Epistemological Issues Research Articles

‘Writing’ small states: contextualizing the construct in the Arab Gulf

How do IR scholars ‘write’ the Arab Gulf? In attempting to address this question, the focus is twofold: first, the ‘small state’ as a construct and second, its application to the study of Gulf small states. The article tries to grapple with issues inherent in such an enterprise by providing a critical assessment of recent scholarship on the topic, with special reference to Qatar and the UAE. The problematic comes to the fore in a context of these two countries’ increasing regional and international visibility, as well as what seems to be renewed scholarly interest in small states, more generally. Specifically, this analysis primarily seeks to relativize the small state within the Arab Gulf sub-region, drawing attention to ontological and epistemological issues. In so doing, the article offers some heuristics for the writing of small states in the Arab Gulf. One suggestion put forward in the article is more scrutiny of the regional context; what is called here the ‘hydrocarbon semi-periphery’; and misgivings (conceptual and empirical) concerning, respectively, the treatment of ‘soft power,’ mediation, and intervention. One parting idea to derive from this line of inquiry is its cautionary note against inflating the utility or the explanatory power of a catch-all ‘small state’ construct when it comes to non-Western settings.

Fabulous: Remarks on scenarism, simulations, and scenarios

In “Governing the Future,” Limor Samimian-Darash does much to illuminate scenarism and the divergence between the simulations and the scenarios that constitute the chief apparatuses of anticipatory governance. She renders both of them fabulations, drawing the concept as well as the divergence between simulations and scenarios from the epistemological and ontological precedents that Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze have set. Her renderings are compelling, but leave many epistemological and ontological issues unresolved. I address three of these issues. First, it has to do with what sort of concept scenarism might be. Second, it has to do with the poetics of simulations and scenarios. Third, it has to do with the virtuality or actuality of simulations and scenarios, in their planning as in their enactments.

“Same same but different”? On the questionable but crucial differentiation between ethical and social aspects in health technology assessment

In health technology assessment (HTA), the demarcation of ethical and social aspects in two separate domains is a given fact. While an overlapping of ethical and social aspects is possible, this also raises theoretical and methodological questions, such as why overlaps happen (on the basis of which understanding of ethical and social aspects), or whether they are legitimate from a methodological point of view. We analyzed, on a basis of purposive sampling, a) two well-known HTA frameworks (HTA Core Model, INTEGRATE-HTA), b) methodological literature about ethical and/or social aspects in HTA, and c) published HTA reports from the German DAHTA database and the international CRD database regarding statements on the understanding (definition/characterization) and relationship between ethical and social aspects. The frameworks use identical definitions for ethical aspects but deviate when it comes to social aspects. Methodological papers do not always provide a definition of social and ethical aspects. In the context of ethical aspects, they often refer back to ethics as a base discipline that deals with the motives and consequences of good and bad actions for ethical aspects, while for social aspects, there is orientation towards already existing checklists and methods, without reference to a base discipline such as sociology. The analyzed HTA reports barely offered details on their understanding of ethical or social aspects (7% of n = 33). The problem of defining/characterizing and differentiating ethical and social aspects exists in both theory and practice. The impression is that little attention is paid to demarcations and overlaps, and that also the methodological literature has not yet thoroughly addressed the issue. While there are also pragmatic reasons for the possible ambiguity between the ethical and the social domains, deeper epistemological issues related to the multi-/interdisciplinarity nature of HTA will have to be considered, too, such as the danger of "disciplinary capture" (pressure on some domains and their basic disciplines, e.g., ethics, to adopt the concepts and standards of other domains that are more dominant in HTA, e.g., efficacy assessment/evidenced-based medicine). The domains in HTA reports should be better described epistemologically and brought into a coherent relationship with each other. This is important to avoid unreasonable overlapping and possible problematic redundancy. Further, this could help with questions of adequate expertise and methods for the processing of all relevant information for solid technology assessment.

Testimony in African epistemology revisited

This article addresses important epistemological issues raised by Barry Hallen and J. Olubi Sodipo’s pioneering philosophical fieldwork among Yoruba herbalists or masters of medicine (onisegun). More precisely, I shall primarily investigate, as well as object to, the unduly restrictive view they take on testimony in Yoruba epistemic practice. With this criticism as the starting point, but still based on the cases Hallen and Sodipo provide, I explore different ways in which an “oral culture” like Yoruba (as traditionally depicted) can rely on testimony as a source of justification without succumbing to the gullible and uncritical attitude towards tradition such societies have been charged with. To this purpose, I put to use relevant developments in analytic epistemology taking place after Hallen and Sodipo published their work.

