Epistemological Work Research Articles

I.M. Sechenov (1829 – 1905) and the Scientific Self-understanding for Medical Sciences

There is no discussion about the historic relevance of I. Sechenov for physiology and neurosciences as the “father of Russian modern physiology”. But he is relevant for modern natural science too because of his basic epistemological and ontological work. He did not accept the up to now basic paradigm of “Ignorabimus” which can be seen as the reason to exclude even the generalizable aspects of individuality, creativity and spontaneity from natural science. He developed techniques for empirical based science to deal with materialistic and idealistic aspects of the comprehensive person the “ignoramus” according to the actual stay of knowledge and the acceptable ontologies. He demonstrated that ontologies (“paradigms”) can be used as tools according to the given problem which should be solved. So Sechenov can be seen as a precursor of the so efficient philosophical positions of Einstein and Th. Kuhn. The stay of the art in physiology and neurosciences changed since the time of Sechenov dramatically. Therefore the philosophical positions of the 19th century should be discussed. Maybe this is indispensable for the needed linkage between materialistic and idealistic aspects of a person. For this the proposals of Sechenov are helpful up to now but nearly unknown. There is no discussion about the historic relevance of I. Sechenov as the “father of Russian physiology.” But he is relevant for modern natural science too because of his epistemological and ontological work. He did not accept the up to now basic paradigm of “Ignorabimus” that can be seen as the reason to exclude even the generalizable aspects of individuality, creativity, and spontaneity from natural science. He demonstrated that ontologies (“paradigms”) and epistemology can be used as tools according to the given problem. So Sechenov can be seen as a precursor of the so efficient philosophical positions of Einstein and Th. Kuhn. The state of the art changed dramatically. Therefore, the philosophical positions of the nineteenth century should be questioned. Maybe this is indispensable for the needed link between materialistic and idealistic aspects of a person as a whole. In this respect the proposals of Sechenov are helpful for medical science in the twenty-first century too but nearly unknown.

Política, planejamento e gestão em saúde: balanço do estado da arte

This work provides a literature review of Policy, Planning and Health Management between 1974 and 2005. Information is presented from previous research and publications, incorporating the production contained within the LILACS database from the last five years. The emergence of studies in these sub-themes is described in an attempt to associate them with political circumstances, with particular emphasis on: the Sanitary Reform Process, the construction of the National Health System and the reorientation of health practices. The particularities of the production in this field are discussed and the need for historical and epistemological work in Brazil is emphasized. The practical challenges impose techno-scientific expertise and, primarily, socio-political militancy on individual and collective subjects.

Meeting Asian/Arab American Studies: Thinking Race, Empire, and Zionism in the U.S.

