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Epistemology
Kinds of Epistemology Selected AbstractsDEWEY'S EPISTEMOLOGY: AN ARGUMENT FOR WARRANTED ASSERTIONS, KNOWING, AND MEANINGFUL CLASSROOM PRACTICEEDUCATIONAL THEORY, Issue 1 2006Deron R. BoylesArticle first published online: 3 FEB 200 Deron Boyles asserts that epistemology can and should represent an area of inquiry that is relevant and useful for philosophy of education, especially as it develops classroom practices that foster inquiry. He specifically seeks to revive Dewey's conception of warranted assertibility in an effort to show the value of fallibilist epistemology in practical and social teaching and learning contexts. By highlighting the distinctions between traditional epistemology and Dewey's conception of knowing, Boyles demonstrates that epistemology has value insofar as it highlights a more useful, instrumentalist theory of knowing that is applicable to classroom practice. [source] LEON GOLDSTEIN AND THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF HISTORICAL KNOWING,HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 2 2006LUKE O'SULLIVAN ABSTRACT Leon Goldstein's critical philosophy of history has suffered a relative lack of attention, but it is the outcome of an unusual story. He reached conclusions about the autonomy of the discipline of history similar to those of R. G. Collingwood and Michael Oakeshott, but he did so from within the Anglo-American analytic style of philosophy that had little tradition of discussing such matters. Initially, Goldstein attempted to apply a positivistic epistemology derived from Hempel's philosophy of natural science to historical knowledge, but gradually (and partly thanks to his interest in Collingwood) formulated an anti-realistic epistemology that firmly distinguished historical knowledge of the past not only from the scientific perspective but also from fictional and common-sense attitudes to the past. Among his achievements were theories of the distinctive nature of historical evidence and historical propositions, of the constructed character of historical events, and of the relationship between historical research and contemporary culture. Taken together, his ideas merit inclusion among the most important twentieth-century contributions to the problem of historical knowledge. [source] TAYLORING REFORMED EPISTEMOLOGY: CHARLES TAYLOR, ALVIN PLANTINGA AND THE DE JURE CHALLENGE TO CHRISTIAN BELIEF by Deane-Peter Baker THEOLOGY, PSYCHOANALYSIS AND TRAUMA by Marcus PoundNEW BLACKFRIARS, Issue 1024 2008GRAEME RICHARDSON First page of article [source] ON NATURALIZING THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF MATHEMATICSPACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2009JEFFREY W. ROLAND In this paper, I consider an argument for the claim that any satisfactory epistemology of mathematics will violate core tenets of naturalism, i.e. that mathematics cannot be naturalized. I find little reason for optimism that the argument can be effectively answered. [source] CHARACTER, RELIABILITY AND VIRTUE EPISTEMOLOGYTHE PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 223 2006Jason Baehr Standard characterizations of virtue epistemology divide the field into two camps: virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism. Virtue reliabilists think of intellectual virtues as reliable cognitive faculties or abilities, while virtue responsibilists conceive of them as good intellectual character traits. I argue that responsibilist character virtues sometimes satisfy the conditions of a reliabilist conception of intellectual virtue, and that consequently virtue reliabilists, and reliabilists in general, must pay closer attention to matters of intellectual character. This leads to several new questions and challenges for any reliabilist epistemology. [source] MI-KYOUNG LEE'S EPISTEMOLOGY AFTER PROTAGORAS: RESPONSES TO RELATIVISM IN PLATO, ARISTOTLE, AND DEMOCRITUSANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY, Issue 2 2010TIMOTHY CHAPPELLArticle first published online: 26 AUG 2010 First page of article [source] Feminism Spoken Here: Epistemologies for Interdisciplinary Development ResearchDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 3 2006Cecile Jackson Development studies is a field characterized by an unusual degree of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research, and therefore is constantly subject both to pressures for the reproduction of disciplines as autonomous and self-sufficient, and to an increasing steer from public funders of research for interdisciplinary work which is valued for its problem-solving character and more apparent relevance, in an era greatly exercised by accountability. At a moment when the need to renew disciplinary interchange has intensified it is therefore instructive to consider the social relations which facilitate interdisciplinarity. This article does this through an argument that feminist cross-disciplinary research shows how important shared values are to motivate and sustain these kinds of learning, and that an explicit focus on social justice as the core of development research can be the basis of such a renewal. If feminist interactions and solidarity provide the motivation, feminist epistemologies provide arguments for why socially engaged research is not ,biased', but stronger than research with narrower ideas of objectivity; why reflexivities and subjectivities are crucial to the conduct of research; and how these, and the convergence of concepts of individuals and persons favoured within different disciplines, might build the common ground required for greater disciplinary interchange. [source] The Speculum of Ignorance: The Women's Health Movement and Epistemologies of IgnoranceHYPATIA, Issue 3 2006NANCY