Epistemological Position Research Articles

Um olhar psicossocial para a educação

RESUMO: Os estudos de Bourdieu e Moscovici, ao permitirem discutir a dimensão simbólica dos fenômenos sociais a partir de uma perspectiva crítica e desestabilizadora, têm muito a contribuir para a compreensão das atuais problemáticas educacionais. Assim, este texto objetiva estabelecer um diálogo entre esses autores, para pensar o campo educacional a partir de uma perspectiva psicossocial. Parte-se, então, de três eixos. O primeiro refere-se à discussão do olhar psicossocial enquanto postura epistemológica, tecendo reflexões sobre uma leitura ternária dos fatos e das relações sociais. O segundo destaca a educação como prática social, considerando suas finalidades e seu espaço social. E o terceiro aborda a relação entre a educação e mudança social. Recuperam-se, assim, noções bourdiesianas e moscovicianas, que contribuem para ressignificar, a partir do olhar psicossocial, as práticas educativas.

“Buying-In” and “Cashing-Out”: Patients’ Experience and the Refusal of Life-Prolonging Treatment

Surgical "buy-in" is an "informal contract between surgeon and patient in which the patient not only consents to the operative procedure but commits to the post-operative surgical care anticipated by the surgeon." Surgeons routinely assume that patients wish to undergo treatment for operative complications so that the overall treatment course is "successful," as in the treatment of a post-operative infection. This article examines occasions when patients buy-in to a treatment course that carries risk of complication, yet refuse treatment when complications arise. We coin this counter-phenomenon "cashing-out." Cashing-out may elicit negative feelings among careproviders. We question why patients or families may wish to cash-out. One reason may be the changing epistemological position of patients as they experience a complication. The shift from the hypothetical discussion of complications during the initial informed-consent process to the experience of having a complication represents new knowledge. Patients and families may use this knowledge as the basis to revoke consent for some or all of the remaining treatment course. This article seeks to understand cashing-out in terms of the patients' experiences. We hope to prompt recognition of this phenomenon across medical contexts and to provide impetus for further work to understand why patients may wish to cash-out.

Filozoficzne aspekty konstytuowania się aparatu pojęciowego chemii

Wśród filozofów nauki panuje rozpowszechnione przekonanie, że spór o realizm nie wpływa w sposób istotny na praktykę badawczą nauk przyrodniczych, a postawa realistyczna jest naturalnym stanowiskiem epistemologicznym przyjmowanym przez przyrodników. W artykule podana jest argumentacja na rzecz tezy, że w naukach przyrodniczych są formułowane koncepcje teoretyczne, które wywołują wśród uczonych istotne kontrowersje poznawcze, które nie pozostają bez wpływu na ich praktykę badawczą. Rozważona zostanie teza Gastona Bachelarda, że przezwyciężenie przez daną dziedzinę nauki realistycznego ‘obciążenia’ jej aparatu konceptualnego ma istotny wpływ na jej rozwój. Prowadzone rozważania będą opierały się na analizie przykładów wziętych z praktyki badawczej chemii XIX i początku XX wieku, w której dyskutowano problem statusu poznawczego przekonań, dotyczących istnienia odniesień przedmiotowych takich pojęć, jak: atom (atom chemiczny), wzór strukturalny (formuła racjonalna) czy wiązanie chemiczne.

The Cybernetic “General Model Theory”: Unifying Science or Epistemic Change?

With the marginalization of cybernetics, efforts to develop a universal epistemological method ceased as well. But the question remains open as to whether cybernetics contributed to the reconceptualization of the model and the popularity of scientific modeling since the mid-twentieth century. The present study approaches this question using the example of the general model theory of the German cyberneticist Herbert Stachowiak. Although this theory failed to produce a unifying and common model concept, its characteristics point toward a change in epistemological positions that is important for today’s scientific practice and also anticipated recent developments in the philosophy of science.

