Epistemological Subject Research Articles

Philosophical Dimensions of Digital Transformation and Their Impact on the Future

This article aims to highlight digital transformation within the context of an in-depth philosophical analysis from the perspectives of epistemological, axiological, ethical, and anthropological dimensions. The period of general philosophical interpretation of the practical-everyday status of digitalisation has evolved into a need for a comprehensive characterisation of the essence of the digital space. The tasks of the article involve organising various philosophical characteristics of digital transformation and aligning them within the scientific worldview paradigm of the future. The article's methodology is based on a qualitative study of the problem of digitalisation within the scientific-philosophical discourse of the last five years. A varied sampling in the literature review has facilitated the analysis of most philosophical dimensions of digitalisation in its contemporary manifestation. The scientific-philosophical synergetic approach is intended to ensure a holistic understanding of the essence of digitalisation as a socio-cultural phenomenon and to optimise the use of its practical structural-technological characteristics. The research results demonstrate the alignment of thematic clusters within the philosophical dimension of digitalisation. The initial dominance of epistemological themes related to the innovation of the digital space is gradually being transformed into a more balanced philosophical interpretation with the actualisation of axiological, ethical, and anthropological contexts. The impact of digital products on individuals and society requires evaluation and understanding how to regulate their activity. Therefore, a review of the literature dedicated to the philosophical aspects of digitalisation indicates a quantitative increase in works of a value-ethical and anthropocentric nature. Philosophy is dynamically shaping the content and format of the structural analysis of digital transformation as a critical sociocultural phenomenon of modernity. At the same time, prospects for philosophical research into the digital space are emerging, which involve outlining short-term tactics for understanding digital transformation in the ethical and anthropological segments and long-term strategies for the axiological and epistemological dimensions. Conclusion: Digital transformation has reached a large scale and intensity within the sociocultural dimension and requires a comprehensive worldview interpretation from science, philosophy, and cultural perspectives. A complete philosophical characterisation of digital transformation should consist of epistemological, axiological, ethical, and anthropological justifications for digitalisation's institutional-organisational and structural-functional aspects.

Pearl and the Fairies of Romance: Hermeneutics and Intertextuality in a Fourteenth-Century Religious Dream Vision

Abstract: This article focuses on the parallels that can be drawn between the characters and landscapes of the fourteenth-century Pearl poem and the fairy characters and otherworlds that frequently appear in works of medieval romance. It argues that the Pearl -poet is consciously engaging with readily identifiable fairy themes and motifs, made popular through a wide range of romances and other sources, in order to help propagate a certain ambiguity within the poem: one that feeds into the broader epistemological themes that are present within the text. More specifically, this article shows that the poet's manipulation of these motifs forms part of the broader unraveling of the poem, in which both the dreamer's and the reader's ability to comprehend the nature of the vision develops as the poem progresses. Drawing on two works in particular, the fourteenth-century alliterative romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Chrétien de Troyes's twelfth-century French romance Le Conte du Graal , this article argues that Pearl parallels these texts in the way that they utilize otherworldly conventions to inhibit both the protagonist's and the reader's ability to rationalize the events taking place within the poem. By identifying the poet's use of fairy conventions in Pearl , a poem that consistently draws attention to the limits of human knowledge, this article examines, from a fresh perspective, the poet's exploration of ineffability and of the divide between material and spiritual modes of existence.

Muslims’ lifeworld during the pandemic and humanistic interpretation of Religions

