Epistemological Implications Research Articles

Habermasian knowledge interests: epistemological implications for health sciences.

The Habermasian concept of 'interest' has had a profound effect on the characterization of scientific disciplines. Going beyond issues unrelated to the theory itself, intra-theoretical interest characterizes the specific ways of approaching any science-related discipline, defining research topics and methodologies. This approach was developed by Jürgen Habermas in relation to empirical-analytical sciences, historical-hermeneutics sciences, and critical sciences; however, he did not make any specific references to health sciences. This article aims to contribute to shaping a general epistemological framework for health sciences, as well as its specific implications for the medical and nursing areas, via an analysis of the basic knowledge interests developed by Habermas.

La historia social como socioanálisis. Construcción de un punto de vista teórico para indagar la relación mundo público, mujeres y clases populares

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17227/01234870.41folios169.185 This article shows the construction of a theoretical viewpoint in the development of research that focuses on the relationship between three categories: the public sphere, women and popular sectors. To do this, it first presents an overview of the trends found in studies focused on similar relationships. Thereafter, a theoretical view is proposed based on the main routes and epistemological and methodological assumptions of social history enlightened by the tenets of socio-analytic proposal from French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Thus, the main epistemological implications of Bourdieu’s perspective in light of a theoretical reflection interested in the way in which a public urban world is set in the time is presented. The urban public world is questioned particularly based on the positions held by women in the working class.

Becoming aware: towards a post-constructivist theory of learning

The dominant learning paradigms conceive of learning as the construction of something, which, depending on the particular bent of the researcher, may be “meaning”, “knowledge”, “conceptions”, or “conceptual frameworks”. However, some recent studies conducted from very different theoretical perspectives showed that students cannot intentionally orient towards what is to be known after a curricular event precisely because the object that directs such an orientation (e.g., future knowledge) does not yet exist. The purpose of this study is to describe and theorize the phenomenon of becoming aware and to suggest the underlying movement as a more appropriate unit of learning. Epistemological, methodological, and instructional implications are discussed.

The Doubly Wired Spectator: Marston's Theory of Emotions and Psychophysiological Research on Cinematic Pleasure in the 1920s

In the 1920s, researchers attempted to gauge the emotional impact of motion pictures by measuring spectators’ respiration and blood pressure during screenings. This paper analyzes psychophysiological spectator studies conducted by William M. Marston at Columbia University and Universal Studios and traces the roots of his methods to Hugo Munsterberg’s applied psychology. Examining the model of embodied spectatorship and concepts of film aesthetics articulated in Marston’s experiments exposes their ethical and epistemological implications. Further, despite his claims to objectivity, Marston’s interpretation of his data reflected cultural cliches and perpetuated the universalist fallacies of biologically oriented psychology.

Epistemología de la historia ambiental a través de una encuesta realizada en el VII Simposio de la Sociedad Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Historia Ambiental (2014)

Este articulo busca destacar algunas tensiones que subyacen en la historia ambiental mediante abordar: 1) Las definiciones de ambiente que mas aceptan los historiadores ambientales y sus implicaciones epistemologicas 2) La ubicacion de la historia ambiental para con las ciencias sociales, las ciencias naturales y las humanidades 3) La relacion de la historia ambiental para con la historia social 4) La caracterizacion de la historia ambiental como transdisciplina, interdisciplina o disciplina. En el articulo se desarrollaran tales discusiones a traves del analisis de las respuestas a una encuesta realizadas en el marco del VII Simposio SOLCHA que se realizo en Quilmes, Argentina. Ademas de comunicar los resultados de la encuesta, su analisis permitira 1) plantear algunos presupuestos epistemologicos envueltos en las respuestas de los encuestados, 2) aumentar la reflexividad de la historia ambiental, 3) ayudar a distinguir los sentidos de lo ambiental, lo medioambiental y lo socioambiental.