A science teacher’s complex beliefs about nature of scientific inquiry

One major concern relating to teaching scientific inquiry is that many teachers show epistemologically naive beliefs about nature of science (NOS). In this study, we use in-depth interviews to identify an upper secondary science teacher’s beliefs about NOS and scientific inquiry in school. We found that what seemed to be a teacher’s positivist position was embedded in broader concerns regarding pedagogical considerations and personal engagement relating to the students. This broader ecology of a teacher’s beliefs enabled us to understand why positivist epistemology and related myths concerning NOS are seemingly robust in school versions of scientific inquiry. We suggest that implications for science teacher education and professional development are that teacher (students) need opportunities for guided reflections on personal experiences and commitments towards scientific inquiry to increase conscience with respect to how they might affect their situated practice.

Seeking after the Glitter of Intelligence in the Base Metal of Computing: The Scope and Limits of Computational Models in Researching Cognitive Phenomena

Computational modelling has a rich history of successful use in researching cognitive phenomena. Its discoveries and applications do not seem to be stopping, yet with the rise of contemporary cognitive science paradigms, its scope and limits have been consistently put into the spotlight. The article reveals the scope of computational modelling by revealing its important role in progressing cognitive science research and helping cause important paradigm shifts as well as being useful at many levels of analysis. The limits are revealed to be some that are not easily solvable, if at all, mostly as they are not dependant on technological advancements. There are two main obstacles for computational modelling of cognitive phenomena: research bias, which manifests through the necessary presence of the designer's epistemological position as well as ideas on the mind and thus unavoidably being included in the model; and autonomy, the impenetrable basic element of living nature, which seems to make living organisms self-determine and thus create their own meaning in the world, something that seems to be unmodellable due to the designer always inputting her own meanings into the model and onto the modelled agents, which has been dubbed the PacMan Syndrome. Computational modelling is discussed in the light of these shortcomings, especially what it means to model living nature.

The Immediate Realism of Léon Noël

After the emergence of the neo-Thomist movement in the early twentieth century, the question of how best to present Aquinas’s latent epistemological realism came to the fore. Léon Noël was an important contributor to this area of neo-Thomism, but his work has unfortunately been eclipsed by that of other more recognizable authors such as Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain. Noël argued that Aquinas’s realism is a form of immediate realism that recognizes the challenge of modern representationalist epistemologies but does not succumb to non-realist ways of thinking. Hence Noël presented immediate realism as an epistemological position that is inspired by Aquinas but also capable of addressing philosophical concerns that emerged after his death. In this article I present Noël’s view as interesting in its own right and capable of engaging with contemporary non-Thomist trends in epistemology.

La ontología y epistemología de Markus Gabriel

With a double facet of worldly and academic philosopher, the German thinker Markus Gabriel articulates in his work some debates of contemporary analytic philosophy and an interpretation of German Idealism, in the form of a philosophy that is both post-continental and postanalitic. In this article, a bibliographic research of the thought of Markus Gabriel and his main intellectual references and theoretical alternatives is carried out, with the purpose of explaining his ontological and epistemological positioning. Through Gabriel’s texts, we can recognize an epistemological conception that is realistic and away from relativism and psychologism, as well as a non-metaphysical ontological conception ―in a certain sense―, which challenges the existence of the world as a self-contained totality and outlines a weak essentialism.

La resurrección del pasado según Alexandre Herculano: una reformulación secular de la hermenéutica figural bíblica

As most scholars have recognized, Herculano’s literary and historiographical concept of «resurrection of the past» did not imply a «restorative» epistemological attitude, but of a «comprehensive» one, towards Portuguese Middle Ages. This paper argues that this attitude is intimately related to the Christian roots of the concept of «resurrection». Here it is asserted that Herculano’s «resurrection of the past» – synonyme of «historical understanding», in the author’s vocabulary – was a secular re-enactment of the figural hermeneutics that gave form to the Bible. First, I describe the romantic nature, and therefore Christian, of the concept of «resurrection of the past». Second, I analyze the structure of Herculano’s «historical understanding». Finally, I study the resemblances between this structure and that one of the biblical figural interpretation. This paper aims to encourage the discussion about the role of biblical thought in the birth of the modern historical conscience.