Meeting Asian/Arab American StudiesThinking Race, Empire, and Zionism in the U.S. Sunaina Maira (bio) and Magid Shihade (bio) I am the witness of the massacre I am the victim of the map I am the son of simple words . . . —Mahmoud Darwish, from "Poem of the Land"1 Speak, your lips still have their liberty Speak, still yours is the spoken word . . . Speak, for the truth is alive even now Speak, say all you wish you had said. —Faiz Ahmed Faiz, from "Speak" (1941)2 Why link Asian and Arab American Studies? Why should we speak of Arab American studies in Asian American studies, or have a conversation in ethnic studies about points of convergence and divergence between these two areas? Is it in order to recognize an emerging ethnic studies field in the U.S., with all the limitations that a politics of recognition based on multiculturalism entails? Is it to extend a comparative ethnic studies approach that is increasingly transforming Asian American studies while raising questions about the definition of ethnic and racial boundaries? In our view, the answer is all of these, but much more. We argue here that speaking of Arab and Asian [End Page 117] American studies in the same breath is ultimately valuable because it illuminates a broader and more urgent issue: the need to develop a fuller analysis of U.S. empire. The meeting of Asian American and Arab American studies has been increasingly highlighted in discussions after 9/11 as it has become apparent that Asian American—particularly South Asian—and Arab American communities as well as Muslim Americans more generally, have similar experiences as targets in the "war on terrorism" waged by the United States. The question of how to produce intellectual and political knowledge to respond to the everyday crisis of empire is urgent at this particular moment, but we want to point out that it has always been so—the conjuncture between Asian/Arab American studies helps to situate U.S. empire in a much longer historical trajectory that links movements in, and out of, Asia and the Middle East. Imperial power operates by obscuring the links between homeland projects of racial subordination and minority co-optation and overseas strategies of economic restructuring and political domination. This link between the domestic and global fronts of empire can be exposed only if we expand our frame of analysis to consider the ways in which categories of subjects such as "Asian American" and "Arab American" are positioned in relation to U.S. empire. Ethnic studies has focused in large part on documenting, understanding, and challenging the construction of ethnic and racial boundaries as they intersect with other axes of domination, such as gender, sexuality, and class, within the nation. However, there has also been a movement in Asian American studies to acknowledge the transnational dimensions of Asian communities and histories, on the one hand, and the paradoxes and pitfalls of a multiculturalist identity politics, on the other. So the meeting of Arab/Asian American studies highlights the question of borders, and the political and epistemological work of boundaries in shaping our understanding of power and resistance. It helps us to locate the issue of ethnic and racial borders within the larger frame of U.S. empire, and to understand that the question facing Asian American studies today is how to intellectually and institutionally confront imperial, not just national or ethnic, politics. This has always been the challenge for ethnic studies, which has often remained confined within a national frame. [End Page 118] The purpose of linking Asian and Arab American studies is not to colonize Arab American studies within an ever-expanding rubric of pan-Asian ethnicity, but to do the opposite: to challenge the ever-expanding borders of an imperial project that operates through direct as well as proxy wars, neo-colonial occupation, and client states. Ultimately, it is for Arab Americanists themselves to decide where they want to be situated in the academy and how Arab American studies should be introduced into the curriculum. Research on Arab Americans is growing and gaining more academic recognition through new faculty hires and programs, though it continues to occur in...

John Locke's Morality of War

This article outlines Locke's theory of war as found in his political writings and seeks to redress a perceived imbalance in John Locke's morality of war. Locke's strident rejection of any sense of proportionality in warfare against unjust aggression, as read in the Second Treatise of Government, has to be tempered with his general philosophical programme against extremism of any sort. Arguably, Locke's war ethic when read alone is strict, objective, and emphatic, but when compared with his epistemological work, its righteousness is reduced to extreme circumstances.

Dying to Know: Scientific Epistemology and Narrative in Victorian England by George Levine (review)