Pain, the unknown: epistemological issues and related clinical implications.

Despite the huge development of pain management in the past decades, pain remains elusive and many patients still remain in the middle of the ford struggling between low drug efficacy and their overuse. A reason for pain elusiveness is its nature of subjective phenomenon, escaping the meshes of the objectivist, mechanist-reductionist net prevailing in medicine. Actually, pain is not only a symptom but an essential aspect of life, consciousness and contact with the world and its noetic and autonoetic components play a key role in the development of the concepts of pleasure-unpleasure and good-evil. The intensity and tolerability of pain and suffering also depend on what the pain means to the patient. The outstanding effects of placebo and nocebo, behavioral and non-pharmacological techniques warrant the need for a shift from the traditional positivist idea of patient as passive carrier of disease to the patient as active player of recovery and move toward a patient's centered approach exploiting individual resources for recovery. Among the mentioned techniques, hypnosis has proved to increase pain threshold up to the level of surgical analgesia, improve acute and chronic pain as well as coping and resilience, helping to decrease both drug overuse and the costs of pharmacological therapy. The plethora of available data suggests the need for a holistic approach, aiming to take care of the individual as an inseparable mind-body unit in its interplay with the environment, where patient's inner world, his/her experience and cognition are taken into due account as powerful resources for recovery through a phenomenological-existential approach.

An Introduction to Reading the Past Critically

An Introduction to Reading the Past Critically

Tensions, Complexities, and Compromises

Abstract Researching and writing about Aboriginal sport history is one of the most challenging, and rewarding, opportunities of our scholarly careers. It is challenging because non-Aboriginal people must engage with ontological, epistemological, theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues and ideas that often exist outside traditional Western conventions. Challenges for male scholars escalate in attempting to represent the experiences of Aboriginal sportswomen. Not only do we need to engage with racial theories and gender analysis, as Susan Birrell has done throughout her career, but it involves consciously creating narratives from the outside as non-Aboriginal men with all the boundaries and limitations this situation imposes. The final layer of complexity is that Aboriginal history-making involves appropriate recognition of, and involvement with, Aboriginal people, and creating reciprocal relationships and practices that are community-driven. We address these issues through a case study of the Marching Girls from the Aboriginal settlement of Cherbourg in Queensland, Australia.

‘Systems of values’, ‘ethical systems’, and sustainability. The economic social ‘entity’ values

The paper aimsto explore the relationships between ‘ethical systems’ and ‘systems of values’, offeringalso semantic and epistemological issues from which ethics cannot be divorced. Although ethics is a branch ofphilosophy that has its roots in ancient Greece, it experienced a remarkable revival in recent decades not only inphilosophy but also in the social and applied sciences. And this deserves wider recognition and appreciation. Aconsiderable amount of ethical thinking can be found in the current and previous literature of economiaaziendale, entity economics, general economics, management, and social philosophy. Ethical principles arecoextensive with principles of rational behavior and all ethics are contextual in the sense that surroundingcircumstances, environmental conditions and situations are involved.The reference to science and mathematics for ethical arguments partially depends on methodology based on apostulated outside ‘natural world’ with statistical relative uniformities. Behavioral economists and managementscientists prefer, as primitive foundations, scientific methods with their observations and prediction of economicand sociological relative regularities. The ‘received view’ that language itself conditions all aspects of realityincludes now the topic that persuasion and rational arguments can support ‘ethical systems’.Realization of common welfare is a prerequisite for establishing a ‘master values system’ and for meeting the‘specifics’ which compose ethical principles. The historical research and anthropological analysis are necessaryfor constructing suitable ‘system of values’ for every entity, economic and not.The coordination of specific ‘systems of values’ and directives is a necessary condition for social welfare.Consequently, any society must compose every kind of conflicting ‘values systems’ and ends into a coherentframework. Neoclassic economics traditionally neglected ‘environmental and social issues’. Different variationsof environmental ethics have been developed; beyond many questions, there are the issues of cause and remedyof the global as well as local ecological crisis. To-day, in times of crisis and pandemia the market paradigm isexhausted, it does not meet the ‘ethics of reciprocity’. In socialist economics exchanging goods at their ‘sociallynecessary labor cost’ would operate as a satisfactory surrogate. Also, entity economics does not completelyescape the labor value identification of classical economics.

