Epistemic Practices Research Articles

A victory (of what sort) for strict purist invariantism? Some reflections on Gerken’s On folk epistemology: how we think and talk about knowledge

ABSTRACT Gerken's On Folk Epistemology: How we think and talk about knowledge develops and defends strict purist invariantism about knowledge. Along the way, Gerken argues that less-orthodox competitors to strict purist invariantism are plagued by certain heretofore unrecognized or underappreciated difficulties. Given Gerken's own explicit methodological commitments, this defensive component of the book's project is dialectically crucial. By Gerken's own lights, we ought to be persuaded to embrace strict purist invariantism only if it turns out that the strict purist invariantist is better positioned than their competitors to explain the folk epistemological “inputs” to epistemic theorizing. My own goal here is to articulate some reasons to worry that Gerken's defensive efforts are less-than-fully successful. In particular, I argue that we ought to adopt a more expansive and more nuanced conception of the relevant folk epistemological “inputs.” Moreover, I suggest that, at least insofar as we have reason to embrace a kind of qualified methodological preference for theoretical explanations that vindicate our ordinary epistemic practice, we might well have good reason for favoring (certain of) the alternate theoretical explanations of these inputs that less-orthodox views of knowledge supply over the kind of explanations that Gerken convincingly argues strict purist invariantism can offer.

Due Reparation. Honour Disputes in Biomedical Sciences in Buenos Aires, 1870–1940

Summary This manuscript focuses on the incidents, trials at courts of honour and duels involving important figures at the University of Buenos Aires School of Medical Sciences, which ruptured the peaceful surface of this institution in order to protect epistemic practices and settings. The existence in itself of the honour culture in the Buenos Aires aristocratic elite is, perhaps, as curious as its use by distinguished local doctors with the purpose of resolving disputes caused by clashing interests—which were related to their profession and experimental work. The conflicts discussed here shed light on a classic issue in the social history of science, technology and medicine: the collective bargaining of credibility in matters personal, professional and research-related.

Knowledge and the governing of the interventionary object: Mali in the German parliament

AbstractWhile studies on the role of knowledge and expertise have seen a resurgence of interest in International Relations and in literature on peacebuilding and security governance, little is known how knowledge enters the governance routines after the initial establishment of peacebuilding operations. Taking the mandate decision-making process of MINUSMA and EUTM operations in Mali in the German parliament as case for our explorative study, we ask how knowledge has entered the parliamentary process and how various epistemic practices and epistemic agency shape this peacebuilding governance since 2013. Informed by an object-centred knowledge framework, we argue that the practices and types of agency involved mostly ‘lock-in’ the governing of robust peacebuilding in Mali in much broader foreign- and security policies routines. Epistemic practices are not primarily concerned with new impulses or critical analysis, but with rendering Mali governable as interventionary object. The epistemic authority of the government is dominant and we do not find much evidence that hegemonic knowledge is challenged. Intervening agents do extract certain knowledge via transnational channels from Mali, however, broader knowledge debates or the involvement of Malian agents are missing.

Zhuangzi’s epistemic perspectivism: humility and open-mindedness as corrective virtues

In Zhuangzi’s philosophy, the intellectual virtues of humility and open-mindedness are best understood in the context of his epistemic perspectivism. The method, which urges knowers to pursue various and diverse points of view and incorporate them into a broad perspective, is justified by a second-order realization that all perspectives are partial and limited. This in turn urges a meta-virtue of humility, defined as a disposition in which knowers become aware of their epistemic limitations. Humility, consequently, encourages the virtue of open-mindedness, defined as the willingness and ability to surpass existing personal perspectives. Zhuangzi endorses the method and its attendant virtues to achieve what he calls great knowing. I propose that we gain a clearer sense of the role of humility and open-mindedness by also considering Zhuangzi’s treatment of the vices, which are addressed with as much frequency as the virtues. Zhuangzi’s treatment of arrogance and closed-mindedness reveals how humility and open-mindedness operate as corrective virtues, in the sense that they compensate for evident and familiar deficiencies in the epistemic practices of knowers in Zhuangzi’s time. Humility and open-mindedness enable knowers to acquire new points of view that reliably produce knowledge.