Some proponents of new atheism, including Dawkins, claim that religion, especially Islam, is the cause of the war because it encourages divisiveness and labeling. In this article, in the first step, I will show that Islam is not the cause of war, but rather it is a misconception of Islam that is the cause of divisiveness and eventually war. Then, I will demonstrate that the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on societies and religious behaviors somehow could, and still can, modify this misconception and blur divisions. This effect occurs in two ways: firstly, a pandemic creates common human problems for all people worldwide, making people more aware of their common points that Islam refers to as fitrah. This awareness of human beings’ common fitrah provides the grounds for presenting and accepting a humanistic interpretation of Islam. Secondly, the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on correcting Islamic beliefs is seen in epistemological explanations made possible thanks to online religious programs. Finally, I will try to apply this model to three types of religious conflict and explain why the COVID-19 pandemic can explain the decrease in the conflict in each: first, Muslims’ violence against non-Muslims; second, non-Muslims’ violence against Muslims; and third, violence within Islam, such as Shiite-Sunni conflicts. It seems that the closure of religious centers, transference of religious rituals to cyber-Islam, and the creation of global human-ethical existence have increased the amount of digital content produced in any religion and sect. Moreover, these contents have shifted towards intellectual, discursive, and epistemological topics. Finally, these contents put more emphasis on common human and ethical issues such as helping fellow human beings.

On proper presupposition

AbstractThis paper investigates the norm of presupposition, as one pervasive type of indirect speech act. It argues against the view that sees presuppositions as an indirect counterpart of the direct speech act of assertion and proposes instead that they are much more similar to the direct speech act of assumption. More concretely, it suggests that the norm that governs presuppositions is not an epistemic or doxastic attitude such as knowledge, justified belief, or mere belief; it's a practical attitude, most plausibly the attitude of rational acceptance. This view has important ramifications well beyond debates in philosophy of language and linguistics. It affects not only our view of which speech act sequences are fine and which are off; it bears on whether presuppositions can function as testimony, whether they can be lies, and whether they are ontologically committal, thus addressing central topics in epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics.

Introduction: The Journal of Clinical Ethics, the MacLean Center, and the Future of Clinical Ethics.

Introduction: The Journal of Clinical Ethics, the MacLean Center, and the Future of Clinical Ethics.

A Black feminist approach to antiracist qualitative research methods: Commemorating the legacy of bell hooks

This article commemorates the legacy of bell hooks by bringing core themes in her oeuvre to bear on several debates on the conceptualization and use of qualitative research methods in sociology. Despite the uptake of qualitative research methods in sociology as a launching point for critical inquiry with analytical and political overtones, they have been fragmented threefold by debates about their politics (whether to humanize research subjects), practice (whether to intervene in field research), and epistemology (procedural, craft, and bricolage orientations). Reflecting on the legacy of bell hooks, this article articulates a Black feminist approach by unearthing methodological and epistemological themes underwritten in hooks’ work (inclusive pedagogy, creative dialogue, and reflexive accountability) to offer new perspectives on the three debates and, in so doing, to identify ways to better qualitative research methods as tools for emancipating the marginalized – by invigorating cross-professional and transdisciplinary dialogue, collaboration, and love.

Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy by Myles F. Burnyeat

Reviewed by: Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy by Myles F. Burnyeat Allison Piñeros Glasscock and Elizabeth C. Shaw and Staff* BURNYEAT, Myles F. Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy, vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. xii + 395 pp. Cloth, $120.00 The eleven essays in this collection were originally published while Burnyeat was at All Souls College, Oxford (1996–2006) and during his subsequent retirement. Like volume 3 of the same series, the collection was published posthumously, with editorial work undertaken by Carol Atack, Malcolm Schofield, and David Sedley. Part I contains seven essays on topics in ontology and epistemology; part II contains four essays on physics and optics. The figures examined include the usual suspects—Plato and Aristotle (plus an appearance by Aquinas)—but Burnyeat also draws our attention to some less appreciated accomplices to the ancient philosophical project: the Platonist commentator Numenius of Apamea, the Pythagorean Archytas of Tarentum, and Anaxarchus of Abdera, a follower of Democritus. The result is a collection that showcases one of Burnyeat's greatest strengths: his ability to identify the clues left for us in ancient texts and to produce from them compelling and exquisitely detailed accounts of what ancient philosophers were thinking and why. One of the final papers of the volume illustrates Burnyeat's detective acumen. "Archytas and optics" starts from the following question: Why is optics absent from the mathematical curriculum Plato sketches in the Republic? Burnyeat hypothesizes that if mathematical optics existed when the Republic was written, Plato likely excised it from the curriculum on the grounds that the discipline would lead the student to focus on visible things and their appearances. The bulk of the paper is devoted to establishing the antecedent of this conditional. Burnyeat argues that mathematical optics did exist at the time of the Republic's writing, and he posits the noncanonical Pythagorean Archytas as its founder. To recognize the significance of this lacuna in the Republic's curriculum and to provide a persuasive identification of the founder of an entire discipline is already to make a substantial contribution to scholarship. But how Burnyeat arrives at his central conclusion is equally impressive. He takes the reader on a tour of Aristotle, Plato, and Iamblichus, fragment 4 of Archytas, and the Apologia of Apuleius (whom readers might better recognize as the novelist responsible for The Golden [End Page 345] Ass). The result is not only an answer to the paper's central question, but a deeper understanding of the broader intellectual network in which canonical figures like Plato and Aristotle operated. No fragment is too small to catch Burnyeat's notice, nor is any line in a manuscript too faint. Part I of the collection includes Burnyeat's famous paper "Kinēsis vs. energeia: a much-read passage in (but not of) Aristotle's Metaphysics." The central argument is that Metaphysics 9.6.1048b18–35 is out of place. It was written by Aristotle for a different context and should not be printed in book 9. Because this article is so well known, I will not dwell on the details of the argument, but once again Burnyeat's methodology is worthy of comment. The first part of the paper offers a careful examination of the Metaphysics's manuscript tradition that attends both to what is present and to what is absent. For example, we learn that the focus passage is missing from an entire branch of the tradition, which Burnyeat suggests is the result of a learned excision. Later, Burnyeat develops a psychological sketch of the scribe of manuscript Ab beginning from the observation that a faint line is drawn through part of the focus passage. He argues that the scribe's motivation is not disapproval of the passage's contents but a desire to keep his text and commentary in sync. Observations like these provide the foundation for Burnyeat's thesis about the philosophical import of the focus passage, and they demonstrate that the physical record can be just as vital to reconstructions of ancient philosophy as the words that the record preserves. Occasionally, Burnyeat offers more direct admonitions to his readers about how to approach ancient philosophy. A key lesson...

Controlling our reasons

AbstractPhilosophical discussion on control has largely centred around control over our actions and beliefs. Yet this overlooks the question of whether we also have control over the reasons for which we act and believe. To date, the overriding assumption appears to be that we do not, and with seemingly good reason. We cannot choose to act for a reason and acting‐for‐a‐reason is not itself something we do. While some have challenged this in the case of reasons for action, these claims seem especially untenable regarding believing for a reason. And extending the scope of control in this way also faces the threat of regress. In the face of this orthodoxy, the present paper argues that we do in fact have control over both believing and acting for a particular reason. It also starts to develop an account of the way in which this would be possible. Given the broad importance of understanding control and agency, this paper bears on a number of topics in epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and ethics.

Anthropological Aesthetics of Greek Antiquity as a Narrative of Philosophical Discourse

Purpose. The article aims to define the philosophical narratives about the "beautiful human" of Greek antiquity in the coordinates of the triad of "natural", "social" and "cultural" body. Theoretical basis. When achieving this purpose, the author based on the conceptual provisions of the philosophical anthropology of Н. Plessner, in particular, concerning the attitude of a limited body to its limit as an empirical comprehension of a human him/herself and the world. Developing the position of the body as a socio-cultural phenomenon and proceeding from the definition of corporeality as a "transformed human body under the influence of social and cultural factors, which has socio-cultural meanings and performs certain socio-cultural functions" (I. Bykhovskaya) (transl. by O. G.), the triad of "natural", "social" and "cultural" body was used as a methodological basis to analyse the research object. Originality lies in the explication of the peculiarities of aesthetic and anthropological discourse in Ancient Greek philosophy, not only through the prism of the dichotomy of "soul" and "body", but also through the prism of the triad "natural", "social" and "cultural" body, allowing rethinking of the narratives concerning the "beautiful human" of the formation period of the European anthropological aesthetics in Antiquity. Conclusions. The anthropological aesthetics of Greek Antiquity is masculine aesthetics, the aesthetics of the male "cultural body". If a man is an epistemological subject, he is able, despite the ugliness and abomination of his natural body, to reach the level of the cultural body, the level of "personal existence of corporeality". As for the female corporeality, since the Ancient Greek philosophy does not provide the status of an epistemological subject for a woman, she remains at the level of "social body".

