Epistemological Role Research Articles

Структура квантовой механики

Interest in quantum mechanics is growing in connection with new experiments with quantum particles and a deeper knowledge of nano- and subatomic principles. The practical use of quantum mechanic methods goes in parallel with the constant rethinking of its foundations, its ideological and epistemological role. A rigorous exposition of the foundations of quantum mechanics in abstract-Hilbert spaces was given in the book of J. Von Neumann in 1933. It is the first and only experiment that has been brought to the end, the presentation of the apparatus of quantum mechanics with the sequence and rigor which usually presented in a purely theory. Later in 1949 the group of French mathematicians under the pseudonym N. Bourbaki introduced the concept of mathematical into mathematics. To date, there is no narration of quantum mechanics, where rigor is combined with the concept of mathematical structure. In the framework of the approach formulated by the group of N. Burbaki, quantum mechanics is a composite structure consisting of three simple structures: the Hilbert space of complex-valued vectors, the space of linear self-adjoint operators and the structure of classical mechanics are showed in this article.

The insanity defence without mental illness? Some considerations

In this paper we aim to offer a balanced argument to motivate (re)thinking about the mental illness clause within the insanity defence. This is the clause that states that mental illness should have a relevant causal or explanatory role for the presence of the incapacities or limited capacities that are covered by this defence. We offer three main considerations showing the important legal and epistemological roles that the mental illness clause plays in the evaluation of legal responsibility. Although we acknowledge that these advantages could be preserved without having this clause explicitly stated in the law, we resist proposals that deny the importance of mental illness in exculpation. We argue, thus, that any attempt at removing the mental illness clause from legal formulations of the insanity defence should offer alternative ways of keeping in place these advantages.

Understanding as a Source of Justification

AbstractThe traditional epistemological approach towards judgments like BACHELORS ARE UNMARRIED or ALL KNOWLEDGE IS TRUE is that they are justified or known on the basis of understanding alone. In this paper, I develop an understanding-based account which takes understanding to be a sufficient source of epistemic justification for the relevant judgments. Understanding-based accounts face the problem of the rational revisability of almost all human judgments. Williamson has recently developed a reinforced version of this problem: the challenge from expert revisability. This is the problem that even the best candidate judgments for understanding-based justification can be rationally rejected by the relevant experts, who may not even have any disposition or inclination to accept these judgments. (Consider, for instance, Graham Priest, a leading logician who rejects the law of non-contradiction.) However, I argue that expert revisability is fully compatible with the proposed understanding-based epistemology, because expert revisability is true of sufficient sources of epistemic justification in general. A remaining metaphysical worry is that understanding might end up being ‘too thin’ to play the envisaged epistemological role. This worry can be countered with a novel metaphysics of understanding involving second-order dispositions.

Knowledge and the Many Norms on Action

If there is pragmatic encroachment in epistemology, whether a person knows that p can vary with normative facts about her actions—including facts that do not bear on the truth or likelihood of p. This paper raises an underappreciated question for defenders of pragmatic encroachment: which of the many norms on action are distinctively connected to knowledge? To the extent that contemporary defenders of pragmatic encroachment address this question, they do so by citing norms of ‘practical rationality.’ I show that this approach can only be made to work on the assumption that all immorality involves some form of incoherence. I then suggest a pluralist strategy for pragmatic encroachers who seek to answer my question without making this heavyweight metaethical assumption: they should agree that multiple distinct norms on action play a difference-making role in epistemology. I close the paper by sketching three ways in which pragmatic encroachers might pursue this strategy.

The Role of Epistemology and Epistemic Games in Mediating the Use of Mathematics in Chemistry: Implications for Mathematics Instruction and Research on Undergraduate Mathematics Education

Mathematics is used in the physical sciences to describe and model phenomena, resulting in a unique interface between mathematics and disciplines such as chemistry and physics. This paper focuses on themes emerging from a larger project that investigated how students understand and use mathematics in chemical kinetics, a field of study concerned with monitoring the rate of chemical reactions. The primary data source for this study involved a subset of the data from the larger project, focusing on semi-structured interviews with 40 students sampled from a second-semester general chemistry course. During the interviews students were asked to work through chemical kinetics problems that could be solved without calculations (using relationships between quantities and chemistry principles) or they could be solved algorithmically (using equations and the provided data). The interviews were analyzed using the construct of epistemic games, which describe a collection of resources and an associated structure that define and guide problem-solving and reflect epistemological commitments. Findings indicate students have productive resources and approaches for engaging in problem-solving, reflected by the observed shared set of epistemic games. Implications emphasize the role of scaffolding and explicit questioning to prevent compartmentalization of chemistry and mathematics, suggesting the need for more support to help students productively apply the knowledge and skills learned in mathematics courses to contexts such as chemistry.

