Epistemology Commons^™

Social Media: On Tech-Caves, Virtual Panopticism, And The Science Fiction-Like State In Which We Unwittingly Find Ourselves, Michael Major

Theses

Making use of three historic philosophical thought experiments, this paper blends psychological perspectives with philosophical reasoning to show how social media is corrupting our perception of reality, the result of which is ultimately detrimental to society as a whole. This is accomplished by first using Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” to analyze and discuss the ways in which social media is limiting humanity’s access to real knowledge. Next, Michel Foucault’s analysis of punishment in its social context, Discipline and Punish, is used to discuss the ways in which social media is adversely affecting our behavior. Finally, Robert Nozick’s “Experience …

Naming The Nameless: An Exploration Of Queer Poetry And Empowerment, Jesse Yelvington

2018 Award Winners

No abstract provided.

What Lies In The Gray: Creative Analytic Pieces On The Formation And Evolution Of Beliefs In Masxha, Robin Mwai

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The purpose of this project was to look at how members of Durban's Masxha township develop their belief systems and ideas about their world. This topic was developed out of a desire to better understand the factors that promote or inhibit individuals from changing their mind about topics relating to their community, society, and culture. I sought to gain a deeper understanding of the specific context of Masxha and the experiences and lives of those with whom I spoke.

To accomplish the goal of learning from lived experiences, this study employed a narrative inquiry approach. Using loosely-structured interviews involving eight …

Becoming Human In The Land: An Introduction To The Special Issue Of Heritage: Landscapes, Drew Hubbell

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This introduction to the special issue of Landscapes theorizes the questions suggested by the theme, "Landscape: Heritage." Weaving personal narrative with literary criticism, cultural studies, human geography, and ecology, the essay examines the way humans become human by developing complex relationships with landscapes over time. As landscapes contain the physical traces of human habitation and development, certain narratives of human inhabitants are written and memorialized in and by those landscapes. The monumentalization of specific heritages leads to contests between human groups who require certain heritages to be memorialized, but not others. Greater awareness of one's humanity requires recovery of polyphonic …

The Problem Of Evil And The Grammar Of Goodness, Eric Wiland

Philosophy Faculty Works

I consider the two venerated arguments about the existence of God: the Ontological Argument and the Argument from Evil. The Ontological Argument purports to show that God’s nature guarantees that God exists. The Argument from Evil purports to show that God’s nature, combined with some plausible facts about the way the world is, guarantees (or is very compelling grounds for thinking) that God does not exist. Both presume that it is coherent to predicate goodness (or greatness) of God. But if Peter Geach’s claim that goodness is logically attributive is cogent, then both arguments fall to the ground.

Making Implicit Methods Explicit: Trade Press Analysis In The Political Economy Of Communication, Thomas F. Corrigan

Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The political economy of communication (PEC) situates media systems and practices in their structural and historical contexts; however, PEC scholars rarely articulate or justify their research methods. To address this oversight, this article explains how PEC scholars use trade publications to study media industries, practices, policy making, and discourses thereof. Following a critical realist approach, PEC researchers “burrow down” in trade press advertisements and reports and “listen in” to the frank, insider discussions therein. This article evaluates the trade press against Scott’s four “quality control criteria” for documentary sources—authenticity, credibility, representativeness, and meaning. Trade publications employ daunting industry jargon, and …

Language, Literacy, And Conscientização In American Public Schools, Julie Ward

Theses and Dissertations

Language, Literacy, and Conscientização in American Public Schools synthesizes poststructural language theory to critique literacy teaching and assessment norms in American public schools in order to theorize a pedagogy of racial and economic justice that embraces globalization and immigration. Chapter I creates a theoretical framework for language that rests firmly on both Lev Vygotsky’s and Jacques Lacan’s sociohistorical approach to language acquisition and language use. Mikhail Bakhtin’s work demonstrates the heteroglossic nature of discourse, while Antonio Gramsci politicizes this framework through an understanding of hegemony. Chapter II sketches ethnographic research on teaching practices of various American communities, focusing on ideology …

Philosophical Ends To Scientific Means: Diagnosis And The Epistemology Of Psychology, Christopher Michael Johnson

