Explanatory Principle Research Articles

Teaching with Intentionality: Language Educators as Transformative Intellectuals and Reflective Practitioners

The fall 2022 issue of GATESOL Journal provides its readers with insights into how language educators could create meaningful learning experiences for their students. The papers are connected with the core idea that language educators are vested in intentionally using pedagogical approaches that could have an impact on how and what students are learning. The papers position language educators as both transformative intellectuals (i.e., educators who strive not only for educational advancement but also personal transformation) and reflective practitioners (i.e., problem-solvers possessing “the ability to look back critically and imaginatively, to do cause-effect thinking, to derive explanatory principles, to do task analysis, also to look forward, and to do anticipatory planning” [Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 10]). This issue will showcase teachers’ intentions through their roles as transformative intellectuals and reflective practitioners.

Visual stream connectivity predicts assessments of image quality.

Despite extensive study of early vision, new and unexpected mechanisms continue to be identified. We introduce a novel formal treatment of the psychophysics of image similarity, derived directly from straightforward connectivity patterns in early visual pathways. The resulting differential geometry formulation is shown to provide accurate and explanatory accounts of human perceptual similarity judgments. The direct formal predictions are then shown to be further improved via simple regression on human behavioral reports, which in turn are used to construct more elaborate hypothesized neural connectivity patterns. It is shown that the predictive approaches introduced here outperform a standard successful published measure of perceived image fidelity; moreover, the approach provides clear explanatory principles of these similarity findings.

Practical rationality as a determinant of formality in communicative situations: toward a procedure for causal interpretation in qualitative communication research

Abstract This article develops an updated version of formality as an analytical framework in the comparative study of communicative situations, and especially of meetings. The discussion remakes Judith Irvine’s formality framework by adding to it the explanatory principle of practical rationality as used within Weber’s Interpretive Sociology. This conceptual move provides an efficient and accurate means by which to infer the final causes, reasons, or ends of communicative situations. To illustrate this analytical approach and how it can contribute to qualitative theorization in general, the article conducts an in-depth ethnographic and comparative examination of civic software production meetings in Israel and the United States. The overall argument of the article is that practical rationality can provide a valuable means for deepening explanations of cultural difference in qualitative communication research.

Ambedkar, Buddhism, and Post-secularism: Inner Life, Politics, and Subalternity

The work of B. R. Ambedkar has spurred scholars and experts to rethink traditional assessments of both the secularization process and the relationship between religious and secular domains. Two generations ago, Ambedkar evoked conversion to Navayana Buddhism as an alternative to hierarchically ordered caste-based society. Through his landmark essay The Buddha and His Dhamma, he questioned studies on Dalit communities that saw them as trying to define their inner life solely as either a negative or mirror image of the standards set by caste-based norms. In the effort to retrieve the autonomy of the Dalit subject, Ambedkar brought to the forefront of his work that conversion was not simply opposition to the power structure of caste society but also meant to overthrow the false ideals that had historically distorted and degraded the Dalit self. The paper addresses some of the methodological questions in political philosophy and historiography that arise in Ambedkar’s thought regarding the analytical categories related to conversion. It begins with a provocation in its juxtaposition of categories from two different discourses: “subalternity” as a relational position in conceptualizing power and “post-secularism” as persistence or resurgence of religious beliefs or practices in the present. It then turns to examine the concept of “subalternity” to show whether it is a relevant lens to understand Dalit subjectivity and agency today. The paper argues that Ambedkar views conversion as a historical process turning away from a status of subalternity, or practices of exclusions, towards becoming individuals with agency, potentially full members of a political community. It also critically examines Ambedkar’s interpretation of Buddhist ethics as an intervention in the analysis of subalternity, showing that the religious ideology of dharma structures the caste order based on discrimination and exclusion. While displacing the explanatory principle of ritual hierarchy that unites Hindu society, Ambedkar addresses the egalitarian imaginary of modern politics that gives us an account of action based on democratic contest and resistance. The paper also explains why the move from Hinduism to Buddhist ethics by Ambedkar can, I argue, be constitutive of a post-secular ethic. Emotion and knowledge are not separate in Ambedkar’s social epistemology, but they draw heavily on the social transformation and importance of religion in people’s inner lives, which went along with conversion.