Using visual representations to realise the concept of “heat”

ABSTRACT Science teachers often use visual images to help students visualise the abstract concepts of science. Yet, they may not support students in making sense of these visual representations, wrongly assuming that the students can intuitively do it on their own. Pre- and in-service teacher professional development programmes also seldom explicitly teach how visual representations can be purposefully selected and utilised to help students comprehend abstract concepts of science. Thus, the aim of this study is to examine how an elementary science teacher made use of visual representations to realise the meaning of the concept of “heat”, and to identify design considerations when using visual representations for concept teaching. Using multimodal analysis, the findings showed how the teacher orchestrated a sequence of ensembles of visual representations which bore conceptual, pedagogical, and epistemological roles in unpacking the concept of “heat” to facilitate his students’ understanding. The findings indicate the importance of teachers developing representation-content-pedagogical competences in order to select representations apt for the targeted content knowledge, the students’ profile, the learning environment, and the nature of the science.

Representations of natural environments, recurring characters and ways of living with the land in children’s retellings of First Nations oral narratives

We report on an analysis of the ways that children in five elementary school classrooms engaged with oral narrative patterns that they experienced through their participation in a First Nations cultural education program. Our analysis focuses on the use of a pattern of “measured descriptive elaboration”, that we argue functions to create vivid and memorable representations of local natural environments and of recurring characters in the stories. This form of narrative patterning is described and situated in relation to research from Indigenous scholars and allied researchers who have discussed the role of relational epistemologies in how we understand our experience of the natural world. A verse analysis of oral stories told by a cultural educator and of the students’ retellings of these stories suggests that children echoed many of these patterns of measured descriptive elaboration in their story retellings. A close analysis of two retellings displays how these patterns were being used by children to share memorable lessons with a listener, and how these patterns could support personalized experiences of natural environments. We conclude with a discussion of ways this research could applied in developing educational spaces that provide children with experiences of multiple and diverse narrative resources.

Tye’s Theory of the Unconceptual Content of the Perceptual Mental States

Introduction. In modern philosophy of perception, the issue of the content of perceptual mental states is actively discussed, in particular the possibility of nonconceptual content is one of the most significant problem. Usually conceptual activity is attributed to thinking, and perception is intended to be non-conceptual. Such an approach may deprive perception of opportunity to serve as a basis for judgment. The paper analyzes Tye’s theory of non-conceptual content of perceptual mental states, which does not deprive the perception of its epistemological function.Methodology and sources. Methodologically, the research work is based on philosophical analysis of modern theories of perception and results of cognitive research.Results and discussion. In accepted terminology, the content of perceptual mental states can be of three types: conceptual, non-conceptual detailed (fine-grained) and nonconceptual coarse (coarse-grained). Tye's position is that perceptual mental states have only the third kind of content. This approach faces a number of objections that are presented in this paper. The analysis of objections shows their surmount ability, thus, it can be concluded that the Tye’s position of nonconceptual content can be considered as reasonable. The main result of the presented research is the presentation of additional grounds for the theory of non-conceptual content of perceptual mental states.Conclusion. The problem of the content of perceptual mental states is crucial for understanding the epistemological role of perception. The theory of non-conceptual content of perceptual mental states provides new insights into perception.

What were the genuine Banach spaces in 1922? Reflection on axiomatisation and progression of the mathematical thought

This paper provides an analysis of the use of axioms in Banach’s Ph.D. and their role in the progression of Banach’s mathematical thought. In order to give a precise account of the role of Banach’s axioms, we distinguish two levels of activity. The first one is devoted to the overall process of creating a new theory able to answer some prescribed problems in functional analysis. The second one concentrates on the epistemological role of axioms. In particular, the notion of norm completeness, as it appears in Banach’s text, can be interpreted as an epistemic linchpin between several a priori inhomogeneous domains of mathematical thought.

Personal or Impersonal Knowledge

Reflections on the contrast between the titles of Popper’s Objective Knowledge and Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge led Haack to explore how Polanyi’s ideas might be used to correct some of the distortions caused by Popper’s refusal to allow any role in epistemology to the knowing subject, and thus to throw light on such questions as the relations between the knower and the known, between epistemology and psychology and sociology of knowledge, and between subjectivity and objectivity.Key words: epistemology; philosophy of science; Karl Popper; Michael Polanyi; knowing subjects; personal judgment.

