Epistemological Limitations Research Articles

Is palaeoanthropology being built on scientific foundations?

The comparative method in palaeoanthropology has been predominant over the hypothesis-testing scientific method. Multiple interpretations over the same phenomena commonly co-exist given the relaxation of demarcation criteria. The contingent nature of non-reproducible phenomena in palaeoanthropology and the epistemological limits of the comparative method for addressing structural and more systematic palaeobiological processes have made it difficult to discern the extent to which palaeoanthropology is guided by scientific protocols. The imprint of corporative and neo-liberal policies in academia has found in essentially non-experimental disciplines a good field in which academic dynamics are ruled by patronizing networks of academic elites that produce and maintain trends, paradigms that do not need to be subjected to heuristics, research agendas frequently with specific political content, and control of the discourse of the past. Foucault argued that such a power-implanted structure is not intentional but emergent at the institutional level. This translates into a palaeoanthropological praxis that thrives on fact-collecting, and which produces interpretations that cannot be checked against any demarcation boundary to test their heuristics. This is reflected in the fact that paradigms may emerge and disappear in palaeoanthropology without need to confront them with their empirical content. Some examples are presented that justify this assertion

The Tension Between Buddhism and Science Within Contemporary Chinese Buddhists: A Case Study on the Religious Conversion Narrative Among Monastics in Larung Gar Buddhist Academy

This article delves into the perception of monastics from Larung Gar Buddhist Academy of Western China concerning the intertwining relationship between Buddhism and science, along with the impact of this perception on their worldview and life trajectory. Many monastics at Larung Gar Buddhist Academy initially held a high regard for science, dismissing Buddhism as superstition. However, upon gaining a comprehensive understanding of Buddhism through various opportunities, they came to believe that certain tenets of Buddhism are compatible with science, even suggesting that Buddhism could address some of the methodological and epistemological limitations of science and offer solutions to some issues that science is unable to resolve. This ultimately led them to embrace Buddhism and renounce worldly life. This study employs a case study to investigate the understanding of the relationship between Buddhism and science amongst the general public in contemporary China, an area underexplored by previous scholarship that predominantly concentrated on the philosophical scrutiny of the apologetic discourses towards the reconciliation between Buddhism and science of influential Buddhist ascetics and lay practitioners. Also, this study endeavors to demonstrate that despite the ongoing secularization of contemporary Chinese Buddhism in the “public sphere”, within the “private sphere” of Chinese Buddhism, there remain individuals who are pursuing the religious, sacred, and transcendental dimensions of Buddhism.

Barriers to diffusion and implementation of pediatric minimally invasive surgery in Brazil

BackgroundThe main barriers to the broad implementation of pediatric minimally invasive surgery (MIS) are technological, technical, and epistemological barriers, as well as the rarity of certain pathologies. These issues are presumed to be more significant in low- and middle-income countries. This study aimed to identify and analyze the factors limiting the diffusion and implementation of pediatric MIS in Brazil.MethodsA nationwide cross-sectional survey was conducted via an online questionnaire in Brazil from January 2022 to July 2022. The sample was taken by convenience from the population of pediatric surgeons in Brazil. A total of 187 surgeons were included. The collected data were divided into three sections to evaluate technological, technical, and epistemological limitations to pediatric MIS implementation.ResultsAlthough 85% of the participants had previous training, a lack of adequate training was identified as a significant limiting factor, particularly among those who had taken only short courses (42.3% vs. 64.3%, p = 0.033). Only 14% of the participants reported performing MIS for major pediatric procedures. With respect to intracorporeal suturing, 38.1% of the surgeons with extensive training considered it a limiting factor compared with 60.7% (p = 0.029) of those without prior training. Among those without previous training, 61% cited a lack of financial support or encouragement from their department as the reason. Additionally, 65% of the surgeons considered the lack of basic instruments a limiting factor. Although 95% of the participants agreed that simulation training is indispensable, pediatric surgery fellowship programs in Brazil do not include a standardized curriculum or mandatory training in MIS, and only 47% reported providing training space for their current fellows.ConclusionA combination of technological, technical, and epistemological barriers hinders the implementation of pediatric MIS. Despite its limitations, this study serves as a foundational guide for future analysis and overcoming the identified barriers.

On formal limitations of causal ecological networks.

