Search

Researchers who cross a discipline may experience culture shock at the different worlds of science and medicine. This paper outlines the differences in concepts and philosophies and in presentation styles. The acute difficulties when attempting to read or write works in different disciplines are also addressed, as well as the differences in perceptions and values when approaching written works in unfamiliar branches of academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of new book collections related to the humanities. These include "Cognition and the Brain: Philosophy and the Neuroscience Movement," by Andrew Brook and Kathleen Akins, "Reading Epistemology: Selected Texts with Interactive Commentary," by Sven Bernecker and "Movies and the Meaning of Life," by Kimberly Blessing.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to dissect key issues and debates in digital humanities, an emerging field of theory and practice. Digital humanities stands greatly to impact the Information and Library Science (ILS) professions (and vice versa) as well as the traditional humanities disciplines.Design/methodology/approach This paper explores the contours of digital humanities as a field, touching upon fundamental issues related to the field’s coalescence and thus to its structure and epistemology. It looks at the ways in which digital humanities brings new approaches and sheds new light on manifold humanities foci.Findings Digital humanities work represents a vital new current of interdisciplinary, collaborative intellectual activity both in- and outside the academy; it merits particular attention from ILS.Research limitations/implications This paper helps potential stakeholders understand the intellectual and practical framework of the digital humanities and “its relationship” to their own intellectual and professional work.Originality/value This paper critically synthesizes previous scholarly work in digital humanities. It has particular value for those in ILS, a community that has proven especially receptive to the field, as well as to scholars working in many humanities disciplines. Digital humanities has already made an important impact on both LIS and the humanities; its impact is sure to grow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist work in the history of philosophy has been going on for several decades. Some scholars have focused on the ways philosophical concepts are themselves gendered. Others have recovered women writers who were well known in their own time but forgotten in ours, while still others have firmly placed into a philosophical context the works of women writers long celebrated within other disciplines in the humanities. The recovery of women writers has challenged the myth that there are no women in the history of philosophy, but it has not eradicated it. What, we may ask, is impeding our progress? This paper argues that so often we treat early modern women philosophers' texts in ways that are different from, or inconsistent with, the explicit commitments of the analytic tradition, and in so doing, we may be triggering our audiences to reject these women as philosophers, and their texts as philosophical. Moreover, this is the case despite our intention to achieve precisely the opposite effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital humanities have developed in concert with online systems that increase the accessibility and speed of learning. Whereas previously students were immersed in the fluidity of campus life, they have become suspended and drawn-into various streams and currents of digital pedagogy, which articulate new forms of epistemological movement, often operating at speeds outside the lived time and rhythm of human thought. When assessing learning technologies, we have to consider the degree to which they complement the rhythms immanent to human thought, knowledge, investigation, and experimentation. In this paper, we examine learning from a humanities perspective, arguing that reading, writing, and thinking are ways of learning underscored by various genres of movement that segue with or diverge from the movements inherent to digital technologies, especially those deployed in learning systems. Using the work of thinkers such as John Dewey and Michel Serres, we examine the importance of movement in dialogue, where to truly learn involves embedding oneself in the flow of thought, accepting the flexibility of concepts, and aligning oneself with a community of thinkers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers Australian receptions of C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959), and of the controversy over the literary critic F. R. Leavis's combative 1962 response to it. Taking a lead from conceptual insights in global histories of science and the history of knowledge, the paper considers the ways knowledge claims iterate differently in different geographic and cultural contexts. Elements of the Snow–Leavis dispute resonated among Australian scientists, cultural critics, journalists and poets, while others did not. Snow's diagnosis of a disciplinary antagonism between the humanities and the sciences was central to Australian receptions of the controversy, but wider political issues, emphasised in much of the more sophisticated historiography of the 'two cultures' as a British-American controversy, were largely ignored. This reception reflected the post-war expansion of Australian higher education, and the shifting relations within it between the humanities and the sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth in our understanding of sport behavior has been slow. Some leaders in sport psychology have called for the development of our own theories or conceptual frameworks, but these pleas have done little to advance our knowledge of sport behavior. This paper provides a brief description of the evolution to some of our current paradigms in sport psychology and explanations for why this growth may be slow. It then sketches some strategies for expanding our conceptual frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article previews several conferences related to systems research and practice in July 2006. The Fourth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities will be held at the University of Carthage in Tunisia. The Sixth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture and Change in Organisations will be held at the Monash University Centre in Italy.