Beware of Safety

Beware of Safety Journal: Analytic Philosophy Manuscript ID APHI-Dec-2017-OA-083.R2 Wiley - Manuscript type: Original Article Keywords: safety, sensitvity, knowledge, epistemology, epistemic interest Abstract: Safety, as discussed in contemporary epistemology, is a feature of true beliefs. Safe beliefs, when formed by the same method, remain true in close-by possible worlds. I argue that our beliefs being safely true serves no recognisable epistemic interest and, thus, that this notion of safety should play no role in epistemology. Epistemologists have been misled by failing to distinguish between a feature of beliefs — being safely true — and a feature of believers, namely being safe from error. The latter is central to our epistemic endeavours: we want to be able to get right answers, whatever they are, to questions of interest. I argue that we are sufficiently safe from error (in some relevant domain) by being sufficiently sensitive (to relevant distinctions).

Universal Hinges and the Bounds of Sense

According to Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, Wittgenstein’s On Certainty presents a theory of hinges, and hinges have a role to play in a foundationalist epistemology (2013, this journal). Williams (2005) and Coliva (Philosophia, 41, 81–96, 2013, this journal) have claimed that the hinges are not suitable to play such a role as they are not shared universally. Moyal-Sharrock has replied that a subset of the hinges is suitable to play such a role: the “universal” hinges, an account of which she developed in her 2004 book Understanding on Certainty (2013, this journal). I argue that for Moyal-Sharrock’s reply to be sustained, she must construe the set of universal hinges much more narrowly than she does currently. For instance, Moyal-Sharrock claims that “I have a brain” is a universal hinge, which consigns people who know nothing about brains to stand outside the bounds of sense. I also provide a novel way of thinking about the universal hinges, which I argue is better textually motivated than Moyal-Sharrock’s own way, and which provides a set of hinges more suitable to play a role in foundationalist epistemology.

Natural Science and Supernatural Thought Experiments

Religious notions have long played a role in epistemology. Theological thought experiments, in particular, have been effective in a wide range of situations in the sciences. Some of these are merely picturesque, others have been heuristically important, and still others, as I will argue, have played a role that could be called essential. I will illustrate the difference between heuristic and essential with two examples. One of these stems from the Newton–Leibniz debate over the nature of space and time; the other is a thought experiment of my own constructed with the aim of making a case for a more liberal view of evidence in mathematics.

Gênero e currículo: olhares do feminismo negro e decolonial sobre um livro didático de Sociologia

Este trabalho tem como proposta apresentar algumas considerações acerca de um levantamento preliminar do conteúdo sobre gênero, presente no livro didático “Sociologia para Jovens do Século XXI”, de Luiz Fernandes de Oliveira e Ricardo Cesar Rocha da Costa, à luz das perspectivas contra-hegemônicas do feminismo negro e decolonial. Para isso, as reflexões de María Lugones, Magdalene Ang-Lygate, Djamila Ribeiro, Ochy Curiel e Chandra Mohanty serão aqui tomadas como principais referências. Em linhas gerais, pensar a dinâmica de (re)distribuição de poder dentro de um currículo escolar, através do que e como certos conteúdos estão ou não presentes, mobilizou o exercício que aqui está proposto. Em um contexto marcado por notória incidência da discussão sobre gênero, dentro e fora da academia, combinado a fortes reações contrárias a abordagem dos temas que tal conceito mobiliza, as considerações que apresento aqui buscam sinalizar a preponderância, na atual conjuntura, de pensar criticamente gênero, demarcando o seu papel epistemológico na Sociologia escolar.

Rethinking Sellars’ Myth of the Given: From the Epistemological to the Modal Relevance of Givenness in Kant and Hegel

ABSTRACTHere, I pursue consequences, for the interpretation of Sellars’ critique of the ‘Myth of the Given’, of separating the modal significance that Kant attributed to empirical intuition from the epistemological role it also played for him. It is argued that Kant’s approach to modality in the Critique of Pure Reason can best be understood as a transcendental variation on Leibniz’s earlier ‘possibilist’ approach that treated the actual world as just one of a variety of possible alternative worlds. In this context, empirical intuitions seem to work like the mythical Givens subject to Sellars’ critique. This Kantian possibilism is then contrasted with an ‘actualist’ alternative approach to modality found in the contemporary work of Robert Stalnaker, but also recognizable in Hegel. In particular, the role of immediate perceptual judgments in Hegel is likened to that played by ‘witness statements’ in Robert Stalnaker’s attempt to distinguish the logic of judgments about the actual world from those about its alternate possibilities.

