Objectivist Epistemology Research Articles

Digital Maturity Assessment Model (DMAM): assimilation of Design Science Research (DSR) and Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)

PurposeThis study introduces the Digital Maturity Assessment Model (DMAM), a model tailored to assess the digital maturity of SMEs, tracing its development from addressing business challenges to establishing a comparative analysis framework grounded in Resource Dependence Theory (RDT).Design/methodology/approachDMAM is based on positivist philosophy and objectivist epistemology, supported by Design Science Research (DSR) and Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). The methodology involves iterative development, from problem identification to creating a practical solution for assessing SMEs' digital maturity and guiding digitalization efforts.FindingsDMAM offers a clear and specific methodology, distinguishing itself by addressing the unique needs of SMEs, particularly resource-dependent ones. The model’s development fills critical gaps in existing literature and provides a practical artifact for SMEs' digitalization.Originality/valueDMAM is original in its focus on the specific needs of resource-dependent SMEs, offering actionable recommendations and addressing shortcomings in existing models. It serves as a foundational framework for SMEs' digital transformation, making a significant contribution to the digital maturity assessment literature.

On a Corresponsive Sport Science.

In our societally extractive age, sport science risks being swept up in the intensifying desire to commodify the experiences of those that scientists proclaim to study. Coupled with the techno-digital revolution, this stems from a vertical (onto)logic that frames the sporting landscape as a static space filled with discrete objects waiting for us to capture, analyse, re-present and sell on as knowledge. Not only does this commodification degrade primary experience in the false hope of epistemological objectivity, it reinforces the unidirectionality of extractivism by setting inquirer apart from, and above of, inquiry. Here, we advocate for a different, more sentient logic grounded in the relationality of gifting as understood in indigenous philosophies. This foregrounds an ecological orientation to scholarship that sets out neither to objectify or describe that which is of concern, but to correspond with its becoming. On this, there are three threads we cast forward. First, in a corresponsive sport science, inhabitants are not objects of analysis, but lines in-becoming, who in answering to others, form knots in a meshwork. These knots constitute communal places in which inhabitants have joined with the differentiating coming-into-being of others. Second, knowledge is not authoritatively (re)cognitive, but humbly ecological; not produced vertically through imposition, but grown longitudinally in responsively moving from place to place. Third, research does not follow a vertically extractive (onto)logic, but is a practice of participant observation. This perspective appreciates that we, sport scientists, are also lines in-becoming that form parts of the knots in which we seek to know. In coda, our thesis is not a call for more qualitative or applied research in the sport sciences. It is a call to response-ably open up to that which sparks our curiosity, answering to what is shared with care, sensitivity and sincerity.

Epistemology According to Rand and Hayek

ABSTRACTAyn Rand’s Objectivist epistemology is the foundation of an impressive, comprehensive, and integrated system of political philosophy, psychology, art, and literature. Friedrich Hayek’s operational system of epistemology and his analysis of the psychology of perception (presented primarily in The Sensory Order) is not as clearly integrated with his economics and political philosophy—and many have debated their consistency with one another. This paper engages in a comparative analysis of Rand’s and Hayek’s epistemology.

Toward a Perceptual Solution to Epistemological Objections to Nonnaturalism

Stance-independent nonnaturalist moral realism is subject to two related epistemological objections. First, there is the metaethical descendant of the Benacerraf problem. Second, there are evolutionary debunking arguments. Standard attempts to solve these epistemological problems have not appealed to any particular moral epistemology. The focus on these epistemologically neutral responses leaves many interesting theoretical stones unturned. Exploring the ability of particular theories in moral epistemology to handle these difficult epistemological objections can help illuminate strengths or weaknesses within these theories themselves, as well as opening up potentially unexplored avenues for responding to deeply entrenched concerns about our epistemic access to the moral properties. In this paper, I assess the prospects of an empiricist and perceptualist model of moral knowledge for responding to epistemological arguments against non-skeptical moral realism. I argue that such a view has powerful responses to these objections that are not open to other moral epistemologists. The upshot is that if some version of the view is correct, then the realist has less to fear from Benacerraf and evolutionary debunking–style epistemological objections. Insofar as one is already a committed realist, then, this provides some indirect support for moral perceptualism.