MLR, 99.4, 2004 1035 to half-empty houses a month later. She stages, on 27 January 1820, her magnificent eightieth-birthday 'Fete', with guests invited 'from all Parts ofthe World' (p. 266), fortunate to have timed it fortwo days before the death of George III and a prolonged period of national mourning. In short, as she writes to her lifelong correspondent, the Reverend Leonard Chappelow, 'Bath does formey(p. 68). But the old lady had one more trick to play, one more tempest to see through, and, like her marriage to Piozzi so many years earlier, it brought public scandal and exile from the society she cherished. It also involved a man, William Augustus Conway, the celebrated young actor, some fifty years her junior. 'Once more Good Night; Your Letter shall be seen by no Eyes but mine, and minister to no one's Happiness but my own' (p. 362), she concludes one letter to him. As their intimacy becomes more public, disfavour grows. 'An Account of disagreeables by Letter is disagreeable in itself?Anonymous Correspondents are best neglected I suppose?though I do not neglect their Advice and rough Admonitions, for I do retirefrom the World, well convinced of its Worthlessness and Deceit' (pp. 395-97), she tells Sir James Fellows. For her exile she chooses 'dull Penzance' (p. 431) or,as she puts itto Penelope Pennington, 'Old Ocean?Can ought else completely wash away all Recollection of Bath parties}' (p. 385), returning only to stay in Cliftonin March 1821. She died in early May, as exuberant and sociable as ever, and just as engaging in her correspondence. This sixth vo? lume of the Piozzi letters completes both a life and a vivid and biased account of a long stretch of English social history. The achievement is immense, the edition invaluable. University of Northumbria Allan Ingram Dying to Know: Scientific Epistemology and Narrative in Victorian England. By George Levine. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. 2002. xi + 326pp. $45; ?3i-5o. ISBN 0-226-47536-0. An epigraph from Pater quoting Plato introduces George Levine's work on the story of epistemology in science and narrative: 'AU who rightly touch philosophy, study nothing else than to die, and to be dead' (p. 1). From Descartes to Karl Pearson, moving between at least three disciplines over four centuries, a scholar of redoubtable learning attempts to trace the protean embodiment of what he argues is in essence a quest narrative, seeking truth at the cost of self: dying to know. This is a formidable enterprise, in both scope and complexity. Few readers could hope to equal the author in reading over such diverse fields. Yet the subject precisely challenges assumptions about knowledge and authority: privileges scepticism, and requires a hard-won sense of personal conviction as a condition of acceptance. It invites questioning to the li? mits of competence, even if the whole outstretches that capacity. I ask about novels, realism, and narrative technique, and must learn about certain aspects of philosophy, science, and statistics. At every stage the argument encounters and works through paradox. 'Descartes's epistemological work [. . .] is first articulated in a narrative, and a narrative that [. . .] attempts to make narrative unnecessary' (p. 19). His and other scientists' au? tobiographies 'gather their power from their very failures' (p. 103); indeed, 'The self-annihilation in the ideal of scientific epistemology becomes a kind of ceremony of resurrection [. . .] the plain style becomes rhetorical after all.' Most striking and disturbingis the disparity between lively minds and their stark self-abnegation. 'Galton 's seems a memoir by the dead' (p. 115). Einstein's AutobigraphicalNotes (quoted p. 8) demand rhetorically,' "Is this supposed to be an obituary?" the astonished reader will likely ask. I would like to reply,essentially, yes.' While Bacon and Descartes are theoretically at odds, their narratives agree in that 'Each affirmsthe presence of contingency even while each argues the possibility of 1036 Reviews the unconditional' (p. 23), for 'Such stories are commonplaces of Western cultural inheritance' (p. 24), moving between 'purity and materiality', seeking how to know. It is narrative itself, and metaphor within narrative, a procedure and its tools, that Levine repeatedly identifies as the means by...

On the status of logic in Piaget

This article analyses the way in which Piaget links the analogy between the child and the primitive with a theory of the history of the sciences, that is, it analyses Piaget's version of Haeckel's principle in which ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis. From this analysis, we reconstitute the operations through which Piaget forms and expresses his conception of logic. In other words, we attempt to reconstruct the characteristic space of Piaget's non‐objectivated choices and positions that determines the conception of logic operative in his scientific and epistemological work.

Articulating Life's Memory: U.S. Medical Rhetoric about Abortion in the Nineteenth Century (review)

