Epistemological Questions Research Articles

Political Epistemology without Apologies

AbstractPolitical epistemology has become a popular field of research in recent years. It sets itself the ambitious task to intertwine epistemology with social and political theory in order to do justice to the relationships between truth and politics, or reason and power. Yet many contributions either expand arguments and concepts from traditional epistemology to political phenomena or use existing theories and frameworks from social and political theory to address the politics of epistemological questions. The former approach (prominent, e.g., in the epistemic injustice debate) leads to an epistemisation of political phenomena and concepts coupled with their de‐politicization, the latter approach (prominent, e.g., in Frankfurt School critical theory) leads to a politicization of epistemic phenomena and concepts coupled with their de‐epistemisation. Instead, it is argued that political epistemology requires reworking even basic concepts, due to its three foundational commitments: It is committed to the claim that socio‐material conditions of existence matter epistemically (minimal materialism), to the self‐reflection of the socio‐material conditions of political epistemology's own arguments and theories (radical self‐reflexivity), and to a specific form of epistemic humility (epistemic non‐sovereignty). Using the notion of normativity as an exemplary problem, the article closes by highlighting the difficulty of maintaining these three commitments.

From televangelism to “tele-exorcism”: a socio-ethical perspective on Christian television broadcast in Cameroon and Nigeria

ABSTRACT Thanks to the forces of globalisation and localisation, televangelism has spread across the world and become so revolutionised that there presently exist a variety of televisual genres questionably classified under it. Indeed, the explosion and tropicalisation of televangelism have given birth to a myriad of televisual cultures relatable only nominally to the original American televangelism. This diversity and complexity raise definitional, epistemological and ethical questions, three of which include: what should genuine televangelism be? How ‘televangelical’ are the versions of the concept observed in African neo-Pentecostal and charismatic movements? And how are these African versions subtle perversions or entirely hybrid televisual genres? Using secondary sources and a critical exploration of Christian televisions in Cameroon and Nigeria, this paper attempts answers to the aforementioned under-researched questions. In the first place, the paper makes a brief incursion into the history of televangelism and its importation into Africa. In the second place, it examines how specific Nigerian and Cameroonian neo-Pentecostal movements have sought to revolutionise this televisual genre. In the last instance, the paper shows how specific Cameroonian and Nigerian church leaders’ apparent perversion of the concept has given birth to tele-exorcism which, besides being confused with televangelism, is questionable in a media ethics sense.

Sensing and making sense of climate change in a Western European urban setting: Bodily exposures, uncertain epistemologies, and climatic care practices

This article probes the crucial role of the body, embodiment, and sensation in the way people encounter large-scale processes of climate change in the city of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Exploring how urban denizens in one of the more temperate regions of the world come to know, speak, and conceptualize climate change in their everyday life, we aim to revitalize a conceptual engagement with embodiment and sensation as meaningful modes of knowing and situating the large-scale realities of climate change. Drawing on a series of group conversations with diverse urban dwellers, we empirically (1) highlight moments, settings, and practices within which climate change is sensed as a local and material reality; (2) trace recurring epistemological questions and anxieties that arise around the register of sense-able experience; and (3) show how moments, settings, and practices within which climate change appears as a sense-able reality generate novel forms of what we coin climatic care practices, in which people try to modulate and manage their exposure to changing climatic conditions in the city. In our conclusion, we underscore the multiple and fragmented character of climate change in the everyday lives, knowledges, and practices of these city dwellers; reflect on methodological possibilities to further address climate change as an everyday reality in Western urban settings; and emphasize the urgency of attuning to climate change as a sensed, in addition to a cognitively known or contested, reality at the level of social theory as well as policy-making.

Why Being Right Doesn’t Make You Good: The Representation of Science and Religion in South Park

Recent scholarship, particularly within the sphere of science communication, has sought to provide an empirical map of the relationship between science and religion, often seeking to explain the persistence of religious belief and practice within a technoscientific world. The framing of science and religion in this context often presumes that the social relevance of both science and religion lies primarily in the epistemic claims both make about the natural world and can be captured through explicit discussion of the relationship between the two. This article argues that other meanings of science and religion are possible by highlighting a case that appears to have little interest in questions of reality and epistemology: the animated comedy South Park. Within the show, scientific and religious discourse and imagery are frequently positioned as being enmeshed within larger social issues, gaining meaning from the ways in which the characters use knowledge for a variety of ends, usually resulting in moral failure. As a story about how to be a good American, South Park positions science and religion as sites where morality can be tested, mediated by a sense of goodness that is presented to the audience as self-evident. While the generality of this specific construction of science and religion can be challenged, the show illustrates the need for a broader or more extensive examination of the multiple meanings that science and religion might have within the public sphere and popular culture, which are far broader than a specific discussion of their epistemic relationship.