Hamilton's rule: A non-causal explanation?

The explanatory power of Hamilton's rule, the main explanatory principle of social evolution theory, is an ongoing subject of controversy. In this paper, we reinforce the case for the considerable value of the regression-based version of the rule in explaining the evolution of social traits. Although we agree that the rule can have an organizing role in social evolution research, we maintain that it does not explain in virtue of citing causes or providing an organizing framework. Instead, we argue it either provides an explanation by constraint or a non-causal counterfactual explanation.

The The Bride Machine: Duchamp’s Theory of Art Revisited

It is a commonplace in certain areas of art theory and contemporary art practices to consider Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades as ordinary objects, which have an artistic value that depends more on a theoretical or institutional framework than on an aesthetic experience. The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the historical emergence of these artifacts on the light of the impact of the industrial production in avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century. Discussing Walter Benjamin’ s and Jean Brun’s, it argues that Duchamp’s practice has an explanatory principle, both in the mechanical reproduction of the work of art and in the aestheticization of the machine. On the other hand, it brings forward some observations regarding Duchamp’s insight on the “total lack of good or bad taste” and the perceptual dimension of a sculptural object as the Large Glass, coming back to Arthur Danto’s interpretation of ready-mades and to the notion of “implementation” introduced by Nelson Goodman to define “the process of bringing about the aesthetic functioning that provides the basis for the notion of a work of art”.

Social Division of Labour as an Explanatory Principle and as a Foundation for Legitimation

The article presents results of the analysis of the conceptions and uses of the social division of labour by the statistical classification schemes and by the social sciences. The general hypothesis pursued is that the social division of labour is used as an explanatory principle and as a basis for legitimation of the social structures. These uses encompass both the current statistical classification schemes and the social sciences involved. In addition to the introduction, a second item discusses the origins and meanings of the social division of labour for the social sciences and its relations with theoretical problems such as the multidimensionality of social structures. Next, the synthesis of the conception and uses of the social division of labour by the main statistical classification schemes in vogue is presented. The high degree of redundancy of statistical classifications is exposed below, particularly with regard to occupations and status in employment. The categories of managers are particularly examined as the main empirical reference. The next item presents the results of the examination of the overlapping of categories linked management with the condition of the employer and the overvaluation of the amount of schooling. Finally, the last item discusses general issues related to the uses of the social division of labour and its limits and relationships with theoretical foundations of the social sciences.

К проблеме смыслового строения сознания

In the article, the authors consider the methodological origins and foundations of psychological science. They point out the impossibility of a mechanical transfer of the paradigm and explanatory principles of natural science to the field of psychology, in which such an approach inevitably leads to a methodological dead end. A person becomes part of a deterministic relationship, losing their most important trait — their freedom. Lev Vygotsky proposed an approach that offers a path beyond this outdated methodology. In the cultural-historical approach, the central concept of psychology is the category of personality, while consciousness serves as the subject of study. However, Vygotsky interpretats consciousness in a significantly different way than it had been in psychology before him. He writes about the systemic and semantic structure of consciousness and it is this aspect that is primary for Vygotsky. The authors consider the works of Lev Vygotsky’s closest disciples and associates in this context. In these works, the problem of consciousness and the relationship between sense and meaning is solved in a manner different from traditional psychology. A meaning is always a generalization. Consciousness operates these generalizations. In this article, the authors discuss the problems of theoretical and empirical generalization in the works of Vasily Davydov. The authors conclude that the solution to the problem of generalization, as proposed by Davydov, leads away from the scientific tradition initiated by the works of Lev Vygotsky and his followers.

