Epistemic Questions Research Articles

The boundaries of gnoseology

AbstractAccording to Sosa (2015, 2021), the domain of epistemic normativity divides into gnoseology and intellectual ethics, a boundary that results from the key notion that gnoseological assessments are telic. We share this view here and highlight the implications that the telic claim has for different debates in contemporary epistemology. However, we also raise the complaint that Sosa’s analogy of the archer has suggested that this boundary aligns with those of the instant of cognitive performance and its attributability to an individual, as featured in the Cartesian fundamental epistemic question: What should I believe now? Against this Cartesian imprint, we claim that temporality and sociality may be constitutive features of gnoseology. In order to show this, we introduce alternative analogies of belief formation processes that illustrate how cognitive achievements may be collectively attained across time, features that may manifest as an epistemology of conversation.

On the Ethics of Mediating Embodied Vulnerability to Violence

Media ethics has long been haunted by the question of representing human beings’ vulnerability to violence. While journalism and photojournalism have an obligation to report on the realities of violence and suffering in the world, the “spectacle of suffering” is fraught with ethical dilemmas. In this essay, I seek to theorize the ethics of vulnerability to violence in media representation. As a starting point, I argue for the politics of embodiment as a generative process that constitutes differential vulnerabilities. I move then to consider the way embodied vulnerabilities play out in the media, as exemplified by recent events such as the Black Lives Matter and MeToo movements as well as in times of war, from Vietnam to, more recently, Ukraine and Israel/Palestine. This leads to considerations of spectatorship: who looks and who is looked at? How are these relations of gazing related to the vectors of social and geopolitical power? Are images of embodied vulnerability simply media spectacles that reinforce power hierarchies, or are they powerful prosocial messages that might mobilize humanitarian activism? To address these epistemic questions, I propose that the feminist ethics of care encompasses an invitational rhetoric that can guide media praxis. Care ethics is aligned with various religious epistemologies, and because of that, I argue for it as an umbrella framework that has application in a variety of national and cultural contexts.

“I ask different questions to my students now”: An inquiry into the role of textbooks for the teaching of historical thinking in Basque secondary schools

Starting from an analysis of the Basque competence-based secondary school history textbook EKI and the perceptions of teachers using it, these pages aim at investigating how history teachers relate to the textbooks they use in the classroom and the role these teaching materials play in the promotion of deeper historical understanding of their students. The Baque case offers a good opportunity to see how competence-based teaching materials are used to teach historical competences and how they may have affected the teaching of history in Basque secondary schools. Two main research questions are addressed: how this competence-based textbook integrates historical thinking skills and how it affects teachers´ understanding of history and teaching practice. The results suggest that theoretical reflections on historical thinking and epistemic questions have not permeated school teaching practices yet; however, the textbook does introduce students into historical thinking concepts and has produced changes in teachers’ practices. Besides, this research has detected the interest of further investigating how we deal with historical thinking in the everyday practice of increasingly diverse classrooms.

A ‘more precise definition of the soul’ from the flights of the soul in The Blazing World and Primero sueño

ABSTRACT This study investigates Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World and Sor Juana’s Primero sueño (First Dream) in relation to Elisabeth of Bohemia’s inquiry about the soul-body union in her correspondence with René Descartes. Elisabeth’s question was two-fold, epistemic as well as metaphysical, and the first aspect remains understudied. Her epistemic question is rendered in gendered terms, seeking a ‘more precise’ account of a female-bodied soul (like hers), allegedly more susceptible to fits of vapours and eager for philosophical meditations nonetheless. This study argues that Descartes’s letters did not adequately address Elisabeth’s epistemic question as such and proposes instead to turn to the aforementioned fictions for accounts of the female soul’s pursuit of (self-)knowledge, by way of imaginary correspondence between the three early modern women on the rational soul in a female body.