This paper examines Frank Ankersmit as a rationalist. I argue that there is a theory of rationality in Ankersmit, and that rationalism is an essential feature of his philosophy of history. It is salient that, according to Ankersmit, this theory of rationality can be discovered by a priori reasoning through analysing what the concept of representation entails. Ankersmit's view is that Leibniz has best succeeded in defining what representation is. Further, Leibniz's theory of representation, and the idea of rationality it entails, are understood to be applicable to history writing, too. The most important standard of rationality is scope. The historian is expected to maximize the scope of her representation, or to create a maximum distance between narrative statements and a narration. The attempts to maximize scope are hampered by other values which stand in opposition to it. For this reason, the historian has to, in effect, find the best possible compromises between two opposing forces – including as much diversity while maintaining as much order as possible, for example. However, no a priori reasoning, or philosophers at large, can in practice determine the most rational representation. This is achieved through historiographical debate and discourse by comparing one representation to its rivals. In the end, I pose some questions and challenges to Ankersmit's theory of rationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to provide some sketchy remarks on the post-empiricist phenomenon in philosophy of science, taking into account the themes of the relationships between language on the one side and reality on the other, and the parallel problem of the alleged elimination of metaphysics. Unlike the logical empiricists, Popper believes that a clear separation between (i) analytic and synthetic sentences, and (ii) between theory and observation, is an impossible task. According to his view, theory and observation are intimately linked to each other, and no pure observation is ever possible. A position very similar to Popper's was endorsed by the American pragmatists in the last two centuries with Charles S. Peirce, William James and John Dewey. There also are important similarities between what Popper says and William James' theses. It is clear that if we recognize that the theoretical dimension precedes observation, and if we claim furthermore that scientific theories have a creative character, then we may explain the "jumps" that often take place in the history of science. Later on Feyerabend and his followers have turned philosophy of science into something mysterious and not easily classifiable in philosophical or scientific terms. The anything goes undermines the meaning itself of the discipline. If science is equated to any other dimension of spirit - art, religion, or even witchcraft - the specific and cognitive character of scientific rationality is eliminated. It follows that philosophy of science loses any meaningful role within the field of human knowledge, while even philosophy as such becomes more similar to a joke than to a serious endeavor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that narrative knowledge (or ‘storyknowing’) is marginalized within the English school system, because it is misunderstood and often not recognized as knowledge. We track the changing status of storytelling through some key moments in recent educational history, particularly focusing on its gradual erosion during the progressive era, the onset of the National Curriculum (despite the impact of the National Oracy Project), and the post-2000 period with its conflicting drives towards compliance and creativity. To understand the consequences of this marginalization, we build up a picture of the value of narrative knowledge, drawing firstly on the body of theorists who have investigated narrative. We then look to our long-term practice research with three groups of ‘low-ability’ 11–14-year-old pupils, in particular their own observations on storytelling made during a focus group. Both sources lead us to challenge the currently dominant perception that pupils listening to a whole narrative are in a passive role. Indeed, we provide evidence that reasserting the value of storyknowing may restore aspects of agency, autonomy and knowledge creation to both teachers and pupils which may not be afforded by overtly ‘active’ learning strategies. We conclude by considering the conditions in which storyknowing, as characterized by the pupils and theorists, might flourish within schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes as its starting point the fact that Bourdieu’s views on sociology as a science have not been sufficiently and adequately understood and discussed. It traces the links between his conception and that of the French tradition of historical epistemology which is critical of positivism. How Bourdieu extends their views, and those of Bachelard especially, beyond the realm of the natural sciences, to the social sciences and sociology in particular, is discussed. In the process he introduces new concepts and methods, such as that of participant objectivation. His perspective reveals a convergence between the natural sciences and the social sciences as human endeavours striving for universal truths. This is reinforced and widened to include the humanities as well as demonstrated by his analysis of the literary field. The paper concludes with the observation that Bourdieu’s post-positivist science is a salutary alternative to the postmodern critique of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The innovative ways in which humanities academics give shape and meaning to traditional and artistic research has attracted increasing attention as researchers address ever-more complex issues. This attention stems in part from the problematic frameworks in which academic research is situated, but it relates also to growing concerns that traditional "scientific" research approaches do not always provide an adequate model for research, including some of what is happening in the sciences. In this paper the focus is on knowledge relating to artistic research. Implications include managing the translation of artistic research into a form that can be understood (and learned from) by the wider academy, and accommodating artistic research output within research frameworks less flexible than the works they assess. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Whereas ethical considerations on imaging techniques and interpretations of neuroimaging results flourish, there is not much work on their preconditions. In this paper, therefore, we discuss epistemological considerations on neuroimaging and their implications for neuroethics. Results: Neuroimaging uses indirect methods to generate data about surrogate parameters for mental processes, and there are many determinants influencing the results, including current hypotheses and the state of knowledge. This leads to an interdependence between hypotheses and data. Additionally, different levels of description are involved, especially when experiments are designed to answer questions pertaining to broad concepts like the self, empathy or moral intentions. Interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks are needed to integrate findings from the life sciences and the humanities and to translate between them. While these epistemological issues are not specific for neuroimaging, there are some reasons why they are of special importance in this context: Due to their inferential proximity, ‘neuro-images’ seem to be self-evident, suggesting directness of observation and objectivity. This has to be critically discussed to prevent overinterpretation. Additionally, there is a high level of attention to neuroimaging, leading to a high frequency of presentation of neuroimaging data and making the critical examination of their epistemological properties even more pressing. Conclusions: Epistemological considerations are an important prerequisite for neuroethics. The presentation and communication of the results of neuroimaging studies, the potential generation of new phenomena and new ‘dysfunctions’ through neuroimaging, and the influence on central concepts at the foundations of ethics will be important future topics for this discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is not yet, and perhaps never could be, a clear canonical history that makes sense of Charles Sanders Peirce. In this sense, despite the best efforts of Peirce scholarship, Peirce is not 'an author'. A highly technical philosopher who worked on several fronts, he appears to espouse positions that the standard traditions of philosophical debate find difficult to hold together. Partly because of the fragmentary nature of his oeuvre, and partly because of the diversity of his interests, he is often appropriated into projects, these appropriations contributing further to the difficulty of telling a single sense-making story. In this paper, I sketch five stories: 1. Peirce as sui generis, the founder of pragmatism; 2. Peirce as not sui generis - the influences in his work and the conversations of the philosophers in which he participated; 3. Peirce as a philosopher of science, and hence, not compatible with projects in the human sciences and the humanities; 4. Peirce as he was appropriated into the human sciences and the humanities, in the form of semiology and following that, into Derrida's critique of semiology; 5. Peirce retrieved by neo-pragmatism as a weapon against 'French theory'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of the knowledge society and the development of knowledge-intensive employment functions do not seem to improve dramatically the situation of humanities graduates on national labour markets. This paper gives an overview of the employment situation of French humanities graduates and summarizes recent attempts to improve it. A description of how the employment for humanities graduates has developed in the course of the last decade is followed by an analysis of two complementary governmental initiatives: the development of Higher Vocational Education degrees and the professionalization of all curricula. The paper concludes with three propositions based on personal teaching experiences and a broader analysis of the French higher education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While contemporary theories of diversity, based on nomothetic thinking that supports homogeneity of experience within population subcategories, have been essential in promoting affirmative strategies and thus have been successful in expanding equality for disenfranchised groups, we see this paradigm as a contemporary double edged sword, one that is temporarily necessary but that needs to be revised over the long term. In this paper, we advance a new conceptualization, a progressive theory of diversity that builds on contemporary theory and is informed by a broad examination of interdisciplinary literature and practice. We begin by looking back at diversity through the lens of history, and then provide criticism of current diversity theory that delimits diversity to embodied or contextual common characteristics. We then propose a theoretical framework that is informed by legitimacy, uncouples diversity from embodied or environmental contextual characteristics, and focuses its examination and action orientation on promoting inclusion and group symmetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the understanding of student's practical epistemologies and their influence on learning through inquiry. Current standards argue that inquiry should be a central strategy of science instruction, for several reasons. These reasons include that students will learn science concepts more deeply as well as develop their skills of doing science. A major reason is that inquiry is presumed to be a way to help students develop a sophisticated understanding of the nature of science. Epistemology is a term used quite differently by philosophers and psychologists. It will be helpful to briefly introduce some definitions to clarify the argument to follow, although the definitions of formal and practical epistemologies that is mentioned here will be expanded upon at greater length throughout the paper. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the study of knowledge. It is concluded by the authors that this paper has been successful to lay out an agenda for studying epistemology in science education in ways that can couple students' epistemological development to their practices of inquiry.