‘Als in een veergezicht’

Abstract ‘As in a view from afar’. Vondel’s epistemological objections to Spinoza’s circle From a philosophical and theological stance, Spinoza and Vondel are traditionally portrayed as downright antipodes. Whereas Spinoza is seen as a pre-eminent representative of ‘radical Enlightenment’, Vondel is generally considered as a rather reactionary author who does not fit at all in this radical version of Enlightenment. The central aim of this article is to modify this generally agreed perception. On the basis of recent historical research in the relation between the circle of Spinoza and Vondel, the affinities between both authors can be brought to the fore, in particular when looking at their writings on the relation between politics and religion. The gap between their views becomes only apparent when their respective views of God are at stake: there is an undeniable contrast between Spinoza’s naturalist pantheism and Vondel’s classic theism. In order to understand that very difference, the focus will be laid on two writings, conceived in more or less the same period: Vondel’s philosophical-theological poem Bespieghelingen van Godt en Godsdienst and Spinoza’s Verhandeling over de verbetering van het verstand (Treatise on the Emendation of Understanding). The central difference between the two authors in these writings relates to their methodological approach of existential questions about God and salvation, in particular to their dissent concerning the epistemological role of the geometrical method and the specific role of language. One of the hypotheses I propound in this respect is that Vondel’s relation to Lodewijk Meyer has been of utmost importance in order to explain their different methodological positions. Finally, I indicate the topical relevance of this methodological difference for contemporary philosophical reflection.

Characterizing Naturalized Epistemology of Science Possessed by Korean Pre-Service Elementary Teachers

This study aimed at exploring how pre-service teachers possessed naturalized epistemology of science. The epistemology of science has been major topics of investigation in science education research targeting pre-service and in-service teacher education. How science works including scientific investigation for achieving science knowledge was well known item in school science. The role of scientific epistemology would play in science classroom. Therefore improving teachers’ perspectives and designing advanced teaching-learning sequences along them have been substantial parts of the science education reform. Such efforts have been active when a new epistemological position emerged such as naturalized epistemology. Through this research Korean pre-service teachers’ understanding of the naturalized epistemology was explored. The questionnaire to explore pre-service teachers’ epistemological beliefs was adopted majorly focusing on naturalized epistemology of science knowledge. They were administrated to forty per-service elementary teachers. The questionnaire is composed of items using a Likert scale. According to the finding, Korean elementary teacher candidates in this study had more agreement for naturalized epistemology than for traditional one.

The fundamental violence of physiotherapy: Emmanuel Levinas’s critique of ontology and its implications for physiotherapy theory and practice

The fundamental role of ontology, epistemology, and ethics is widely recognised across the healthcare professions. Yet what is less known in physiotherapy is how ontology and epistemology potentially undermine the ethical intentions of our theories and practices. In this article, we draw on the work of 20th-century philosopher Emmanuel Levinas to highlight this problem. Particularly Levinas’s ethical critique of ontology and the associated notion of thematisation enable us to highlight a violence that takes place in the philosophical foundations of physiotherapy. Using the overarching aims of physiotherapy, the theory and practice of diagnosis, and the notion and enforcing of professional identities as examples, we additionally show how this violence consequently pervades physiotherapy theory and practice. By exploring a range of critical and practical implications, we finally show how an application of Levinas’s critique of ontology additionally opens toward an otherwise physiotherapy grounded in a renewed understanding of self, other, and their relation. With this, we hope to highlight the core value and critical need for a deeper engagement with the work of Levinas in relation to all aspects of physiotherapy, and particularly its understanding and implementation of ethics that is so fundamental to its practice and a cornerstone of physiotherapy education.

From Glory to Glory

This article argues that, in De Trinitate, Augustine’s ascent to God via a search for the Trinity is successful precisely because of the emphasis he places on the role of Christ in such an ascent. Unlike scholarship which reads this ascent as an exercise in Neoplatonism—whether as a success or as an intentional failure—this article asserts that Augustine successfully discovers an imago trinitatis in human beings by identifying the essential mediation of the temporal and eternal in the person of the Incarnate Word. Of the work’s fifteen books, Books 4 and 13 focus extensively on the soteriological and epistemological role of Christ, who, in his humility, conquered the pride of the devil and reopened humanity’s way to eternity. The Christology in these books plays an important role in Augustine’s argument by allowing his ascent to move from self-knowledge to contemplation of God. Indeed, it is his understanding of the Christological perfection of the imago dei which allows Augustine to discover a genuine imago trinitatis in human beings. For Augustine, the imago is observable in humanity to the extent that an individual is conformed to Christ, the perfect image of the invisible God. Thus, it is only through Christ that a human being can successfully contemplate the Trinity in this imago.

Is understanding reducible?

ABSTRACTDespite playing an important role in epistemology, philosophy of science, and more recently in moral philosophy and aesthetics, the nature of understanding is still much contested. One attractive framework attempts to reduce understanding to other familiar epistemic states. This paper explores and develops a methodology for testing such reductionist theories before offering a counterexample to a recently defended variant on which understanding reduces to what an agent knows.