorial engagement with Big Data premised on responsibility, care, and an ethics of unknowability. Within this framework, vision may be conceived differently, perhaps not only as enhancement and control, but as generator of new possibilities. Ultimately, the article proposes that the visual theories after which Big Data is being imagined matter not only for our understanding of Big Data's epistemic potential, but also for the possibility of shaping emerging data worlds.

Digital orphans: Data closure and openness in patient-powered networks

In this paper, we discuss an issue linked to data-sharing regimes in patient-powered, social-media-based networks, namely that most of the data that patient users share are not used to research scientific issues or the patient voice. This is not a trivial issue, as participation in these networks is linked to openness in data sharing, which would benefit fellow patients and contributes to the public good more generally. Patient-powered research networks are often framed as disrupting research agendas and the industry. However, when data that patients share are not accessible for research, their epistemic potential is denied. The problem is linked to the business models of the organisations managing these networks: models centred on controlling patient data tend to close networks with regard to data use. The constraint on research is at odds with the ideals of a sharing, open and supportive epistemic community that networks’ own narratives evoke. This kind of failure can create peculiar scenarios, such as the emergence of the ‘digital orphans’ of Internet research. By pointing out the issue of data use, this paper informs the discussion about the capacity of patient-powered networks to support research participation and the patient voice.

Exhibiting Epistemic Objects

Scientific and medical collections contain many of what we may call epistemic objects, i.e. objects that have played important roles in the production of knowledge. Drawing on the work of H.-J. Rheinberger on ‘epistemic things’ and J. Pickstone on ‘ways of knowing’ this paper considers ways of exhibiting epistemic objects that utilize their knowledge-generating potential and allow them to continue to stimulate curiosity and generate knowledge in the exhibition. The epistemic potential of the objects can then be made to work together with the function of the exhibition as a knowledge-generating set-up in its own right. A focus on epistemic history further allows the cultural and scientific roles of objects of science to be combined in exhibitions. This paper takes its point of departure in the development of displays for the exhibition The Body Collected at Medical Museion in Copenhagen, which shows how anatomical specimens have been used to generate medical knowledge. KeywordsEpistemic objects, objects of knowledge, scientific instruments, anatomical collections, science as process

Epistemic marginalisation and the seductive power of art

Many voices and stories have been systematically silenced in interpersonal conversations, political deliberations and historical narratives. Recalcitrant and interrelated patterns of epistemic, political, cultural and economic marginalisation exclude individuals as knowers, citizens, agents. Two questions lie at the centre of this article, which focuses on the epistemically – but also politically, culturally and economically – dominant: How can we sabotage the dominant’s investment in their own ignorance of unjust silencing? How can they be seduced to become acute perceivers of others’ experiences of oppression and reckon with their own participation in it? Situated at the intersection between political theory, aesthetics and epistemology, this article contributes a so-far-unexplored suggestion: that certain literary works create epistemic friction between shared, entrenched prejudices on the one hand, and representations of epistemic exclusion or authority, on the other. Their power to illuminate ideational, moral and experiential limitations makes them valuable tools in problematising, rendering visible and dislocating epistemic injustice, as well as other marginalisations it intersects with. To advance this argument, the article relies on insights from aesthetics, unpacking fiction’s multidimensional epistemic potential. Audre Lorde exemplifies literary works’ ability to seductively sabotage bias and provide audiences with prosthetic visions of unfamiliar experiences of marginalisation.

La présence de chercheurs postcoloniaux dans les universités sud-africaines

À la lumière de l’expansion du continent africain, notre intérêt est d’identifier le volume et la forme de la population d’universitaires étrangers en Afrique du Sud provenant de 44 pays africains, avec en toile de fond les réformes structurales dans le système d’enseignement universitaire sud-africain. Nous désagrégeons cette population académique africaine en fonction de formations postcoloniales et la comparons à la distribution des pays africains d’origine. Nous examinons ces données dans vingt-trois universités qui ont été officiellement subdivisées entre les types institutionnels d’Université de Recherche, Université de Technologie et Université Généraliste. Nous fournissons un exemple empirique de la cohorte africaine de 2014 dans le système universitaire sud-africain. Nous considérons l’intérêt de prendre en compte les dimensions paradigmatiques et théoriques des épistémès africaines comme sources d’analyse de ce relativement nouveau segment de la population académique en Afrique du Sud.