Intellectual virtue and its role in epistemology

An overview is presented of what I take to be (some main aspects of) the role of the intellectual virtues within the epistemological enterprise. Traditionally, the theory of knowledge has been thought to be central to the epistemological project, but since, as I explain, the intellectual virtues aren’t required for knowledge, this might suggest that they have only a marginal role to play in epistemological debates. I argue against this suggestion by showing how the intellectual virtues are in fact crucial to several core (and inter-related) epistemological topics, including the nature of inquiry, epistemic axiology and our understanding of ignorance.

Epistemological messages in a modeling‐based elementary science classroom compared with a traditional classroom

AbstractThis study aimed to explore what kinds of epistemological messages were conveyed through teacher discourse in modeling‐based and traditional elementary science classrooms and how teachers framed the two classrooms distinctively through these messages. Data came from two sixth‐grade teachers' science classrooms—one characterized as a modeling‐based classroom and the other as a traditional classroom. Video recordings of science lessons in the two classrooms were analyzed as the main data source. Epistemological messages from within the teacher discourse in the two classrooms were identified, and different ways of the teachers' epistemological framing by these messages were inferred. As a result, we identified a constellation of epistemological messages corresponding to a variety of epistemological themes and categories communicated by the teacher in the modeling‐based classroom. This constellation indicated the teacher's framing of the modeling‐based classroom as supportive of students' construction of knowledge through engagement in the scientific practice of modeling. By contrast, in the traditional science classroom, epistemological messages served the teacher's framing of the classroom as a place for learning correct knowledge by recording and memorizing the information transferred via the teacher and the textbook. The findings suggest that epistemological messages can be used as a conceptual and instructional tool to analyze and shape epistemic aspects of science classrooms and that rational authority on scientific practices of modeling can be an important characteristic of a modeling‐based science classroom that sets it apart from a traditional classroom.

IDENTIFYING CONCEPTIONS OF THE COVALENT BOND: AN ANALYSIS FROM A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

The covalent bond is a classical topic in science education because it is fundamental to a considerable number of other concepts and by its ability to interpret several chemical phenomena. However, the process of learning this concept presents some difficulties discussed here. This article brings together the conceptions related to the covalent bond, identified, and reported from other studies, to find similarities and to organize what is known about the topic in epistemological themes. In this paper, it was conducted a systematic review using 3 databases, reaching more than 200 reports, and classified 253 sentences of misconceptions in 7 epistemological themes. The main contribution of this article is the classification of misconceptions into themes, which enables teachers and researchers to easily identify a topic considering its complexity. This review shows different misconceptions over the same topic, how misinterpretations can appear over all the models and theories related to the covalent bond, heterogeneity of school levels with the same misconception and mixing of theoretical foundations. Finally, we claim that the knowledge of this wide sight can be especially important to further lesson/unity planning, studies, and understanding of how to make a better transition between one topic to another.

A Knowledge-First Account of Group Knowledge

The aim of this paper is to relate two trending topics in contemporary epistemology: the discussion of group knowledge and the discussion of knowledge-first approach. In social epistemology no one has seriously applied and developed Williamson’s theory of knowledge-first approach to the case of group knowledge yet. For example, scholars of group knowledge typically assume that knowledge is analyzed in terms of more basic concepts, such as group belief or acceptance, group justification, and so on. However, if Williamson’s theory of knowledge is correct, these are not good analyzes for understanding group knowledge. For, in such framework, knowledge is not analyzed in terms of belief and justification, and the same should apply to group knowledge. Thus, we propose to analyze which consequences Williamson’s theory has for social epistemology, namely for an understanding of group knowledge. The questions that will guide this article are the following: What is a knowledge-first approach to group knowledge? And what does a knowledge-first approach teach us with regard to one of the most pressing issues of social epistemology, namely the dispute between summativists and non-summativists accounts of groups? We claim that a knowledge-first account of group knowledge can be offered and that it favors non-summativism.