Lokāyata/Cārvāka: A Philosophical Inquiry by Pradeep P. Gokhale

Reviewed by: Lokāyata/Cārvāka: A Philosophical Inquiry by Pradeep P. Gokhale Ethan Mills (bio) Lokāyata/Cārvāka: A Philosophical Inquiry. By Pradeep P. Gokhale. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. 222. Rs. 750; £21.99, isbn 978-0-19-946063-2. The greatest strength of Pradeep P. Gokhale's Lokāyata/Cārvāka: A Philosophical Inquiry is its much-needed enrichment of the vocabulary for the study of the Indian Lokāyata/Cārvāka school. For too long this school has been studied in the rather limited terms of its opponents in texts such as Mādhava's Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha, which identify a single Cārvāka position advocating extreme empiricism in epistemology, materialism in metaphysics, and hedonism and irreligiousness in ethics. Gokhale establishes frameworks for understanding the diversity of epistemological, metaphysical, and axiological positions of Cārvāka philosophers that ought to be considered by anyone writing on the school in the future. Chapter 1 introduces Gokhale's pluralist approach to understanding Cārvāka. Concerning the various names for this school—Lokāyata, Cārvāka, and Bārhaspatya—Gokhale suggests that while these names have separate histories, they all designate "a family of systems or a family of philosophical trends" (p. 19). While recognizing this diversity, Gokhale follows the practice of most scholars in tending to use "Cārvāka" inclusively to refer to this family, which will also be my practice in this review. Gokhale criticizes what he calls a singularist approach to Cārvāka in the works of scholars such as Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya and Ramkrishna Bhattacarya, who conceive of Cārvāka as a single school with a more-or-less unified set of positions. In opposition, Gokhale supports a pluralist approach according to which "Cārvāka" is to be understood as a family-resemblance term that refers to Indian philosophers with irreligious intentions. Other scholars such as D. R. Shastri and Eli Franco have supported pluralist approaches, but Gokhale's book offers a more fine-tuned and sophisticated version of pluralism. Part of the reason for this is that, while Gokhale [End Page 645] is well versed in the available historical evidence, he considers his inquiry to be more philosophical than historical (pp. 21–22), which allows him to set out philosophically plausible positions that may not always be directly apparent in the primary texts. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 cover Cārvāka epistemology, highlighting skepticism, extreme empiricism, and mitigated empiricism, respectively. Chapter 2 focuses on Jayarāśi (ca. 770–830 c.e.). While singularists tend to claim that Jayarāśi cannot be a member of the Cārvāka school on account of his rejection of materialist principles and perception as a means of knowledge, Gokhale's pluralist model includes Jayarāśi as the primary example of a skeptical branch of the Cārvākas. Jayarāśi can be called a Cārvāka, argues Gokhale, due to his negative doctrines (i.e., critiques of religious philosophy) and acceptance of worldly practices in everyday matters. Gokhale reads Jayarāśi as an epistemological skeptic who denies all means of knowledge (pramāṇas), and offers an interesting treatment of Jayarāśi's response to the "paradox of skepticism" (i.e., the charge that skepticism is inconsistent or self-refuting) by comparing Jayarāśi's response with those of other skeptics like Nāgārjuna and Śrī Harṣa (pp. 37–45). Chapter 3 concerns extreme empiricism, which is the view that "perception is the only means of knowledge and inference is not a means to knowledge at all" (p. 49). This is the view typically assigned to the Cārvākas. Gokhale counters what he sees as misunderstandings of this view. Extreme empiricist Cārvākas do not mean to deny reasoning in general or even that inference (anumāna) can sometimes yield knowledge; their argument is that inference cannot be considered to be a proper means of knowledge because it does not necessarily yield knowledge. They support this view with a dilemma of inference (where it is argued that the object of inference cannot be a particular, a universal, or a particular...