Estudio de caso sobre una experiencia de alfabetización multimodal crítica a través del cine

This qualitative study reports the mediation performed by a History teacher and aimed at developing critical multimodal literacy in students participating in a film workshop at a Chilean public school. From this theoretical-methodological perspective, the film workshop was conceived as a multimodal space comprised of curriculum macrogenres , according to Christie’s conception from Educational Linguistics. Each film was considered a semiotic resource, which recontextualizes and resignifies curriculum contents. The methodology was based on the triangulation of disciplinary discourse, teaching mediation, and value construction performed in the film workshop. The results showed some strategies of teaching mediation, such as the identification of actors, processes and historical events through the pedagogy of the question , according to Freire’s conception; the unpackaging and packaging of highly abstract concepts; the deployment of verbal and written verbal resources, deictic and illustrative gestures, and semiotic resources such as the map, the PowerPoint and the film itself. From the experience of this film workshop, a possible conclusion is that the History teacher weaves patterns of meaning to mediate the literacy process of the students through the mentioned strategies. In addition, the films seen during the film workshop have a significant semiotic and epistemic potential for the development of critical multimodal literacy in combination with other semiotic resources in order to create meaning in context. Keywords: cinema, multimodal critical literacy, mediation.

Escritura académica, argumentación y prácticas de enseñanza en el primer año universitario

Este artículo muestra cómo docentes de la carrera de Profesorado y Licenciatura en Letras de una universidad pública argentina lograron entramar prácticas de escritura académica con prácticas de enseñanza, a fin de actualizar en sus aulas los potenciales epistémicos de la escritura. Enmarcados en un estudio de casos múltiples, configurado como una investigación didáctica naturalista, los resultados expuestos aquí provienen de dos fuentes de datos: entrevistas a alumnos y recolección de materiales de trabajo (consignas de escritura y producciones de alumnos). El análisis de tales datos estuvo guiado por la codificación y la contextualización, buscando las relaciones de similitud y contigüidad entre ellos. Desde el punto de vista teórico, teniendo como antecedentes los estudios sobre escribir a través del currículum (WAC), esta investigación retoma la noción de transposición didáctica propuesta por Chevallard para caracterizar de qué formas se entraman prácticas de enseñanza con escritura, en particular, cuando los docentes trabajan en sus clases una práctica de escritura disciplinar. Así, hallamos que, para transponer en el aula prácticas de escritura que resultasen potencialmente epistémicas y no propedéuticas, los docentes precisaron trabajar con una escritura argumentativa y vigilar cuidadosamente que las circunstancias de producción de tales prácticas fuesen similares a las que se desarrollan en el ámbito de las comunidades disciplinares a las que aspiran a pertenecer sus alumnos.

A Randomly Selected Chamber: Promises and Challenges

This paper explores the idea of a randomly selected chamber of representatives (RSC) through an appreciation of the promises it offers and the challenges it would face. We identify two main promises: a RSC could offset the aristocratic character of elections, thereby increasing the legitimacy of the political system; and it could increase democracy’s epistemic potential, thanks to gains in terms of diversity, deliberations, humility, and long-term perspective. We then discuss four key challenges. First, participation: how can the chamber have diversity without mandatory participation or heavy sanctions? Second, how can we conceive or build legitimacy for this non-elected and somehow unaccountable chamber’s views? Third, independence: how to safeguard randomly selected people from corruption? Finally, there may be a linguistic challenge: if the RSC has a deliberative role, how should it cope with the possible linguistic diversity of its members? We conclude that these challenges are not insurmountable, but reveal some trade-offs that cannot be entirely dissolved.

¿QUÉ Y PARA QUÉ SE ESCRIBE DURANTE UN TRABAJO PRÁCTICO DE LABORATORIO DE BIOLOGÍA EN LA ESCUELA SECUNDARIA?

La escritura constituye una herramienta esencial para el aprendizaje, sin embargo, en el marco de las prácticas en el aula, muchas veces se la utiliza solamente con el fin de acreditar los conocimientos o registrar datos. En función de esto, resultó de interés indagar el rol de la escritura en clase y la percepción de los alumnos sobre la misma. En este trabajo, se caracterizan las producciones escritas y la valoración de los estudiantes de quinto año de una escuela privada de Córdoba, Argentina, durante la realización de un trabajo práctico de laboratorio de biología. Se analizaron desde distintas perspectivas los borradores e informes finales realizados por los estudiantes y mediante un cuestionario se indagó cómo valoran los alumnos la tarea de escritura y la realización de trabajos prácticos. Se encontró que los estudiantes conciben el trabajo práctico como una instancia más de aprendizaje, que les brinda herramientas conceptuales y procedimentales que contribuyen a la comprensión de la biología y que reconocen, en cierta medida, el potencial epistémico de la escritura. A pesar de estos resultados positivos, no se observó una reestructuración relevante del escrito final a partir de los borradores y predominaron las secuencias narrativas y explicativas frente las argumentativas.

Addressing Deficits and Injustices: The Potential Epistemic Contributions of Patients to Research.

