scholarly journals The epistemic role of fiction in scientific models

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-16
Author(s):  
Ana Katic

Giere?s analysis of the epistemic role of fiction in science and literature is the representative of antifictionists. Our research finds the three inconsistencies in his main paper regarding the comparison of fiction in scientific models and literary works. We analyze his argument and offer our solution to the issue favoring the perspective of fictionalism. Further, we support a typological differentiation of false representation in science into fictional and fictitious. The value of this differentiation we demonstrate by giving the example of digital organisms in system biology. The paper aims to help better understanding of fiction in science and to avoid the oversimplification of literary fiction.

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-18
Author(s):  
M. A. Rodionov ◽  
I. V. Akimova

In the submitted study the problem of the formation of financial literacy of students at informatics lessons and relevant training of future informatics teachers is considered. Financial literacy is understood as a set of basic knowledge in the field of finance, banking, insurance, as well as budgeting for personal finances that allow a person to choose the right financial product or service, soberly assess and take risks that may arise during the use of these products, correctly accumulate savings and identify doubtful (fraudulent) investment schemes. The authors conclude that successful development of meaningful lines of the course of financial literacy requires integration of a few school subjects, such as mathematics, history, informatics, social science and literature. The role of modern informatics teacher in the formation of financial literacy of students is great. Therefore, in the training of a future informatics teacher, it should be paid the attention to issues related to the study of elements of financial literacy in informatics lessons. In order to solve the problem, the authors propose to use the special course “Basics of work in 1С:Enterprise”, which is implemented at Penza State University. The article contains a program of the course and the methodological recommendations for its implementation.


Author(s):  
Inna A. Koroleva ◽  

This article is dedicated to the 110th birthday anniversary of a great Russian poet, native of Smolensk, one of the founders of the Smolensk Poetic School Aleksandr Tvardovsky (1910–1971). It examines how Smolensk motifs and Tvardovsky’s love for his home town are reflected in his works at the onomastic level. Smolensk-onyms reflected in long poems are analysed here, the focus being on anthroponyms and toponyms naming the characters and indicating the locations associated with Smolensk region. A close connection between the choice of proper names and Tvardovsky’s biography is established. An attempt is made to demonstrate how, using onomastic units introduced by the author into the storyline of his artistic text, the general principles of autobiography and chronotopy are realized, which have been noted earlier in critiques of Tvardovsky’s literary works. The onomastic component of the poems is analysed thoroughly and comprehensively, which helps us to decode the conceptual chain writer – name – text – reader and identify the author’s attitude to the characters and the ideological and thematic content of the works, as well as some of the author’s personal characteristics, tastes and passions. At the onomastic level, the thesis about the role of Smolensk motifs in Tvardovsky’s literary works is once more substantiated. A review is presented of onomastic studies analysing proper names of different categories in Tvardovsky’s poems (mainly conducted by the representatives of the Voronezh Onomastic School and the author of this article). It should be noted that Smolensk proper names in the entire body of Tvardovsky’s poetry are analysed for the first time.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-47
Author(s):  
Julia Langkau

AbstractThis paper argues that we should distinguish two different kinds of imaginative vividness: vividness of mental images and vividness of imaginative experiences. Philosophy has focussed on mental images, but distinguishing more complex vivid imaginative experiences from vivid mental images can help us understand our intuitions concerning the notion as well as the explanatory power of vividness. In particular, it can help us understand the epistemic role imagination can play on the one hand and our emotional engagement with literary fiction on the other hand.


GeoJournal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Gabellieri

AbstractScholars have been investigating detective stories and crime fiction mostly as literary works reflecting the societies that produced them and the movement from modernism to postmodernism. However, these genres have generally been neglected by literary geographers. In the attempt to fill such an epistemological vacuum, this paper examines and compare the function and importance of geography in both classic and late 20th century detective stories. Arthur Conan Doyle’s and Agatha Christie’s detective stories are compared to Mediterranean noir books by Manuel Montalbán, Andrea Camilleri and Jean Claude Izzo. While space is shown to be at the center of the investigations in the former two authors, the latter rather focus on place, that is space invested by the authors with meaning and feelings of identity and belonging. From this perspective, the article argues that detective investigations have become a narrative medium allowing the readership to explore the writer’s representation/construction of his own territorial context, or place-setting, which functions as a co-protagonist of the novel. In conclusion, the paper suggests that the emerging role of place in some of the later popular crime fiction can be interpreted as the result of writer’s sentiment of belonging and, according to Appadurai’s theory, as a literary and geographical discourse aimed at the production of locality.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mónica Ribau ◽  
Rui Perdigão ◽  
Julia Hall