Causal multivariate time-series analysis, combined with network theory, provide a powerful tool for studying complex ecological interactions. However, these methods have limitations often underestimated when used in graphical modelling of ecological systems. In this opinion article, I examine the relationship between formal logic methods used to describe causal networks and their inherent statistical and epistemological limitations. I argue that while these methods offer valuable insights, they are restricted by axiomatic assumptions, statistical constraints and the incompleteness of our knowledge. To prove that, I first consider causal networks as formal systems, define causality and formalize their axioms in terms of modal logic and use ecological counterexamples to question the axioms. I also highlight the statistical limitations when using multivariate time-series analysis and Granger causality to develop ecological networks, including the potential for spurious correlations among other data characteristics. Finally, I draw upon Gödel's incompleteness theorems to highlight the inherent limits of fully understanding complex networks as formal systems and conclude that causal ecological networks are subject to initial rules and data characteristics and, as any formal system, will never fully capture the intricate complexities of the systems they represent. This article is part of the theme issue 'Connected interactions: enriching food web research by spatial and social interactions'.

Reflexive anthropology: On the method-guided construction of premises in social theory

The notion of reflexive anthropology follows Bourdieu's concept of reflexive sociology. It argues that it is necessary to take a reflexive look at the “unconscious” of sociological research in order to overcome epistemological limitations. At the same time, however, Bourdieu fails to identify scientific research practice as part of a differentiated society that is structurally dependent on the cult of the individual (Durkheim). Therefore reflexive sociology needs to be complemented by a reflexive anthropology that analyzes the human person and its normative special status as an institution of a horizontally differentiated society. This leads to the question that I explore in this article: what follows from the fact that the anthropological premises of sociological research affirm the anthropological conception of modern sociation? The fact that sociology reproduces the anthropological certainties of modern society has been repeatedly criticized. Based on these arguments, I present a critical procedure that allows us to work out whether and to what extent the general conceptual presuppositions of research reproduce modern anthropocentrism. Finally, I outline a social theory that makes it possible to render the modern self-conception an object of study.

John Rechy and the Novel of Opportunity

ABSTRACT This article argues that the career of queer Mexican American author John Rechy has been shaped by the epistemological limits of twentieth-century publishing—that is, what presses will and will not print. Because his early efforts to publish as an intersectional subject met continual rejection, Rechy leaned into the “sexual outlaw” reputation curated for him by Grove Press. Thus, the critical reception surrounding Rechy failed to acknowledge his status as a Latino author and Chicano subject until the mid-1980s. By comparing Rechy’s first, long-unpublished novel Pablo! to The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gómez, his first novel to be explicitly marketed as Latinx, this article suggests that the horizon of publishable Latinidad has structured his legacy as an artist. Rechy’s career in publishing echoes his larger status as hustler and “sexual outlaw” in that he deployed publishers’ sensationalist characterizations of his identity against them, playing up different aspects of his marginalized subjectivity at opportune moments.

Intersubjectivity as an analytical concept to study human-animal interaction in historical context: street dogs in Late Ottoman period.

Human knowledge pertaining to human-animal interaction is constructed by the human author, albeit the presence of animal subjects. Such a human lens is pronounced when studying human-animal interactions across history, whose nonhuman animal subjects are not only absent, and therefore eliminating the possibility of conducting empirical studies in situ, but also their experiences are filtered by the interpretative lens of human authors of extant historical accounts as well as contemporary human analysts who interpret these accounts. This article draws upon such epistemological limitations of understanding nonhuman animal presence in historical accounts and offers human-animal intersubjectivity as an analytical concept, involving generative iterability and indistinctive boundaries that emphasise intersubjective openness and relationality, to trace and disclose the continuity of human-animal co-existence. The article's historical scope is the Late Ottoman period characterised by a sense of temporal and spatial disorientation and reorientation for humans as well as street dogs during its modernisation processes.

"To See With Eyes Unclouded": Nonhuman Selves and Semiosis in "Princess Mononoke"

Responding to a robust archive of ecocritical work on science fiction, this paper argues for fantasy as a genre that can offer powerful tools for ecological thinking. Focusing on Miyazaki Hayao’s 1997 film Princess Mononoke, I argue that fantasy’s portrayal of an animistic natural world provides a framework for recognizing and respecting the subjectivity of nonhuman persons. Drawing on Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s concept of multinatural personhood, this paper analyzes the ways in which animistic fantasy allows Miyazaki to portray plants, animals, and other nonhumans as agential subjects that must be respected. Further, using Eduardo Kohn’s work on the materiality of semiosis to examine instances of cross-species communication in Princess Mononoke, I argue that the film’s expanded conceptions of personhood and language counter anthropocentric narratives of mastery by portraying human knowledge as necessarily limited and incomplete. In turn, the acknowledgement of epistemological limits encourages an ethical attitude which resonates with Michael Marder’s description of plant-thinking as a mode that acknowledges the importance of the unknown and the unknowable. Ultimately, this paper calls for a consideration of how modes of thought and aesthetic representation that have traditionally fallen outside the purview of the scientific can offer resources for imagining human-nonhuman relations.

