Epistemological Framework Research Articles

The Notion of the Soul in al-Kindi: Building the Epistemological Foundation of Early Islamic Psychology

The discourse surrounding the nature of the soul, a central theme in the field of psychology, has endured through centuries of scholarly inquiry. Within the rich tapestry of Islamic intellectual heritage, the systematic examination of this topic found its early champion in al-Kindi, a prominent Muslim philosopher. His contributions, as explored in this article, have left an indelible mark on the Islamic and Western traditions of soul study. Employing a library research methodology, this work draws from an array of data sources, including books, articles, pamphlets, and various other printed and non-printed materials. A documentary approach is employed to methodically gather data from these diverse sources, which is subsequently subjected to descriptive analytical scrutiny. This examination yields several key findings. Al-Kindi’s exploration of the soul is wide-ranging, encompassing its definition, its intricate relationship with the human body, its state when separated from the corporeal vessel, and its manifold powers. Of particular significance is the unique role played by the rational faculty, a power intrinsic to humanity that facilitates the generation of knowledge. Furthermore, al-Kindi’s classification of knowledge is both notable and comprehensive, contributing significantly to the development of the nascent field of Islamic psychology. In summation, al-Kindi’s profound insights have laid a robust foundation for the epistemological framework of early Islamic psychology, shaping its trajectory in enduring ways.

Закон избыточной реакции надсистем и экстремальный принцип

The article’s subject of study is the extreme principle, according to which the system behaves in such a way that some value characterizing its activity takes an extreme (minimum or maximum) possible value. The content of the extreme principle, its formulations, as well as a special case of its manifestation in the form of the principle of least action are considered. The connection between the extreme principle, on the one hand, and primary properties and basic laws of being, on the other hand, is revealed. The sought connection can be built through the law of supersystems overreaction formulated by the author in the previous paper, which is one of the prima-ry laws of being and is determined from the analysis of evolution at the lowest level of material structures. The dissipative nature of all existing real systems means their existence at the expense of supersystems’ resources and determines the limitations of behavior, which in the framework of epistemology can be formalized in the form of an extreme principle.

China as Method: Methodological Implications of François Jullien’s Philosophical Detour through China

François Jullien’s theoretical construction of China as a “philosophical tool” signifies an important methodology, namely presenting China not as an object of study, but as a method of reflection. By advocating a strategy of “detour and access,” he proposes to (re)interrogate the European culture and tradition from China, perceived as the “outside,” to unveil the “unthought-of” of Europe. In this sense, Jullien’s approach has pushed China studies out of a marginalized field to the foreground of more general philosophical debates, and yields methodological implications for not only studying China but also theoretical inquiries in general. From an “object” to a “method,” this shifted role of China suggests reversing the Eurocentric theoretical and epistemological framework, leading to the construction of a transcultural research paradigm based upon cultural pluralism and communicability, in which China becomes a nexus of East-West dialogue and a method to understand the world.

The “Tenderness” of the Principle of Least Action: From the Philosophy of Physics to the Paradigm for Sustainable Development

The paper delves into the methodological aspects of how foundational mathematical and physical tenets, most notably the principle of least action, are interpreted and assimilated within humanities discourse. The pursuit of the article’s objectives is driven by the necessity for a philosophical and methodological analysis of the current conceptual status of the principle of least action. This analysis is informed by cognitive-axiological and teleological imperatives of a “synthetic” development program for the principle. Any fundamental principle will not have a definitive explanation, as otherwise it would not be fundamental, but in this case, some justification can be given based on deeper grounds discussed in the article. Drawing on the epistemological frameworks of French philosophers P. Hadot, E. Levinas, J. Bouveresse, and J.-T. Desanti, the article weaves together mathematical abstractions with human experience and philosophical doctrines with physical theories. J.-T. Desanti’s perspective on mathematical objects as an outcome of human activity is examined. Also scrutinized is B. Nicolescu’s concept of transdisciplinarity, which challenges the traditional subject-object dualism in science. The author’s methodological stance emerges from a dialectical viewpoint, one that eschews a simplistic dichotomy between materialism and idealism and is grounded in rigorous scientific inquiry and an exhaustive examination of the subject matter itself. The principle of least action, as a paramount principle in physics, is shown to exemplify a legacy of innovation, positioning it as both methodologically insightful and heuristically valuable. The paper also highlights how this principle diverges from the classical principle of economy. The broader goal – within the context of “sustainable development,” transdisciplinary studies, and creative industries – is to establish the principle of least action as a paradigmatic imperative for interaction within social and economic systems. The conclusions drawn from this study contribute to a deeper understanding of the principle’s essence, the nature of transdisciplinarity, and confront the vestiges of scientism in the humanities.