The End of Liberal Peacebuilding

The End of Liberal Peacebuilding

Knowledge, Love and Epistemic Uncertainty in Marlowe's Dido, Faustus and Edward II

In Disowning knowledge in Seven Plays of Shakespeare (CUP, 1987), Stanley Cavell insists on works of art being read in « the company of philosophy » - even if, he continues, such company can sometimes be « restive, difficult, occasionally impossible » (Cavell, 2). The book’s main issue is « that of the communication between philosophy and literature ». Cavell’s intuition, he says, is « that the advent of skepticism as manifested in Descartes’s Meditations is already in full existence in Shakespeare ». What is particularly striking about Cavell’s analysis is how the notion of skepticism is ultimately bound up with desire : « the issue posed is no longer, or not alone, as with earlier skepticism, how to conduct oneself best in an uncertain world. Our skepticism is a function of our now illimitable desire » (Cavell, 3). What is true of Shakespeare’s tragedies appears to be even truer of Marlowe’s works. Yet Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, Edward II, or – even more surprisingly – Doctor Faustus have only too rarely been submitted to a similar epistemic or philosophical probing. With a few notable exceptions, most critical readings and interpretations of Marlowe’s drama tend to engage with politics, religion or identity, thus foregrounding the way the Marlovian protagonist – or the Marlovian text – strives to interact with the cultural and social environment they belong to, while leaving the epistemic question in the background : Patrick Cheney’s Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe (2004) is a case in point, containing as it does many references to politics, sexuality and religion but none to either knowledge or science. This is all the more surprising as (epistemic) desire and knowledge are themes which are just as prominent in Marlowe’s plays as they are in Shakespeare’s. By drawing on Stanley Cavell’s philosophy, this paper will aim at exploring how Marlowe’s plays abound in epistemic « tensions, clashes and oxymora » addressing, or perhaps springing from, the desire/knowledge nexus. It will be my contention that these tensions and clashes can be read as so many sites of a fruitful, if restive, conversation between early modern drama and philosophy – a conversation that seems to further validate the advent of skepticism within early modern philosophy and literature, while also testifying to Marlowe’s philosophical relevance and topicality. Responding to Ruth Lunney's suggestion that more attention should be paid to such a issues as "identity, memory and place in Dido", this essay will also aim at analysing the knowledge / love nexus in light of Cavell’s twofold hypothesis that skepticism amounts to the position that the world is fundamentally unknowable and that love is often presented as one of the possible remedies to uncertainty, in so far as it constitutes what Cavell calls a “return of the world”, that is to say a possible way of acquiring at least a modicum of certainty. In Marlowe’s dramatic universe, however, love often proves to be more of a trompe-l’oeil solution than a real and solid escape out of skepticism, as the absence of certainty can only be resolved by the destruction of the loving subject.

Online Echo Chambers, Online Epistemic Bubbles, and Open-Mindedness

Abstract This article is an exercise in the virtue epistemology of the internet, an area of applied virtue epistemology that investigates how online environments impact the development of intellectual virtues, and how intellectual virtues manifest within online environments. I examine online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles (Nguyen 2020, Episteme17(2), 141–61), exploring the conceptual relationship between these online environments and the virtue of open-mindedness (Battaly 2018b, Episteme15(3), 261–82). The article answers two key individual-level, virtue epistemic questions: (Q1) How does immersion in online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles affect the cultivation and preservation of open-mindedness, and (Q2) Is it always intellectually virtuous to exhibit open-mindedness in the context of online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles? In response to Q1, I contend that both online echo chambers and online epistemic bubbles threaten to undermine the cultivation and preservation of open-mindedness, albeit via different mechanisms and to different degrees. In response to Q2, I affirm that both a deficiency and excess of open-mindedness can be virtuous in these online environments, depending on the epistemic orientation of the digital user.

The ontological and epistemological foundations of tourism geography: Chosen aspects of its empirical field of research

The article addresses a noteworthy gap in the consideration of philosophical dimensions within the methodological discourse of geography. Specifically, the domain of tourism geography, as a “young” sub-discipline, requires a more profound analysis of its subject matter, particularly the empirical field. Consequently, the primary objective of this study is to explore ontological and epistemic questions concerning the nature ofthe empirical field in tourism geography and the status of knowledge generated within it. Employing ananalytic philosophy approach and leveraging J. Searle’s new-realist social ontology, the investigation seeks toshed light on the vital interplay between philosophy and geography. By illuminating the unexplored philosophical aspects, this research contributes to the broader understanding of geographical methodologies, making it an essential step toward advancing the theoretical field of tourism geography.