Reviewed by: Articulating Life’s Memory: U.S. Medical Rhetoric about Abortion in the Nineteenth Century Lynda Koemm and Mary M. Lay Articulating Life’s Memory: U.S. Medical Rhetoric about Abortion in the Nineteenth Century. By Nathan Stormer. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2002; pp xi + 233. $70.00 cloth; $22.95 paper. Do women have a cultural duty to propagate? Is the body free from ideology at its time of birth, or are all bodies born into a cultural ideology that preexists the [End Page 250] individual body? According to Nathan Stormer, the seemingly contradictory assumptions that bodies are free of ideology at birth and that women have a reproductive cultural responsibility dominated early antiabortion discourse in the United States. Although individual and spatial rights of mother versus fetus are valid in any discussion of current abortion arguments, when identifying the origins of cultural influences or practices, finding the root is imperative. In Articulating Life's Memories, Stormer identifies the cultural nexus of antiabortion rhetoric in America. The questions that assisted his understanding of this nexus are "how knowledge of abortion was produced, how the space of its debate was formed, and the materiality of the bodies involved" (xii). Stormer's stated goal is "to understand better why we have an impasse" in the current abortion debate by learning the history of the rhetoric surrounding the debate (xi). He offers then a "not-so-humanistic" approach but looks instead at the rhetoric of practices rather than people (xii). After surveying hundreds of medical journals and texts from the nineteenth century, Stormer attempts what Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak calls a "misreading"—a reading against conventions to discover "what other rhetorical work is being done that we are failing to notice" (xv; emphasis in original, xi). Stormer is interested in a rhetorical analysis of the texts and their performative aspects rather than in their persuasive function. He also makes his own political position clear in the beginning of his text: "I think the final outcome of a pregnancy belongs in the hands of potential mothers as embryos go about becoming" (3), a bold but necessary move for such an investigation. Stormer is successful in presenting a fair and thorough account of the early abortion debate, going beyond landmark works on this period by Leslie Reagan and James Mohr. Stormer offers a rhetorical analysis of the political, material, and spatial origins involved in the formation and maintenance of a cultural memory of antiabortion discourse. He identifies the genre in which he writes as a "feminist critical history of medical practice as rhetoric" (xiv). He covers not only the texts that directly inform his argument but also includes, for example, information on the culture of modesty that limited the physical examination of women, the entrance of women into the medical profession, the focus by physicians first on the uterus and then on the ovaries, and the attempt by physicians to curtail midwifery practice. He astutely weaves his many examples from medical professionals, politicians, and citizens so as to illuminate the spectrum of influences from which the current abortion debate has evolved, rather than relying solely on a preliminary literature review. Stormer's argument is sophisticated and ambitious as he eloquently marries medical texts and rhetorical theory to illustrate how medical discourses of the enlightenment, resulting from rituals of exposure, create and perpetuate antiabortion sentiment through the Neoplatonic processes of hypomnesis and anamnesis, resulting in a collective cultural memory. The eloquence of his style is exemplified by such statements as: "The moment the body gains a cultural purpose, it becomes rhetorical. When it gains a [End Page 251] destiny, it becomes a source of memory" (41). Stormer does not over-teach the rhetorical theory that provides a foundation for his analysis. He challenges the reader to learn the necessary rhetorical terms and tools but does so in clearly articulated statements, such as his definition of memory: "Treating truth-seeking as rhetorical, I consider memory as the capacity for a certain kind of epistemological work that etches the present in the likeness of experiences, places, events, things, and people of a refigured knowledge" (42). The reader then traces with Stormer the messages reflected in medical...