Biblical theology's bridge-building capacities are studied in this paper by mapping out a historical trajectory of the discipline, and by addressing the possible novel directions the field might take in the future. An epistemological parameter and a structural parameter were set by Gabler that continue to inform the contemporary discussion. In order to open up the discussion to hermeneutical, philosophical and systematic theological questions, the paper offers a proposal for a text theory, and addresses its implications for some concrete questions posed recently in biblical theology. A final section sketches various currents in biblical studies and theology that are having an impact on the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologija: Mintis ir Veiksmas is the property of Vilnius University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines recent attempts to defend Rule-Consequentialism against a traditional objection. That objection takes the form of a dilemma, that either Rule-Consequentialism collapses into Act-Consequentialism or it is incoherent. Attempts to avoid this dilemma based on the idea that using RC has better results than using AC are rejected on the grounds that they conflate the ideas of a criterion of rightness and a decision procedure. Other strategies, Brad Hooker‘s prominent amongst them, involving the thought that RC need contain no overarching concern to maximize the good are acknowledged to avoid the original dilemma, but lead to further problems of motivating and justifying RC in the absence of such a concern. The paper argues that Hooker‘s attempt to deal with these problems by using a ‘Reflective Equilibrium plus‘ method is unsuccessful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to trace the evolution of Bachelard‘s thought as he gropes toward a concrete formulation of a philosophy of the imagination. Reverie, the creative daydream, occupies the central position in Bachelard‘s emerging metaphysic, which becomes increasingly ’’phenomenological‘‘ in a manner reminiscent of Husserl. This means that although Bachelard does not use Husserlian terms, he appropriates the following features of (Husserlian) phenomenology: 1. a desire to ’’embracket‘‘ the initial (rationalistic) impulse; and 2. an aspiration to apprehend in its entirety, the creative epiphany of an image. Ultimately, this paper aims to show that there is a sense in which Bachelard‘s metaphysical concerns in his poetics are an outgrowth of (rather than radical break from) his earlier scientific and epistemological concerns. What results in reverie is an aesthetic intentionality providing a metaphysic of the imagination: the aesthetic object, such as fire or water, is an object only insofar as it enables/calls forth a subject to enter into a receptive, self-aware and cosmic state of being; subject-ness and object-ness are intimately and archetypally intertwined. Bachelard‘s ’’new poetics‘‘ results from his transplantation/cross-fertilization of the general epistemology of the ’’new scientific spirit‘‘ on to/across his aesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes issue with a number of standard interpretations of Australian political thought and the methods of argument by which they have been reached. It confronts the substantive claims (a) that Australia has produced no significant indigenous political thought, ideology, or ideological conflict, and (b) that which passes for political thought is generally derivative, lacking in originality and inferior. It is argued that such claims are based upon unduly narrow conceptions of political thought and misplaced categories of evaluation. Finally, the paper demonstrates that by expanding our conceptions of political thought beyond that of `epic' or universalist political philosophy, and applying methods of evaluation appropriate to the subject matter, more sensible conclusions can be drawn about the existence and quality of Australian political thought, as well as its place in political life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of "deep mapping", as an approach to place, has been deployed as both a descriptor of a specific suite of creative works and as a set of aesthetic practices. While its definition has been amorphous and adaptive, a number of distinct, yet related, manifestations identify as, or have been identified by, the term. In recent times, it has garnered attention beyond literary discourse, particularly within the "spatial" turn of representation in the humanities and as a result of expanded platforms of data presentation. This paper takes a brief look at the practice of "deep mapping", considering it as a consciously performative act and tracing a number of its various manifestations. It explores how deep mapping is a reflection of epistemological trends in ontological practices of connectivity and the "flattening" of knowledge systems. In particular those put forward by post structural and cultural theorists, such as Bruno Latour, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, as well as by theorists who associate with speculative realism. The concept of deep mapping as an aesthetic, methodological, and ideological tool, enables an approach to place that democratizes knowledge by crossing temporal, spatial, and disciplinary boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article strategically resituates scholarly engagement with archival documents within the media ecology and the epistemic culture that sustains literary and cultural studies, noting affinities between historical and contemporary configurations as well as between theoretical and medial-material dimensions of archives. Based on current debates on the growing relevance of archival documents in American Studies and adjacent fields, it stakes out a framework that leans on recent work in a small branch of contemporary literary theory focused on historical epistemology, especially with regard