Inquiry, Activity and Epistemic Practice

2008 ◽  
pp. 99-117 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Practice

Academic Freedom and the Politics of Truth

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Public Mind ◽  
Epistemic Practice ◽  
The Public ◽  
The One ◽  
Rational Inquiry ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter argues that academic freedom is justified because it is an inherently epistemic practice that serves the ideals of democracy. With Dewey, it is argued that “The one thing that is inherent and essential [to the idea of a university] is the ideal of truth.” But far from being apolitical, the value of pursuing truth and knowledge—the value that justifies academic freedom, both within and without the public mind—is a fundamental democratic value, and for three reasons: the practices of academic inquiry exemplify rational inquiry of the kind needed for democratic deliberation; those practices serve to train students to pursue that kind of inquiry; and those practices are important engines of democratic dissent.

scholarly journals Epistemic corruption and the research impact agenda

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-167
Author(s):  
Ian James Kidd ◽  
Jennifer Chubb ◽  
Joshua Forstenzer
Keyword(s):  
Research Impact ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
Empirical Methods ◽  
Epistemic Practice ◽  
Academic Researchers ◽  
Critical Scrutiny ◽  
The Impact

Contemporary epistemologists of education have raised concerns about the distorting effects of some of the processes and structures of contemporary academia on the epistemic practice and character of academic researchers. Such concerns have been articulated using the concept of epistemic corruption. In this article, we lend credibility to these theoretically motivated concerns using the example of the research impact agenda during the period 2012–2014. Interview data from UK and Australian academics confirm that the impact agenda system, at its inception, facilitated the development and exercise of epistemic vices. As well as vindicating theoretically motivated claims about epistemic corruption, inclusion of empirical methods and material can help us put the concept to work in ongoing critical scrutiny of evolving forms of the research impact agenda.

Conservatism, Basic Beliefs, and the Diachronic and Social Nature of Epistemic Justification

Episteme ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-218
Author(s):  
Jeremy Koons
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Epistemic Practice ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Basic Beliefs ◽  
Do So

ABSTRACTDiscussions of conservatism in epistemology often fail to demonstrate that the principle of conservatism is supported by epistemic considerations. In this paper, I hope to show two things. First, there is a defensible version of the principle of conservatism, a version that applies only to what I will call our basic beliefs. Those who deny that conservatism is supported by epistemic considerations do so because they fail to take into account the necessarily social, diachronic and self-correcting nature of our epistemic practice. Second, I will attempt to show how our basic beliefs are justified via this principle of conservatism.

scholarly journals The Metaphysics of Self in Praśastapāda’s Differential Naturalism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shalini Sinha
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Ethical Practice ◽  
True Self ◽  
Epistemic Practice

In A Compendium of the Characteristics of Categories (Padārthadharmasaṃgraha) the classical Vaiśeṣika philosopher Praśastapāda (6th century ce) presents an innovative metaphysics of the self. This article examines the defining metaphysical and axiological features of this conception of self and the dualist categorial schema in which it is located. It shows how this idea of the self, as a reflexive and ethical being, grounds a multinaturalist view of natural order and offers a conception of agency that claims to account for all the reflexive features of human mental and bodily life. Finally, it discusses the ends of self’s reflexivity and of human life as a return to the true self. It argues that at the heart of Praśastapāda’s metaphysics of self is the idea that ethics is metaphysics, and that epistemic practice is ethical practice.

The politics of generating best practice knowledge: Epistemic practice and rendering space technical in a European Commission working group on education policy

2020 ◽  
pp. 239965442096210
Author(s):  
Natalie Papanastasiou
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Education Policy ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Epistemic Practice ◽  
Political Discourse Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practice Knowledge ◽  
The Relationship

This paper seeks to understand how best practice knowledge is constructed and maintained as a hegemonic form of policy knowledge. The paper argues that best practice is based on two claims: firstly, that best practice draws on situated practices of ‘what works’ in specific policy contexts, and secondly, that best practice uses these practices to build universal policy lessons that can be transferred across political space. How do policy actors tasked with generating best practices manage to deal with the challenge of integrating knowledge that is situated in particular places with knowledge that holds true across political space? The paper explores this question through the lens of political discourse analysis and studies the relationship between epistemic practice and the social construction of space. Drawing on observation and interview data, the paper analyses how best practices are generated by a group of education policy experts coordinated by the European Commission. Analysis demonstrates that producing best practices involves ‘rendering space technical’ whereby the complex, relational nature of political space is transformed into a series of ‘contextual variables’ from which universal policy mechanisms can be extracted. This allows for the enactment of an epistemic practice which draws clear distinctions between policy and political space rather than understanding them as co-constitutive – a dualism which is pivotal for upholding the hegemonic status of best practice. By analysing counter-hegemonic moments where the claims of best practice are called into question, the paper also considers alternatives to rendering space technical in policymaking practices.

Investigating students' engagement in epistemic and narrative practices of chemistry in the context of a story on gas behavior

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Pabuccu ◽  
S. Erduran
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Conceptual Understanding ◽  
Student Outcomes ◽  
Secondary School Students ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Student Group ◽  
School Students ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Epistemic Practice

This study investigated secondary school students' engagement in epistemic and narrative practices of chemistry in the context of a chemistry story on gas behavior. Argumentation is an example of an epistemic practice in science and stories are one kind of narrative (Ricoeur, 1981). By using a chemistry story, the authors hoped to engage students in the argumentation processes by linking chemistry knowledge to everyday contexts (Erduran and Pabuccu, 2012). Student group discussions and written frames during the activity were used as data sources. Analysis of these student outcomes concentrated on (a) the nature of the students' discourse; (b) the quality of students' argumentation; and (c) students' conceptual understanding of gas behaviors. The authors categorized the nature of group discourse using five different codes, determined the quality of student argumentation by counting the number of rebuttals, and measured conceptual understanding through students' answers in the writing frames. The results of this study add to the literature seeking to understand how to develop students' engagement in the argumentation process, how to enhance the quality of students' argumentations, and how to improve their conceptual understanding of gas behaviors.

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