Psychiatrists Urged to Embrace Patient-Safety Movement

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Professional NewsFull AccessPsychiatrists Urged to Embrace Patient-Safety MovementBenjamin C. Grasso, M.D.Benjamin C. GrassoSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:7 May 2004https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.39.9.0008Like other clinicians, I work to know and care for my patients and to avoid causing harm. Part of psychiatry is finding evidence for the success or failure of our efforts and determining whether the evidence is sound. This part—being a good epistemologist—is one of the hardest in medicine. We also hypothesize on the causes for clinical improvement, stasis, or decline. Amid this epistemological work, we also call forth empathy for our patients’ lives in their worlds and for their experiences as patients.My father taught me much about empathy, especially while he was a patient. An Italian immigrant and gifted physician, two years of prison camp during World War II left him susceptible to later illness. Medical frailty eventually rendered him disabled and homebound his last 14 years.I learned patient safety firsthand as our family shepherded my father through dozens of hospitalizations. He was often helped but sometimes (inadvertently) harmed, and he often received compassion but sometimes indifference or rudeness, until his death many years ago.Five years ago I became a state psychiatric hospital’s medical director. One hat I wore was that of chair of the pharmacy and therapeutics committee. I’d blithely pass out data gathered by pharmacy and nursing staff, including the hospital’s medication error rate. For the nearly 40,000 monthly medications administered to patients, we would average 12 errors. Not too bad for a much-maligned state hospital!After a while, the pharmacy director determined it was safe to express less-laudatory observations. I found we were sloppy epistemologists—medication errors (all self-reported, as in most hospitals) were never independently assessed for accuracy. Yet staff feared punishment for reporting their mistakes or others’, and administration did not protest low error rates, so self-reporting seemed suspect.In seeking more valid data, we found 2,194 medication errors versus the nine errors staff had reported for the same patients and episodes of care. I began to wonder how exposed our patients were to medication errors.Then I discovered that a patient safety movement had been spawned 20 years ago when mortality rates from anesthesia caused a spike in liability premiums. The mortality rate has been reduced from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 200,000 (1). Brennan, Leape, Bates, and others in the Harvard Medical Practice Study later broke ground in medical error studies in the early 1990s (2,3).Reports emerged of seemingly implausible patient death rates caused by errors. In its 1999 landmark report, the Institute of Medicine concluded that 44,000 to 98,000 persons die each year from medical errors (4). Harvard’s Lucian Leape argued that 180,000 people die each year as a result of treatment-induced injuries—the equivalent of three jumbo-jet crashes every two days. I became a proponent of the Institute of Medicine’s “10 Rules for Change,” enumerated in “Crossing the Quality Chasm,” especially the rule of transparency (5).Like-minded colleagues and I created a patient safety institute in Maine (6) and a Web-based data collection system that allows staff from all U.S. hospitals to report medication errors and adverse drug reactions anonymously and to rate their hospital’s work culture regarding transparency, quality, and safety (7).Today I’m still a full-time clinician. But the reports of widespread patient dissatisfaction and of many patients inadvertently harmed gnaw at me.I think psychiatry should welcome the patient safety movement. Let’s consider the Institute of Medicine’s “10 Rules for Change” vis-à-vis psychiatry and ensure that our work is included in reports such as “Crossing the Quality Chasm” (5). APA’s efforts at pushing payers to value more highly our patients’ clinical needs and to reward clinicians for practicing good psychiatry deserve our support, as does APA’s Committee on Patient Safety. Fear of unjust malpractice litigation that deters adopting transparency must be allayed, perhaps partly by linking increased transparency with tort reform.In the end, we remain well advised (although not in our Hippocratic Oath) by Hippocrates: “Above all [first] do no harm.” ▪Benjamin C. Grasso, M.D., is a member of APA's Committee on Patient Safety, guest editor of the patient safety series in Psychiatric Services, and medical director of the Institute for Self-Directed Care and of Saferating.com. He is in private practice in Portland, Maine. ISSUES NewArchived

The Redemptive Instant: Bachelard on the Epistemological and Existential Value of Surprise

The notion of redemption was first used by Bachelard when developing his conception of time and consciousness in L'Intuition de l'instant (1932), as he engaged in a polemic with Bergson.1 He used it again two years later in "Idealisme discursif" when reflecting on human being.2 This essay will examine what lies behind this notion and also its consequences, in particular in relation to surprise. It will argue that Bachelard's idea of the redemptive instant is bound up with his epistemology and central to his conception of human existence. At first glance, the idea of redemption formulated by a philosopher of science might well seem suspect, best played down for the sake of academic respectability. If though we conquer our discomfort, we shall find in this idea a guiding thread into important aspects of Bachelard's thinking. He refers to redemption a number of times towards the end of L'Intuition de l'instant, perhaps most strikingly in the following lines: "The full force of time is condensed in the innovatory instant when, by the pool of Siloam, our eyes are opened at the touch of a divine redeemer" (95).3 There is a curious movement here from definition to story. The phrase "the innovatory instant" clearly sums up Bachelard's conception of discontinuous time: why then does he add the story? The context of this book provides the key. L'Intuition de l'instant is ostensibly a study of a work by his friend and colleague Gaston Roupnel, entitled Siloe, hence the reference to Siloam.4 It is not however meant to be an objective study, as Bachelard makes clear in his introduction, in which he refers to his "deformations" of Roupnel's arguments (8), arguments he uses-or bends-in developing his own theory of time against Bergson. Thus, he explicitly takes the idea of redemption from Roupnel, for whom Art-with a capital A-is the way of redemption, redeeming being by creating it, by renewing language, perception, emotion, spirit, and surprise (97-98). At the root of this redemption, Bachelard says, is the instant, the Roupnelian instant being what he terms "an intensity of consciousness," intense because it is the synthesis of contradictory emotions (99). Bachelard holds on to this notion of the redemptive instant, transforming it however, and with it the associated ideas of consciousness and being. For him, it is not art but reason that is redemptive; it is consequently in terms of reason that time, consciousness, and being must be understood. Given that reason, or more precisely the nature of reason in twentieth-century science had preoccupied Bachelard's epistemological work prior to L'Intuition de l'instant, this metaphysical-and metaphorical-turn may well seem baffling.5 I wish to argue however that it is a function of his epistemology, and more specifically of his ideas of rectification and approximate knowledge. In his first work, his Essai sur la connaissance approchee (1928), Bachelard rejects deductive, a priori reason and with it idealism because these can neither explain "the continual movement, the continual progress of scientific knowledge" nor account for "the fundamental incompleteness of knowledge" that he regards as "an epistemological postulate" (13).6 In his attempt to understand how reason works in modern science, we note his emphasis on "the undeniable existence of error," error that "by its very nature cannot be eliminated," so constituting "one of the strongest objections to idealism" and obliging us "to make do with approximations" (13). This notion of ineradicable error is important in Bachelard's thought, underlying the conception he develops here of the interdependence of reason and reality, a conception he will later dramatize by the metaphor of redemption. Why though insist on error when surely accuracy is the aim of science? The answer lies, I suggest, in Bachelard's ideas of newness and surprise. The word "surprise"-etonnement-is used just once in this book, but tellingly.7 Referring to microphysics, Bachelard declares that "The infinitely small is the geometric centre of our surprise. …