LOUIS ALTHUSSER’S CRITIQUE OF THE POLITICAL THEORY

The article analyzes various projects of hybridization of materialism and political theory in one conceptual system. Special attention is paid to the critical analysis of the phenomenon of economic materialism of the nineteenth century, which for a long time remained the only example of a materialistic analysis of politics. The subsequent development of materialism that became a new limit of economic determinism, put new problems in the context of the capabilities of materialistic policy. The author proposes to follow the argument of the French philosopher Louis Althusser as a philosophy of aleatory materialism created by the thinker himself, including to substantiate the variations of materialistic understanding of the political. The article consistently disassembled the prerequisites for the crisis of the Marxist economic interpretation of history, which, at the original stage of its own formation, had extremely few common with philosophical materialism. The further struggle of new materialists with the idea of a universal explanatory principle ultimately allowed them to create a new type of philosophical knowledge that is not related to the idea of universal history. The focus in this case is chained to the political aspect of Althusser's Materialism regarding the theory of conjuncture as a genuine object of any materialistic politics. Finally, the author compares aleatory materialism with a number of other directions of post-modern materialistic ontology, whose representatives direct their own criticism towards the anthropological component of the political theory, which, however, leads to the denial of this discipline in principle. Thus, it is Althuserianism that in couple with Schmitterism, are the only examples of a successful project to create a materialistic theory of politics.

Toward a unified account of nonsymbolic and symbolic representations of number: Insights from a combined psychophysical-computational approach.

There is an ongoing, vibrant debate about whether numerical information in both nonsymbolic and symbolic notations would be supported by different neurocognitive systems or rather by a common preverbal approximate number system, which is ratio dependent and follows Weber's law. Here, we propose that the similarities between nonsymbolic and symbolic number processing can be explained based on the principle of efficient coding. To probe this hypothesis we employed a new empirical approach, by predicting the behavioural performance in number comparison tasks with symbolic (i.e., number words) and nonsymbolic (i.e., arrays of dots) information not only from numerical ratio, but for the first time also from natural language data. That is, we used data extracted from vector-space models that are informative about the distributional pattern of number-words usage in natural language. Results showed that linguistic estimates predicted the behavioural performance in both symbolic and nonsymbolic tasks. However, and critically, our results also showed a task-dependent dissociation: linguistic data better predicted the performance in the symbolic task, whereas real numerical ratio better predicted the performance in the nonsymbolic task. These findings indicate that efficient coding of environmental regularities is an explanatory principle of human behavior in tasks involving numerical information. They also suggest that the ability to discriminate a stimulus from similar ones varies as a function of the specific statistical structure of the considered learning environment.

A semantic and pragmatic explanation of harmony

ABSTRACT This paper introduces a semantically and pragmatically oriented typological generalisation, which is named the orientation principle. It entails that the position of connectives, as defined as a single lexical category including adpositions and conjunctions, provides an explanatory principle for a number of harmonic correlations in crosslinguistic data. A reanalysis of the data guided by this insight is proposed as an alternative to processing approaches.

Еще раз о зоне ближайшего развития

The article presents an analysis of L.S. Vygotsky’s concept of a zone of proximal development (ZPD); considers various ZPD definitions; provides a critical review of the most popular definition of ZPD as adopted from L.S. Vygotsky’s 1935 work and used as basic by English-speaking authors. Taking into account the fact that L.S. Vygotsky’s general methodological intention was to establish psychology as a practice and that his developmental theory as well as the ZPD concept development remained incomplete due to the known life circumstances, we analyze L.S. Vygotsky’s writings that allow for another ZPD conceptualization, which differs from the one implied by the 1935 definition, so as to attempt at reconstructing the concept. In reviewing L.S. Vygotsky’s assumptions regarding the learning-development relationship; ZPD; its relevance for diagnostic assessment and teaching; feasibility of extrapolating the ZPD concept onto different personality aspects, the authors identify substantive aspects of the ZPD concept that the "canonical" definition lacks. The article describes a multidimensional model of ZPD, which has taken shape within the Reflection-Activity Approach to assisting students with overcoming learning difficulties and which integrates Vygotsky's key ZPD-related ideas. E.G. Yudin’s conceptualization of methodological functions of conceptual schemes is used to reconstruct the methodological status of the ZPD concept. The authors demonstrate that, since its inception, the ZPD concept has passed through the stages of an explanatory principle, a research subject, and a methodological tool for constructing new subjects of research and development.

Metaphilosophy and Argument: The Case of the Justification of Abduction

This paper is an essay on metaphilosophy that reviews, describes, categorises, and discusses different ways philosophers have approached the justification of abduction as a mode of reasoning and arguing. Advocating an argumentative approach to abduction, I model the philosophical debate over its justification as the critical assessment of a warrant-establishing argument allowing “H explains D” to be used as a reason for “H can be inferred from D.” Philosophers have discussed the conditions under which such kind of generic argument can be accepted, and I identify five kinds of such conditions, namely: a) dialectical/procedural restriction; b) claim restriction; c) restriction over acceptable explanatory principles; d) balancing restriction; and e) epistemic restriction.