Midnight Expressas a Product of Hollywood Orientalism

This paper aims to deconstruct the motives behind Oliver Stone & Alan Parker’s 1978 film Midnight Express, in terms of putting Turkey and Turkish people in the Oriental position and putting Western and White characters in the Occidental epistemological positions. Some questions this paper tackles include “How does Orientalism work in the context of Film Studies? Does the Gaze grant a monolithic and unidirectional look at the Orient instead of the Occident? How does the “based on a true story” tagline serves as a marketing tactic in order to augment the “horror” of being stuck in a Turkish prison, while the actual true facts were differing from the facts represented in the film? What affects do these misrepresentations have?

Мовна семантика у вимірах філософії інтервальності.

The author proceeds from the inadequacy of language semantics modeling, advocated in Linguistic Semantics theory. It is underlined that in modern linguistic studies prevails a selective (unidimensional) approach towards modeling linguistic meaning as a conceptual entity verbalized in a language sign. The opinion is advanced to model the contents of a linguistic item or of a class of linguistic items through a sampling of a multidimensional situation concept that represents the dynamics of the world of discourse (a certain situation or its fragment) conceptualization from different vantage points. For Linguistic Semantic methodology such an approach provides for using the principles of Interval Philosophy that ascertains the features of an object of investigation from the perspective of a researcher’s chosen epistemological position.

Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note

Subjectivity and the evolution of reality

The profound impact of the information revolution and social media on human perceptions of reality is a phenomenon that is only now beginning to grow apparent. Our faculties of discernment are being challenged like never before as a bewildering array of ideologies, credos, agendas and epistemological attitudes jostle for supremacy on the information highway. What are some of the implications of these precarious shifts in our individual and collective perspectives of reality, and what forces or motivations may be responsible for driving them? Could the way the very systems we have developed for discerning and disseminating truth themselves be in some ways increasingly responsible for inhibiting our further understanding of the nature of reality, and our quest to improve the quality of life for one and all?

Subjectivity and the evolution of reality

The profound impact of the information revolution and social media on human perceptions of reality is a phenomenon that is only now beginning to grow apparent. Our faculties of discernment are being challenged like never before as a bewildering array of ideologies, credos, agendas and epistemological attitudes jostle for supremacy on the information highway. What are some of the implications of these precarious shifts in our individual and collective perspectives of reality, and what forces or motivations may be responsible for driving them? Could the way the very systems we have developed for discerning and disseminating truth themselves be in some ways increasingly responsible for inhibiting our further understanding of the nature of reality, and our quest to improve the quality of life for one and all?

Behavioral finance and games: simulations in the academic environment

ABSTRACT The contribution from this study lies in its reflection on the factors that influence market efficiency, which requires a multidisciplinary view to analyze the intervening factors that impact results of the financial system. It also contributes by reflecting on the need for new approaches for training professionals who will go on to work in financial and related areas and preparing them by using different financial analysis techniques; by reflecting on the fact that analytical practices are influenced by social, cognitive, and emotional aspects, enabling the students to be better prepared to act in the financial market; by presenting various technical possibilities and providing more comprehensive knowledge to choose the one that best suits the object of analysis and their preferences; and by reflecting on different ways of perceiving investment opportunities and risk, which can be expanded on in other studies on the segmentation of clients according to their preferences in the investor market. The aim of this study was to analyze how social and psychological aspects influenced the decisions involved in simulated trading operations. The relevance lies in its discussion of the philosophical and epistemological position in finance, which suffers from a vision that only focuses on the rationality of means and does not explain the anomalies verified in the financial market. The study originated from the application of a company game simulating the work of stock market trading desk operators, applied in the Stock Market Operations course and using fundamental, technical, and graphical techniques. The population was intentional and made up of undergraduate and graduate students from one of the four best Brazilian federal universities. The data analysis was performed by analyzing the content of the questionnaires applied and the journal entries made during participant observation.

