Epistemology Commons^™

Phenomenological Psychology In Practice And Research: A Global Perspective On A Human Science, Alex A. Ekstrom

Global Honors Theses

Phenomenology is a philosophical movement, and more recently, an approach taken by healthcare professionals around the world in their work with patients, and by social scientists in their research about human phenomena (Creswell, 2011; Viney & King, 2003). In this paper, I will explore this approach in the field of psychology specifically. I will focus on how phenomenology has been used to enhance the clinical practice of psychology, and in qualitative research in psychology to better understand and promote well-being. I will suggest that the phenomenological approach in psychology leads to a more open-minded and rigorous practitioner and researcher who …

Commentary On 'Acts Of Ostension', Paul L. Simard Smith

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Commentary On ‘Levels Of Depth In Deep Disagreement’, Tim Kenyon

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Bias In Legitimate Ad Hominem Arguments, Patrick Bondy

OSSA Conference Archive

This paper is about bias and ad hominem arguments. It will begin by rehearsing some reasons for thinking that there are both legitimate and illegitimate ad hominems, as well as reasons for thinking that biases can be both justified and unjustified. It will explain that justified biases about people with certain social identities can give rise to both legitimate and illegitimate ad hominem attacks, while unjustified biases only give rise to illegitimate ad hominems.

The paper will then describe Audrey Yap’s view that even when an unjustified bias is made explicit and shown to be unjustified, it can still make …

Compassion, Authority And Baby Talk: Prosody And Objectivity, Leo Groarke, Gabrijela Kišiček

OSSA Conference Archive

Recent work on multimodal argumentation has explored facets of argumentation which have no obvious analogue in the written arguments which were emphasized in traditional accounts of argument. One of these facets is prosody: the structure and quality of the sound of spoken language. Prosodic features include pitch, temporal structure, pronunciation, loudness and voice quality, rhythm, emphasis and accent. In this paper, we explore the ways that prosodic features may be invoked in arguing.

Pursuing Objectivity: How Virtuous Can You Get?, José Ángel Gascón

OSSA Conference Archive

While, in common usage, objectivity is usually regarded as a virtue, and failures to be objective as vices, this concept tends to be absent in argumentation theory. This paper will explore the possibility of taking objectivity as an argumentative virtue. Several problems immediately arise: could objectivity be understood in positive terms— not only as mere absence of bias? Is it an attainable ideal? Or perhaps objectivity could be explained as a combination of other virtues?

Ad Stuprum: The Fallacy Of Appeal To Sex, Beverley I. Anger Ms., Catherine Hundleby Dr.

OSSA Conference Archive

Arguments sometimes appeal to sex by invoking the sexuality of a model or a person or the promise of sexual gratification. When sexual gratification is not a relevant consideration, the appeal seems to be fallacious.

We will address when this may be an appropriate line of reasoning -- there is such a thing as “sex appeal”--and when it may be biased to assume the relevance of sexuality. Advertising, which provides infinite examples of appeal to sex, may be questionable as a case of argumentation, as opposed to some other sort of negotiation or communication, especially perhaps in its reliance on …

Communicating Who Knows What In Sustainability Science: Investigating The Role Of Epistemology In Science Communication And Engagement, Brianne M. Suldovsky

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The complex socio-ecological problems we face today often require that researchers collaborate with individuals and organizations outside of their own disciplines and, oftentimes, outside of academia entirely. This sustainability science model encourages university researchers to engage in participatory models of engagement, where nonscientific publics and scientists working outside of academe are invited to co-produce knowledge and, through collaboration, arrive at solutions for sustainability. Despite the popularity of participatory models of engagement in sustainability science, very little research has examined sustainability science researchers’ perceptions of epistemic authority in conjunction with their engagement behavior. This kind of work is important given that …

Virtue, Knowledge, And Goodness, Marlin Ray Sommers

Masters Theses

This thesis consists of three parts. Part one responds to an argument by Jason Baehr that virtues of intellectual character which make their possessor good qua person can also figure as virtues in reliabilist accounts of knowledge. I analyze his argument with special attention to the cases he uses to motivate his claims, and argue that the role which intellectual character virtues play in the acquisition of knowledge is not the role which is relevant to reliabilists accounts of knowledge. More generally, I argue that character intellectual virtues are not good candidates for reliabilist virtues because their telos is not …

The Constellations Of Empiricism, New Science, And Mind In Hobbes, Locke, And Hume, Lisa Pelot

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis, positive and negative tensions among the “unit-ideas” of New Science and empiricism are explored as they relate to explanations of aspects of mind in the Modern period. Some constellations of ideas are mutually supporting, and provide fruitful discussion on how mind can fit into the natural world. This project aims to clarify the adequacy of this type of framework in accommodating and explaining mind, and aspects of mind. I proceed by analyzing key texts via the “unit-ideas” of New Science and empiricism. The three central chapters are case studies, looking at Hobbes, Locke, and Hume. Each chapter …

Redefining Medicine: The Epistemology, Political Theory, And Phenomenology Of Health And Disease, Jacqline J. Murillo

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

This thesis argues that health needs to be redefined in a more comprehensive fashion, namely as a physiological/biological state, with social, environmental, and individual determinants always related to one’s personal needs to achieve one’s life plan. The benefits of this new definition include more emphasis on the distribution of health as a social good.

