scholarly journals Economic Epistemology: Hopes and Horrors

Episteme ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uskali Mäki
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
World Science ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Sociology Of Scientific Knowledge ◽  
The Status ◽  
Science Wars

The cultural and epistemic status of science is under attack. Social and cultural studies of science are widely perceived to offer evidence and arguments in support of an anti-science campaign. They portray science as a mundane social endeavour, akin to religion and politics, with no privileged access to truthful information about the (socially unconstructed) real world. Science is under threat and needs defence. Old philosophical legitimations have lost their bite. Alarm bells ring, new troops have to be mobilised. Call economics, the good old friend of the status quo depicting it as a generally beneficial social order while accommodating a rather mundane picture of human behaviour. In contrast to constructivist and relativist sociology of scientific knowledge, economic accounts of science seek to provide a rigorous defence of the cultural and epistemic legitimacy of science by accommodating plausible elements in the sociological accounts and by embedding them in invisible-hand arguments about the functioning of some market-like structure within science. Viewed through economic spectacles, science re-emerges from the ashes as stronger and more beautiful than ever. A spectator raises an innocent question: is economics itself strong and beautiful enough to offer such alleviating services? In order to examine the emerging issue of disciplinary credibility, we need to look at economics itself more closely, and we need to address traditional issues in the philosophy of science as well as less traditional issues of reflexivity. We will see that the above caricature concerning the role of economics in the science wars calls for heavy qualifications if not wholesale rejection (no comment here on the caricatured role of the SSK).

Religion, Reconciliation, and Modern Society: The Shifting Conclusions of Hegel'sLectures on the Philosophy of Religion

2013 ◽  
Vol 106 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-60
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
The Status ◽  
Religious Reasons ◽  
Role Of Religion

G. W. F. Hegel's greatest contributions regarding religion and politics stem from his abiding concern with social cohesion. While Hegel was interested in now classic questions regarding the role of religion in government, the focal point of his engagement with religion and politics lay in his view of religion's role in binding together a complex society in which a more traditional social order had been fragmented by interrelated economic, social, political, and intellectual transformations. He was less concerned with the role of religious reasons and language in policy debates or elections than with politics in a broader sense—specifically, the way that religion enables the population as a whole to identify with the society's defining social and political institutions, including the family, the economic order, and other legal institutions. In this image, religion reconciles the population with the existing practices and institutions. Without significant degrees of such identification and reconciliation, even the best of laws will be insufficient to sustain a polity. Though reconciliation is one of Hegel's principal terms for this relationship, it in no sense implies “making do,” settling for, or simply accepting the status quo because it happens to exist. Rather, he is ultimately concerned with religion's ability—or inability—to enable us to find ourselves at home in a just and rational social order that promotes freedom.

scholarly journals MEMORY COMPATIBILISM: PRESERVING AND GENERATING POSITIVE EPISTEMIC STATUS

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (143) ◽  
pp. 457-481
Author(s):  
Tiegue Vieira Rodrigues
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Status ◽  
The Status ◽  
Epistemological Debate ◽  
Epistemic Role

ABSTRACT The contemporary epistemological debate regarding the epistemic role of memory is dominated by the dispute between two different views: memory preservationism and memory generativism. While the former holds that memory only preserves the epistemic status already acquired through another source, the latter advocates that there are situations where memory can function as a generative epistemic source. Both views are problematic and have to deal with important objections. In this paper, I suggest a novel argument for granting memory the status of a generative source of justification and knowledge that overcomes objections raised for both preservationism and generativism. I shall call this view Memory Compatibilism. I argue that the proposed view better explains the generative epistemic character of memory.

