scholarly journals External Representations and Scientific Understanding

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaakko Kuorikoski ◽  
Petri Ylikoski
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Extended Cognition ◽  
Scientific Understanding ◽  
External Representations ◽  
Counterfactual Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Surrogate Systems

This paper provides an inferentialist account of modelKbased understanding by combining a counterfactual account of explanation and an inferentialist account of representation with a view of modeling as extended cognition. This account makes it understandable how the manipulation of surrogate systems like models can provide genuinely new empirical understanding about the world. Similarly, the account provides an answer to the question how models, that always incorporate assumptions that are literally untrue of the model target, can still provide factive explanations. Finally, the paper shows how the contrastive counterfactual theory of explanation can provide tools for assessing the explanatory power of models.

Persons in a World of Things

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Power ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Classic Essay

This chapter focuses on the reality of persons in a world of things. It begins and ends with some relevant views drawn from the Jewish philosophers Buber (1878–1965), Heschel (1907–72), and Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–93). Framed by the Jewish concerns, it turns to a philosophical exploration of human personhood. The chapter begins by consiering Sellars's classic essay on the scientific and manifest images of “man-in-the-world.” Sellars shows how urgent and difficult it is to sustain a recognizable image of ourselves as persons in the face of scientism. With additional help from Nagel and Kant, it argues that persons cannot be conceptually scanted in a world of things. Notwithstanding the explanatory power of science, there is more to life than explanation. Explanation of what we are needs supplementing by a conception of who we are, how we should live, and why we matter. Those are questions to which Jewish sources can speak.

Reasons First

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Justify Belief ◽  
Moral Worth ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Common Currency ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
The World ◽  
Explanatory Priority

The last fifty years or more of ethical theory have been preoccupied by a turn to reasons. The vocabulary of reasons has become a common currency not only in ethics, but in epistemology, action theory, and many related areas. It is now common, for example, to see central theses such as evidentialism in epistemology and egalitarianism in political philosophy formulated in terms of reasons. And some have even claimed that the vocabulary of reasons is so useful precisely because reasons have analytical and explanatory priority over other normative concepts—that reasons in that sense come first. Reasons First systematically explores both the benefits and burdens of the hypothesis that reasons do indeed come first in normative theory, against the conjecture that theorizing in both ethics and epistemology can only be hampered by neglect of the other. Bringing two decades of work on reasons in both ethics and epistemology to bear, Mark Schroeder argues that some of the most important challenges to the idea that reasons could come first are themselves the source of some of the most obstinate puzzles in epistemology—about how perceptual experience could provide evidence about the world, and about what can make evidence sufficient to justify belief. And he shows that along with moral worth, one of the very best cases for the fundamental explanatory power of reasons in normative theory actually comes from knowledge.

White Man’s IR: An Intellectual Confession

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1112-1122 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Lake
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
White Male ◽  
Professional Practices ◽  
Good Work ◽  
The World

Drawing largely on my own career in academia, I elaborate on the need for greater gender, racial and other forms of diversity in International Relations. Although theories are thought to be “objective,” what goes into those theories and, in turn, their explanatory power is ultimately shaped by subjective, lived experiences. Different individuals with different life stories will develop different intuitions about how the world “works,” and thus will write different theories to capture those intuitions and, in turn, larger patterns of politics. I explain here how my life experience as a privileged white male has shaped the intellectual contours of my work on international hierarchy. Building from this foundation, I then explore how professional practices elevate as gatekeepers individuals with generally similar life experiences and, thus, intuitions about what constitutes “good” work in the field, which in turn reinforces those professional practices and priorities. The final section focuses on problems of eroding the disciplinary hierarchy and broadening the pipeline into the profession.

How Universal Is Media Entertainment, Really? On the Enriching Potential of Cross-Cultural Approaches for Existing Entertainment Scholarship

2021 ◽  
pp. 101-122
Author(s):  
Özen Odağ
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Thinking Styles ◽  
Western World ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
The World ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Behavior And Cognition

The current chapter focuses on the (cross-)cultural appeal of existing entertainment theories, showcasing the meager evidence that exists with respect to their universality. The central argument throughout the chapter is that most entertainment theories have originated in the Western world and little has so far been done to apply them to the much larger rest of the world. The rest of the world has shown to be profoundly different, however, with respect to various dimensions of human behavior and cognition, including self-concepts, emotion appraisal and display, valued affect, thinking styles, values, and well-being maxims. The chapter scrutinizes five pertinent entertainment theories for their ability to explain this cultural variation. It suggests the inclusion of fruitful macro- and micro-level concepts from cross-cultural psychology and intercultural communication to increase their global explanatory power. The main aim of the current chapter is to spark an overdue (cross-)cultural evolution of media entertainment scholarship.