TUANAArticle first published online: 9 JAN 200 This essay aims to clarify the value of developing systematic studies of ignorance as a component of any robust theory of knowledge. The author employs feminist efforts to recover and create knowledge of women's bodies in the contemporary women's health movement as a case study for cataloging different types of ignorance and shedding light on the nature of their production. She also helps us understand the ways resistance movements can be a helpful site for understanding how to identify, critique, and transform ignorance. [source] Indigenous Epistemologies and Education,Self-Determination, Anthropology, and Human RightsANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2005Teresa L. McCarty First page of article [source] Socrates, Epistemology, and Pediatric Cardiology, Or Should Doctors Think Like Lawyers?CONGENITAL HEART DISEASE, Issue 4 2007David Driscoll MD First page of article [source] The Bible and Epistemology: Biblical Sounding on the Knowledge of God , Edited by Mary Healy and Robin ParryINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, Issue 1 2009Justin Thacker No abstract is available for this article. [source] Methodological Nationalism, the Social Sciences, and the Study of Migration: An Essay in Historical Epistemology,INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 3 2003Andreas Wimmer The article examines methodological nationalism, a conceptual tendency that was central to the development of the social sciences and undermined more than a century of migration studies. Methodological nationalism is the naturalization of the global regime of nation-states by the social sciences. Transnational studies, we argue, including the study of transnational migration, is linked to periods of intense globalization such as the turn of the twenty-first century. Yet transnational studies have their own contradictions that may reintroduce methodological nationalism in other guises. In studying migration, the challenge is to avoid both extreme fluidism and the bounds of nationalist thought. [source] Epistemology of Transformative Material Activity: John Dewey's Pragmatism and Cultural-Historical Activity TheoryJOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 4 2006REIJO MIETTINEN The paper compares John Dewey's pragmatism and cultural-historical activity theory as epistemologies and theories of transformative material activity. For both of the theories, the concept of activity, the prototype of which is work, constitutes a basis for understanding the nature of knowledge and reality. This concept also implies for both theories a methodological approach of studying human behavior in which social experimentation and intervention play a central role. They also suggest that reflection and thought, mediated by language and semiotic artifacts, serve the reorientation of activity and is vital in the development of new, alternative ways of action. That is why Dewyan pragmatism and activity theory supply means of understanding organizational behavior and change in human activities better than the concepts of practice based on rule following, routines or embodied skills. [source] Active Minorities and Social Representations: Two Theories, One EpistemologyJOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 4 2002Birgitta Orfali First page of article [source] English Law's Epistemology of Expert TestimonyJOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 4 2006Tony Ward The decision whether to believe an expert witness raises difficult epistemological and ethical questions for a lay juror or judge. This article examines the English courts' approach to these questions in the light of a series of cases which endorse the test of admissibility formulated in the Australian case o/R v. Bonython. It argues that, if interpreted more rigorously than it generally has been to date, Bonython could provide the framework for an approach which avoids the pitfalls of either a ,scientistic' or a ,constructivist' epistemology of expert testimony. Such an approach needs to distinguish between different types of expertise and the differing degrees of deference that they call for on the part of a lay fact-finder. [source] Negotiating Historical Narratives: An Epistemology of History for History EducationJOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, Issue 1 2010JON A. LEVISOHN Historians typically tell stories about the past, but how are we to understand the epistemic status of those narratives? This problem is particularly pressing for history education, which seeks guidance not only on the question of which narrative to teach but also more fundamentally on the question of the goals of instruction in history. This article explores the nature of historical narrative, first, by engaging with the seminal work of Hayden White, and second, by developing the critique of White by David Carr. The picture of historical inquiry that emerges is one in which the fundamental cognitive activity is one of negotiating among narratives. Students, like historians, like any of us, come to the work of historical inquiry in possession of prior narratives, which are then thrown into an encounter with other narratives of varying size and scope. Good historians enact the negotiation among narratives responsibly and well, demonstrating the virtues of historical interpretation. History education, therefore, ought to help students improve their historical interpretations at the same time as it fosters those qualities that make them good interpreters. [source] Information, Knowledge and Learning: Some Issues Facing Epistemology and Education in a Digital AgeJOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, Issue 1 2000C. Lankshear [source] Black on White: Film Noir and the Epistemology