The labyrinth of marginality: a critique of theorising literary representation of marginality in indian english literature

In his work After Amnesia, G.N. Devy rightly points out a gap, a void created by our collective “cultural amnesia” in literary theory and criticism. Foregrounding this insight, the research on “Marginal Literature” has crucial ontological and epistemological questions ahead of itself. The question: “What is Marginal Literature?” becomes more pertinent and complex when assessed in the context of the plurality of Indian society and culture. The exercise of creating a structured and organised theoretical point of view that is comprehensive enough to address and acknowledge the diverse and multifaceted marginal experience as expressed by contemporary writers is a challenge for all scholars working to define, hypothesise, analyse the phenomenon of marginality in the form of a question, a vista, an enigma or a mere tributary in the canon of Indian Literature written and translated in English. As a doctoral candidate working in this area, in this paper, I intend to discuss the various theorists, thinkers, and perspectives that have informed and the lacunas that have restrained the discussion of marginality in my thesis.

“Another Logic is known”: Benedetto Croce's assessment of “Indian Logic”

AbstractThis essay aims to shed new light on the theoretical pertinence of classical Indian logic and epistemology in Benedetto Croce's criticism of Western Aristotelian and modern logic. As a matter of fact, Croce gave a positive and extraordinarily enterprising evaluation of “Indian Logic” in his review of Hermann Jacobi's Indische Logik (1905) and in his book Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept (1996 [1909]). Yet Croce's significant and considerable evaluation of “Indian Logic” has remained neglected until today. This essay tries to clear the field of some prejudices that misled scholarly research on Croce and Indian philosophy, and it glosses in detail the “neglected” judgment on “Indian Logic” in Croce's Logic. In doing so, it critically discusses some epistemological questions starting from Croce's philosophy, such as the character of “natural induction,” the relationship between language and thought, and the connection between historical languages and logical forms.

Heinz von Foerster's operational epistemology: orientation for insight into complexity

PurposeBased on the reception of the principle of self-organization, the core of Heinz von Foerster's operational theories, I hypothesize how Heinz von Foerster's theory can be an orientation model for the epistemological problem of complexity. I have chosen this study to demonstrate complexity as an epistemological problem. This is because the question of how order arises - the core problem of complexity - is an epistemological question for which Heinz von Foerster developed an epistemology of self-organization. I do not present new research because HvF already had the complex organization of systems in mind. Rather, I build a critical approach to complexity on the research and work on operational epistemology in HvF.Design/methodology/approachThis article aims to provide an orientation for a philosophical and epistemological understanding of complexity through a reading of Heinz von Foerster's operational theory. The article attempts to establish complexity as an epistemological phenomenon through the following method: (1) a conceptual description of the science of complexity based on the turn to thermodynamic time, (2) a genealogy of complexity going back to the systemic method, and (3) Heinz von Foerster's cybernetic approach to self-organization.FindingsBased on the reception of the principle of self-organization, the core of Heinz von Foerster's operational theories, the conclusion is drawn that complexity as a description is based on language games.Research limitations/implicationsThe results present complexity not as an object of science, but as a description that stands for the understanding of complex description.Social implicationsThe hypothesis that complexity is a question of description or observation, i.e. of description for what language serves, has enormous social implications, in that the description of complexes and the recognition of their orders (patterns) cannot be left to algorithmic governmentality, but must be carried out by a social agency.Originality/valueHvF's operational epistemology can serve as an epistemological model for critical complexity theory.

Quantification as social technology: Integrating studies of quantification with philosophy of technology

Studies of quantification are an emerging academic interest due to the datafication and quantification trends in modern society. The existing literature on this interdisciplinary field involves two approaches: a history of science approach and a sociology approach. This article argues for adding perspectives from the philosophy of technology. The philosophy of technology raises otherwise neglected ontological, epistemological, and ethical questions about the technology of quantification. Quantification as social technology is non-neutral and exhibits social constructed features, which beyond the commonly perceived realist opinions. The social-constructed quantification also has the ability to influence social agents, mediating the way humans exist in and understand the life world. Ethical and political questions about quantification call for integration into an already rich ethical and political discourse surrounding technological artifacts, actions, and political agendas.