Flexible, creative, constructive, and collaborative: the makings of an authentic science inquiry task

ABSTRACT To promote scientific literacy in school science, students need to learn key concepts in science, along with the nature of scientific knowledge and how it is generated. Ideally, this learning mirrors authentic scientific inquiry through student engagement in three key epistemic practices: flexibility and creativity, knowledge construction, and collaboration. This paper draws on findings from a larger research study investigating the implementation of a guided-inquiry multimodal approach to teaching science. It reports on a case study of three Australian Year 9 science students investigating sustainable design strategies for houses, as a summative task. Through a post-hoc analysis, this paper explores how, and to what extent, the task supported the epistemic practices of authentic scientific inquiry. To address these questions, the author developed and applied an Authentic Inquiry Framework (AIF) to analyse the students’ dialogue and interactions during this task. The findings reveal that the students applied a flexible and creative approach to addressing their inquiry questions, through their own experimental design and engagement in provisional and collaborative knowledge construction. To support their investigation, the students were also able to productively integrate disciplinary-specific tools and technologies.

Guidance and mainstream epistemology.

According to one prominent critique of mainstream epistemology, discoveries about what it takes to know or justifiedly believe that p can't provide the right kind of intellectual guidance. As Mark Webb puts it, "the kinds of principles that are developed in this tradition are of no use in helping people in their ordinary epistemic practices." In this paper I defend a certain form of traditional epistemology against this "regulative" critique. Traditional epistemology can provide-and, indeed, can be essential for-intellectual guidance. The reason is that, in many cases, how you should proceed intellectually depends on what you already know or justifiedly believe: how you should treat counterevidence to your beliefs, for example, can depend on whether those beliefs count as knowledge. Therefore, to get guidance on how to proceed intellectually, it will often be essential to be able to figure out what you know or justifiedly believe. And to do that it will often be helpful to try to figure out what it takes to count as knowledge or justified belief in the first place. To do this is precisely to engage in mainstream epistemology.

Eye for an AI: More-than-seeing, fauxtomation, and the enactment of uncertain data in digital pathology.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are being developed to assist with increasingly complex diagnostic tasks in medicine. This produces epistemic disruption in diagnostic processes, even in the absence of AI itself, through the datafication and digitalization encouraged by the promissory discourses around AI. In this study of the digitization of an academic pathology department, we mobilize Barad's agential realist framework to examine these epistemic disruptions. Narratives and expectations around AI-assisted diagnostics-which are inextricable from material changes-enact specific types of organizational change, and produce epistemic objects that facilitate to the emergence of some epistemic practices and subjects, but hinder others. Agential realism allows us to simultaneously study epistemic, ethical, and ontological changes enacted through digitization efforts, while keeping a close eye on the attendant organizational changes. Based on ethnographic analysis of pathologists' changing work processes, we identify three different types of uncertainty produced by digitization: sensorial, intra-active, and fauxtomated uncertainty. Sensorial and intra-active uncertainty stem from the ontological otherness of digital objects, materialized in their affordances, and result in digital slides' partial illegibility. Fauxtomated uncertainty stems from the quasi-automated digital slide-making, which complicates the question of responsibility for epistemic objects and related knowledge by marginalizing the human.