to the notion of 'epistemic objects'. Engaging these theoretical concerns, the article discusses concrete archival collections and documents, including letters by the novelist Willa Cather and items from a capacious archive documenting the emergence and evolution of Andrew Carnegie's public library philanthropy. I outline several ways in which the shape and the aesthetics of such archives embody the information economies and epistemic situations of the past – in this case, the formative period around 1900. Finally, the article addresses the digital document overload that confronts the contemporary researcher and comments on the emerging archival knowledge culture of today's humanities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The original reason for modern semiotic movement had been to make a general attempt to systematically increase the semantic clarification of the discourses of the traditional humanities through getting rid of the domination of philosophical-dogmatic stereotypes and by dint of intensifying interdisciplinary-directed theoretical practice. The emerging single-disciplinary tendency of the current semiotic scholarship caused by professional competitions and determinism of marketing has pressed semiotics to develop along professional-utilitarian and methodological-pragmatic directions. The result of these tendencies promotes its further disconnection from the original aim of contemporary semiotic movement directed to the scientific and rational progress of the theoretical humanities. Accordingly, this institutionalization of the single-disciplinary-directed semiotics could substantially weaken the scientific orientation and creative potential of semiotic-theoretical practice. This paper presents a double conception of institutional semiotics to deal with the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the space of possible worlds, there might be a best possible world (a uniquely best world or a world tied for best with some other worlds). Or, instead, for every possible world, there might be a better possible world. Suppose that the latter is true, i.e., that there is no best world. Many have thought that there is then an argument against the existence of God, i.e., the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect being; we will call such arguments no-best-world arguments. In this paper, we discuss ability-based objections to such arguments; an ability-based objection to a no-best world argument claims that the argument fails because one or more of its premises conflict with a plausible principle connecting the applicability of some type of moral evaluation to the agent's possession of a relevant ability. In particular, we formulate and evaluate an important new ability-based objection to the most promising no-best world argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory essay contextualizes and meditates on the three articles—Bhattacharya, Day, and Waller—presented in this special section on “Knowledge Management in Postmodern Society.” In the process it reflects on following points: (1) the capacity the university had in the past to incorporate the irregular and its loss in the contemporary university, (2) the devaluation of humanities and social sciences because of the reduction of the narrative as well as the reflective and critical thinking to mere doxa, (3) the competition from mass media on university's traditional role in knowledge dissemination and the building of the public sphere, (4) the oscillation of academy between Taylorism and post-Taylorism, (5) the possible role students can play in overcoming crisis faced by the university, and (6) the evolution of the binomial writing/reading in the shift to digitalization and the information society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Certain limitations arise from the persistent consideration of two common relations of islands in the humanities and social sciences: land and sea, and island and continent/mainland. What remains largely absent or silent are ways of being, knowing and doing—ontologies, epistemologies and methods—that illuminate island spaces as inter-related, mutually constituted and co-constructed: as island and island. Therefore, this paper seeks to map out and justify a research agenda proposing a robust and comprehensive exploration of this third and comparatively neglected nexus of relations. In advancing these aims, the paper's goal is to (re)inscribe the theoretical, metaphorical, real and empirical power and potential of the archipelago: of seas studded with islands; island chains; relations that may embrace equivalence, mutual relation and difference in signification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A course in symbolic logic belongs as a requirement in the undergraduate philosophy major. In this paper, which started life as a letter to my departmental colleagues, I consider and respond to several reasons one might have for excluding Logic from the core requirements. I then give several arguments in favor of keeping Logic. The central--and most important--argument is that the lack of a proper background in logic makes it very difficult to approach many relatively straightforward philosophical arguments, let alone the more technical subliteratures of philosophy. In developing this argument, I consider a few core texts and arguments (e.g., Gettier's classic paper on the analysis of knowledge) and bring out how a student with some background in formal logic would be able to approach the texts and arguments with much greater ease than a student who lacks such a background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws from the ARC Discovery project called Moving Ideas: Mobile Policies, Researchers and Connections in the Social Sciences and Humanities - Australia in the Global Context (2006-2009). This project explored the ways that ideas travel and how knowledge transforms through travel. One aspect