ГЕОГРАФІЧНА ІНТЕРПРЕТАЦІЯ ТУРИСТИЧНОГО ПРОЦЕСУ

The most important tasks of geography in the context of shaping the theoretical foundations of tourism include the need to substantiate the essence of an integral epistemological object (tourist system) and identify the mechanisms of its functioning. The presence of tourist processes is the main essence of the actual existence of the tourist system. The objectively inherent conditions for the implementation of any process are as follows: the presence of an object or phenomenon, that is, the actual substance that changes or is in the process; presence of time changes; the presence of spatial connections and their geospatial localization; the geospatial and temporal orientation of object changes. The tourist system is considered as a generalized object, that is, a substance that changes or is in the process, and in the context of geographic methodology it is conceptualised as a tourist-geographic system. The mechanism of the functioning of the tourist system should be understood, first of all, as connections and relations within the system that are formed under the influence of a set of factors and subordinate to the general goal of the system. In order to clarify the essence and peculiarities of the tourist process, we substantiate the hypothesis of isomorphism of transport, transport-geographic and tourist processes, the common defining feature of which is mutual relations. Connections mean material, energy and informational exchange between geographical objects. Primarily territorial connections, namely those connections that are carried out by overcoming space, are considered. The common features of the given definitions are: first, the presence of a transportation operation in the each of them, the essence of which is the spatial (territorial) movement of people; second, both transport and tourist processes are sub-processes of the general socio-geographical process, and therefore they cause changes both in the socio-geographical system in general and in the touristic-geographical system in particular. The definition of the tourist-geographical process is proposed as a set of actions and operations that make possible geospatial connections between the elements of the tourist-geographical system. The constituent parts of this process should be considered primarily the transportation and transfer of tourists from one type of transport to another, which have a clearly defined spatial and territorial character and constitute the essence of tourism (territorial movements, travel).

Unexceptional Moral Knowledge

Abstract The article defends moral realism against epistemological objections by arguing that if there are moral truths, some of them are known. The claim that moral properties are unknowable because causally inert is shown to be ineffective: none of the main current theories of knowledge requires a causal connection, and anyway moral properties have not been shown to be causally inert. It is explained why a posteriori moral knowledge need not derive from combining a priori moral knowledge with a posteriori non-moral knowledge. The possibility of moral knowledge by perception and by testimony is briefly defended. The role of recognitional capacities for instances of moral properties is emphasized.

Truth and Affordances

The notion of living in a post-truth world compels many who speak of truth in a commonsense way to use the term “objective truth.” In various theoretical psychologies, by contrast, favor continues to be given to the affordances alleged to inhere in locally relativized psychological truths, over the epistemic violence observed in claims to objective psychological knowledge. Despite this sanguine view of epistemic relativity, it, too, has conduced to epistemic violence throughout history, resulting in the further oppression of othered peoples, by way of objectively false assertions cunningly disguised as objective truth. I analyze ways in which such typical relativist assertions as “Proposition X is true for some but not for all” creates epistemic muddles obscured by “prepositional attitudes.” Particular attention is given to ways in which (a) the “true-for” relativist/nonobjectivist epistemology that many theorists advocate depends on the non(true-for)relativist knowledge they reject, and (b) objectively false claims about othered peoples may have mislead progressively-minded scholars into believing that the cause of epistemic violence lies in an objectivist epistemology, a belief that keeps hidden from them the social-justice affordances that inhere in that very epistemology.