Advancing group epistemic practices in the resolution of interdisciplinary societal dilemmas

The present paper inquires whether a meticulous program designed to resolve Interdisciplinary Societal Dilemmas through dialogic argumentation advances epistemic practices. To delineate how epistemic practices are manifested in classroom discussions, we adopted the Actor-Network Theory (ANT), which explores the interactions and agencies of human and non-human actors. ANT analyses uncover the power these actors exert on each other and help recognize the networks that these actors create or dissolve. They also delineate how epistemic practices emerge and are shaped in these networks. We identified four epistemic practices in the discussions: (1) taking a reasoned position, (2) integrating knowledge from different disciplines, (3) weighing pros and cons before taking a complex position, and (4) role-playing in a democratic game. We show that the type of discourse developed in the program was mostly dialogic argumentation. In addition, we demonstrate how teachers often inhibit these advancements. Indeed, in the case of integrating knowledge from different disciplines, teachers’ role is central, but the emerged actors’ network is often non-dialogic. Moreover, we show how non-human actors shape the interactions in networks as well as the formation of knowledge and agency. We conclude that: (a) the design of activities for resolving interdisciplinary societal dilemmas provides many opportunities for advancing epistemic practices, (b) these practices are mostly advanced through dialogic argumentation, but (c) more efforts should be invested in affording interdisciplinary argumentation.

Understanding student use of epistemic criteria in engineering design contexts

AbstractRecent trends have shifted the focus of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education onto practice‐based learning, to encourage opportunities for students to engage in science and engineering practices (SEPs) with the goal of more meaningful participation and engagement in authentic STEM experiences for all students. However, we do not fully understand how K–12 engineering students use the SEP of argumentation to design solutions or make problem‐solving decisions. In this study, we examine middle school students’ discourse to understand the epistemic criteria students use when making design decisions and how they meaningfully take up epistemic practices for engineering, specifically when engaging in engineering design. We find that students use five epistemic criteria (nature, creativity and innovation, justification, collaboration, and the user) in ways meaningful to design‐oriented goals, even at the beginning of the school year, and that consideration of these criteria varies according to the implicit goals in each stage of the design process. These findings suggest that (i) students took up epistemic goals for sensemaking and designing solutions, and (ii) students already possessed the skills and abilities to meaningfully engage in design work, suggesting an asset view of student epistemic practices should be adopted.

Emotions in knowledge production

ABSTRACT This synoptic review surveys the philosophical literature on the epistemology of emotions to identify the role of emotions in knowledge production. It analyses their evaluative, motivational, hermeneutical and social functions as embedded in epistemic practices and cultures. The focus on situated epistemic emotions stresses the importance of developing an ethics of knowledge production. The review introduces some new proposals for fostering inquiry in this field, drawing from agency-based accounts of emotions (enactivism, in particular) and virtue epistemology.

Critical thinking in primary science through a guided inquiry pedagogy: A semiotic perspective

ABSTRACT Although education research in critical thinking is a rapidly emerging field, how teachers can facilitate, monitor, and support critical thinking in primary science remains a challenge. This paper builds on recent semiotics mediated scientific reasoning research to present a fresh perspective of critical thinking in primary science. Analysis of student and teacher interactions in an innovated semiotics grounded learning design and pedagogy demonstrates a recursive process of collaborative construction, reviewing and refinement of representational systems and models. The multimodal epistemic practices of the discipline, involving the generation, evaluation and refinement of the semiotic systems that frame scientific ideas and practices are presented to both stimulate and support generative critical thinking. How semiotic systems in primary science can provide a focus, stimulus, and tool, for not only students’ generative critical thinking but also teacher monitoring and support is presented.

Making Gender Known: Assembling Gender Expertise in International Organizations

AbstractIn recent decades, gender equality goals have been adopted widely in global policymaking, creating a demand for specialized knowledge and evidence to support the design and implementation of gender equality policies. Bridging feminist scholarship on gender expertise and practice–theoretical literature on knowledge production, this article examines a knowledge production initiative of the World Bank, the Gender Innovation Laboratories (GILs). While research has examined the position of gender experts and the content of gender expertise in global governance, it has overlooked how knowledge about gender is produced. In this paper, we use a practice–theoretical approach—assemblage thinking—to study the practical work mobilized in the GILs to produce, maintain, and disseminate knowledge about gender inequality. Drawing on interviews with lab researchers, documents, and online materials, and focusing on the epistemic practice of impact evaluations, our analysis demonstrates the work invested in assembling them, such as forging alignments with and securing support among stakeholders, activating repertoires of expertise, and translating results into material objects. These practices produce gender inequality as a governance object, which is amenable to technical policy interventions, which facilitates certain forms of action to address it. Yet, they simultaneously silence more political solutions to gender inequalities.