Fontes com múltiplas perspetivas interpretadas por alunos em provas de exame final de história

Current analysis is a contribution on the manner 12 th year students interpret History sources and how, as from this interpretation which should include multi-perspective messages, they establish a specific idea of the past that would contribute towards a more advanced historical awareness. The qualitative study involving the inductive analysis of data provided the progressive construction of a conceptual model on the form that 12 th year students who sat or were about to sit for a national exam, prepare historical inferences from sources with diversified messages. The instruments dealt essentially with issues on sources used in exams. Data showed that evidence is more or less the result of their idea of the past. Reflections are thus needed on epistemological implications in the teaching and learning of History to criss-cross the dominion of evidence with the dominion of historical empathy.

The Exile of Metaphysics: Adorno and the Language of Political Experience

AbstractHow do our personal and political experiences shape the way we perceive and conceptualize the world? How does the impact of political events on our personal lives relate to the “ultimate” metaphysical questions? For Theodor W. Adorno, these questions are profoundly interconnected, albeit in a complex way. Although Adorno himself spent “only” eleven years of his life in exile, those years irreversibly shaped his philosophical thinking. Exile and migration – political life experiences shared by millions in the twentieth century – are for Adorno far more than objective historical conditions; they have far-reaching linguistic, epistemological and metaphysical implications. The possibility and impossibility of expressing oneself coherently in another language, the necessity of understanding and integrating into a new culture, the emotional and geographical distance from one’s place of origin and socialization: for Adorno, these issues lie at the core of philosophical thinking in the twentieth century. This paper discusses Adorno’s personal views on his own political experience of exile from and return to his native German culture, as well as the conclusions he draws for an understanding of metaphysics in times of exile and migration.

Global Plants and Digital Letters: Epistemological Implications of Digitising the Directors' Correspondence at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Abstract Digitisation is presenting new possibilities and challenges for the use of collections in both the humanities and the sciences. However, digitisation is also another layer in a longer process of selections shaping the collection—something which must be analysed on a case-by-case basis. This paper considers the epistemological implications of the digitisation of the Directors' Correspondence (DC) collection (1841-1928) at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, made available through the Global Plants database. In order to avoid a polarised analysis of the end-products of archive and database, the selection process shaping this collection is traced from the writing of the letters and their reception into the DC at RBG, Kew, to the digitisation with corresponding metadata and the end-user searching the database. Particular attention is given the digitisation process and the knowledge produced by the project digitisers, as they combine close reading and database searches in writing the summaries of the letters for the metadata. This analysis of the DC engages with wider discussions about digitisation by emphasising the importance of taking a longer historical perspective, with particular attention to moments of selection, and highlighting the knowledge generated by those involved in the digitisation process. By doing so, the result is not a clear trajectory but a combination of losses and gains, disconnections and reconnections. Care is therefore needed to avoid replicating the invisible losses of extractive approaches to knowledge production, particularly in the context of collection-based biodiversity conservation.1

La iconografía en la era digital: hacia una heurística para el estudio del contenido de las imágenes medievales

This article invites us to consider the usefulness of iconography as a method to describe the subjects represented in medieval works of art. In this study, a greater emphasis has been put on investigating the epistemological implications resulting from the use of that method, and the biases that may appear in the process of transforming images into words. The aim is to address what has been called the “semantic gap”, i.e., a kind of barrier that prevents the verbal representation of a non-lexical medium, such as the visual one, in a satisfactory and undiminished way. After a brief panorama of image theory throughout the classical era, with especial reference to the rhetorical genre of ekphrasis, this study suggests that, beneath the apparent balance between the verbal and the visual media, a rivalry persists. Later on, in medieval times, a mutation occurs in the way we perceive the visual arts and the images start being considered as texts that can be read. Thanks to the prejudice implied by the statement that we can only attain knowledge through words, the image is relegated to a decorative role or, at the most, an instrument of evangelisation of the illiterate. In the discipline of medieval art history, defective uses of iconography have led to question its validity as a tool for analysis, even after the systematizing task endeavoured by Erwin Panofsky. Iconography, however, has gained new momentum thanks largely to the creation of digital collections that require iconographic principles to facilitate the recovery of visual documents. The new technologies, however, have accentuated the semantic gap between image and word, and nuanced the value of iconography, combined with indexing techniques based on controlled vocabularies and thesauri. In addition, a critical survey has been made of the most interesting projects which have undertaken the task of indexing the medieval art. Finally, it is argued that migration of iconography into the Web can be the hard core that allows medieval art history to step forward and fully enter into the domain of digital humanities.