Public inquiry into state violence: the epistemic question

ABSTRACT This article examines the problem of recent UK public inquiries into military controversies both in general (the waging of war) and particular (individual killings). It first sets out their potential and actual value as well as the critiques that threaten their legitimacy. Arguing that the benefits of the process make the public inquiry worthy as an apt intra-state device for uncovering unlawful military violence, revealing the ‘truth’ of a matter, apportioning responsibility and changing practices, it then asks whether or how this promise might be better fulfilled by addressing some of its identified conceptual and practical flaws? The article then focuses on the epistemic dimension, arguing that if public inquiry is to serve as a valid truth-seeking mechanism, it will first need to address not only the identification of what and whose knowledge should be sought through inquiry (the general epistemic question), but also the way in which that knowledge is to be found and presented (the zetetic question). Without attending to both matters, reforming the current statutory framework of the Inquiries Act 2005, public inquiry into military wrongs is likely to disappoint as an independent, impartial and inclusive process that fails to satisfy basic accountability norms.

The Role of Philosophy in Hume’s Critique of Empire

ABSTRACT The British Empire found itself in uncharted territory during the global competition over military and commercial hegemony in the eighteenth century. Many thinkers questioned the wisdom of empire by comparing Britain’s overseas expansion with the fate of ancient Rome and the government’s controversial colonial policy. David Hume distinguished himself from these critical voices by adopting a detached philosophical approach. His detachment nonetheless ended in scepticism. This article reconstructs Hume’s doubts about empire in order to illuminate the way philosophy interacts with practical political questions. Working at the intersection between political philosophy and epistemology, Hume demonstrates how scepticism shapes his remark on the perennial republican dilemma concerning the trade-off between empire and liberty. His philosophical approach shifts the focus of the debates from attempting to reconcile the two to diagnosing the crux of political instability in modern empires. I argue that Hume defended philosophy's use by highlighting the epistemological aspect of the problem. For him, ideational factors, such as extreme and false beliefs, could provoke public frenzy. This meant that popular politics posed a substantial challenge to modern imperial rule. Governing the passions for empire should therefore be made a matter of a national priority. By pinpointing in this way the role of the citizenry, Hume clarified how epistemic questions remained central to modern politics.

Problems posing as solutions: Criticising pragmatism as a paradigm for mixed research

Mixed research is a methodology of growing importance both within and without education. This type of research forces researchers to reconcile conflicting ways of justifying and understanding research with results that have the potential to be forward pointing for all researchers. As mixed research has grown, mixed research has gained an increasingly solidified identity which is increasingly associated with the pragmatic paradigm. This paper seeks to describe and criticise pragmatism as a paradigm for mixed research. We identify six features of pragmatism which we argue render it unfit for purpose. 1. That it is a “paradigm of convenience” 2. That it takes a consequentialist view of good research. 3. That it takes a consequentialist view of truth. 4. That it assumes the answers to epistemic questions is “somewhere in the middle” 5. That it priorities the research question, rather than ontology or epistemology 6. That it treats itself as a prerequisite for mixed research. We argue that in prioritising flexibility and practicality over principles, pragmatism loses the ability to offer guidance to researchers. Furthermore, many of the issues with pragmatism arise from a conflation of paradigm and method. I.e., by thinking that there are quantitative and qualitative paradigms. We conclude that traditional paradigms are better served to act as a paradigm for mixed research.

Using the Weighted Clause Ratio to Measure the Accuracy of Students’ Responses to Epistemic Questions

Using the Weighted Clause Ratio to Measure the Accuracy of Students’ Responses to Epistemic Questions

Pluralism is not Enough for Tolerance. Philosophical and Psychological Reflections on Pluralism and Tolerance

The issue of religious tolerance is increasingly raised in a globalized world with societies becoming more and more religiously diverse and inhomogeneous. Religious tolerance can be defined as the practice of accepting others as acting in accordance with their religious belief system. Philosophers have recently begun to study more thoroughly the relationship between religious pluralism and religious (in)tolerance with a main focus on the epistemic question of whether the recognition of and reflection on religious pluralism might lead to greater religious tolerance. The major thrust of this idea is that any genuine reflection of a person about her epistemic peers adhering to other religions will weaken the person’s epistemic justificatory basis for believing that her own religious beliefs are better warranted than the religious beliefs of her peers.
 The rational consequence of the recognition of this justificatory fact, in turn, should lead to more religious tolerance and to a weakened dismissive attitude towards adherents of other religions. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the plausibility of this account against the background of existing empirical, in particular psychological literature: Does increased contact with adherents of other religious traditions indeed lead to more tolerance? How are we able to show a deeper understanding for people with different religious beliefs and to take on—at least partially—their perspective? What are potential psychological obstacles to these achievements? Resources from research on intergroup toleration, social identity-theories, developmental psychology and personality traits will be used for tackling these questions. This shall help to broaden the so far rather narrow epistemic philosophical perspective on religious pluralism and (in)tolerance by embedding it into the larger context of constitutive traits of the human psyche.