Wrong Numbers: The Endless Fiction of Auster and Deleuze and Guattari and …

It was a wrong number that started it. —Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy One ought, probably, to make a start for oneself, but I think that on this point Jeffrey T. Nealon says it best The detective novel is often analyzed in terms of its metafictional and metaphysical appeal. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the genre comments upon the process of sifting through signs, and ultimately upon the possibility of deriving order from the seeming chaos of conflicting clues and motives. The unravelling work of the detective within the story mirrors and assists the work of the reader, as both try to piece together the disparate signs that might eventually solve the mystery. The reader of the detective novel comes metafictionally to identify with the detective, as both reader and detective are bound up in the metaphysical or epistemological work of interpretation, the work of reading clues and writing a solution or end. (91-92)

Politics, Philosophy, Writing: Plato's Art of Caring for Souls. Edited by Zdravko Planinc. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001. 261p. $19.95

The edited volume Politics, Philosophy, Writing attempts to contribute to the reinterpretation of Plato's dialogues by clarifying some issues they addressed. In each chapter the author attempts to expand on specific mystical, poetic, or political themes in individual dialogues that have not previously received enough treatment. For example, Leon Craig elaborates on the politic elements of Plato's Meno, a dialogue usually considered a primarily epistemological work. This reinterpretation of Plato tries to overcome some of the recent misuse of Plato by modern and postmodern thinkers that has resulted in Plato being reduced to “a footnote in the works of other philosophers” (p. 1). The authors of Politics, Philosophy, Writing succeed in raising some interesting issues in the dialogues and refuting several prevalent misconceptions as they detail Plato's attention to caring for souls.