Memahami Keputusan Meninggalkan Zona Nyaman Karyawan “X” BUMN

Background – Leadership and organizational culture is one of the keys for someone deciding to leave or maintain their work comfort zone. BUMN companies are taken in this case because of the social fact that these companies are able to provide adequate compensation and even tend to be abundant. However, whether these social facts are in line with the facts in the field will be the focus of this study to reveal these things that are juxtaposed with organizational culture and leadership in it. Purpose – This study aims to obtain an empirical picture in the field in order to find the justification for someone leaving the comfort zone of BUMN. Design / Methodology / Approach – This research uses explanatory principles by digging up information related to the decision to leave the comfort zone of BUMN, an interesting phenomenon in which BUMN employees are known to receive better compensation than other companies and have secured prestigious positions in the company but choose to leave. The selected subjects are BUMN executive employees who choose to leave their positions before entering retirement. Result and Discussion – The results of this study reveal an interesting fact where respect for company executives is a very important thing that must be given by the CEO/ President Director and if there is any neglect of this, the risk faced is the loss of potential employees. Other findings may be that further study is the best option to reduce work stress. Conclusion – Organizational culture factors that are too dynamic have a positive influence on leaving the comfort zone of work. Researh Limitations – This study uses a limited subject, therefore the picture described follows the limitations of the number of subjects taken.

Neo-Kantianism, Darwinism, and the limits of historical explanation

ABSTRACT This paper looks at the neo-Kantian response to Darwinism as a historical science. I distinguish four responses to this aspect of Darwin’s thought from within the neo-Kantian tradition. The first line of response, represented by August Stadler and Bruno Bauch, views Darwin’s model of historical explanation as a fulfilment of Kant’s criteria of scientific intelligibility. The second, represented by Otto Liebmann, regards historical explanation as intrinsically limited, because it cannot tell us why nature develops as it does. The third line of response questions whether we can give a historical account of qualitative change. Friedrich Lange expresses this scepticism in general terms, while Alois Riehl and Ernst Cassirer extend it to human beings specifically. A fourth line of response, represented by Heinrich Rickert, challenges the misperception that Darwinian explanatory principles such as natural selection have normative or socio-political significance.

Inhabiting Identities: On the Elusive Quality of Indigenous Identity in Mexico

AbstractThis article explores the volatility of indigenous identity, not as inconsistency or exception but as its central explanatory principle. This research is based on ethnographic and historical examples from Mexico and Latin America. Despite general recognition that “identities are contextual,” I show that it is still relevant to dismantle the ontological register associated with identifications, whose philosophical underpinnings might be traced back to Aristotle's theory of classification. As an alternative, I develop an analytical model centered on the elusiveness of identities, based in Ernst Cassirer's theory of classification, for whom classifying means momentarily stabilizing incessantly mobile content. I also draw on theories of ethnicity and in an intellectual history framework to propose three dimensions in which the volatility of identifications can be captured: meanings, configurations, and experiences. I conclude by discussing some of the political consequences of adopting this interpretive model.

Theory Construction Methodology: A Practical Framework for Building Theories in Psychology

This article aims to improve theory formation in psychology by developing a practical methodology for constructing explanatory theories: theory construction methodology (TCM). TCM is a sequence of five steps. First, the theorist identifies a domain of empirical phenomena that becomes the target of explanation. Second, the theorist constructs a prototheory, a set of theoretical principles that putatively explain these phenomena. Third, the prototheory is used to construct a formal model, a set of model equations that encode explanatory principles. Fourth, the theorist investigates the explanatory adequacy of the model by formalizing its empirical phenomena and assessing whether it indeed reproduces these phenomena. Fifth, the theorist studies the overall adequacy of the theory by evaluating whether the identified phenomena are indeed reproduced faithfully and whether the explanatory principles are sufficiently parsimonious and substantively plausible. We explain TCM with an example taken from research on intelligence (the mutualism model of intelligence), in which key elements of the method have been successfully implemented. We discuss the place of TCM in the larger scheme of scientific research and propose an outline for a university curriculum that can systematically educate psychologists in the process of theory formation.