UNINTENTIONAL MONUMENTS, OR THE MATERIALIZING OF AN OPEN PAST

ABSTRACTThis article examines the emergence of a new epistemic value that was attributed to remnants of the past during the broad debate on historical evidence in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the unintentionality of the testimony. Beginning in the early modern period, growing awareness of the partiality of historical literacy narratives regarded as intentional testimonies as well as growing interest in nonwritten pasts have led to the consideration of other kinds of relics, which have been seen as unwitting and indirect carriers of information about the past. Material and iconographic remains, languages and oral traditions, costumes, and superstitious practices gained currency as “neutral” and “authentic” testimonies of times past. This process is accessed by analyzing the historical evidence par excellence in eighteenth‐century France: the monument as material and immaterial remains. Over the course of this period, evidence underwent impressive semantic enhancement and became a polysemic epistemological object. At the time, the term “monument” referred to an intentional mark designed for and entrusted to the future and to unwitting or involuntary evidence of the past, evidence that was later invested with historical value not originally intended by its maker. Although the nineteenth century saw the term “monument” lose its meaning as an unwitting trace of the past, what has survived is the epistemic value of an unintentionality of testimonies, albeit under other conceptual guises such as “remnants,” “witnesses in spite of themselves,” “traces,” and “clues.” What, then, is the usefulness of still imagining unintentionality today for the practice of research and for historical understanding?

Neutrality and Force in Field’s epistemological objection to platonism

ABSTRACT Field’s challenge to platonists is the challenge to explain the reliable match between mathematical truth and belief. The challenge grounds an objection claiming that platonists cannot provide such an explanation. This objection is often taken to be both neutral with respect to controversial epistemological assumptions, and a comparatively forceful objection against platonists. I argue that these two characteristics are in tension: no construal of the objection in the current literature realises both, and there are strong reasons to think that no version of Field’s epistemological objection which has both Neutrality and Force can be construed.

Current value as relational becoming: the case of goodwill impairment testing

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to shed light on the tools, processes and negotiations involved in the formation of acceptable current values in the context of goodwill impairment testing. The study raises the questions of how a current value for goodwill becomes a faithful representation and how one expectation about the future becomes more convincing than other expectations.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the study of associations, the analysis presents a case study of a large, internationally active organisation. By combining field notes, interview transcripts and a variety of documents, the qualitative analysis focusses on strategies and mechanisms of persuasion.FindingsThe findings reveal how epistemological objectivity of current values forms in three moments of relational becoming that codify, depersonalise and proceduralise the valuation task. Further, the study suggests that a convincing argument forms with the help of four enablers: a bricolage of inscriptions, methodological mystification, transformed professional identities and a practical need for closure.Originality/valueThe study contributes with an analysis and illustration of financial accounting as practice, elaborating on the meaning and construction of faithful representation in cases of measurement uncertainty.

Meaning-Making View of Extreme States

The perception of extreme states prevailing in contemporary society and mental health systems does not give justice to the transformational aspect of the process of extreme states. It generally views mental distress from the confinements of the perspective of objectivist epistemology and medicalization, disregarding its potential valuable aspects. Consequently, extreme states are reduced to biological malfunction, which renders the process meaningless and can have negative social implications. It is proposed in the article for extreme states to instead be viewed as a call to become aware of the context that the human being finds unbearable. Following this, the emphasis is put on the view of extreme states as an invitation to hold space for exploration and the potential emergence of new ways of being. The aim is not to minimize the suffering that can accompany extreme states, but to bring the meaning-making aspect of extreme states to the forefront.

Impact of Islamic Financial Literacy, Subjective Norms, Risk Perception and Perceived Behavioral Control on Adoption of Islamic Banking in Pakistan

A nation’s economic success is largely dependent on the performance of their banks as they play a major role in regulating its financial sector to stability and cohesion by acting as an intermediary to various parties such as individuals, organizations and governments to conduct their borrowing and depositing activities. In Pakistan, a larger percentage of the population is employing conventional banks compared to Islamic banks due to factors such as unfamiliarity of products and services and inadequate marketing. This study examines the impact of Islamic financial literacy, subjective norms, risk perception and perceived behavioral control on adoption of Islamic banking in Pakistan. A quantitative research approach is employed in this research following the positivist assumption with a realist ontology and objectivist epistemology. Data was collected using a convenient sampling method. The data collection was carried out from online survey Google forms through survey from 311 individuals. The data has been analyzed by using Partial Lease Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique. The result of the study reveals that behavioral, normative and IFL are significant determinants of adoption of Islamic banking in Pakistan. It has been found that behavioral beliefs are very important for Islamic banking adoption. As an implication, focusing on risk management while providing quality information to the customers towards Islamic banking products will lead to increase Adoption of Islamic banking in Pakistan.