La sociologia come vocazione: il pubblico e la professionalizzazione sostanziale in Michael Burawoy

The paper illustrates an assessment of theoretical reflections on the concept of public sociology made by Michael Burawoy during a long period of research, occurring between the beginning of the 2000s and the most recent times. In the first place, assumptions concerning the definition of public sociology are presented. Thus, innovative elements compared to the previous interpretation of the term made by Herbert Gans are stressed. The focus is consequently shifted towards epistemological questions raised by necessity/willingness of practicing a reflexive science deeply engaged with publics. Secondly, it is argued how the thought of Max Weber represents an essential reference point to frame the relationship between expertise and audiences. Finally, some conclusive considerations are exposed with respect to the overall intellectual trajectory of the British sociologist.

‘Where are we?’: The ghost as interrogative haunting in The Others

The ghost raises fundamental questions of reality, identity and epistemology. The ghost is the shadow image of otherness that threatens our notions of life, humanity and permanence by intimating that if death is permanent and the afterlife eternal, then perhaps it is our present tangible reality that is the simulacrum. The ghost interrogates the quotidian, not vice versa. The fetishization, aesthesizing and ritualizing of death in the Gothic aims consistently to defer the final definitive ending of death and the state of non-existence. As a memento mori, ghosts remind us that our ruminations of death are not morbid, but life-affirming. This article will explore the depiction of the afterlife in The Others () in which the living are simulations of the dead and vice versa. Unlike the typical horror movie, the predominant discourse of The Others is a postmodern interrogation of belief, truth and doctrine. The haunted house is an in-between land of purgatory, a death space of self-loss and separation that plays out in the conflict between religion and the supernatural. The questions with which the films ends – ‘What does all this mean? Where are we?’ – is not just a geographical question, but an ontological one. The interrogation of Biblical narratives causes the audience to evaluate the reliability of the discourse of established religion and its doctrine of the afterlife. By defying audience expectations of the generic conventions of the ghost story, the movie relies on the viewer’s faith that what we see on-screen is real, when this cinematic reality is as deceptive as seeing dead people artificially propped up to appear alive. Suspended between being and nothingness, both absent and present, the ghost is a metaphor for the simulacrum of film. The cinematic thus serves as the Other by which the real can be defined.

Memahami Konsep Keselamatan dan Filsafat Kristen Tinjauan Dari Perspektif Teologis Dan Filosofi

On the other hand, from a Christian philosophical perspective, the concept of salvation can be approached through rational thinking and conceptual analysis. Christian philosophy often explores ontological and epistemological questions about the nature of salvation, such as the relationship between human freedom and God's sovereignty, as well as the nature of spiritual truth. This research highlights the differences in sources of authority, methods of truth discovery, and ultimate goals between theological and philosophical approaches to salvation. While theology relies on religious teachings, divine revelation, and religious experience, Christian philosophy tends to use logical reasoning and conceptual analysis. However, these two fields can complement each other in deepening understanding of the concept of salvation, creating creative and in-depth dialogue about the nature of the Christian faith. This research provides valuable insights for theologians, philosophers, and practitioners of Christianity to explore the concept of salvation holistically, combining deep theological understanding with critical philosophical analysis.

Recent empirical work on religious experience: New directions

AbstractNovel developments in neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology have spawned a thriving empirical literature on religious experience. Previous literature in the cognitive science of religion has largely ignored empirical results from these fields, focusing narrowly on results from evolutionary psychology. Additionally, it has ignored the epistemological relevance of non‐paradigmatic cases of religious experience discussed in the literature from these subspecialties. In this article I submit that philosophical research on religious experience should take empirical work outside of evolutionary psychology as its primary foci towards uncovering fresh perspectives. I focus on three different literatures from neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology as case studies for generating novel philosophical research. I show that empirically‐discovered factors related to non‐paradigmatic religious experiences raise crucial and unique epistemological questions.

The philosophy of Stanislaw Lem through the eyes of Professor Okolovsky. Review of the book “Stanislaw Lem and reason. Philosophical studies"

The article is a review of the publication: Okolovsky P. Stanislav Lem and reason. Philosophical studies. Minsk: Galiafi, 2022. 224 p. The author is a professor at the University of Warsaw, researching the philosophical legacy of Stanislaw Lem. The book is a collection of essays and interviews that reveal Lem's vision of resolving ontological, epistemological and axiological questions. The Russian-speaking reader is offered an analysis of the philosophy of the mature Lem: it is little known and does not fit into the canonical approaches expressing the history of philosophy of the 20th century. This publication makes a significant contribution to Lemology, allowing one to get an idea of the principles and approaches of Lem as a philosopher, and to look at his philosophical heritage against the background of the ancient classics.