Intellectual Virtue and the Epistemological Nature of Medical Evidence

This article examines the problem of defining the epistemological nature of evidence in modern medicine through its two interrelated aspects — bias in the collection of data in randomized controlled trials and personal bias of the physician — which form part of the general bias problem in various professional fields. This problem is widely discussed today in the medical community, in which there is no unanimity in understanding what grounds for making the correct clinical decision are considered decisive — randomized controlled trials or the doctor's own clinical experience. In this article, it is interpreted from the point of view of the modern epistemology of virtues, which makes it possible to raise the question of the doctor's responsibility not from the position of professional deontological morality, but from the point of view of intellectual virtue. The virtuous nature of the medical profession lies in the ability of the subject to make responsible clinical decisions in the course of the cognitive process and to find the optimal balance between standardized protocols for diagnosis, prevention and treatment and their own clinical experience, which makes an individualized approach to each individual medical history possible. A standardized approach requires the “grafting” of the hermeneutic experience expressed in a general theory of understanding and interpretation. Against the background of a decrease in the level of social trust in the medical community, the substantiation of individualizing standardization as a methodologically productive way of integrating various cognitive practices is intended to help overcome the limiting abstraction of the epistemological subject in the classical epistemology of medicine and to recognize the productive-heuristic role of the doctor as a subject of cognition.

On the safety and danger of ‘viral’ information from the perspective of the epistemological subject

Abstract The present paper addresses the formal perspective of information with the focus on ‘untrue’ information presented as dangerous. Grounded in perspectivism, the epistemic subject is understood as decisive in informational transfer. In this context, ethics should focus on how the epistemic subject receives information. Regarding wide-spread information, the notions of danger and safety, the latter being a reaction to the former, essentially result from the fear mechanism of affective neural systems in higher mammals. The practice of attaining safety by eliminating danger is analyzed through the Nietzschean metaphor of the Apollonian and the Dionysian and the concept of ressentiment. Focusing on the individual, the paper presents a critique of systemized authoritative management of speech content, intensified by the emergence of social media. It is asserted that, by reacting to danger through the systematization of prevention and regulation of speech, it not only affirms fear but also decreases the faculties of an individual to deal with danger and fear itself. The paper argues that the only way to overcome danger and fear is through the individual’s exposure to it, which allows for the strengthening of one’s faculties, thus fulfilling one’s potential in freedom.

Service model of science, or to the question of changing the status of science in society

Transformation of society to the post-industrial stage of development and the formation of a consumer society has significantly changed the status of science, which is reflected in the culture of postmodernism. The pre-existing status of science in the modern culture was based on its role as a basic epistemological subject producing true knowledge. The new status of science follows from the role of science in the service sector and the understanding of science as one of the subjects of this sphere, which was enshrined in the concept of «service science». The emegence of service science is due to a number of reasons: the increasing high cost of scientific research and the limited sources of state funding, the transfer of a number of scientific organizations to self-financing, etc. The phenomenon of service science has become a reality. Modern philosophy of science and, in particular, social epistemology, which focuses on both the advantages of service science and its negative features, is engaged in its comprehension. On the one hand, service science accelerates the development of scientific knowledge, redistributes functions between scientific organizations in order to speed up calculations, reduce costs, etc. On the other hand, the transformation to service science has led to a decline in the authority of science as an independent social institution, a decrease in its importance as a public domain, and the relationship «customer/consumer of services-service provider» is now dominant in the field of scientific activity, which makes science dependent on the customer (in particular, in the choice of research topics, etc.). This is dangerous in the sense that research and development begins to focus on the immediate demand, which, in the end, hides the desire of the customer to get a big profit here and now. At the same time, service science is, although predominant, but still only a part of modern science. However, the further development of science implies an increasing immersion in the service sector, which is already evident in the development of technoscience.