Trust but verify? A social epistemology framework of knowledge acquisition and verification practices for fictional entertainment

Abstract Fictional entertainment can serve as a vivid and easily comprehensible source of knowledge, but only if audiences are able to tell its kernel of truth apart from fantasy. In this article, we use the lens of social epistemology to develop a theoretical framework of knowledge acquisition and verification practices for fictional entertainment that integrates various extant lines of work on entertainment education, perceived realism, information processing, credibility assessment, and verification strategies. To flesh out the conceptual model derived from top-down theoretical integration, we use an inductive, bottom-up approach to theory building, assisted by qualitative research. The resulting model describes knowledge acquisition from fiction as an essentially social process characterized by a combination of epistemic trust and epistemic vigilance toward fictional content and sources, in which credibility is assessed via social knowledge sharing and verification practices.

Reconnecting with the mathematical thought of the Mesoamerican numbers in Ixil: an onto-epistemological dialogue

AbstractNumbers and languages are present around the world. While mathematics is deemed as universal, communities around the world have developed mathematical practices that align with their specific context and needs. Rooted in an Indigenous epistemological framework, this manuscript presents a dialogue among four co-researchers and teachers retelling their experiences teaching and learning Mesoamerican numbers in both monolingual (Spanish) and bilingual (Ixil and Spanish) contexts. With a strong desire to learn about and reconnect with the forces of Indigenous mathematical thought and language that move within the teaching and learning of these numbers, the authors collectively reflected on their “tellings” of prior work. It is worthy of note that these reflections on teaching and learning processes of naming Mesoamerican numbers, their symbols, and numerical values help realize that these concepts are more fully animated when presented in contexts that are onto-epistemologically relevant.

Interdisciplinary, but how? Anthropological Perspectives from Collaborative Research on Climate and Environmental Change

The aim of this perspective article is to rethink how anthropology can be involved in interdisciplinary research on climate and environmental change, considering wide-spread obstacles for successful collaboration and recommending best practices. Anthropologists complement ”big data“ with “thick data“, which must not be overlooked if the global scientific goal is to have a sustainable and responsible local impact in communities facing environmental change. Anthropologists are used to working with uncertainty, qualified for shifting scales and perspectives, and, perhaps most importantly, pre-occupied with studying the human dimensions of environmental change. However, there are still many practical, ontological and epistemological challenges concerning interdisciplinary research with an environmental focus. After outlining the most recent developments and literature on interdisciplinary research, we share our experience with integrating diverse forms of environmental knowledge including local and indigenous knowledge. Using an inductive approach, we build on and illustrate our conclusions with ethnographic vignettes that stem from a variety of our interdisciplinary projects. Several key themes and suggestions emerge: a) establishment of a joint epistemological framework before the research phase; b) humility and respect for methodologies used by other disciplines, including time spent on studying these with colleagues of different disciplinary backgrounds; c) openness, creativity and flexibility to step out of one’s own disciplinary comfort zone; d) communication within the project team based on trust and without disciplinary hierarchies. Finally, we share some practical suggestions on how to set up interdisciplinary projects.

Decolonizing ELT teacher education by incorporating knowledge of local communities in the teaching practicum.