How Data Curation Enables Epistemically Responsible Reuse of Qualitative Data

Data sharing and reuse are becoming the norm in quantitative research. At the same time, significant skepticism still accompanies the sharing and reuse of qualitative research data on both ethical and epistemological grounds. Nevertheless, there is growing interest in the reuse of qualitative data, as demonstrated by the range of contributions in this special issue. In this research note, we address epistemological critiques of reusing qualitative data and argue that careful curation of data can enable what we term “epistemologically responsible reuse” of qualitative data. We begin by briefly defining qualitative data and summarizing common epistemological objections to their shareability or usefulness for secondary analysis. We then introduce the concept of curation as enabling epistemologically responsible reuse and a potential way to address such objections. We discuss three recent trends that we believe are enhancing curatorial practices and thus expand the opportunities for responsible reuse: improvements in data management practices among researchers, the development of collaborative curation practices at repositories focused on qualitative data and technological advances that support sharing rich qualitative data. Using three examples of successful reuse of qualitative data, we illustrate the potential of these three trends to further improve the availability of reusable data projects.

Recovering Mystery: Ecological Encounters and Practical Theological Ways of Knowing

Abstract Western ways of thinking about our ecological context have too often failed to nurture meaningful relationship with it. This failure is rooted in our assumptions about what it means to know. Approaches to environmental education (including environmental education in religious communities and beyond) that rely on rationalist and objectivist epistemologies fail to adequately address the emotional and relational aspects of forming ecological character and identity. Ecological encounter, as spiritual and pedagogical practice, grounds an integrated and comprehensive way of knowing, loving, and caring for a dynamic and mysterious world, and the place of human life within it.

Women’s ‘exchange’ in Western and Amerindian societies: a feminist critique of perspectival anthropology

Over the last two decades, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro has developed the concept of ‘perspectival anthropology’ to think philosophically with and through Amerindian cosmology. In this article, I argue that the epistemological roundness of this concept is, in actuality, a by-product of philosophical reification of Amerindian cosmological dynamics. This reification stems from distortive abstractions of specific societal structures, which rely on the silencing of two key phenomena: the fact that the central or unmarked perspective assumed in ‘perspectivism’ is that of men, and the fact that the valorisation of men’s perspective is enabled by the exchange and accumulation of women. By unearthing this exchange system that lies behind the cyclical valuation of males’ gaze, I do not seek to denounce the role of actual women in Amerindian societies. My central aim is to demonstrate that both perspectival anthropology’s depiction of Amerindian cosmology and what Viveiros de Castro calls ‘Western objectivist epistemology’ are made possible by the erasure of women’s capacity for transcendence.

Becoming the temporary surgeon: A grounded theory examination of anaesthetists performing emergency front of neck access in inter-disciplinary simulation-based training.

The time-critical 'can't intubate, can't oxygenate' [CICO] emergency post-induction of anaesthesia is rare, but one which, should it occur, requires Anaesthetists to perform rapid emergency front of neck access [FONA] to the trachea, restoring oxygenation, and preventing death or brain hypoxia. The UK Difficult Airway Society [DAS] has directed all Anaesthetists to be trained with surgical cricothyroidotomy [SCT] as the primary emergency FONA method, sometimes referred to as 'Cric' as a shorthand. We present a longitudinal analysis using a classical approach to Grounded Theory methodology of ten Specialist Trainee Anaesthetists' data during a 6-month training programme delivered jointly by Anaesthetists and Surgeons. We identified with a critical realist ontology and an objectivist epistemology meaning data interpretation was driven by participants' narratives and accepted as true accounts of their experience. Our theory comprises three themes: 'Identity as an Anaesthetist'; 'The Role of a Temporary Surgeon'; and 'Training to Reconcile Identities', whereby training facilitated the psychological transition from a 'bloodless Doctor' (Anaesthetist) to becoming a 'temporary Surgeon'. The training programme enabled Specialist Trainees to move between the role of control and responsibility (Identity as an Anaesthetist), through self-described 'failure' and into a role of uncertainty about one's own confidence and competence (The Role of a Temporary Surgeon), and then return to the Anaesthetist's role once the airway had been established. Understanding the complexity of an intervention and providing a better insight into the training needs of Anaesthetic trainees, via a Grounded Theory approach, allows us to evaluate training programmes against the recognised technical and non-technical needs of those being trained.