Prospective primary teachers’ views on the nature of science

This article presents the results of a piece of research that analyzed the views on the nature of science (NOS) among student teachers enrolled in programs of Primary Education at two public universities in Spain. Previous studies have reported that science teachers maintain ‘eclectic’ epistemological perspectives on science; in this article, we test if such a hypothesis holds when teachers’ NOS ideas are ‘anchored’ in specific periods and topics of the philosophy of science. We studied 114 prospective teachers attending an undergraduate teaching course with emphasis on the natural sciences at the Universities of Burgos and Valladolid in the period of 2017-18. A Likert-scale questionnaire with 50 items was applied to determine trends in those teachers’ epistemological views on science. The results showed that teachers’ views are mostly correlated with the philosophical period of Logical Positivism/Received View, and to some extent to the period of Recent and Contemporary Accounts. Regarding the classical epistemological topics of correspondence, methodologies, intervention, evolution and representation, teachers’ views could be related to the period of Logical Positivism/Received View and Critical Rationalism, but also to the New Philosophy of Science. The main conclusion of this study is that teachers’ expressed views on NOS are epistemologically eclectic to a much smaller degree when examined with more detail concerning specific periods and topics of the philosophy of science.

Seeking Eccentricity

This Sociology and Technoscience monograph extends conversations and uses of eccentricity as a methodological tool for doing research within the field of feminist and gender studies. The search for eccentricity responds to the editors’ interest in reflecting on and engaging with different methodological approaches which help deviate from canonical established patterns of research onto unusual and provocative ways of doing research differently. In this collection we have gathered contributions dealing with the analysis of technologies of gender, sexuality and bodies to propose new ways to defocus, dislocate or blur the split between subjects and objects of study. In sum, with this monograph we intend to contribute to gender approaches to science by exploring "eccentrically" the ways feminist and gender scholars think and research otherwise.
 Feminist modes of knowledge and doing research have traditionally been excluded from academic discourses or denied the merits of their own specificity due to the constitution of the notion of “women” as a sexual differentiated subject. “Women”, as epistemological subject, has been trapped between the unrepresented or unrepresentable due to the articulation of what Michel Foucault calls “technologies of sex” - that is, mechanisms, apparatuses and discourses (legal, pedagogical, medical, demographic, religious or economic) that regulate sexuality. Following the Foucaultian concept, Teresa De Lauretis (1987) coins the concept of “technologies of gender” to move away from the idea of gender as sexual difference towards its comprehension as a political tool instead. Technologies are hence understood as inseparable from their sociocultural milieus and the semiotic apparatuses which produce women and men, assigning an identity and a position to each individual within the social group.

The main cultural approaches in the interpretation of the immortality phenomenon. Scientifi c and methodological materials in the "Cultural Studies" training program

The article demonstrates that one of the most important and original forms of embodying the issue of death and immortality is a myth, the core of which, regardless of the territorial location of the state, was the act of sacrifice and the interrelated principle of retribution. It is the myth that introduces the epistemological subject to the constructs of reality, not relying on abstract concepts and logical reasoning, but guided by visual poetized images and sensory associations. The article reveals the issue of immortality as a mythologem and as a scientific problem of many cultural concepts.

Proof in Mathematics Education, 1980-2020: An Overview

This paper looks at the evolution of ideas on the role of proof in mathematics education from 1980 to 2020, examining in particular the contributions of both theoretical and empirical research to the teaching of mathematical proof. In so doing, it describes some of the major epistemological themes that emerged in the last forty years, primarily in the philosophy of mathematics and in mathematical education, and informed both the mathematics curriculum and research in mathematics education. The paper also discusses selected research studies that shed light on the opportunities and limitations students face when they engage in proof. Finally, it describes briefly a number of developments in proof technology and the potential of automated theorem provers for enhancing the teaching of proof.