Operationalising ethnicity in accountability: insights from an ethnic group within the Salvation Army

PurposeThis paper explores how ethnicity is implicated in an etic–emic understanding through day-to-day practices and how such practices meet external accountability demands. Addressing the broader question of how ethnicity presents in an accounting situation, it examines the mundane level responses to those accountability demands manifesting an operationalisation of the ethnicity of the people who make those responses.Design/methodology/approachThe study followed ethnomethodology principles whereby one of the researchers acted both as an active member and as a researcher within a Salvation Army congregation in Manchester (UK), while the others acted as post-fieldwork reflectors.FindingsThe conceivers and guardians of an accountability system relating to the Zimbabwean-Mancunian Salvationist congregation see account giving practices as they appear (etic), not as they are thought and interiorised (emic). An etic–emic misunderstanding on both sides occurs in the situation of a practice variation in a formal accountability system. This is due to the collision of one ethnic group's emics with the emics of conceivers. Such day-to-day practices are thus shaped by ethnic orientations of the participants who operationalise the meeting of accountability demands. Hence, while ethnicity is operationalised in emic terms, accounting is seen as an etic construct. Possible variations between etic requirements and emic practices can realise this operationalisation.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors’ findings were based on one ethnic group's emic construction of accountability. Further research may extend this to multi-ethnic settings with multiple etic/emic combinations.Originality/valueThis study contributed to the debate on both epistemological and methodological issues in accountability. As it is ill-defined or neglected in the literature, the authors offer a working conceptualisation of ethnicity – an operating cultural unit being implicated in both accounting and accountability.

Researching tribute bands: tools, counter-interpretations and extending research relations to Facebook in a tight network

This article discusses methodological, ethical, and epistemological issues that arise when research is conducted in a tight-knit network of respondents: in this case, artists in search of fame and recognition, while performing in a tribute band – a relatively downgraded form of music. The study was conducted in Switzerland and used qualitative methodology, consisting mainly of observations of concerts and semi-structured interviews with musicians, cultural intermediaries and audience members. With an aim to contribute to the reflexivity of sociology as a discipline and ideally provide methodological traces for future research in similar conditions, the article first presents the general methodology used in this study. Then, the discussion turns to the uses and difficulties of certain methodological elements such as Howard Becker’s advice on ‘playing dumb’ for obtaining more subtle information, dealing with ‘counter-interpretations’ by study participants, or the extension of research relations to the online realm.

Dualistic Vision in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves

Abstract The article focuses on Virginia Woolf’s novel, The Waves, a sui generis work, in which the writer explores metaphysical and epistemological issues such as the meaning of selfhood, time and identity as flux, silence and language, the self as defined by language, and other fundamental concerns. These topics are explored through a dualistic perspective. This duality permeates the entire structure of the novel through binary oppositions: the self as one/the self as plural; the lyrical/the novelistic; the mystical/the rational; narrative/formlessness; the embodied/the disembodied; potentiality/actuality; language/silence. Woolf’s ambivalent approach is also at work in the way she uses language in the novel. The urge towards a teleological existence prompts her characters to turn events into a narrative that would arrange and combine them into one thread. The present article, however, shows that in The Waves the very human propensity to turn experience into a coherent story is countered by the opposite perception that this narrativizing drive is only an illusion.

Approaches in the concept of convergence. A critical review of the literature

This article explores the existence of two main perspectives on the concept of convergence. The first view assumes convergence as an epistemological, methodological and heuristic issue resulting from the confluence of scientific disciplines and technological fields. The second view emphasizes the importance of technology management and industrial application development as strategies for analyzing the technical challenges and risks associated with convergence processes in the firm. To differentiate between the two visions, 59 specialized bibliographic works selected from a theoretical sample are analyzed. The main finding of this review is the characterization of these two perspectives that, although contradictory, are part of a common conceptualization of convergence as an umbrella notion. These findings provide relevant insights for a field of knowledge under construction: policy agendas focused on fostering technological convergence should start from the differentiation of these two analytical and conceptual levels.

Formalizing falsification for theories of consciousness across computational hierarchies.