of the study was the critical examination of various research policies around the world that are associated with moving ideas and moving researchers. These are often coupled with notions of 'brain drain-gain/mobility' and diaspora. A second focus was on the mobility biographies of globally mobile intellectuals with various links to Australia and on the implications of their mobility for their ideas, politics and national and trans-national identifications. It is our view that the actual experiences and insights of such people have the potential to enhance researcher (academic) mobility policies. A third concern has been to address the question of what it means to globalise the research imagination. In addressing this question we have drawn on leading researchers from around the globe who undertake research on globalisation itself. The paper to follow draws from selected publications associated with this project. The book from the project, to be completed in 2010, is titled Moving Ideas and Mobile Intellectuals. It should be noted at the outset that our focus in the project and in this discussion paper is on researchers in the social sciences and humanities including but not exclusively educational researchers. We begin by asking what it means to globalise research and how is this related to the nation-state'? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experimental philosophy has emerged as a very specific kind of response to an equally specific way of thinking about philosophy, one typically associated with philosophical analysis and according to which philosophical claims are measured, at least in part, by our intuitions. Since experimental philosophy has emerged as a response to this way of thinking about philosophy, its philosophical significance depends, in no small part, on how significant the practice of appealing to intuitions is to philosophy. In this paper, I defend the significance of experimental philosophy by defending the significance of intuitions—in particular, by defending their significance from a recent challenge advanced by Timothy Williamson. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I investigate current issues in the methodology of philosophy. In particular, the epistemology of intuition and the status of empirical work on the use of intuition in philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, Ancient Mesopotamian epistemic practices resulting in the vast corpus of cuneiform ‘lexical lists’ and other, similarly formatted treatises have been conceptualized as “ Listenwissenschaft” in Assyriology. Introduced by the German Assyriologist Wolfram v. Soden in , this concept has also been utilized in other disciplines of the Humanities as a terminological means to describe epistemic activity allegedly inferior to ‘Western’ modes of analytical and hypotactic scientific reasoning. Building on the exemplary evidence of a bilingual list of cuneiform compound graphemes from the early 2nd millennium BCE as well as on recent conceptualizations of ‘epistemic cultures’ and the instrumental function of material ‘representations’ in the context of epistemic practices, the present paper attempts to replace the essentialistic and teleological concept of an Ancient Mesopotamian “ Listenwissenschaft” with a new epistemological model describing the underlying epistemic practices as highly adaptive non-linear epistemic practices comparable to what has been described as ‘practices with »epistemic things«’ in recent epistemology and practice theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a long time-maybe starting from the well known 1929 meeting in Davos-the philosophy of exact and natural sciences deriving from Neo-positivism and hermeneutics followed separate ways. Post-positivistic philosophy of science and epistemology, though, saw the emerging of theses showing the existence of some affinities between the empirical method and the hermeneutical method. The paper singles these affinities out and discusses their consequences from the point of view of the problems of objectivity and truth. In particular, it supports the ideas of objectivity as achievement and of truth as empty regulative ideal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to consider the links between engineering and philosophy in order to understand what their synthesis, in a discipline we might call 'engineered epistemology', might be like. This article will attempt to defend the thesis that engineering and philosophy are complementary ways of approaching the same reality, distinct methodologically but not distinct in kind. I will do this by demonstrating internal, rather than external, links between these two disciplines. I will begin by investigating the types of external links different historical traditions have established, with particular attention to two recent attempts to define a philosophy of engineering. Then I will address the problem of characterising some possible internal links, first by trying to understand how engineering can be understood as a philosophical discipline, then secondly how philosophy itself can be interpreted as a discipline related to engineering. These sections will take the form of an investigation of some problems in established traditions. I will conclude by drawing together the consequences of these different approaches to the concept of 'engineered epistemology'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that subjectivity needs to be understood as a geography. The “psychotopical” analysis that is necessary in order to understand subjectivity requires that more emphasis be placed on arts of experiment drawn from the battery of performing arts that exist on the borderline between the humanities and the social sciences. Some examples are given.Subjectivity (2008) 22, 82–89. doi:10.1057/sub.2008.