<p>Strategic narratives (persuasive use of story systems) in science communication have been gathering<br>increasing support, especially in the face of misunderstandings about high-impact climatic change and hydrometeorologic extremes.<br>The use of these narratives reveals, in line with linguistic research, that traditional scientific discourse<br>conception has become outdated. Should scientific discourse be centered on the description of discoveries?<br>Should the role of political discourse be to convince someone to act? Before answering these, it is necessary to<br>understand the crucial function that uncertainty plays in communication, along with its consequences in the<br>concepts of objectivity and truth. More importantly, understanding its role in scientific society and sustainability.<br>Unable to eliminate uncertainty altogether, science becomes an essential escort to recognize, manage<br>and communicate its pertinency. However, the most popular strategic narratives sideline uncertainty as a threat.<br>Denialists follow a similar approach, though they communicate uncertainty to discredit evidence. Comparatively,<br>in their latest Assessment Report, the IPCC characterized uncertainty whilst stating: “uncertainty about impacts<br>does not prevent immediate action”.<br>Scientific discourse outputs and social reality constructions influence each other. The moralization of<br>science communication reveals how XVII century revolutionary skepticism can now be perceived as a threat, and<br>facts expected from science can be deemed dogmatic truths and perceived as decrees through rationalism and as<br>an extension of Judeo-Christian philosophical influence. Equally important, uncertainty reinforces individual<br>freedom, while society grasps and recognizes certainty as security and demands it from institutions, accepting<br>degrees of authoritarianism to maintain a tolerable living condition.<br>From “Climate Emergency” to “Thousand-Year Flood”, public interest in climatic change and extremes<br>increases following high-impact events, yet trust in science plunges into a deep polarized divide among absolute<br>acceptance and outright rejection relative to the bold headlines conveyed not only in the media but also in some<br>scientific literature.<br>Political, religious and activist leaders strike one as prophets acting in the name of science. From<br>rationalism to rationality, scientific culture is pivotal to the analysis of complexity, objectivity, and uncertainty in<br>the definition of truth (absent from epistemological discussions for centuries). Humor/sarcasm, literature or<br>dialectic are examples of how to communicate entropy of scientific models, while reflecting about the role,<br>uncertainty, and mistake, retain in life.<br>“People want certainty, not knowledge”, said Bertrand Russel. However, neither science nor democracy<br>work like that, rather taking reality as having shades of grey instead of a reduced black-or-white dichotomy.<br>Science is not about giving just one single number to problems clearly not reducible to such, as that gives a false<br>sense of certainty and security in an entropic world where we cannot control everything.<br>In order to objectively analyze discourses in light of their uncertainty features, detecting whether they<br>contain polarized, absolutistic narrative patterns, we introduce a new process-consistent Artificial Intelligence<br>framework, building from Perdigão (2020, https://doi.org/10.46337/200930). The complementarity of our<br>approach relative to both social and information technologies is brought out, along with ways forward to reinforce<br>the fundamental role of uncertainty in scientific communication, and to strengthen public confidence in the<br>scientific endeavor.</p>


Author(s):  
Izolda Tsakher

In the article, the author summarizes her work experience as a teacher of music literature at the theoretical department of F. Chopin College of Music. A historically continuous interaction between literature and music is doubtless. It can be seen, namely, in T. Mann’s deliberate referring to music regularities when creating a philosophical novel and in A. Deblin’s seeing music as a sort of model for literature. Understanding contacts between literature and music of the same period contributes to enlarging students' field of interests in literature. Referring to the works by the genius authors (A. Pushkin, J.W. Goethe) and to mythology determines new perception of music. In general, music is included in a broad semantic and aesthetic context. Meanwhile, perception of literary works is also enriched thanks to their correlation with the artistic personalities of J.S. Bach and W.A. Mozart. For example, one can notice how the unique personality of Mozart reveals itself in the light of the exclusively semantically concentrated Pushkin’s text. As a result, this direction contributes to achieving the goals of the musicology course at college.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 171-177
Author(s):  
Kamil Hozyasz

Philosophy ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Randel Koons

Many authors have argued that emotions serve an epistemic role in our moral practice. Some argue that this epistemic connection is so strong that creatures who do not share our affective nature will be unable to grasp our moral concepts. I argue that even if this sort of incommensurability does result from the role of affect in morality, incommensurability does not in itself entail relativism. In any case, there is no reason to suppose that one must share our emotions and concerns to be able to apply our moral concept successfully. Finally, I briefly investigate whether the moral realist can seek aid and comfort from Davidsonian arguments to the effect that incommensurability in ethics is in principle impossible, and decide that these arguments are not successful. I conclude that the epistemic role our emotions play in moral discourse does not relativize morality.


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