Towards the Nature of Geography for geography education: an exploratory account, learning from work on the Nature of Science

ABSTRACT This paper offers an exploratory account of the Nature of Geography (NOG) for geography education. The proposed NOG framework describes geography through the theoretical offerings of the family resemblance approach across the dimensions of: aims and values; knowledge; methods and methodological rules; practices; and geography as a social-institutional system. In science education, the recontextualized family resemblance approach has stimulated fruitful contributions to research, including its applications as an analytical methodological tool for curriculum research and development, and to inform teacher education. Rather than seeking to describe the essence of geography through an illusive shared epistemological object of study, the family resemblance approach offers a framework shown to be robust in science education with space for multiple foci and flexibility to hold unresolved questions in tension. Our argument is that integration of the NOG framework into geography education would introduce students to a more holistic understanding of the different ways in which aims and values, knowledge, methods, practices, and social-institutional dimensions interact in the construction and constitution of geography. We suggest possibilities for NOG across teaching resources, curriculum research, and teacher education.

Concept-formation according to Rand. A personal adaptation (and two extra phases)

In her «Introduction to Objectivist epistemology» (1990) Ayn Rand shows us how concepts are formed. She identifies three stages: the sensorial, the perceptual and the conceptual stage. Sensations are stimuli impinging on the senses that cannot be retained by man’s memory, nor can be experienced in pure isolation. They are always experienced together with other sensations in the automatically integrated whole that she calls percepts. This automatic integration is performed by our subconsciousness. The last step is a conscious, volitional integration of these percepts by our focused conscious-ness, yielding concepts.
 Her description of the process (p. 6) makes notice of the first stage as being aware of objects, to which she ascribes the concept «entity», followed by the «closely allied» stage in which a child detects «specific, particular things» to which she ascribes the con-cept «identity». She then goes on by ascribing the concept «unit» to the third stage, in which objects with similar traits are grouped, and abstracted by their essential, distinguishing characteristic.

Why the Horrendous Deeds Objection Is Still a Bad Argument

A common objection to divine command meta-ethics (‘DCM’) is the horrendous deeds objection. Critics object that if DCM is true, anything at all could be right, no matter how abhorrent or horrendous. Defenders of DCM have responded by contending that God is essentially good: God has certain character traits essentially, such as being loving and just. A person with these character traits cannot command just anything. In recent discussions of DCM, this ‘essential goodness response’ has come under fire. Critics of DCM have offered various objections to the essential goodness response. This paper responds to these critics. I examine and refute six such objections: (a) the objection from counterpossibles, (b) the objection from omnipotence, (c) the objection from requirements of justice, (d) the objection from God’s moral grounding power, (e) the objection from evil and indifferent deities, and (f) the epistemological objection. I will maintain that despite all that has been said about the horrendous deeds objection in recent analytic philosophy, the horrendous deeds argument is still a bad argument.

Efekt ślepej plamki. Antropologia krytyczna wobec neoliberalizmu

In this article, the authors argue that critical anthropology must inevitably recognize its intrinsic aporia, which can be illustrated by the “blind spot” metaphor. They use the metaphor to point to a cognitive bias that can be described as the tendency to claim one’s own epistemological objectivity and axiological neutrality while ignoring the fact of being entangled in the object of anthropological critique. To illustrate the blind-spot effect they refer to the visible neoliberalization of Polish academia in the last decade. Their aim is to show how critical anthropologists (re)produce the entrepreneurial regimes, power relations, and mechanisms of subjugation that they critique. For the sake of their argument they use theories drawn from studies on governmentality, namely affect theory and the idea of the dispositive.