Beyond Trust: Plagiarism and Truth

Academic misconduct distorts the relationship between scientific practice and the knowledge it produces. The relationship between science and the knowledge it produces is, however, not something universally agreed upon. In this paper I will critically discuss the moral status of an act of research misconduct, namely plagiarism, in the context of different epistemological positions. While from a positivist view of science, plagiarism only influences trust in science but not the content of the scientific corpus, from a constructivist point of view both are at stake. Consequently, I argue that discussions of research misconduct and responsible research ought to be explicitly informed by the authors’ views on the relationship between science and the knowledge it produces.

Christopher Alexander\u2019s A Pattern Language: analysing, mapping and classifying the critical response

A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander is renowned for providing simple, conveniently formatted, humanist solutions to complex design problems ranging in scale from urban planning through to interior design. This text is also believed to be the most widely read architectural treatise ever published. Despite this, there is also little acknowledgement in its popular reception that it is only one part of a trilogy of works documenting Alexander’s ‘second theory’ of architecture. Thus, while A Pattern Language is widely referenced in architectural scholarship, most of these references simply acknowledge its existence and fail to engage with its content. Furthermore, the literature that does critically engage with Alexander’s theory, challenging its ideas and assumptions, is often difficult to find, and the criticisms are diverse and complex. The intent of this paper is to facilitate a deeper understanding of these criticisms and the relationships between them. The 28 criticisms identified in past research are organised hierarchically in this paper into three tiers representing those associated with the: (i) conceptualisation, (ii) development and documentation and, (iii) implementation and outcomes of Alexander’s theory. The relationships between these criticisms are then mapped diagrammatically thereby forming the basis for thematic groupings within each hierarchical tier. This organisation reveals that only two criticisms relate to the concept of pattern languages in isolation, while the remainder arise, directly or indirectly, from Alexander’s idiosyncratic ontological and epistemological positions. The conclusion analyses the relationships between the criticisms to develop a holistic and understanding of where the problems in Alexander’s theory might lie.

Subvert the dominant paradigm: a critical analysis of rationalism’s status as a paradigm of International Relations

It is frequently maintained that rationalism is something other than an ‘ism’ of International Relations. Inspired by critical theory but using quantitative survey data, this article takes issue with that notion, arguing that rationalist work – with its emphasis on interests, institutions, and information – has a distinct logic of individualistic utilitarianism. It therefore exhibits all of the subjective biases of other ‘isms’, defining both the answers and the very questions that are asked. Using data from the 2011 TRIP survey, I show that those substantive commitments reveal themselves in the economic ideology of those who make rationalist assumptions in their work. Parallel to a view of international relations in which egoistic units seek material gains, rationalists identify as economic libertarians at a much higher rate than non-rationalists. All of this suggests that rationalists have an unacknowledged and unconscious bias in their scholarship that threatens the positivistic epistemology to which most claim to be committed.

How school staff understand the relationship between problem behaviours and language difficulties

This exploratory study adopted a mixed methods methodology, a critical realist ontological stance and a constructionist epistemological position to consider how special educational needs coordinators and pastoral managers in mainstream high schools understand the relationship between problem behaviours and language development. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight participants, and 20 participants completed a Q sort. The interview data were analysed using thematic analysis and in Q methodology an inverted factor analysis with a qualitative interpretation of the resultant factors was used. Triangulation was adopted as the method for the final integration of the data. Three meta-themes were identified indicating that, despite a range of recent initiatives, school staff continue to have a limited understanding of the relationship between problem behaviours and language difficulties. Previous experience and existing practice were drawn upon in considering causal relationships and interventions. Implications for educational psychology practice at casework, systems and commissioning levels are addressed.