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the Humanities should be distinguished from the Social Sciences in terms of primary subject matter alone, and not in terms of theory, method, epistemology, or style of presentation. Some implications for how research should proceed in the Humanities are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author focuses on a role of the humanities in the contemporary model of knowledge. She tries to analyse the postmodern ways of knowing and ask about the consequences of exhaustion of the strict boundaries of human knowledge. The paper indicates a need for the integral humanities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Special issue Identity and difference in health and healthcare Guest editor: John S Drummond [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that there are major historical epochs with paradigm shifts between them, that the age of globalization is one such epoch. Global corporations and technological innovation comprise essential parts of this process and we explore how they function. We argue that global companies modify human cultures and have implications for educational policy. The companies also create ‘virtual’ communities, where traditional sense of place and tradition are of diminished importance. We also consider the human qualities and educational skills which are needed to survive and prosper in our global age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is much talk in the ‘art world’ about boundaries and the blurring of boundaries between art and non-art, art and craft, and various forms within art. What is meant by a boundary is not always clear and this paper tries to make some sense of what may be at stake when deciding on which side of a line something falls. It is suggested that the important thing is how we deal with and react to particular examples rather than worrying about whether it is a this or a that. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wittgenstein sought to uphold ‘realism without empiricism’. This paper identifies in Wittgestein's and in Kant's philosophies a common line of argument that provides a genuinely transcendental argument for (not from) mental content externalism. This line of argument has not been previously recognized in either thinker's work. The common thesis defended by both Wittgenstein and Kant alike is that, if we human beings did not inhabit a natural world structured by a recognizable degree of similarity and variety among the objects or events we perceive, we could not so much as think, so we could not so much as be self-conscious. (This line of argument is independent of Kant's idealism, and ultimately shows that Kant's transcendental idealism is false and unsupportable.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predictivism asserts that novel confirmations carry special probative weight. Epistemic pluralism asserts that the judgments of agents (about, e.g., the probabilities of theories) carry epistemic import. In this paper, I propose a new theory of predictivism that is tailored to pluralistic evaluators of theories. I replace the orthodox notion of use-novelty with a notion of endorsement-novelty, and argue that the intuition that predictivism is true has two roots. I provide a detailed Bayesian rendering of this theory and argue that pluralistic theory evaluation pervades scientific practice. I compare my account of predictivism with those of Maher and Worrall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the divergent theoretical developments in the UK and US disability studies and posits some explanations for these differing trajectories. History, politics, space, place and the search for identity have all played important roles. These emergent and hotly debated developments add a wealth of material to the epistemological project. The recent collections by Barnes et al. (2002) Disability studies today, and Snyder et al. (2002) Disability studies: enabling the humanities, wall be used as pivotal works. However, the question remains as to what explanatory power discourses developed within western metropolitan national cultures have for exploring the experience of disability in cultures on the peripheries. This analysis is being undertaken by an English bom academic, who has been living in Australia for over 20 years and has been keenly watching and participating in the transatlantic battles over the past decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper questions the view that knowledge must be articulable or at least experiential. It asserts that what distinguishes habitual yet intentional action from a mechanistic response is its grounding in a suitable claim to knowledge. However, it denies that a necessary condition for knowing how to perform an action is the ability of the subject to either articulate the particulars of that act, or experience it as appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers and analysis of Ernest Sosa's Virtue Perspectivism. Although Sosa has been credited with fathering the influential contemporary movement known as Virtue Epistemology, I argue that Sosa imprudently abandons the reliabilist-based insights of Virtue Epistemology in favor of a reflection-based, ``perspectival'' view. Sosa's mixed allegiance to reliabilist-based and reflection-based views of knowledge, in fact, leads to an unwelcome tension in his thought which can be relieved by recognizing that his reflection-based view is in fact an account of the cognitive state of understanding, rather than an account of knowledge. Sosa makes matters difficult for himself because he expects too much, as it were, from the concept of knowledge, and in the process burdens his view with elements of reflection it does not require. To solve the problem, I suggest that Sosa needs to develop a two-tiered epistemology which recognizes that knowledge, on the one hand, and understanding, on the other, both have necessary and sufficient conditions unique to themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]