The scientific study of consciousness is currently undergoing a critical transition in the form of a rapidly evolving scientific debate regarding whether or not currently proposed theories can be assessed for their scientific validity. At the forefront of this debate is Integrated Information Theory (IIT), widely regarded as the preeminent theory of consciousness because it quantified subjective experience in a scalar mathematical measure called that is in principle measurable. Epistemological issues in the form of the “unfolding argument” have provided a concrete refutation of IIT by demonstrating how it permits functionally identical systems to have differences in their predicted consciousness. The implication is that IIT and any other proposed theory based on a physical system’s causal structure may already be falsified even in the absence of experimental refutation. However, so far many of these arguments surrounding the epistemological foundations of falsification arguments, such as the unfolding argument, are too abstract to determine the full scope of their implications. Here, we make these abstract arguments concrete, by providing a simple example of functionally equivalent machines realizable with table-top electronics that take the form of isomorphic digital circuits with and without feedback. This allows us to explicitly demonstrate the different levels of abstraction at which a theory of consciousness can be assessed. Within this computational hierarchy, we show how IIT is simultaneously falsified at the finite-state automaton level and unfalsifiable at the combinatorial-state automaton level. We use this example to illustrate a more general set of falsification criteria for theories of consciousness: to avoid being already falsified, or conversely unfalsifiable, scientific theories of consciousness must be invariant with respect to changes that leave the inference procedure fixed at a particular level in a computational hierarchy.

Epistemological considerations about mathematical concepts

PurposeCategories (particular (P) and general (V)) constitute a bipole with epistemological implications. The mutual categorical implication of this bipole is embodied in ordinary notions. It follows that a concept because it forms an element of concrete, sensible-rational, practical-theoretical activity has to unite the two inseparable poles, the general and the particular. If the concept of a physical quantity is abstract in relation to the physical object, it is concrete in comparison with mathematical quantity. This product of a secondary abstraction covers the background of physical qualities to extract the pure number, legitimately named abstract number. Both kinds of numbers are mutually exclusive: either the numbers are attached to a unit name and the number is concrete or nothing is attached and the number is abstract. However, in addition to their coordination in extension, they involve each other in comprehension: in fact, the pure number is the general pole V and concrete numbers form the particular pole of the dialectical concept of number K. The purpose of this paper is to provide a model for epistemological issues that arise in the context of meaning, concepts and use of words.Design/methodology/approachA dialectical theory of the binomial comprehension-extension of mathematical magnitudes.FindingsThe findings provide an objection to the traditional deductive order being also true in mathematics, and also that the reverse order cannot be considered as characteristic of mathematics, but show dialectic as universal. This opens the way to the special scientific deduction (mathematical, physical, biological, etc). going from the general to individual.Originality/valueThe structure of the mathematical concepts is elaborated.

How to Assess the Epistemic Wrongness of Sponsorship Bias? The Case of Manufactured Certainty.

Although the impact of so-called “sponsorship bias” has been the subject of increased attention in the philosophy of science, what exactly constitutes its epistemic wrongness is still debated. In this paper, I will argue that neither evidential accounts nor social–epistemological accounts can fully account for the epistemic wrongness of sponsorship bias, but there are good reasons to prefer social–epistemological to evidential accounts. I will defend this claim by examining how both accounts deal with a paradigm case from medical epistemology, recently discussed in a paper by Bennett Holman. I will argue that evidential accounts cannot adequately capture cases of sponsorship bias that involve the manufacturing of certainty because of their neutrality with respect to the role of non-epistemic values in scientific practice. If my argument holds, it further highlights the importance of integrating social and ethical concerns into epistemological analysis, especially in applied contexts. One can only properly grasp sponsorship bias as an epistemological problem if one resists the methodological tendency to analyze social, ethical, and epistemological issues in isolation from each other.

Decolonizing Trans/Gender Studies?

Abstract In this article, the author argues that a decolonial perspective on gender means conceptualizing it as always already trans. The object of investigation is gender as a category and gender studies as a field of knowledge. To discuss what decolonizing trans/gender studies in Europe could mean, the author aims to bring different strands together that have been held apart so far: resistance against global attacks on gender studies, resistance against transphobic feminism, and the “decolonising the curriculum” movement in the United Kingdom. A critical focus on Eurocentric knowledge and truth claims means to define Europe as a complex set of geopolitical, historical, and epistemological processes and not just as a neutral location. At British universities, a mostly student-led movement has started to emerge that fights for decolonizing higher education. This movement is inspired by transnational student movements like Rhodes/Fees Must Fall in South Africa and calls for challenging racist, colonialist, nationalist, and neoliberal paradigms in knowledge production by addressing both issues of epistemology and access to higher education. Applying central political claims of the “decolonising the curriculum” movement, the author explores potentials and challenges of the task of decolonizing trans/gender studies in Europe and the global North. The author's intervention opens up a discussion on how to conceptualize knowledge on transgender with a central focus on decolonial and transnational perspectives.