The Ontology Of Biomedical Rationality: A System Of Scientific Foundations And Reflection (Aspects Of Material And Informational Reality Paradigm)

In the context of general philosophical knowledge, a comprehensive reference concept of biomedical rationality has been formulated for the first time in the present article. The concept is close in meaning to digitalization, but differs from a methodological perspective. In the system of scientific foundations, it is presented as a core notion in the characterization of human ontos and as notion reflecting the multidisciplinary ideas about the values of the existing technological order. The phenomenon of reflection is considered as a gnoseological basis, an explanatory principle, a condition for a renewed style of rational thinking in the modern scientific paradigm. From the connective tissue individuality, the causality of processes in the living and the foundation of biorationality as the intersection of reality are modeled. The evaluative and parametric analysis of the phenomenon based on the generalization of new neuroscience data shows the theoretical and methodological prospects of this understanding within the framework of the substrate and attributive approaches. The operational nature of the concept of reflection and its components - vector, efficiency, intensity - are introduced into the system of personality traits as performing a predictive role on the way to truth, including medical truth. The involvement of the patient's personality as a component of the 5-PSM model of medicine as the most developing sector of science means the vision of reflection as an instrumental-significant resource in the objectification of information. In the context of post-non-classical science, deployed to the paradigm of the integrity of information-material reality, reflection in the medical worldview provides the focus of attention on the essence of the disease and the patient's personality in diagnostics.

Hierarchical forms of inequality in reality: in search of regularities and problems of explanation

The paper is devoted to the problems of study of environmental systems, especially to geographic systems. There is a strong focus on a search for regularities in the differentiation of real systems and on a discussion of possible explanatory principles of these regularities. Above all, there is a summary of the results of the research focused in this way at the socio-geographic centre of the Faculty of Science of Charles University. The research is based on the ideas and empirical generalizations of Jaromír Korčák. Eighty years have already passed since Professor Korčák published his study about two basic types of arrangement of mass phenomena in reality: a relative homogeneity of generic systems of elements on the one hand and asymmetric (hierarchical) differentiation of environmental systems on the other.

Умеренный фундаментализм в феноменологии Гуссерля

The article deals with the problem of knowledge justification in Husserl's phenomenology. The author of the article shows that, in the matter of justification of knowledge, Husserl's phenomenology does not fully meet the requirements of either foundationalism or coherentism. The fundamentalist way of reasoning assumes the presence of basic beliefs, from which all inference beliefs are derived. One of the most paradigmatic examples of foundationalism is the Cartesian “cogito ergo sum”, and it is this kind of justification that is present in phenomenology. However, the Cartesian method of justification is accepted by Husserl in a truncated form: the ego is the source of apodictic evidence, but it cannot guarantee the adequacy of subsequent conclusions. In this regard, the author of the article comes to the conclusion that Husserl is a moderate foundationalist in the matter of knowledge justification. In search of an explanatory principle for such a position, a hypothesis is expressed about the asymmetry between epistemological and ontological approaches to the interpretation of the ego's experience in Husserl's phenomenology. A non-epistemic understanding of the ego's experience presupposes the recognition of the obviousness of the existence of the ego as a thinking instance, while an epistemic understanding concerns all peripheral superstructures of the ego, which, in fact, are inferential knowledge from the basic belief given by the formulation cogito ergo sum. The presence of these restrictions forced Dagfinn Follesdahl to qualify Husserl's phenomenology as a kind of coherentism. The author of the article objects to this, believing that phenomenology cannot be considered either as a form of coherentism or as a form of (strong) foundationalism. Based on William Alston's thesis on the combination of epistemic and non-epistemic beliefs in a rethought type of foundationalism and on the works of LLaurence BonJour, the author of the article comes to the conclusion that Husserl's phenomenology should be understood as moderate foundationalism. The specificity of phenomenology -its appeal to the experience of the transcendental ego - leads to the fact that the pre-predicative structures of consciousness become the criterion of validity as such. Thus, moderate foundationalism in phenomenology boils down to the fact that Husserl recognized the undoubted evidence of the non-epistemic experience of the ego experience and, on the other hand, saw the possibility of correcting epistemic beliefs that do not affect the fundamental nature of the non-derivative basis.