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Modern scientific psychology continues to advance toward newer and greater discoveries of the inner workings of the human mind, posited in the belief that a universal objectivity exists if only to be found. Despite the professional emphasis on conducting psychological enterprises in this manner, the field has spent much of its formalized existence struggling to answer some of its most basic questions. This paper thoroughly explores the nature of a scientific psychology, while suggesting that psychology may find wisdom in its philosophical origins. It further suggests that psychology continue toward a postmodern epistemology, in which a unitary psychological reality is …

The Sylvan Blindspot: The Archaeological Value Of Surface Vegetation And A Critique Of Its Documentation, John S. Harris

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Surface vegetation at archaeological sites is a resource overlooked in cultural resource management. Drawing upon comparative documentary surveys of site forms and human surveys of 161 archaeologists in 12 U.S. states, this thesis explores why surface vegetation offers archaeological data potential; how archaeological documentation is an artifact of archaeologists, shaped by various subjectivities; and how improvements can be made for vegetal description in cultural inventory site forms. The surveys offer a critique on how the site form records are a product of disciplinary training oversights, differing work background experience, cultural bias, limitations in botanical knowledge, regional differences in U.S. archaeological …

Rocky Horror Sublimation: Identity As A Contingency Of Experience, Josh Harper

Senior Theses

Queer theory, as a subfield of feminist theories concerned with revealing epistemic, political, and humanitarian problems of a male-dominated society, has been heavily influenced by its founding thinkers, including Judith Butler, the theorist focused on herein. In critiquing various problems of our western society, Butler preserves the structure underlying such problems: through her approach of a gay/straight framework critiquing a male domination of female, the binary is preserved. This is problematic for many reasons, including its exclusion of perspectives that do not fall cleanly into such dichotomies, namely trans and polysexual ones. By appealing to these, as well as to …

Arts-Based Education For Enchanting, Embodied And Embedded Sustainability, Hans Dieleman

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article sketches two contrasting ideal-typical narratives of sustainability, a disenchanting and an enchanting one, and argues that current thinking in sustainability is mainly situated in the narrative of disenchantment. This narrative is based on various obsolete philosophical assumptions, and hampers the transformation process, as it distances the population from being part of this. It then sketches the narrative of enchanting sustainability and shows how this has the capacity to engage, intrigue and motivate people to be involved. It is rooted in an arts-based approach of connecting aesthetics, associative thinking, reflective practice, emotion-based working, aspiration and intentionality. The article moves …

Walking As Ontological Shifter: Thoughts In The Key Of Life, Bibi (Silvina) Calderaro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

With walking as ontological shifter I pursue an alternative to the dominant modernist episteme that offers either/or onto-epistemologies of opposition and their reifying engagements. I propose this type of walking is an intentional turning towards a set of radical positions that, as integrative aesthetic and therapeutic practice, brings multiplicity and synchronicity to experience and being in an expanded sociality. This practice facilitates the conditions of possibility for recurring points of contact between the interiority perceived as ‘body’ and the exteriority perceived as ‘world.’ While making evident the self’s at once incoherence with it-self, it opens to a space beyond the …

Course Syllabus (Su17) Coli 331: “‘World-Traveling’: Alterity And Liminality In Spike Lee’S Do The Right Thing And Amiri Baraka’S Dutchman”, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

This semester, we’ll view Spike Lee’s 1989 Do the Right Thing and Shirley Knight’s 1966 cinematic production of Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman through the critical lenses of Maria Lugones’ notions of ‘worlds’ and ‘world-traveling,’[1] which she develops in Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions. Our task is to analyze a number of the problematics addressed in these visual works as discernible ‘world(s)’ of meaning and experience constituted by the libidinous investments, concrete practices, and ideological convictions of the human subjects who bear and circulate them.

[1] Maria Lugones, Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, …

How Trump Won: Media And The Silent Majority In The 2016 Us Presidential Election, Joshua K. Miller

Senior Honors Theses

Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign ended in victory because of two powerful forces: enormous media advantage gained through sensationalism and a strong coalition made up of evangelicals, pragmatic conservatives, and the silent majority. The work of Neil Postman sheds light on the underlying cultural foundation of Trump’s media advantage. Parallels from the video game industry explain how intentional sensationalism played into Trump’s success in the primary process. Evangelicals and pragmatic conservatives joined Trump’s coalition in spite of his scandals, and Eric Hoffer’s work helps explain his appeal to the silent majority. Ultimately, the patterns of Trump’s victory yield significant learning …

Society, Scientific Authority, And Linguistics: The Need For Epistemic Justification, Libby C. Chernouski

