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Full-Text Articles in Theory, Knowledge and Science
Assertion And Its Many Norms, John N. Williams
Assertion And Its Many Norms, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Timothy Williamson offers the ordinary practice, the lottery and the Moorean argument for the ‘knowledge account’ that assertion is the only speech-act that is governed by the single ‘knowledge rule’ or norm, that one must know its content. I show that the emptiness of the knowledge account renders mysterious why breaking the knowledge rule should be a source of criticism. I then argue that focussing exclusively on the sincerity of the speech-act of letting one know engenders a category mistake about the nature of constraints on assertion. For Williamson and those in his tradition, assertion alls under purely epistemic norms. …
Refocusing On Qualitative Methods: Problems And Prospects For Research In A Specific Asian Context, Lily Kong
Refocusing On Qualitative Methods: Problems And Prospects For Research In A Specific Asian Context, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
A recent issue of Area (1996, Volume 28.2) devoted space to six papers on focus groups, attesting to their increasing importance as a means of obtaining qualitative data. The papers provided interesting insights into the use of focus groups in specific research and cultural contexts, and raised three main issues in my mind. The first is a continuing misunderstanding as to the nature of knowledge, which surfaces in discussions of, and approaches to, the use of qualitative methods such as focus groups. The second is the range of related techniques that are actually involved in the qualitative method, known as …