The digital transformation of knowledge order: a model for the analysis of the epistemic crisis

ABSTRACT In a proclaimed age of ‘post-truth,’ scholars have raised concerns about the spread of false information and the questioning of epistemic authorities. In this paper, we develop an analytical model to capture the digital transformation of knowledge order. Drawing on insights from social epistemology, sociology and history of knowledge, and media history, we identify epistemic practices as basic elements of knowledge order. We then analyze how epistemic practices are organized into an overarching structure of knowledge phases, contexts, roles, and hierarchies. Digital media tend to destabilize the traditional knowledge order. This destabilization is characterized by a more flexible order of phases, a dissolution of boundaries between contexts, an opening of professional roles to new actors, and a flattening of hierarchies.

Deepfakes and the epistemic apocalypse

It is widely thought that deepfake videos are a significant and unprecedented threat to our epistemic practices. In some writing about deepfakes, manipulated videos appear as the harbingers of an unprecedented epistemic apocalypse. In this paper I want to take a critical look at some of the more catastrophic predictions about deepfake videos. I will argue for three claims: (1) that once we recognise the role of social norms in the epistemology of recordings, deepfakes are much less concerning, (2) that the history of photographic manipulation reveals some important precedents, correcting claims about the novelty of deepfakes, and (3) that proposed solutions to deepfakes have been overly focused on technological interventions. My overall goal is not so much to argue that deepfakes are not a problem, but to argue that behind concerns around deepfakes lie a more general class of social problems about the organisation of our epistemic practices.

From Clinical Encounter to Knowledge Claims: Epistemological Guidelines for Case Studies in Psychotherapy

In the fields of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, case study researchers rarely justify their knowledge claims on formal epistemological grounds. This poses several issues to the case study method. First, without articulating the standards by which our knowledge is being justified, we are potentially enabling the criticism that case studies are mere anecdotal reports and should not be treated as forms of evidence. Second, without the guidance of wider epistemological standards for case study research, we risk falling into arbitrary justifications of other as well as our own case studies. This paper seeks to address these issues by examining and developing epistemic practices in psychoanalytic and psychotherapy case studies. Drawing from different social science resources, the paper describes three epistemological concepts appropriate for case study research: retroductive reasoning, analytic generalization and working hypothesis. The paper demonstrates how each epistemological concept can be used in psychotherapy research and explicates specific methodological guidelines. Social science definitions and principles are applied in a psychotherapy and/or psychoanalytic research context, and further considerations about canons of evidence are provided. The impetus of this paper is to strengthen qualitative research standards, particularly case study research standards, in clinical case study writing.

University Teachers’ Experiences of Teaching Hands-On Components in Science and Technology in Primary Teacher Education during COVID-19

ABSTRACT Teacher education programs have the dual task of teaching specific subject content while also providing examples of how this content can be taught in schools. This task is especially important, and also problematic, when it comes to technology and science education, where hands-on components such as design/construction exercises, laboratory exercises, and excursions are central epistemic practices. When COVID-19 hit, Swedish universities were forced to change from campus-based teaching to online distance education, termed “emergency remote teaching (ERT).” The present study aims to investigate university teachers’ experiences of how hands-on components in science and technology education worked in the ERT mode that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis was performed with a social semiotics and community of inquiry framework, and shows that both the type of instruction and the subject content were impacted. In particular, the reduced opportunities for students to apply scientific and technical methods and the reduced ability of teachers to determine whether the students had understood their instruction generated new ways of communicating and supporting the students’ learning. Therefore, analysis of meaning making in science and technology online-learning contexts needs to address the topics of the nature of science (NOS) and the nature of technology (NOT). An extended, three-dimensional model of meaning making is suggested.