Despite significant advances in the epistemological frameworks that guide teacher education in Colombia and elsewhere, it continues to be governed mostly by traditional Eurocentric paradigms. Decolonizing teacher education requires epistemological moves to resignify the plurality of local knowledges and praxis. This article aims at reporting a qualitative research project carried out with three student teachers of a teacher education program with emphasis on English, at a public university in the northeast of Colombia. The main objective was to explore and reflect on how EFL pre-service teachers incorporated knowledge of local communities as resources for language teaching and learning during the practicum. Data were gathered over a three-semester period through pre-service teachers' lesson plans, materials, a final academic report, and a semi-structured interview. Data were analyzed based on the principles of thematic data analysis. Findings revealed that student teachers approached knowledge from an ecological perspective coming from different ways of knowing, seeing, being and living in the world. At the same time, the ecology of knowledges helped them to overcome the challenges they faced during the project.

Decolonial Futures

Abstract This roundtable showcases how different Asian, Pacific Islander, and Indigenous communities in Colorado are fighting for sovereignty of their homelands. It reorients the question of “homelands” to highlight the experiences of communities whose homelands remain occupied by settler-colonial and imperial nation-states, like the United States, India, Israel, and China. Participants speak to the struggles of sovereignty of their communities and communities they work with, unsettling epistemological frameworks to disrupt normative understandings of home, migration, and diaspora.

How do women talk about self-funded breast cancer genetic testing?: Small stories and stance-taking strategies.

Genetic testing for breast cancer genes is an experience which is inextricably linked with health communication practices and the broader social context in which it occurs. Linguistic approaches can provide perspective on how women seeking self-funded BRCA1/2 gene testing represent their experiences, knowledge, roles, choices and emotions through the way they talk. A discursive constructionist epistemology and narrative theoretical framework informed the applied linguistics methodology. Analysis of 'small stories' and stance-taking was performed on eight transcripts of audio-recorded telephone interviews with women at low to moderate risk of carrying BRCA1/2 pathogenic variants who self-funded genetic testing. We found a high prevalence of 'small stories' including accounts of events, hypotheticals, habitual narratives, and stories which combined multiple genres. Stance-taking was a means by which participants constructed personal identities in the conversational context, such as that of a responsible person. Via stance-taking strategies, participants also actively negotiated the conversational agenda, for example expressing different degrees of alignment with the interviewer's orientation towards emotions. This study provides a basis for recognizing linguistic markers in genetic counseling interactions about genetic testing for breast cancer genes. Enhanced awareness of client language choice, and the ways in which small stories and stance can signify the client's evaluation of experience and choices, alignment with the genetic counselor's questions/statements, and investment in the conversation, has potential to improve the therapeutic interaction.

혁명가의 책 읽기

This article examined how the socialist literary movement in colonial Korea in the 1920s imagined and recognized the “mass reader”. Socialist theory was embraced by colonial Korea as an alternative perspective for imagining the self-renovation and emancipation of non-Western colonized peoples. The fact that the magazine Kong-Je used disparate ideas as resources to unpack the meaning of labor, workers, and the labor movement is evidence that the concern of early socialists was not to accurately translate a particular theory. The magazine Kong-Je sought to address its unspecified readers as “workers” by providing them with an epistemological framework to critically perceive reality. Socialist theory was not used as an abstract theory, but as a theoretical framework for recognizing and critiquing real-world problems, and as a tool for critiquing existing perspectives on interpreting reality.
 In this respect, Yeom Sang-seop and Kim Hwa-san's critique of the socialist literary movement did not deny the possibility of socialist literature; they appropriated socialism as a theory and questioned what the goals of the socialist literary movement should be. This article examines Yeom Sang-sup's appropriation of socialist ideas and his literary theory based on them, focusing on a review he published in 1927. For him, socialism was about overcoming the notion of suppressing the “mental activity” of colonized Koreans, and therefore socialist literature should be read by readers to provide them with a critical lens through which to read reality. Kim Ki-jin's literary path in the 1920s resonated with Yeom Sang-sup's literary beliefs, as he saw the main purpose of the socialist literary movement as “educating” the masses, and constantly emphasized that literature had to be read to someone. These statements are not easily found in the socialist literary discourse produced in Korea at the time, and were made possible by applying Western “universal theories” of socialist ideology and its literary applications to the realities of colonial Korea.