Comparer la réception des images par les Nord et les Sud dans le cadre d’un Partenariat Hubert Curien Tassili

Pascal Laborderie This paper relates the experience of a PHC Tassili cooperation project between the universities of Reims and Oran 2 entitled “Pictures, realities and fictions of the North-South Relations”. This research project proposes to compare different reception of a same audiovisual object on the various publics located on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea. This article explains the material and administrative modalities, the methodological difficulties as well as the philosophical and epistemological issues of the program.

A apropriação dos territórios quotidianos pelos grafitos. Do risco social à multiterritorialidade

Social hazards, understood as one of the fields of study of Anthropic hazards, contains a variety and complexity of phenomena that encompass work, family life, social relations, among others. Anthropic cindinic sciences are faced with new challenges generated by everyday life, demanding territorial analysis in a multi-scale perspective. Furthermore, it is necessary to bear in mind the dynamics of the communities, concerning their way of living, interpreting, and acting, aspects that may lead to the development of social tensions and frictions. This paper aims to discuss social risks from a multi-territorial view, starting with the issue of social frictions related to graffiti and based on the case study of the University of Coimbra as heritage classified by UNESCO – World Heritage Areas. The number of tourists and visitors has increased impressively, having transformed the dynamics of the city and of the protected area, namely through the rehabilitation and preservation of buildings. Despite this, the University and the upper part of town have been the target of intense graffiti, raising epistemological, civic and institutional issues.

The future of mathematics education since COVID-19: humans-with-media or humans-with-non-living-things.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the agenda of mathematics education. This change will be analyzed by looking at three trends in mathematics education: the use of digital technology, philosophy of mathematics education, and critical mathematics education. Digital technology became a trend in mathematics education in response to the arrival of a different kind of artifact to the mathematics classroom. It was thrust into the spotlight as the pandemic suddenly moved classrooms online around the world. Challenges specific to mathematics education in this context must be addressed. The link between the COVID-19 pandemic and digital technology in education also raises epistemological issues highlighted by philosophy of mathematics education and critical mathematics education. Using the notion that the basic unit of knowledge production throughout history is humans-with-media, I discuss how humans are connected to the virus, how it has laid bare social inequality, and how it will change the agendas of these three trends in mathematics education. I highlight the urgent need to study how mathematics education happens online for children when the home environment and inequalities in access to digital technologies assume such significant roles as classes move on-line. We need to understand the political role of agency of artifacts such as home in collectives of humans-with-media-things, and finally we need to learn how to implement curricula that address social inequalities. This discussion is intertwined with examples.

How to (Blind)Spot the Truth: An Investigation on Actual Epistemic Value

This paper is about the alethic aspect of epistemic rationality. The most common approaches to this aspect are either normative (what a reasoner ought to/may believe?) or evaluative (how rational is a reasoner?), where the evaluative approaches are usually comparative (one reasoner is assessed compared to another). These approaches often present problems with blindspots. For example, ought a reasoner to believe a currently true blindspot? Is she permitted to? Consequently, these approaches often fail in describing a situation of alethic maximality, where a reasoner fulfills all the alethic norms and could be used as a standard of rationality (as they are, in fact, used in some of these approaches). I propose a function $$\alpha$$ , which accepts a set of beliefs as input and returns a numeric alethic value. Then I use this function to define a notion of alethic maximality that is satisfiable by finite reasoners (reasoners with cognitive limitations) and does not present problems with blindspots. Function $$\alpha$$ may also be used in alethic norms and evaluation methods (comparative and non-comparative) that may be applied to finite reasoners and do not present problems with blindspots. A result of this investigation is that the project of providing purely alethic norms is defective. The use of function $$\alpha$$ also sheds light on important epistemological issues, such as the lottery and the preface paradoxes, and the principles of clutter avoidance and reflection.