Additionally, redefining health puts the value of the individual’s life rather than the strict monetary value of their needed treatment as a focal point. It also draws more attention to medicine as a practice of care, rather than viewing it simply as a technology or science, …

A Defense Of The Ambiguity Theory Of 'Knows', Mark R. Satta

Open Access Dissertations

In recent years, questions regarding the truth conditions of knowledge ascriptions (sentences of the form ‘S knows that P’ where S is a subject and P a proposition) and knowledge denials (sentences of the form ‘S doesn’t know that P’) have been at the fore of a certain sector of analytic epistemology and philosophy of language. These questions include “How do we determine the truth conditions of a particular knowledge ascription or denial?”, “What sorts of factors are relevant in this determination?”, and “Is context among the relevant factors in a non-trivial way, and if so, how?” A variety of …

Service And Learning For Whom? Toward A Critical Decolonizing Bicultural Service Learning Pedagogy, Kortney Hernandez

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

The notion of service has enjoyed historical longevity—rooted deeply within our institutions (i.e., churches, schools, government, military, etc.), reminiscent of indentured servitude, and rarely questioned as a colonizing practice that upholds oppression. Given the relentless insertion of service learning programs into working class communities, the sacrosanctity awarded and commonsensically given to service is challenged and understood within its colonial, historical, philosophical, economic, and ideological machinations. This political confrontation of service learning practices serves to: (a) critique the dominant epistemologies that reproduce social inequalities within the context of service learning theory and practice; and (b) move toward the formulation of a …

Tesitmony As Significance Negotiation, Jennifer F. Epp

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation addresses the following questions: How should epistemologists conceptualize testimony? What do people use testimony to do? And why does ‘what people do’ with testimony matter epistemically? In response to these questions I both define and characterize testimony.

While doing so I argue for the following answers, given here very briefly: What do people do when they testify? They tell each other things and avow that those things are true, offering their statements to others as reasons to believe. More importantly, they interact with each other in order to negotiate about significance. Why do these activities matter epistemically? Because …

Toward A Kripkean Concept Of Number, Oliver R. Marshall

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Saul Kripke once remarked to me that natural numbers cannot be posits inferred from their indispensability to science, since we’ve always had them. This left me wondering whether numbers are objects of Russellian acquaintance, or accessible by analysis, being implied by known general principles about how to reason correctly, or both. To answer this question, I discuss some recent (and not so recent) work on our concepts of number and of particular numbers, by leading psychologists and philosophers. Special attention is paid to Kripke’s theory that numbers possess structural features of the numerical systems that stand for them, and to …

Wabi-Sabi Mathematics, Jean-Francois Maheux

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Mathematics and aesthetics have a long history in common. In this relation however, the aesthetic dimension of mathematics largely refers to concepts such as purity, absoluteness, symmetry, and so on. In stark contrast to such a nexus of ideas, the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi values imperfections, temporality, incompleteness, earthly crudeness, and even contradiction. In this paper, I discuss the possibilities of “wabi-sabi mathematics” by showing (1) how wabi-sabi mathematics is conceivable; (2) how wabi-sabi mathematics is observable; and (3) why we should bother about wabi-sabi mathematics

Using Heider’S Epistemology Of Thing And Medium For Unpacking The Conception Of Documents: Gantt Charts And Boundary Objects, Sebastian K. Boell, Florian Hoof

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Documents play a central role for many organizational processes. Current conceptualizations of documents predominantly engage with documents in two different ways. One sees documents as things with specific properties, and a second sees documents as medium enabling communication across different groups of actors. What is currently not well understood is how documents are perceived either as thing or as medium. This chapter engages with this issue by drawing from Fritz Heider’s epistemology of thing and medium, a concept stemming from social and media theory. According to Heider things are uniform and medium are multiform. Applying this concept to documents we …

How Much A Quarter Cost: Allegory Of A Coin And Other Stories, Grant C. Gallo

The Downtown Review

The philosophical theories of Baruch Spinoza and George Berkley were described, compared, and contrasted. Various examples and metaphors were used to help fully illustrate their respective metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical positions. The relevance of their theories to current philosophical discourse was discussed; showing that even in today’s technologically advanced society, seemingly antiquated ideas may still provide useful knowledge. In the end, Spinoza and Berkley’s apparently conflicting paradigms are rectified through a multiplexual, relativistic lens.

Skepticism As Epistemic Naturalization, Dylan Vallance

2016 Undergraduate Awards

Responses to radical philosophical skepticism often interpret skeptical arguments as conceptual challenges that must be overcome if common epistemic practices are to remain justifiably practicable. Such responses treat skeptical arguments as attacks on our ability to justifiably make knowledge claims, wherein the skeptic attempts to isolate conceptual problems embedded in common epistemic processes that debar those processes from the potential to produce knowledge. In this framework, the successful skeptic reveals our constitutional epistemic blindness while the successful response defangs the skeptic’s attack on our capacity for knowledge.

This paper argues that this interpretation is predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of …

Evidence For Anti-Intellectualism About Know-How From A Sentence Recognition Task, Ian Harmon, Zachary Horne

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

An emerging trend in cognitive science is to explore central epistemological questions using psychological methods. Early work in this growing area of research has revealed that epistemologists' theories of knowledge diverge in various ways from the ways in which ordinary people think of knowledge. Reflecting the practices of epistemology as a whole, the vast majority of these studies have focused on the concept of propositional knowledge, or knowledge-that. Many philosophers, however, have argued that knowing how to do something is importantly different from knowing that something is the case. Hence, in this paper we turn our attention to people's concept …