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What is the place of interpretation in text analysis? An example using ALCESTE® software

ABSTRACT Statistical text analyses appear at the borderline of quantitative and qualitative research, raising epistemological questions in the field. This paper focuses on a specific method of text analysis: the Reinert method. It aims to address the role of interpretation and subjectivity in the construction of the results using this kind of analysis. To this end, this manuscript presents a dual interpretation of a same corpus and software outputs highlighting the convergences and divergences in both researchers’ interpretations. It discusses how the use of statistics on qualitative data may provide a false sense of objectivity and sweep the questions of interpretation and epistemology away. Finally, it offers clear guidelines regarding individual and dual interpretation to those who wish to start using the Reinert method. We argue that this type of analysis is adaptable and can be applied across a variety of epistemological stances and research questions.

AI and its implications for research in higher education: a critical dialogue

ABSTRACT This article weighs in on the developing discourse on AI's role in higher education research through a structured dialogue between two diametrically opposed academics. Utilising a dialectical framework, the discourse transcends surface-level debates to grapple with ethical, methodological, and epistemological questions that are often overlooked, but are paramount to the field's integrity. Russell advocates for AI as an indispensable tool for academic research, while Rachel raises critical questions about AI’s potential to undermine the very essence of academic inquiry. Through this disputation, the article reveals the complex tensions between efficiency and ethical concerns, between innovation and integrity. Rather than offer facile solutions, it exposes the intricate challenges and invites the reader to consider the broader implications for academic research practice. The article serves as a catalyst for a more rigorous, nuanced dialogue, aiming to shift the discourse from the technological to the ethical and epistemological. It is an imperative read for anyone committed to understanding the transformational potential and pitfalls of AI in higher education research.

Hair Apparent; or, Dickens’s Public Hair

Abstract: Dickens plays off the strange hybrid nature of hair throughout his fiction. Hair is both alive and dead, public but also private, part of and not part of the body. Dickens uses hair to create both comedy and pathos, and it projects key aspects of many characters while simultaneously defying their control. Through hair, Dickens raises epistemological questions about the human tendency to categorize the world in binaries, and he suggests that all such categories misrepresent reality and fail to capture the complexity of human experience.

Moral considerability of brain organoids from the perspective of computational architecture.

Human brain organoids equipped with complex cytoarchitecture and closed-loop feedback from virtual environments could provide insights into neural mechanisms underlying cognition. Yet organoids with certain cognitive capacities might also merit moral consideration. A precautionary approach has been proposed to address these ethical concerns by focusing on the epistemological question of whether organoids possess neural structures for morally-relevant capacities that bear resemblance to those found in human brains. Critics challenge this similarity approach on philosophical, scientific, and practical grounds but do so without a suitable alternative. Here, I introduce an architectural approach that infers the potential for cognitive-like processing in brain organoids based on the pattern of information flow through the system. The kind of computational architecture acquired by an organoid then informs the kind of cognitive capacities that could, theoretically, be supported and empirically investigated. The implications of this approach for the moral considerability of brain organoids are discussed.

Colonialism, Race, and the Concept of Energy

The following paper puts the history of race and colonialism in conversation with the history of the concept of energy. The objective is to understand what a critical decolonial perspective can teach us about the central role that energy plays in western culture, materially and epistemologically. I am interested in how this approach to political, epistemological, and ontological questions demands that we reconceptualize energy to account for the historical particularity of the concept and the phenomena of history and intersubjectivity, which are eschewed in a purely materialistic and quantitative conception of energy. We will see how energy has been complicit in the racialization of black and indigenous bodies, and how the privileged place that the concept of energy has occupied in the canon of western physics has served to obscure the theological, metaphysical, and cultural assumptions that constitute it.

Decolonialidade, Biocentrismo e Educação Ambiental

ABSTRACT The political emergence of indigenous peoples in Brazil in the 1970s/1980s brought contributions to both the environmental and environmental education fields. The aims of this paper are to investigate contributions from this emergence to the environmental debate, mainly as related to the resumption of the concept of biocentrism; and to address some implications of that resumption for Environmental Education. Results corroborate the resumption of the concept but question the claims that it is naïve. Epistemological, theoretical, and political questions are raised. Results also identify the resumption of the ontological aspect of the debate and raise questions about its implications for environmental education research and practices.