Veritistic Value and the Project of Social Epistemology

Until the late twentieth century social epistemology was a neglected subject. Alvin Goldman was one of the first epistemologists to recognize its importance, and, in a series of essays, he provided a conception of how social epistemology should be pursued and applied that conception to particular cases. Knowledge in a Social World develops the conception more systematically, and considers a broad range of social practices. The scope of Goldman's discussion and the characteristic clarity with which he approaches the issues make this book the first classic in the field. Throughout Goldman's epistemological work there is an emphasis on understanding the ways in which processes of belief-formation promote the acquisition of true beliefs. Yet, as he recognizes, not all truths are worth our belief. Any assessment of belief-forming processes should be sensitive to the differential worth of true beliefs. Noting that some truths are important to us because they enable us to reach practical goals, while others have intrinsic significance, he introduces a notion of (87 ff.). This enables a crisp formulation of the project: social epistemology seeks to assess not only the practices currently employed by people and communities, but to inquire whether there might be better practices to replace those currently in use. (91) There are three points here that seem to me important and correct: first, the emphasis on truth, second the differentiation of kinds of truth, and third, the consequentialist focus on appraising practices and specifically on trying to improve the status quo. My principal concern about Goldman's treatment is that, so far as I can see, his notion of veritistic value is inadequate to the task he sets himself. In what follows, I'll try to explain why this is so and also to make clear why the project of meliorative social epistemology is so difficult. Veritistic value (V-value in his shorthand) is relativized to agents. If an agent is totally uninterested in certain questions, then the agent's lack of any belief with respect to those questions doesn't imply that his belief state has low V-Value. Intuitively, if I don't care how many people have walked

Prospects for a Naturalization of Practical Reason: Humean Instrumentalism and the Normative Authority of Desire

This is an age of naturalization projects. Much epistemological work has been done toward naturalizing theoretical reason. One might view Hume as seeking to naturalize reason in both the theoretical (roughly, epistemological) and the practical realms. I suggest that whatever else underlies the vitality of Hume's instrumentalism - encapsulated in his view that 'reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions' - one incentive is the hope of naturalizing practical reason. This paper explores some broadly Humean versions of instrumentalism that are among the most plausible contenders to represent instrumentalism as a contemporary naturalistic position. It first offers a taxonomy of reasons for action and, in that light, formulates a plausible version of instrumentalism. It then raises difficulties for the view, some of them concerning the nature of desire. It also develops an epistemologically significant comparison of desires with beliefs. Given the magnitude of the difficulties, it outlines an alternative account of practical reason.

The flesh of all that is: Merleau-Ponty, Irigaray, and Julian’s ‘showings’

Julian of Norwich (b. 1342) anticipated the ontological and epistemological work on sexed embodiment pioneered in the work of Merleau-Ponty and Irigaray in the 20th century. Her epistemology of sensual ‘showings’ helped reconfigure women’s embodiment and speech acts (‘bodytalk’): by recognizing cognitive emotions and the knowledge-producing body; and by envisioning the intertwining of human flesh with All That Is. The paper next examines Merleau-Ponty’s somatic discourse on the chiasmic flesh, which leads to a discussion of Irigaray’s work on poetic mimesis.

A Weberian Theory of Time

This article formulates a Weberian general theory of time. The theory is Weberian, in the sense that it is drawn from Weber's epistemological and sociological work. After a short presentation of Weber's epistemological writings, concerning how social scientists may investigate present and past events, and a brief digression on Husserl's possible influence on Weber, it focuses on Weber's sociological analysis of time in interactional and social contexts, and especially - on the interactions between formal and informal contexts. A unitary theoretical framework is then developed and analyzed in the light of classical and contemporary sociological work, concerning time as a social construction and a social constraint.

Knowledge in Humans and Other Animals

What is the proper subject matter of epistemology? On one traditional view, it is, inter alia, our concept of knowledge, and the work of epistemology begins with an analysis of that concept. This view of epistemology's subject matter has much to recommend it, and it is very widely held, not only by many traditional epistemologists, but by some naturalists as well.l In this paper, however, I explore an alternative view. I suggest that the subject matter of epistemology is not our concept of knowledge, but knowledge itself. I suggest that knowledge should be viewed as a natural phenomenon and that it should be investigated in just the way in which we investigate other natural phenomena. Indeed, I suggest that we should view knowledge as a natural kind.2 Now I recognize that many will see this last suggestion as utterly absurd. Some, of course, are unsympathetic with the very idea of natural kinds. But even among those who are perfectly comfortable with the idea that there are real kinds in nature, many find the idea that knowledge should be one of those kinds to be particularly implausible. Are we to believe that knowledge, like water, has some sort of microstructure which makes it what it is? And if we reject the idea that there is a microstructure to knowledge as we should, of course then what is there in the world to determine the boundaries of the kind? It is the apparent absurdity of such questions which makes even those who are hostile to social constructivist accounts of almost anything sympathetic with the idea that knowledge itself might be a social construct. Knowledge certainly does not seem to be at all like any of the paradigmatic examples of natural kinds.3 Nevertheless, I will argue that the view that knowledge is a natural kind has