Testimonial justification under epistemic conflict of interest

Can a hearer be rationally justified to have beliefs based on testimony alone when the source of his information is known to have conflicting epistemic goals? When it comes to belief justification, existing theories either recommend avoiding epistemic conflicts of interest or ignoring them. This is an important epistemological limitation. A theory that comes in degrees, capable of explaining what beliefs we are justified to hold and why, despite epistemic conflict of interest, is still lacking. Building on a game-theoretical approach, I suggest such a theory and argue that the hearer can justify some beliefs on testimony alone. This justification relies on an equilibrium concept, which is only reached in the long run. In addition, the hearer’s justified beliefs will always be less accurate than those held by the original source. For instance, assume the speaker is a climate scientist who has good reasons to believe that a 2∘\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$^{\\circ }$$\\end{document}C increase in temperature will lower the current global GDP by 10 percentage points. Under epistemic conflict of interest, a hearer will typically be justified to a belief close to that value, but not equal to it. The smaller the epistemic conflict of interest, the closer, on average, the hearer’s and speaker’s belief. These results highlight the importance of scientific norms which, in practice, are the embodiment of these equilibrium mechanisms and thus of scientific credibility.

Normativity, Autonomy, and Agency: A Critical Review of Three Essays on Agency in Nature, and a Modest Proposal for the Road Ahead

Has the renewal of interest in the ostensible agency of living beings signaled an advance from a merely heuristic Kantian sense of purposiveness to an unequivocally, empirically grounded research program or are there as yet hidden tensions or contradictions in, for example, the organizational autonomy approach to natural agency? Can normativity be found to be immanent in nature but only beginning with the living cell or must a thoroughgoing naturalism find the seeds of normativity immanent throughout abiotic as well as biotic nature? Beginning with a brief exposition of Kant´s influential treatment and recommendation for how to methodologically combine what he took to be the inevitable epistemological limit to explaining the origins of ostensible biotic purposefulness with the legitimate intentions of scientific research and explanation, this essay will critically engage with three recent essays that attempt to grapple with the preceding questions. Having putatively raised questions about the consistency and adequacy of each of the individual positions, the essay will attempt to move synthetically, drawing upon aspects of all three contributions, in the direction of a “cooperativity theoretic” approach to incipient natural normativity and agency.

Occupational health nursing: Realities and challenges.

Designing and enhancing resilient occupational health and safety systems is a challenge. This fact makes it clear that occupational health professionals must be able to develop their full range of competencies. From this premise, it is appropriate to define and deepen the strengths and weaknesses of occupational health nursing (OHN), as well as to point out the opportunities and realities that address its performance. In the history of the professionalization of this speciality, different circumstances have conditioned its projection: the absence of its own body of doctrine, the lack of professional recognition, limited autonomy, and the definition of a clear regulatory framework. In addition to an epistemological limitation and the absence of clear leadership. In the consolidation of this speciality, there is a limited capacity to implement its own competencies, the invisibility of nursing care, the absence of leadership that incorporates research findings and difficulties in the application of scientific evidence, in addition to the influence of regulatory provisions and the idiosyncrasies of the company. The analysis of classical models with a transformative approach invites a more fluid and coordinated communication between occupational health, occupational risk prevention, primary care and public health, a proposal that induces collaboration and a more holistic approach to care for workers.

The Participation between Indigenous Empowerment and State Normalization

The present work starts from a social and systematic anthropological perspective with its epistemological limitations and openings with a constant analytical and methodological deconstruction within the framework of critical and reflexive practices. We will seek to understand the dynamics and implications of the normative, historical and structural relations between the State and indigenous peoples in two working spaces: the Provincial Council of Indigenous Affairs (CPAI) located in La Plata, and the comanagement in Bariloche located within the National Parks Administration (APN). Therefore, we will investigate and analyze a heterogeneous corpus that includes legal and administrative materials composed of a particular language and logic of state bureaucracy. In this context, we will observe these dynamics and tensions through the legal personality as a case of analysis of such strategic uses by indigenous people to reaffirm themselves as communities and, at the same time, this process translated into a normative “waiting” as a control mechanism. This will allow us to understand the historical, normative and structural relations with the State and participation as the main dimension of work.