Patient or public involvement (PPI) in health research is increasingly expected as a matter of policy. In theory, PPI can contribute both to the epistemic aims intrinsic to research (generating knowledge), and to extrinsically valued features of research such as social inclusion and transparency. In practice, the aims of PPI have not always been clear, although there has been a tendency to encourage the involvement of so-called ordinary people who are regarded as representative of an assumed patient perspective. In this paper we focus on the epistemic potential of PPI, using theoretical work in epistemology to develop a nuanced account of patients' experiential knowledge and how this might contribute directly to conceptual development, hypothesis generation and data interpretation. We also consider how some features of health research pose barriers to this kind of epistemic contribution. Drawing on Miranda Fricker's idea of testimonial injustice, we explore how disciplinary indicators of credibility in clinical and academic health research contexts might be wrongly applied to those involved in PPI, undermining their potential to contribute. Finally we argue for a range of strategies to maximize opportunities for patients to engage with research teams and make epistemologically significant contributions to research.

The Epistemic Value of Public Opinion: Theoretical and Practical Considerations

This paper discusses the claim that citizens lack sufficient political knowledge to make sound judgements on public matters. It is contended that practical judgements raise essentially two types of claims, namely a claim to empirical truth and a claim to normative rightness, and that there are good reasons to believe that people's insufficient political knowledge undermines both of them. Yet, an examination of the dynamics of public opinion formation reveals that there is an epistemic potential in public opinion, though it is dependent upon the quality of public debate. Building on this idea and on the concept of deliberative responsiveness, two paths of political reform are proposed, which should illustrate the practical implications of the theoretical argument made in this paper by demonstrating how the quality of public debate and, thus, the epistemic value of public opinion could be enhanced.

Marsupial lions and methodological omnivory: function, success and reconstruction in paleobiology

Historical scientists frequently face incomplete data, and lack direct experimental access to their targets. This has led some philosophers and scientists to be pessimistic about the epistemic potential of the historical sciences. And yet, historical science often produces plausible, sophisticated hypotheses. I explain this capacity to generate knowledge in the face of apparent evidential scarcity by examining recent work on Thylacoleo carnifex, the ‘marsupial lion’. Here, we see two important methodological features. First, historical scientists are methodological omnivores, that is, they construct purpose-built epistemic tools tailored to generate evidence about highly specific targets. This allows them to produce multiple streams of independent evidence and thus maximize their epistemic reach. Second, investigative scaffolding: research proceeds in a piece-meal fashion, information only gaining evidential relevance once certain hypotheses are well supported. I illustrate scaffolding in a discussion of the nature of functional ascription in paleobiology. Frequently, different senses of ‘function’ are not discriminated during paleobiological investigation—something which can mar adaptationist investigations of extant organisms. However, I argue that, due to scaffolding, conflating senses of ‘function’ can be the right thing to do. Coarse-grained functional hypotheses are required before it is clear what evidence could discriminate between more fine-grained ones. I draw on omnivory and scaffolding to argue that pessimists make a bad empirical bet. It is a bad idea to bet against the epistemic fortunes of such opportunistic and resourceful scientists, especially when we have reason to think we will systematically underestimate the amount of evidence ultimately available to them.

Cognitive Animation Theory: A Process-Based Reading of Animation and Human Cognition

This article considers both animation and human cognition in terms of process philosophy, and articulates some common ground between the processes of animation and the processes of human cognitive imagery. In doing so it suggests a new cognitive theory of animation – one that differs dramatically from the bulk of the literature surrounding cognitive film theories, which tend to focus only on the viewer’s cognitive response to the completed film. Instead this theory will address a number of process philosophy-based ideas that, together with a discussion of the use of cognitive imagery, can position animation quite apart from other mediums. Firstly, the author suggests that movement and image should be considered as distinct entities both in the animated form and in human cognition. Next, he suggests that animation and cognitive imagery are often made up of numerous layers signaling a unique set of processes and facilitating greater creative and epistemic potential. And finally the article considers the influence of sound as well as the comparative uses of metamorphosis.

La lectura, la escritura y el pensamiento. Función epistémica e implicaciones pedagógicas

En este trabajo se reflexiona sobre la relación entre la lectura, la escritura y elpensamiento desde el enfoque sociocultural (Vygotsky, 1985, 1978 y Olson,1998). Reflexiones que permitirán desentrañar las densas construcciones quese entretejen entre los procesos de comprensión y producción de la palabraescrita para pensar y conocer. Introduce algunas consideraciones sobre lafunción epistémica de la lectura y la escritura, desde la revisión teórica de estaproblemática particular relacionada con las ciencias del lenguaje, para examinarde qué modo desde la enseñanza disciplinaria se pueden favorecer experienciascon potencial epistémico. Finalmente, se plantean implicaciones pedagógicas de lafunción epistémica de la lectura y la escritura para la construcción de ciudadanía.