The conjunction of Rationality and Mysticism in the Heart Sutra: An Epistemological Exploration

This study delves into the philosophical and epistemological interpretation of the Heart Sutra, emphasizing the conjunction between rational and mystical thought processes. The paper illustrates how the Sutra promotes an intertwined understanding of reality through textual analysis and comparative discussion involving Eastern and Western philosophical perspectives. The exploration reveals that the Heart Sutra serves as a profound guide, advocating for a balanced comprehension that integrates empirical rationality and mystical insight. The findings suggest that the notion of 'Shunyata' or emptiness encapsulates a complex relational understanding of being, where rational knowledge and mystical experiences are not only coexistent but mutually inclusive. This conjunctive approach challenges the conventional boundaries of epistemic thought and offers a comprehensive framework for understanding reality's multifaceted nature. This research contributes to the broader discourse on integrating traditional philosophical insights with contemporary epistemological frameworks, enriching both academic and practical understanding of spiritual texts.

The Making of Two Intellectuals: Caste, Epistemology and the Question of Dissent

Caste has an unspeakable presence in the ‘Kerala model’ development discourse. Over the years, Dalits have countered the upper-caste imagination of Kerala. The discontent with the popular imagination of Kerala started to gain momentum in the 1980s and 1990s. By then, the less privileged groups, such as women and Dalits, found reasons to contest the false promises of a modern secular society and the principles of socialist ideology. The study focuses on the intellectual engagements of two Dalit intellectuals from Kerala. K. K. Kochu and M. Kunjaman trace their epistemological framework through dissent and disagreement. Their discontent creates a rift in the hegemonic discourses produced by upper castes, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Kerala and other power structures. K. K. Kochu’s Dalithan (Dalit) and M. Kunjaman’s Ethiru (Dissent) are two autobiographical accounts that map out the intellectual life of these two prominent public figures.

Toward a new stage for the epistemology of futures studies: Exploring social epistemology

This article aims to enhance the epistemology of futures studies by utilizing the perspective of social epistemology. Its objective is to address epistemological questions in futures studies, including the nature, sources, means of acquisition, and justification of futures knowledge. It argues that by establishing a robust scientific community, futures studies can be defended as a science within the framework of social epistemology. The social construction and institutional structure of epistemological sources for futures knowledge are as crucial as the evidence itself, and it is necessary to pay more attention to testimony as one of the sources of futures knowledge. Futures studies requires reliable knowledge production processes to acquire and justify futures knowledge.

Decolonising sociology through popular culture-music research: Nigeria’s liberal democracy in focus

The discipline of sociology digs out the empirical reality of societies based on affirmed epistemological frameworks. Sociological theory, methodology and research in Nigeria are deeply encapsulated in dominant Western-oriented epistemes and objectivity designs aimed at value-free assumptions, yet they are non-universally applicable to ascertaining nuanced realities with impacting outcomes. Guided by Justin Labinjoh’s 1982 Metaphor of Change to engage the objectivity versus subjectivity debates in the sociological practice, this paper argues that sociology is a colonising epistemology that requires a decolonising strategy through popular culture-music research to unearth the nuanced and subterranean reality of the subaltern classes in Nigeria’s liberal democratisation process. The paper also uncovers the taken-for-granted nuances of everyday life in the areas of power and governance, poverty and development in Nigeria’s democratisation process. Data were sourced from popular music of Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu (Burna Boy) and Folarin Falana (Falz), which highlighted power, politics and development contradictions in Nigeria’s liberal democracy.

Turats and the Reconstruction of Scientific Civilization in Progressive Muslim Perspective

This paper examines the intellectual responses of the progressive variant of Muslim thought to various contemporary humanity’s challenges based on its distinctive epistemological and interpretive approach, namely progressive ijtihad. This is library research based on analyzing the works of leading proponents of this progressive Muslim thought. It argues that progressive Muslim thought offers and develops a critical and progressive interpretation of Islam that respects and glorifies human values. With this epistemological and interpretive framework, progressive Muslim thought contributes significantly to the development and reconstruction of scientific civilization, which is transdisciplinary and capable of tackling various humanity's problems at both global and local levels.