Purdue Linguistics, Literature, and Second Language Studies Conference

Many have considered Linguistics a science for decades, though linguists themselves have debated the accuracy of this characterization of the study of language. These conversations about linguistics as a science reveal a discipline intent on securing scientific status, often through rigorous methodology and theoretical frameworks mirroring the traditional sciences. If successful, however, linguistics inherits the authority of modern science, which maintains an epistemically hierarchical relationship with non-scientists. By examining and representing the epistemic relationships between expertise, authority, and science, I ask us to think of all linguistics not as a socially neutral endeavor, but as perpetuating the juxtaposition of scientific …

Spiritual Journeys: A Study Of Ifá /Òrìṣà Practitioners In The United States Initiated In Nigeria, Tony Van Der Meer

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this study is to understand the culture of one of the newest branches of traditional Yorùbá Ifá/Òrìṣà practice in the United States from practitioners born in the United States that were initiated in Nigeria, West Africa.The epistemology of the Ifá/Òrìṣà belief system in the United States has been based on the history and influence of Regla de Ocha or Santeria that developed out of Cuban innovation and practice.This is an ethnographic and auto-ethnographic study that pulls from participant observation, field notes, interviews, and photos as data.The central question of this dissertation is what are the challenges and …

The Consequences Of Narrative, Kylie Mosbacher

IdeaFest: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works and Research from Cal Poly Humboldt

No abstract provided.

The Discursive Functioning Of Knowledge Claims In Research Studies On Children’S Conceptual Knowledge Of Number, Patrick D. Byers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Researchers interested in the development of conceptual knowledge of number have studied children’s behavior in various tasks or other contexts in order to draw conclusions about what they know. The guiding assumption of this work is that the presence or absence of a given form of knowledge is typically reflected in the ability/inability to perform certain types of behavior. Researchers complicate this assumption when they claim that (1) the ability to perform a given behavior may also reflect simple imitation or rote learning in the absence of understanding, and/or (2) that the inability to perform a certain behavior may reflect …

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 …

Giving A Voice To The Powerless: Participatory Monitoring & Evaluation As A Tool For Inclusive Development Through Microfinance, Evan T. Burke

Capstone Collection

The greatest experts on the situation of the marginalized peoples of the world are the marginalized communities themselves. This paper explores how participatory monitoring & evaluation can be a powerful tool for giving voices to marginalized communities, ensuring that the voices of beneficiaries and local stakeholders are heard and inform sustainable project design. It analyzes a participatory monitoring and evaluation methodology implemented for women’s credit cooperatives in Gujarat, India by the Human Development & Research Centre, and examines lessons to be learned to design evaluations facilitating inclusive development.

Strategies for the monitoring and evaluation of microfinance have evolved along with …

How Does “Collaboration” Occur At All? Remarks On Epistemological Issues Related To Understanding / Working With ‘The Other’, Don Faust, Judith Puncochar

Conference Presentations

Collaboration, if to occur successfully at all, needs to be based on careful representation and communication of each stakeholder’s knowledge. In this paper, we investigate, from a foundational logical and epistemological point of view, how such representation and communication can be accomplished. What we tentatively conclude, based on a careful delineation of the logical technicalities necessarily involved in such representation and communication, is that a complete representation is not possible. This inference, if correct, is of course rather discouraging with regard to what we can hope to achieve in the knowledge representations that we bring to our collaborations. We suggest …

Mathematical Models Of Games Of Chance: Epistemological Taxonomy And Potential In Problem-Gambling Research, Catalin Barboianu

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

Games of chance are developed in their physical consumer-ready form on the basis of mathematical models, which stand as the premises of their existence and represent their physical processes. There is a prevalence of statistical and probabilistic models in the interest of all parties involved in the study of gambling – researchers, game producers and operators, and players – while functional models are of interest more to math-inclined players than problem-gambling researchers. In this paper I present a structural analysis of the knowledge attached to mathematical models of games of chance and the act of mathematical modeling, arguing that such …

Nepantla And Ubuntu Ethics Para Nosotros: Beyond Scrupulous Adherence Toward Threshold Perspectives Of Participatory/Collaborative Research Ethics, Monique Antoinette Guishard