A non-anthropocentric solution to the Fermi paradox

Abstract A few dozens of solutions to the Fermi paradox have been proposed in the past. The most relevant ones will be concisely discussed in this paper. They will be classified as follows: exceptionality solutions, annihilation solutions and communication barrier solutions. The argument will be advanced that all existing resolutions to the Fermi paradox are in their essence anthropocentric. The epistemological groundwork of anthropocentrism will be discussed. Conversely, in this paper, a non-anthropocentric solution to the Fermi paradox will be proposed: the ‘lasting human epistemological limitations solution’. This resolution to the Fermi paradox acknowledges that human epistemological capacities are limited to the degree that not only extraterrestrial forms of life may be unobservable to the human perceptive apparatus, but that universes may exist around humans with forms of life, inorganic matter or entities of any other type that humans are incapable of perceiving. In light of the revolutionary developments in theoretical physics, it is likely that in the future these developments will be reflected in increasingly non-anthropocentric solutions to the Fermi paradox.

ChatGPT Undermines Human Reflexivity, Scientific Responsibility and Responsible Management Research

AbstractWith ChatGPT being promoted to and by academics for writing scholarly articles more effectively, we ask what kind of knowledge does ChatGPT produce, what this means for our reflexivity as responsible management educators/researchers, and how an absence of reflexivity disqualifies us from shaping management knowledge in responsible ways. We urgently need to grasp what makes human knowledge distinct compared with knowledge generated by ChatGPT et al. Thus, we first explain how ChatGPT operates and unpack its intrinsic epistemological limitations. Using high‐probability choices that are derivative, ChatGPT has no stake in the knowledge it produces and is thus likely prone to offering irresponsible outputs. By contrast, genuine human thinking—embodied in a contingent socio‐cultural setting—uses low‐probability choices both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the box of training data, making it creative, contextual and committed. We conclude that the use of ChatGPT is wholly incompatible with scientific responsibility and responsible management.

The epistemological limitations of scientific inquiry: Crucial experiments revisited

Scientific knowledge is the outcome of research and experimentation. How this goal is to be achieved is and has been a topic of much debate over the centuries. In the 17th century, the English philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon (1561-1626) regarded science as the systematic collecting and gathering of facts. Upon this view, nature tells us what the facts are on the assumption that we learn how to listen properly to nature. We design experiments and run them, and the verdict is to nature. Thus, “crucial” experimentation is the hallmark of science. A crucial experiment is an experiment that unambiguously favours one or the other of two competing hypotheses under test, no matter the outcome.
 
 At some stage in the development of science, it was believed that such crucial experiments can be designed. However, some philosophers deny that they are possible in some domains of scientific inquiry, while others deny that they are possible in any domain of scientific inquiry. In this context, the French physicist, historian and philosopher of science Pierre Duhem (1861-1916) argued that in physics, crucial experiments are not possible. While the American philosopher W. V. Quine (1908-2000) adopted the radical view that crucial experiments are forthcoming in no domain of scientific inquiry. In the philosophy of science, these two views are joined in what came to be known the Quine-Duhem Thesis.
 
 This study examines the controversial Quine-Duhem Thesis and discusses whether, or not, it is considered a threat to the rationality of science. The fundamental features of rationality in science are to be addressed. It is concluded that the Quine-Duhem thesis does not make an epistemological point and Quinean holism does not destroy the objectivity of science.

Afro-Asian resonances: Staging the Congo Crisis in 1960s’ Chinese theatre

AbstractIn the first half of the 1960s China witnessed an unprecedented florescence of theatrical works on Third World decolonization, which aimed to disseminate the ideology of Maoist internationalism and cultivate transnational and interracial solidarity among the Chinese public. Existing scholarship on Maoist internationalist theatre tends to understand the phenomenon as the domestication of Third World decolonization for China’s political ends. This article, by focusing on the heterogeneous processes of production, adaptation, and reception, illuminates the practical and epistemological challenges of representing an internationalist subject, the imperfect performance of foreign culture and history, and the porous process of meaning-making for Chinese performers and audiences. Using previously untapped historical materials, such as performance programmes, personal recollections, and newspapers, this article explores the staging of the Congo Crisis (1960–1965)—a widely mediated international event in Maoist China and a central conflict in the global Cold War—in the spoken drama War Drums on the Equator (1965), its many local variations, and a dance drama adaptation, The Raging Congo River (1965). By mediating and enacting ‘embodied and affective knowledge’ about Congo, these theatrical works made the political motif of internationalist solidarity into sonorous and kinaesthetic artefacts that engendered plural meanings to Chinese performers and audiences. This article further reveals flawed perceptions, processes of corrections, and the epistemological limitations in the performance of the Congo Crisis in Maoist China.