On Postcolonial Knowledge

Abstract Knowledge and knowledge production play a significant role in the postcolonial project of de-traumatization and self-realization. However, such knowledge has often been couched within a Eurocentric epistemological framework. The postcolony is caught firmly within the orthodox which translates positivistic knowledge into the very definition of worldly progress—the idea of how a state attends to the welfare and well-being of its citizens through a development agenda. This essay engages the question: What might constitute an autonomous framework that could assist Africa and her thinkers and scholars in the development and validation of local forms of knowledge for social transformation? In this regard, I will examine the claims of Otto Neurath’s postpositivism and the dynamic pluralism of the Ifá sacred corpus of the Yorùbá, both within the framework of the epistemology of the South project. Both of these epistemological frameworks outline a pluralistic understanding of knowledge that could enable the reconfiguring of knowledge production in Africa.

Dakota/Lakota Math Connections: an epistemological framework for teaching and learning mathematics with Indigenous communities and students

Tribal colleges/universities have and continue to seek out connections between the local heritage and culture and the mainstream education content. In math, calls for culture to be more integrated into the classroom have been met with epistemological challenges as well as a dearth of math and local culture resources. The Dakota/Lakota Math Connections research project addresses both of these challenges. This article will specifically share the collaborative development, pilot, evaluation, and confirmation of an epistemological framework for curriculum development in both the math and language classrooms at Sitting Bull College. Following an Indigenous research paradigm focusing on relationality and relational accountability, the co-authors gathered a group of tribal college math instructors, Lakota language immersion teachers, and fluent elders. Altogether they experienced, evaluated, and confirmed the Dakota/Lakota Math Connections framework as a path for teaching and learning mathematics with Indigenous communities and students. Using an Indigenous research paradigm led to circular, reciprocal research questions for this article: In what ways, if any, did the framework impact the participants? In what ways, if any, did the participants influence the framework? The framework includes four major components (Western Math, Dakota/Lakota Math, the English language, and the Dakota/Lakota language) and the intersections among each component. The framework builds from the assumptions that language is intimately tied with culture and identity and that higher order mathematical thinking is embedded within Dakota/Lakota language and culture. This is based on the assumption that all cultures “do” math. The framework asserts that math fluency and Dakota/Lakota language fluency can grow together. The Dakota/Lakota Math Connections framework lays an epistemological pathway for Dakota/Lakota students to see their culture, identity, and language in the math curriculum as well as for math instructors to honor the call to connect the math classroom with the local heritage and culture.

Impact of Governance on the Failure of Moroccan SME Exporters

This study aims to assess how governance can affect the ability of exporting SMEs in Morocco to cope with exchange rate fluctuations, by identifying the resulting failure factors and proposing effective governance strategies to address them. The hypothesis formulated is that good governance within exporting SMEs can improve their ability to cope with exchange rate fluctuations by reducing the default factors associated with these variations and by promoting the implementation of effective exchange rate risk management strategies. The epistemological framework of this study is based on a quantitative approach, using a linear regression model to analyze data collected from Moroccan SME exporters. The results of the analysis enable the identification of good governance practices, such as management transparency, quality of financial information and stakeholder participation. Currency risk management measures, such as hedging, are also recommended to help exporting SMEs cope with exchange rate fluctuations. Finally, support measures for exporting SMEs, such as training in financial management and foreign exchange risk management, are proposed to strengthen their ability to cope with exchange rate fluctuations

Transformative Education, Participative Black Theology and the Challenge of Making a Difference

This paper explores the critical intersection of transformative pedagogies, especially the work of Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal, as it encounters Black theology. The nexus of these epistemological frameworks is then reflected on further, in order that a Black participative mode of theological reflection can be explicated as a newer, more critical form of intellectual enquiry. The development of this work, I argue, can then be used as a means of improving the praxiological intent of Practical theology in South Africa. In the final part of the paper, I outline how South African Practical theologians have responded to the radical intent I am outlining in this article.