of Race in Recent African American CinemaJOURNAL OF SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2000Dan Flory First page of article [source] Epistemology and the socio-cognitive perspective in information scienceJOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Issue 4 2002Birger Hjørland This article presents a socio-cognitive perspective in relation to information science (IS) and information retrieval (IR). The differences between traditional cognitive views and the socio-cognitive or domain-analytic view are outlined. It is claimed that, given elementary skills in computer-based retrieval, people are basically interacting with representations of subject literatures in IR. The kind of knowledge needed to interact with representations of subject literatures is discussed. It is shown how different approaches or "paradigms" in the represented literature imply different information needs and relevance criteria (which users typically cannot express very well, which is why IS cannot primarily rely on user studies). These principles are exemplified by comparing behaviorism, cognitivism, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience as approaches in psychology. The relevance criteria implicit in each position are outlined, and empirical data are provided to prove the theoretical claims. It is further shown that the most general level of relevance criteria is implied by epistemological theories. The article concludes that the fundamental problems of IS and IR are based in epistemology, which therefore becomes the most important allied field for IS. [source] Feminist Epistemology, Contextualism, and Philosophical SkepticismMETAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 5 2009EVELYN BRISTER Abstract: This essay explores the relation between feminist epistemology and the problem of philosophical skepticism. Even though feminist epistemology has not typically focused on skepticism as a problem, I argue that a feminist contextualist epistemology may solve many of the difficulties facing recent contextualist responses to skepticism. Philosophical skepticism appears to succeed in casting doubt on the very possibility of knowledge by shifting our attention to abnormal contexts. I argue that this shift in context constitutes an attempt to exercise unearned social and epistemic power and that it should be resisted on epistemic and pragmatic grounds. I conclude that skepticism is a problem that feminists can and should take up as they address the social aspects of traditional epistemological problems. [source] Psychologism Revisited in Logic, Metaphysics, and EpistemologyMETAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 3 2001Dale Jacquette Psychologism is a philosophical ideology that seeks to explain the principles of logic, metaphysics, and epistemology as psychological phenomena. Psychologism has been the storm center of concerted criticisms since the nineteenth century, and is thought by many to have been refuted once and for all by Kant, Frege, Husserl, and others. The project of accounting for objective philosophical or mathematical truths in terms of subjective psychological states has been largely discredited in mainstream analytic thought. Ironically, psychologism has resurfaced in unexpected guises in the form of intuitionistic logic and mathematics, cognitivism, and naturalized epistemology. I examine some of the principal objections to psychologism , distinguishing roughly between good and bad or philosophically acceptable versus unacceptable psychologism , and consider the extent to which a new wave of psychologism may be gaining prominence in contemporary philosophy, and the light its successes and failures may shed on the original concept and underlying perspective of classical psychologism. [source] Conversation, Epistemology and NormsMIND & LANGUAGE, Issue 5 2002Steven Davis It is obvious that a great many of the things that we know we know because we learn them in conversation with others, conversations in which it is the intention of our interlocutor to inform us of something. It might be thought that only assertoric acts are informative. I shall argue that there is a range of conversational interventions that have this characteristic, including speech acts, presuppositions and conversational implicatures. The main focus of the paper is a discussion of the different norms, both moral and epistemological, that entitle us to believe what we learn from conversations. I compare our entitlement to believe what we learn from conversation with our entitlements to believe what we learn from perception. In providing an account of our epistemic warrant for our knowledge gained in conversation with ours, I draw on the work of Tyler Burge (1993 and 1997). [source] Mind, Language, and Epistemology: Toward a Language Socialization Paradigm for SLAMODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 3 2004Karen Ann Watson-Gegeo For some time now second language acquisition (SLA) research has been hampered by unhelpful debates between the "cognitivist" and "sociocultural" camps that have generated more acrimony than useful theory. Recent developments in second generation cognitive science, first language acquisition studies, cognitive anthropology, and human development research, however, have opened the way for a new synthesis. This synthesis involves a reconsideration of mind, language, and epistemology, and a recognition that cognition originates in social interaction and is shaped by cultural and sociopolitical processes: These processes are central rather than incidental to cognitive development. Here I lay out the issues and argue for a language socialization paradigm for SLA that is consistent with and embracive of the new research. [source] A Delicate Knowledge: Epistemology, Homosexuality, and St. John of the CrossMODERN THEOLOGY, Issue 4 2001Christopher Hinkle In light of the intractable disagreements, both theological and theoretical, which emerge at every turn in contemporary discussions of homosexuality and religion, this essay advances an epistemological approach to the discussion. The advantage of an epistemological approach is that it sidesteps many of the narrow denominational discussions, making almost no reference to Romans, to natural law, or to a sexual ethic based on love and mutuality. By drawing upon analytic philosophy of religion (Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne specifically), I hope to show how a failure explicitly to face epistemological challenges has undermined pro-gay claims and arguments and contributed to religious confusion. Constructively, the work of St. John the Cross helpfully offers a powerful epistemological vision that importantly supplements the analytic projects of Plantinga and Swinburne, thereby helping us comprehend more fully what is implied and required in justified pro-gay religious conviction. [source] Mental Action and the Epistemology of MindNOUS, Issue 1 2005Matthew Soteriou First page of article [source] An Argument Against Reduction in Morality and EpistemologyPHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS, Issue 3 2006Jeremy Randel Koons To avoid Moore's open question objection and similar arguments, reductionist philosophers argue that normative (e.g. moral and epistemic) and natural terms are only coextensive, but not synonymous. These reductionists argue that the normative content of normative terms is not a feature of their extension, but is accounted for in some other way (e.g. as a feature of these terms' meaning). However, reductionist philosophers cannot account for this "normative surplus" while remaining true to their original reductionist motivations. The reductionist's theoretical commitments both require and forbid a reductionist account of the normative content of moral and epistemic concepts. [source] Religious Belief and the Epistemology of DisagreementPHILOSOPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 8 2010Michael Thune Consider two people who disagree about some important claim (e.g. the future moral and political consequences of current U.S. economic policy are X). They each believe the other person is in possession of relevant evidence, is roughly equally competent to evaluate that evidence, etc. From the epistemic point of view, how should such recognized disagreement affect their doxastic attitude toward the original claim? Recent research on the epistemology of disagreement has converged upon three general ways of answering this question. The focus of this article is twofold: first, we summarize and give a brief evaluation of the main accounts of the epistemic significance of disagreement; then, we look at what these accounts suggest about how to epistemically assess both inter-religious and intra-religious disagreements. A final section offers recommendations for further research. [source] Introduction to the Epistemology of CausationPHILOSOPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2009Frederick Eberhardt This survey presents some of the main principles involved in discovering causal relations. They belong to a large array of possible assumptions and conditions about causal relations, whose various combinations limit the possibilities of acquiring causal knowledge in different ways. How much and in what detail the causal structure can be discovered from what kinds of data depends on the particular set of assumptions one is able to make. The assumptions considered here provide a starting point to explore further the foundations of causal discovery procedures, and how they can be improved. [source] Rationality Disputes , Psychology and EpistemologyPHILOSOPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2008Patrick Rysiew This paper reviews the largely psychological literature surrounding apparent failures of human rationality (sometimes referred to as ,the Rationality Wars') and locates it with respect to concepts and issues within more traditional epistemological inquiry. The goal is to bridge the gap between these two large and typically disconnected literatures , concerning rationality and the psychology of human reasoning, on the one hand, and epistemological theories of justified or rational belief, on the other , and to do so in such as way as to expose interesting points of contact and convergence between them. [source] Science and Religion: Philosophical IssuesPHILOSOPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2008Alan G. Padgett An overview of several philosophical issues that arise from the recent growth of interest in the relationships between science (especially natural science) and theology (especially Christian thought). The interactions between theology and science are complex, and often highly contextual in nature. This makes simple typologies of their interaction rather dubious. There are some similarities between religion and science, including the difficulty of defining them. Concerns about the use and meaning of language, and issues of realism and anti-realism, are found in both areas of thought. Epistemology is important to both areas, and there is increasing acceptance of differing epistemologies not only in religion and science, but also within the various scientific disciplines. One central issue is the question of legitimate influence between science and theology given their aims and methods. Another issue surrounds the question of naturalism in natural science. Also important to note is the variety of god-concepts at work in the current dialogue between science and theology. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||