Проблема вычислительной объективации рациональности в искусственных интеллектуальных агентах

The subject of the article is objectification of rationality in artificial intelligent agents (AIA). The author considers two complementary trends in its context. The first ‘bottom-up’ trend is associated with attempts to artify rational reasoning and action in AIA, the second ‘top-down’ one is associated with attempts to interpret human thinking and behavior in machine terms. The first one is limited by the lack of semantic content, personal coloring and full-fledged psychosomatic embodiment of computational processes in AIA. Hypertrophy of logical normative components in them leads to mechanistic rigidity. The second is generated by the expansion of digital technologies into real life, their active fusion, which gives rise to the ideology of computationalism, according to which people are computing agents. At the same time, the convergence of the ‘intellectualization’ of AIA and the ‘machinization’ of human is a false appearance, since there are fundamental ontological and epistemological limits. The main ontological limit: human rationality is based on socio-cultural and bio-adaptive layers of the existence of a human subject, and therefore cannot be principally reproduced in ontologically simple, techno-physical AIA. The main epistemological limit: human thinking cannot be formalized and computationally objectified, since a meaningful semantic core is primary in it, which bears the stamp of subjectivity, and is also strongly linked to layers of implicit personal knowledge and other components of consciousness. Among them a number of sub- and non-rational phenomena stand out (emotions, values, common sense, morality), which are maximally distanced from algorithmic averaging, but without interaction with them rationality remains essentially reduced. It is concluded that the computational representation and objectification of definite components of rationality in AIA is possible, but is not rational itself, since their artificial separation from the larger, human-sized part of rationality initiates a split in it.

The Rhetoric of Transparency: Telling Knowledge in Ancient Medical and Forensic Texts

Abstract: This paper investigates the role of rhetoric within ancient medicine by setting medical writings in dialogue with contemporary forensic texts. Reading across these two genres allows us to capture the shared ways in which early medical and forensic discourse mobilise rhetoric in response to the epistemological limits of medical and forensic practice. Both medical and forensic discourse frame factual and practical knowledge as the remedy to the slippages of words, but at the same time they need words to formulate and validate their tentative knowledge of those very facts. Select readings from the Epidemics illustrate the importance of a rhetorically structured narrative in response to uncertain scenarios. Much like the narrative of forensic texts, I argue, the case-histories of the Epidemics try to shape elusive realities through a rhetorical gesture that confers a precise meaning upon them. Rhetoric, the paper concludes, is not merely an embellishment nor a skill. It is, instead, a medium for the communication of knowledge and the negotiation of its limits, even in texts that at first glance seem, or claim, to be devoid of any rhetorical features.

Between the Placement Problem and the Reconciliation Problem. Philosophical Naturalism Today

Scientific naturalism—the conception according to which the natural sciences, and possibly physics alone, set the limits of ontology and epistemology—is characterized by a strong monistic tendency. For this reason, all versions of scientific naturalism face the so-called “placement problem”, which concerns the features of the ordinary view of the world that, at least prima facie, do not fit into the scientific view of the world (think of consciousness, moral properties, free will, and intentionality). To address this problem, scientific naturalists use three strategies: reductionism, eliminativism, and mysterianism—none of which, it is argued, produces satisfying results. Liberal naturalism opts instead for a pluralistic attitude in both ontology and epistemology but accepts a constraint according to which one should accept no entity or explanation that is incompatible with the scientific worldview. Liberal naturalism faces the “reconciliation problem”, which concerns the relationship between the scientific and the ordinary views of the world once one denies ontological and epistemological priority to either of them. Three strategies for addressing this problem are presented: according to the first, the ordinary worldview and the scientific world are categorically distinct; according to the second, the former emerges from the latter; according to the third, between them there is a relation of global supervenience. Other objections to liberal naturalism are finally presented and addressed.

Análisis predictivo y protencionalidad digital

What do we mean when we say that algorithms are capable of predicting what is going to happen and anticipating our actions? In the following article I will analyse the phenomena of algorithmic prediction and behavioural anticipation, explaining their convergence in contemporary techniques of predictive analytics. First, I will deal with some possible misconceptions about the predictive capacities of algorithms by delving into probability theory. Secondly, I will take Bernard Stiegler’s post-phenomenological theory of algorithmic governmentality as a model to explain their capacity for behavioural anticipation. Lastly, I will present Mark Hansen’s Whiteheadian reading of predictive analytics, in which he provides a way to understand the ontological basis of the power of these algorithmic systems and also highlight their epistemological limits. Besides the theoretical purposiveness of this account, in the conclusion I will argue that this also provides us with new tools to extend Stielger’s pharmacological project further, opening up the possibility of thinking about ways in which algorithmic prediction could be implemented towards positive outcomes.