Absorptive Capacity, R&D Intensity and Innovation Results

2010 ◽  
pp. 152-165
Author(s):  
Jorge Cruz-González ◽  
Miriam Delgado-Verde
Keyword(s):  
Absorptive Capacity ◽  
Dynamic Capabilities ◽  
Software Industry ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Sustainable Competitive Advantage ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Resource Based View ◽  
The World ◽  
Innovative Capacity

The dynamic capabilities Perspective has emerged in the last decade to improve the explanatory power of the Resource-Based View of the firm with regard to obtaining sustainable competitive advantage by firms operating in rapid change environments. However, some aspects of its conceptualization, especially in relation to the factors that make up them, do not appear to be entirely clear. Accordingly, the aim of the present chapter is to provide a conceptual synthesis of the construct, trying to identify the key factors involved in the development of dynamic capabilities by firms. Based on a sample of 177 companies around the world operating in the software industry, the authors derive an empirical study. Their findings suggest that firms that jointly develop absorptive capacity and innovative capacity achieve better results.

Spiritual Atheist Scientists

2021 ◽  
pp. 76-93
Author(s):  
Elaine Howard Ecklund ◽  
David R. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Work ◽  
Scientific Understanding ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Spiritual Practices ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Personal Wellness ◽  
The World ◽  
The U.S

Spiritual atheists comprise the smallest subset of atheist scientists in the U.S. and U.K. Unlike modernists (who are not spiritual) and culturally religious atheists (who participate in religion), spiritual atheist scientists construct alternative value systems without affiliating with religious traditions. Many cast spirituality in emotional terms of awe and wonder provoked through scientific understanding of the world, while others frame their spirituality in terms of the dimensions of life that cannot be explained through science. Such constructions of spirituality are consequential for secular spiritual practices. For scientists, these involve scientific work itself, morality in relationships, personal wellness practices, and resources for coping with adversity.

Quick’n’Lean or Slow and Rich?

2019 ◽  
pp. 191-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakob Hohwy
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Sensory Input ◽  
Extended Cognition ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Internal Representations ◽  
New Synthesis ◽  
The World

Andy Clark’s exciting work on predictive processing provides the umbrella under which his hugely influential previous work on embodied and extended cognition seeks a unified home. This chapter argues that in fact predictive processing harbours internalist, inferentialist and epistemic tenets that cannot leave embodied and extended cognition unchanged. Predictive processing cannot do the work Clark requires of it without relying on rich, preconstructive internal representations of the world, nor without engaging in paradigmatically rational integration of prior knowledge and new sensory input. Hence, next to Clark’s image of fluid “uncertainty surfing” is an equally valid image of more emaciated and plodding world-modelling. Rather than underpinning orthodox embodied and extended approches, predictive processing therefore presents an opportunity for a potentially fruitful new synthesis of cognitivist and embodied approaches to cognition.

Explanatory power of extended cognition

2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 735-759 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuli Pöyhönen
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Extended Cognition

Organizing Women in Contemporary Russia: Engendering Transition. By Valerie Sperling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 303p. $59.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 506-507
Author(s):  
Rebecca Kay
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Model ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
Movement Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Economic

In the introduction, Valerie Sperling notes that "Russia's transition from communism toward capitalism and a more democratic political arrangement has been both good and bad for women, presenting both obstacles and opportunities for organizing" (p. 7). She goes on to produce an engaging and thought-provoking analysis aimed at broadening the scope and explanatory power of social movement theory, which, she argues, has been developed by scholars who focus primarily on social movements in the "contemporary core democracies" (pp. 52-3). In contrast Sperling develops "a cross-cultural model of social movement organizing and development that explores five interrelated opportunity structures: socio-cultural or attitudinal, political, economic, political-historical, and international" (p. 53). In each subse- quent chapter she tackles one of these opportunity structures and offers a number of fascinating insights into the world of post-Soviet social movements, based on the experience of her sample of women's organizations.

scholarly journals Hugh's book and Krogh's animals: biodiversity and textbook examples in teaching

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Robischon
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Model Organisms ◽  
Secondary Source ◽  
Instructional Models ◽  
Scientific Question ◽  
The World ◽  
Experimental Organism

The medieval simile of the world as a book seems to anticipate modern notions of biodiversity as a key to insights and learning. This thought is translated into the practice of research in the August Krogh principle, which provides argumentative support for researchers who dare to venture beyond the range of commonly used models by choosing a new experimental organism for a particular scientific question. Established model organisms often hold high exploratory power to the researcher yet little explanatory power to the student, in particular when represented in a secondary source. This essay puts forward the suggestion that Krogh's principle applies to the use of organisms as instructional models and textbook examples too and encourages educators to continuously venture beyond established illustrative teaching examples in a continuous exploration of the “book of the world” and the “treasure house of nature.”

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