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Participatory Action Research (PAR) refers less to a method and more to a continuum of approaches to collaborative inquiry. Within PAR, ideally, some phenomenon has been identified as a mutual area of concern to researchers and community members; working together they design, conduct, analyze, and disseminate the findings of a shared piece of research and coordinate action(s) aimed at using research to redress injustice. If PAR is embraced holistically boundaries inevitably blur as research team members become enmeshed in each other's lives. This blurring while momentous can give rise to ethical quandaries that IRB centered research ethics are inadequate to …

Presence-At-Hand, Eric Lyle Schultz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

The writing that follows is intended to provide a theoretical framework for the motives behind my practice. The primary concerns addressed are the reception, transmission, and physical shape of knowledge. I will discuss a human condition that exists as a byproduct of both the legacy of representation as well as the innate biology of the brain. I will argue that as a society we are governed by the residue of an extreme logic, and that this condition places severe margins on our potential for creative solutions. I will propose that our ability to create meaning is stifled by the …

Subversive Humor, Chris A. Kramer

Dissertations (1934 -)

Oppression is easily recognized. That is, at least, when oppression results from overt, consciously professed racism, for example, in which violence, explicit exclusion from economic opportunities, denial of adequate legal access, and open discrimination perpetuate the subjugation of a group of people. There are relatively clear legal remedies to such oppression. But this is not the case with covert oppression where the psychological harms and resulting legal and economic exclusion are every bit as real, but caused by concealed mechanisms subtly and systematically employed. In many cases, those with power and privilege use cultural stereotypes in order to sustain an …

Specters Of Kurdish Nationalism: Governmentality And Counterinsurgent Translation In Turkey, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

This essay examines translations of the Kurdish epic poem Mem û Zîn into Turkish, tracing the logics behind these state-sponsored translations and examining how acts of translation are also efforts to regulate, translate, and erase Kurdish subjectivities. I argue that the state instrumentalizes Mem û Zîn’s potent nationalist currency in order to disarm present and future claims of Kurdish national autonomy. Using translation as a counterinsurgent governmental tool, the state attempts to domesticate Kurdish nationalist discourses even as it reproduces them, thereby transforming Kurdish nationalism into a specter of itself. Attending to this specter, however, allows us to see how …

Objectivity And The Role Of Journalism In Democratic Societies, Tyler Sonnemaker

CMC Senior Theses

In this essay, I argue that the institution of journalism plays a vital role in informing citizens of a deliberative democratic society, and that to effectively fulfill this role, journalists must report the news objectively. I first examine the historical evolution of objectivity as it pertains to journalism. Then, I elaborate on some of the philosophical concepts that provide the foundation for objectivity. Next, I introduce John Rawls’ idea of public reason, which provides an improved understanding of the role of journalism within a democratic society. I claim from this that journalism must re-envision its role as guardian of the …

Reducing Subjectivity: Meditation And Implicit Bias, Diana M. Ciuca

CMC Senior Theses

Implicit association of racial stereotypes is brought about by social conditioning (Greenwald & Krieger, 2006). This conditioning can be explained by attractor networks (Sharp, 2011). Reducing implicit bias through meditation can show the effectiveness of reducing the rigidity of attractor networks, thereby reducing subjectivity. Mindfulness meditation has shown to reduce bias from the use of one single guided session conducted before performing an Implicit Association Test (Lueke & Gibson, 2015). Attachment to socially conditioned racial bias should become less prevalent through practicing meditation over time. An experimental model is proposed to test this claim along with a reconceptualization of consciousness …

Wilderness And Epistemic Wildness, John T. Stanfield

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The traditional concept of wilderness was a product of the time out of which it came. Times have changed. The social context of conservation, how humans affect nature, and scientific understanding of how ecosystems function have all shifted in ways that make the wilderness idea problematic. The values that people found in wilderness are still relevant, however. It is the way that they are tied together in the concept of wilderness that has become a problem.

I propose a revised concept of wilderness that meets the concerns of critics of wilderness, and accounts for the tension between the wild and …

Esquisse D’Un Projet Épistémologique Pour La Science Politique Dans Une Afrique Post-Génocide, Mame-Penda Ba

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article attempts to answer two main questions: “What does it mean to teach political science in an African university when oneself is African?” and “what social realities are we documenting (or should we document)?” As a political scientist, I came to ask myself these questions based on my encounter with the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, and based on the questions that this major event had kindled in me. My encounter with the subject of “genocide” was in all respects an upheaval because I understood suddenly a large weakness in the way political science was taught at Université …