Urban geography I

In the midst of what has been termed the ‘urban age’, two divergent approaches to understanding life in cities have emerged. In this first of three urban geography progress reports, I engage these two strands of urban theory, identifying key differences in their intellectual, political and geographical genealogies, and consider their political and epistemological implications. Borrowing from Chakrabarty’s concept of History 1 and History 2, I name these approaches ‘Urbanization 1’ and ‘Urbanization 2’. Urbanization 1 is exemplified by the planetary urbanization thesis that posits the complete urbanization of society, whereas Urbanization 2 is characterized by a more diverse set of interventions, united by a political and epistemological strategy of refusing Eurocentrism and ‘provincializing’ urban theory.

On Doxastic Justification and Properly Basing One’s Beliefs

According to an orthodox account of the relationship between propositional and doxastic justification, basing one’s belief in P on one’s source of propositional justification to believe P suffices for having a doxastically justified belief. But in an increasingly recognized work Turri (Philos Phenomenol Res 80:312–326, 2010a) argues that this thesis fails and proposes a new view according to which having propositional justification depends on having the ability to acquire doxastic justification. Turri’s novel position has surprisingly far-reaching epistemological consequences, ruling out some common epistemological positions that afford one propositional justification in the absence of an ability to acquire doxastic justification (e.g., common forms of evidentialism, conservatism, and closure principles). In what follows I show Turri’s novel position to be problematic and go on to suggest a more modest revision to orthodoxy. The first section presents the orthodox view of the relationship between propositional and doxastic justification and Turri’s counterexample to it. The second section introduces Turri’s novel view of that relationship and draws out some of its epistemological implications. The third section gives counterexamples to Turri’s proposal. The fourth section defends a modest revision to orthodoxy.

The Hybrid Breeding of Nanomedia

The Hybrid Breeding of Nanomedia

The life of concepts: Georges Canguilhem and the history of science.

Twelve years after his famous Essay on Some Problems Concerning the Normal and the Pathological (1943), the philosopher Georges Canguilhem (1904-1995) published a book-length study on the history of a single biological concept. Within France, his Formation of the Reflex Concept in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1955) contributed significantly to defining the "French style" of writing on the history of science. Outside of France, the book passed largely unnoticed. This paper re-reads Canguilhem's study of the reflex concept with respect to its historiographical and epistemological implications. Canguilhem defines concepts as complex and dynamic entities combining terms, definitions, and phenomena. As a consequence, the historiography of science becomes a rather complex task. It has to take into account textual and contextual aspects that develop independently of individual authors. In addition, Canguilhem stresses the connection between conceptual activities and other functions of organic individuals in their respective environments. As a result, biological concepts become tied to a biology of conceptual thinking, analogical reasoning, and technological practice. The paper argues that this seemingly circular structure is a major feature in Canguilhem's philosophical approach to the history of the biological sciences.

Corporeal realism and victimology

This article introduces corporeal realism to victimology and incorporates work on the sociology of the body to manifest a critical victimology focused on the body–society relationship. It reviews the current literature in the sociology of the body and situates corporeal realism within this oeuvre. This article challenges how the body has often been neglected or treated at the abstract level in victimology and how corporeal realism can provide a basis for analysis of the manifold elements within the purview of victimology. The significance of corporeal realism for victimology is shown by recognizing the role of structure and embodied agency in relation to victims and victimization. In addition, this article evinces epistemological implications of corporeal realism for victimological research.

<b>Poder e Verdade em Foucault e em Habermas

Current paper examines how truth is enmeshed with power in Foucaults and Habermass theories, highlighting similarities and differences within the two theoretical perspectives. If, on the one hand, truth in Foucault is based on a monologic imposition, on the other hand, Habermas insists on the dialogic understanding of the truth, although in both cases, related to power, at opposite positions, as Habermas himself points out in 'The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity'. Foucault takes on a capillary perspective of power, whereas this relationship is most clear in Habermas through his idea of the colonization of the life world, which is close to the idea of imposing a speech on the other, with the subsequent forming of truth, as in Foucault. The essay draws attention to the epistemological implications of these two perspectives, or rather, the more they are distant from one another, the more they underscore the deep bond between the production (and imposition) of truth and power in our society.