Impact of gender transition on sexuality and diversity of practices: a qualitative analysis of reddit discussions

<h3>Objectives</h3> Transgender people are a heterogeneous and growing population in visibility and numbers. There is little research on their sexuality, especially outside of a heterosexual binary approach. The physical, psychological, and social changes associated with transition make knowledge developed about cisgender people difficult to apply. Internet remains the preferred source to access information. In addition, transgender people face documented difficulties in accessing health care systems, including lack of knowledge among professionals and discrimination. The objective of this study is to report on the diversity of practices and issues related to the impact of transition on sexuality. It is conducted in a participatory manner, under the direction of a transgender person and in connection with the community. <h3>Methods</h3> A quantitative content analysis was performed on a pool of most relevant threads and comments about the topic "asktransgender" on Reddit. In accordance with the participatory approach, the relevant threads have been selected by two researchers, one of whom is transgender. Corpus analysis techniques were used to highlight the potential impacts of transition on sexuality and the diversity of practices. Secondly, the results were analyzed by gender and experience of transition. <h3>w?>Results</h3> Reddit is mostly used by transgender people asking for advice to other users about behavioral and hormonal impact of gender transition, as well as sexual practices outside of gender binarity. The results show a significant gap between research evidence and the needs of those involved. Social exclusion and fear of violence appear as central aspects of actual or anticipated sexual experiences. <h3>Conclusions</h3> There is an important need to develop research and clinical approaches to support transgender people in maintaining and developing positive sexuality. This field largely questions the established boundaries between normal and pathological and raises epistemic questions about the sexological approach and more broadly about the Western social conception of gender and its impact on sexuality. <h3>Conflicts of Interest</h3> For this presentation, the authors declare having no conflict of interest.

Gambling with our climate futures: On the temporal structure of negative emissions

This paper considers negative emissions—the deliberate removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere by human intervention—as a future-oriented imaginary of connected social and technological order. It does so in order to examine how expectations around the development and use of negative emission technologies are managed with the help of integrated assessment models (IAMs). By treating this family of models as a case study for drawing out historical associations between the terminology of risk saturating the discourse of net-zero emissions and the modern conception of the future as an unexplored territory to be profitably colonized, the paper argues that integrated assessment modeling, as a praxis of forecast, structure and organize our experience of the future through standards of risk management and utility maximization. It concludes that to consider risk as a means of navigating between possible futures is to engage with practices that are enacted in the name of a particular understanding of how one ought to act in the face of deep uncertainty. Aside from epistemic questions of how to treat various kinds of uncertainties inherent to IAMs, of pressing concern are thus also normative questions of how its representation of environmental hazards in terms of risk are distinctively writing the contours of our contemporary forms of responsibility toward nature, each other, as well as future generations.

Religious Belief through Drum-Sound Experience: Bengal’s Devotional Dialectic of the Classical Goddess and Indigenous God

The epistemic question about what constitutes religious belief in non-Western contexts is addressed here through the ontology of sonic experience. I demonstrate that religious beliefs are habitually ingrained as long-sustaining visceral memories, when afforded by sensory—for instance, aural—affects. Bengal’s peculiar devotional milieu constructs a prototype of oppositions. On one end is the urban, classical, martial goddess, Durga, with elite histories of acquiring a high Brahmanical form, and whose autumnal rituals are based on scriptural rules, caste hierarchies, and distance among the devotees and deity. On the other end is the rural, indigenous, non-classical, peasant god, Shiva, whose spring-time worship celebrating primordial death and regeneration is based on intensely embodied and communitarian principles of identity among the caste-equal bodies of devotee men, and even their god. Based on immersive ethnographic analyses, the paper argues that these dual psychological ends of the regional sacred cosmos are made vividly real through differential perceptive experiences of percussion sounds (ubiquitous in these festivities), their varied tempos, textures, volumes, and rhythm modulations. Through phenomenological deep listening, I describe stark styles of making and playing the sacred membranophone drum, dhak, which embodies distinct rhythm styles, relationships with rituals, and psychophysical effects on the devotional ensembles. I show how the bodies of devotees, dhak players (dhakis), deities, and even the dhak, become tied to the tonalities of the drum, which is taught through generations of deft learning among dhakis, to sound distinctly when echoed for Durga and Shiva. The paper’s main argument is that these dhak sounds, which have remained a conceptual oversight in literature, not only aid in, but indeed, enable the experience of and belief in Bengal’s divergent deities. It is through such empowering sensory sedimentations of the different sounds of the same percussion, that people recognize, remember, and maintain the region’s devotional dialectic and complex religious lifeworld. In essence, the body’s powerful experiences of drum sounds make religious belief palpable and possible.

