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In this paper, we report the results of cross-linguistic studies on knowledge-how that employ English and Japanese. The studies involve native speakers of both English and Japanese, and for the knowing how constructions in Japanese, we examined two knowledge verbs in Japanese, “shitte-iru” and “wakatte-iru,” which have been shown to be radically different in knowledge attributions in epistemologically important cases. We claim that the results support pluralism about knowledge-how.

Contemporary economic theory has entered into an era of unprecedented pluralism. Convincing arguments have been presented for the integration of this pluralism, the possibilities for which however rest on questions of ontology. This paper looks at two hubs of pluralist research, complexity economics and heterodox economics, to evaluate the possibilities for an integration. Complexity economics constitutes an ontological broadening of neoclassicism, but is based on an implicit and incomplete social ontology. Heterodox economics has been argued to be systematized by a critical realist ontology, but has been criticized for limits in the operationalization of this ontology. An ontological merge is sketched, resulting in Complex Realist economics, which is argued to be capable of resolving the ‘confused state’ of complexity economics, providing the heterodox tradition with the necessary methodologies to study the phenomena that it theorizes, and constituting a consistent ontological foundation for an ‘interested pluralism’.

This paper examines Miranda Fricker’s method of paradigm-based explanation and in particular its promise of yielding an ordered pluralism. Fricker’s starting point is a schism between two conceptions of forgiveness, Moral Justice Forgiveness and Gifted Forgiveness. In the light of a hypothesis about the basic point of forgiveness, she reveals the unity underlying the initially baffling plurality and brings order into it, presenting a paradigmatic form of forgiveness as explanatorily basic and other forms as derivative. The resulting picture, she claims, is an ‘explanatorily satisfying ordered pluralism.’ But what is this ordered pluralism and how does Fricker’s method deliver it? And to what extent can this strategy be generalised to other conceptual practices? By making explicit and critically examining the conception of ordered pluralism implicit in Fricker’s procedure, I assess the promise that her approach holds as a way of resolving stand-offs between warring conceptions of ideas or practices more widely. I argue that it holds great promise in this respect, but that if we are to avoid reproducing just the schismatic debates that the pluralism of paradigm-based explanation is supposed to overcome at the level of what is to be regarded as a paradigm case, we need to take seriously the thought that what counts as a paradigm is partly determined by our purposes in giving a paradigm-based explanation.