Cultural intertexts and scientific rationality: the case of pregnancy ultrasound

The text begins a line of dialogue between feminist and epistemological work in the life sciences using a case study of the concepts ‘foetus’ and ‘baby’ in diagnostic ultrasound and parental discourse. The case material illustrates the multiple, coexisting registers of clinical discourse and the significance of cultural intertexts, the insertion within biomedical discourse of concepts from other cultural domains. It follows that biomedical rationality lacks the autonomy that Canguilhem argued it has; rather than giving itself its own laws, biomedical rationality is heteronomous, receiving and using cultural intertexts from many and varied domains.

A New interpretation of Michael Polanyi's theory of tacit knowing: Integrative philosophy with ‘Intellectual Passions’

According to my interpretation, based on the entirety of Michael Polanyi's epistemological works, his theory of tacit knowing is conceived of as three models tied together by the central feature of Intellectual Passions as integrator. The models are progressively refined forms of his first conception of tacit knowing: ‘we know more than we can tell’. The three models are: the Gestalt-Perception Model based on the gestalt notion of part-whole relations, the Action-Guiding Model incorporating the phenomenological-existential notion of intentional action, and the Semiotic Model, an abstract conception of action directed to meaning showing that tacit knowing has a ‘from-to structure’ (from subsidiary awareness to focal awareness). In the Semiotic Model integration is named by the logical term ‘inference’. Polanyi's conception of reality and his theory of truth are introduced linked to the models, to show why his epistemology is not subjectivist and his theory of truth is not relativist.

Why does semantics matter to the study of religion?

Beware of meaning! Meaning is not an entity. It does not refer to anything. This essay is an attempt to describe Donald Davidson's theory of semantics. It took Davidson some time to realize that his conditional theory of meaning entailed a radical repudiation of traditional correspondence and coherence theories of meaning. We now have a third theoretical alternative in semantics. In this theory truth is left undefined. It is essential that you grasp firmly the fact that does not refer, or, connect-up anything that makes a sentence true. That is the work of epistemology, or perhaps psycho-neurology. The first theoretical task, therefore, is to describe truth, or meaning, as convention-T. The second principle, the principle of charity, provides an explanation for testing the theory. The third principle, the principle of holism, provides the theoretical framework for truth-conditions and charity. The theory provides new and powerful refutations of relativism and the notion that semantics must be reduced to the function of the brain, sensations, specific stimuli, and the like. It also provides warrants for denying that religion is symbolic of experience of the numinous, the sacred, or other given foundations of what might be described as religious experience. Davidson's theory has important, if not radical, consequences for the study of religion. The essay briefly describes a few of these.

Why does semantics matter to the study of religion?

AbstractBeware of meaning! Meaning is not an entity. It does not refer to anything. This essay is an attempt to describe Donald Davidson's theory of semantics. It took Davidson some time to realize that his truth conditional theory of meaning entailed a radical repudiation of traditional correspondence and coherence theories of meaning. We now have a third theoretical alternative in semantics. In this theory "truth" is left undefined. It is essential that you grasp firmly the fact that truth does not refer, or, "connect-up" anything that makes a sentence true. That is the work of epistemology, or perhaps psycho-neurology. The first theoretical task, therefore, is to describe truth, or meaning, as "convention-T". The second principle, the principle of charity, provides an explanation for testing the theory. The third principle, the principle of holism, provides the theoretical framework for truth-conditions and charity. The theory provides new and powerful refutations of relativism and the notion that semantics must be reduced to the function of the brain, sensations, specific stimuli, and the like. It also provides warrants for denying that religion is "symbolic" of experience of the numinous, the sacred, or other "given" foundations of what might be described as "religious experience". Davidson's theory has important, if not radical, consequences for the study of religion. The essay briefly describes a few of these.