“Is he gay? That’s like, all I want to know”: Curiosity, authenticity, and epistemology in a GSA bookclub

Part of a larger yearlong ethnography at a comprehensive, public high school in a Midwestern city in the United States, this article explores a telling case from a bookclub that was part of the school’s Genders and Sexualities Alliance. Approaching curriculum as a question of what knowledges are valued in education, in this article I describe the layers of epistemic practices that youth in the bookclub co-constructed and the consequences of these practices for oppressive values with respect to sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity, and language. The telling case features youth talking about young adult author Sáenz’s sexuality, his novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, and whether and how (literary) authors’ identities affect their writing (of literature). My analysis of the case explores epistemological phenomena related to literature, curiosity, authenticity, #OwnVoices, and author–reader relationships, which I consider through critical, especially queer and trans, theoretical perspectives about epistemology, transparency, and opacity. The findings have implications for educators working to disrupt oppressive, anti-LGBTQ+ epistemologies in schools in an effort to encourage humanizing curiosity, promote compassion, and foster joy among and for LGBTQ+ students.

Establishing an experimental agenda at the Accademia del Cimento: Carlo Rinaldini’s book lists

ABSTRACT Information on the origins of the Accademia del Cimento is extremely limited. Almost all of the surviving correspondence relating to the year before the Academy began its activities variously concerns print culture. Lists of books (read, studied, purchased, and researched), handwritten notes on old or new publications, vernacular translations of edited passages, and inquiries about new works punctuate the archive. The study of these lists and of the relationship between reading practices and ones related to annotation and knowledge production leads to a reinterpretation of certain aspects of the Accademia del Cimento, suggesting the pursuit of a more flexible agenda. Through the analysis of some book lists, this contribution aims to shed light on the presence in Florence of interconnected groups of scholars, common epistemic practices, and a kind of methodological unity centred on the sharing of materials and agreement concerning the need to subject theories to experimental verification.

Anchoring phenomena and summary writing working together to improve student learning

concepts, such as gravity, may provide the perfect opportunity to bring phenomena into the classroom. As a knowledge generation strategy, summarizing can foster that opportunity. Using phenomena and summary writing together might help student learning since it requires making connections between their ideas and words to explain the natural phenomena. This article describes how anchoring phenomena and summary writing were integrated into a cohesive unit by using five generative activities that include different language and epistemic practices. Five activities include 1) Asking, 2) Designing, 3) Negotiating, 4) Explaining, and 5) Summarizing. A series of lessons, aligning with the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and the NGSS, were designed with the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) approach. After these lessons, students were asked to write a letter to their younger peers about what they learned related to the phenomenon. The teacher mentioned that class discussions and summary writing practice helped her to see connections in students’ ideas and how those connections changed throughout the unit. Many of the students also mentioned that they preferred completing a summary writing rather than a paper-pencil test because they were able to explain themselves in a more comfortable way.

Panoramic view to the evolution of three scientific communities in chilean academia 2012-2022

The scientific community (or the academic profession) is one of the key players in the global and local dynamics of R&D and affects enormously the performance of contemporary societies. Nevertheless, historical, and institutional conditions strongly affect the magnitude and form of scientific and technological production in the various scientific communities around the globe. During the 20th century, the scientific community has been described as Merton's CUDO, followed by Kuhn's notion of paradigm, and finally in terms of post-normal science debates, mode two, and triple helix. This paper compares two measurements (survey-2012, and survey 2022), describing the evolution of a set of characteristics, especially incentives and values, ​​​​in three scientific communities (astronomers, sociologists, and molecular biologists) as representative of three epistemic practices: exact sciences, natural sciences, and social sciences. After an introduction describing the context of knowledge production in Chile, the paper compares results from both surveys, trying to understand the differences and aspects in common in a transversal way through three dimensions. The results are the outcome of two online surveys applied to a statistically representative of the communities studied.