Differences between Feminist and Mainstream Approaches to Social Science, Most Notably in Sociology, Political Science, Anthropology and History

Abstract - It is widely accepted among feminists that feminism implies a distinctive approach to inquiry. And for some this is not just a matter of the grounds on which topics are selected for investigation, or even of the theoretical ideas that are treated as relevant. Rather, feminism is taken to carry distinctive methodological and epistemological implications (Hammersley, 1995: 45). In this paper I want to assess the arguments for a distinctively feminist methodology. My first task, though, is to provide some detail about what this is taken to entail. There are, of course, important differences among feminists who have written on this topic, and in the course of the discussion I will highlight some of these. I certainly do not want to suggest that what I am assessing is a single position, nor am I claiming to represent the basis on which most feminists actually do research. My main concern here is solely with feminist writing about methodology.

The Knowledge Concealed in Users’ Narratives, Valuing Clients’ Experiences as Coherent Knowledge in Their Own Right

Objective. As the history of psychiatry has been written, users have told their stories and often presented pictures incompatible with the professional or official versions. We ask if such a gap still exists and what the ethical as well as epistemological implications may be. Study Design. The design is based on a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, with a qualitative content analysis of the narratives. Data Sources. The paper draws on user narratives written after the year 2000, describing positive and negative experiences with the mental health services. Extraction Methods. Among 972 users answering a questionnaire, 492 also answered the open questions and wrote one or two stories. We received 715 stories. 610 contained enough information to be included in this narrative analysis. Principal Findings. The stories are coherent, containing traditional narrative plots, but reports about miscommunication, rejection, lack of responsiveness, and humiliation are numerous. Conclusions. The picture drawn from this material has ethical as well as epistemological implications and motivates reflections upon theoretical and practical consequences when users’ experiences do not influence professional knowledge to a larger degree.

New qualitative research methodologies in management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to deliver an introduction to the Special Issue on new qualitative research methodologies in management. Design/methodology/approach – The reasons of interest for the object of this Special Issue are explained through the discussion of a selected literature. Technological and sociological changes are considered as a source of new problem and new opportunities for management and management research. The traditional methods are put under strain by these changes and epistemological implications are considered. Findings – New qualitative methodologies analyzed in the Special Issue are characterized by drivers including hybridization with others methods, both qualitative and quantitative. New methods can contribute to reduce distance between researcher's and practitioner's context. Originality/value – A frame to analyze the new qualitative management research through the papers published in the Special Issue.

Big Data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts

This article examines how the availability of Big Data, coupled with new data analytics, challenges established epistemologies across the sciences, social sciences and humanities, and assesses the extent to which they are engendering paradigm shifts across multiple disciplines. In particular, it critically explores new forms of empiricism that declare ‘the end of theory’, the creation of data-driven rather than knowledge-driven science, and the development of digital humanities and computational social sciences that propose radically different ways to make sense of culture, history, economy and society. It is argued that: (1) Big Data and new data analytics are disruptive innovations which are reconfiguring in many instances how research is conducted; and (2) there is an urgent need for wider critical reflection within the academy on the epistemological implications of the unfolding data revolution, a task that has barely begun to be tackled despite the rapid changes in research practices presently taking place. After critically reviewing emerging epistemological positions, it is contended that a potentially fruitful approach would be the development of a situated, reflexive and contextually nuanced epistemology.

Ethics, evidence and economics in the pursuit of "personalized medicine".

Despite enthusiastic advocacy for what personalized medicine might be able to deliver and major investments into the development of this, there remain disappointingly few examples of personalized medicine in routine clinical practice today, particularly in high areas of unmet need such as cancer. We believe that this is because personalized medicine challenges the moral, economic and epistemological foundations of medicine. In this article, we briefly describe the scientific premises underpinning personalized medicine, contrast these with traditional paradigms of drug development, and then consider the ethical, economic and epistemological implications of this approach to medicine.