Environmental expertise for social transformation: roles and responsibilities for social science

ABSTRACT What role should social science play in the work for transforming society towards sustainability? The background for this question is that despite massive investments in environmental research and the accumulation of data on the human impact on the environment, action remains insufficient. The severity of the current situation has led to the conclusion that moderate change is not enough; there is a need for a fundamental transformative change of society. How social science expertise should contribute to this is a fundamental epistemic and normative question and is the point of departure for this paper. This paper aims to develop a theory of social scientific environmental expertise. It first gives a broad account of expertise and its current landscape. It then develops a pluralistic approach, where expertise can take many forms, but should be reflexive, critical, and constructive. Finally, it stresses the crucial role that social science expertise has to play in the work for transformative change, not least to broaden environmental problems and their complexities, so that society is better equipped to undergo sustainable transformation.

Bias and Modality in Conditionals: Experimental Evidence and Theoretical Implications

The concept of bias is familiar to linguists primarily from the literature on questions. Following the work of Giannakidou and Mari (Truth and Veridicality in Grammar and Thought: Modality, Mood, and Propositional Attitudes, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2021), we assume “nonveridical equilibrium” (implying that p and ¬p as equal possibilities) to be the default for epistemic modals, questions and conditionals. The equilibrium of conditionals, as that of questions, can be manipulated to produce bias (i.e., reduced or higher speaker commitment). In this paper, we focus on three kinds of modal elements in German that create bias in conditionals and questions: the adverb wirklich ‘really’, the modal verb sollte ‘should’, and conditional connectives such as falls ‘if/in case’. We conducted two experiments collecting participants’ inference about speaker commitment in different manipulations, Experiment 1 on sollte/wirklich in ob-questions and wenn-conditionals, and Experiment 2 on sollte/wirklich in wenn/falls/V1-conditionals. Our findings are that both ob-questions and falls-conditionals express reduced speaker commitment about the modified (antecedent) proposition in comparison to wenn-conditionals, which did not differ from V1-conditionals. In addition, sollte/wirklich in the antecedent of conditionals both create negative bias about the antecedent proposition. Our studies are among the first that deal with bias in conditionals (in comparison to questions) and contribute to furthering our understanding of bias.

Narrative, Knowledge, and Moral Character in Art and Literature

Abstract Although the term “narrative” has been subject to very loose usage, it should be clear that scientific theories cannot be considered as such in the same sense as literary and artistic works. But this clearly calls the latter into serious epistemic question. On the one hand, we are often drawn to saying that agents have learned or come to know (morally or otherwise) something from literary or other artistic fictions; on the other hand, their fictional status seems to preclude regarding this as knowledge. Drawing on insights from Plato’s Socratic and other dialogues, this paper argues that such learning from art and literature should be deemed genuine knowledge of an epistemically uncontroversial kind.

Profile of Science Literacy of Grade 10 Students Using Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) Model

This study aims to determine the effect of the CSCL model on science literacy (SL). SL is considered as the abilities to use science knowledge to solve the science problem by utilizing the critical thinking skills. The quasi-experimental with a non-equivalent group design was applied as the research method. Subjects of this research were grade 10 students (N=50). Different tests were carried out to determine the existence of science literacy. There are 3 aspects of knowledge assessed in SL skills, i.e., content, procedural, and epistemic knowledge. The instruments used was a 15 questions of science literacy consisting of 5 content knowledge, 5 procedural, 5 epistemic questions, and an assessment of interest in SL. The results showed the average of content knowledge of experimental class was 76.92% or in a high category, and control class was 73.33% or in moderate category. The average of procedural knowledge of the experimental class was 66.92% and the control class was 64.99%, or both were moderate. And the average of epistemic knowledge of the experimental class was 64.61% and the control class was 60.99% or both moderate. The assessment of attitudes towards SL aims to give an idea that students have an interest in the components of SL attitudes.