Defamiliarizing the popular image of the bible in some contemporary rewritings in english

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Ewa Rychter
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Popular Image ◽  
Fervent Believer

Abstract This paper focuses on the ways some recent British and Irish rewritings of the Bible estrange what has become the publicly accepted and dominant image of the biblical text. Recently, the Bible has been given the status of “home scripture” (Sherwood, Yvonne. 2012. Biblical Blaspheming: Trials of the Sacred for a Secular Age. Cambridge: CUP) and become a domesticated and conservative text, a rather placid cultural/literary monument, an important foundation of democracy, a venerable religious document judged more tolerant and liberal than other scriptures. Though the Bible used to be perceived as an explosive text, peppered with potentially offensive passages, today its enmity is neutralised either by linking the Bible with ancient times or by relating it to people’s religious beliefs and by entrenching its more scandalous parts within the discourse of tolerance. It is such an anodyne image of the Bible that the biblical rewritings of Roberts, Winterson, Barnes, Crace, Pullman, Tóibin, Alderman, Diski defamiliarize. By showing biblical events through the eyes of various non-standard focalizers, those novels disrupt the formulaic patterns of the contemporary perception of the Bible. It is through these strange perspectives that we observe the critical moment when the overall meaning and the role of the biblical text is established and the biblical story is actually written down. Importantly, it is also the moment when somebody moulds the scripture according to their ideas and glosses over all the complexities, violence and immorality related to the events the biblical text describes. Also, contemporary biblical rewritings defamiliarize the currently popular image of the Bible – that of a whitewashed text which inculcates morality, conserves social order and teaches love and tolerance, by employing images of disintegration, dirt and contagion as well as by constructing a figure of a fervent believer in the Bible and its ideas.

Conservative Political Thought in Britain in Response to the French Revolution

1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 601-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Philip Schofield
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
True Nature ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
The French Revolution

In attempting to explain the stability of eighteenth-century Britain, and in particular the maintenance of political, social and economic supremacy by the landed aristocracy, scholars have begun to pay attention to the role of ideology and opinion. They see this not merely as providing an explanation of the way things were, but justifying and reinforcing them. The dominant ideological interpretation of society had emerged from the political and constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century, and in particular from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, an interpretation which might be denominated ‘Whig’, and which faced its most serious challenge at the very end of the eighteenth century from the French revolution. Despite the more tangible threat of French arms, the ruling classes in Britain did not underestimate the danger to social order from the arguments advanced by adherents of the rights-of-man doctrine propagated by the revolutionaries. If, in reply to these views, the status quo could be shown not only to be necessary and inevitable, but also right and good, that is to say correspondent with the true nature of man, then the morality of the existing practices and institutions of civil society would be proven. The problem at its most fundamental level was ethical, and it was a problem which conservatives attempted to solve in a variety of ways.

Religion and Politics in 20th-Century Central America

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia Garrard-Burnett
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Central America ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Central American ◽  
The Status ◽  
Role Of Religion

The role of religion shifted dramatically in Central American politics during the 20th century, as the Catholic Church moved from a position as conservator of the status quo to a powerful force for reform and human rights. The century also witnessed the rise, then the “boom,” of Protestant—specifically Pentecostal—religion. By the century’s end, Central America had become among the most Protestant regions of Latin America, with every country except Costa Rica and Belize measuring a large and rising evangélico minority. These changes unfolded alongside, and deeply affected, one of the most traumatic and violent periods in the region’s history, the so-called Central American crisis of the late 1970s and 1980s, when Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala became the battlegrounds for one of the last large proxy wars of the larger Cold War, between Marxist insurgencies and authoritarian governments.

scholarly journals The Transformation of the Role of Dedes in Modern Times

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Ali Yaman
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Primary Role ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Cultural Centers ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Status ◽  
Traditional Institutions

This article deals with the transformation of the dede institution, one of the basic institutions of Alevism, throughout the urbanization. Dede institution played a primary role in the survival of Alevism until today. That is why it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that this institution is of key importance for an understanding of Alevism in Anatolia. Dedes have moved away from their roles in dede-talib relations, which are based on ocaks in traditional life, and also from their traditional functions due to urbanization. Today, cemevis and cultural centers in Turkey and the urban centers around Europe are widely run by associations and foundations. It is now clear that traditional institutions which had a significant power in the past, such as ocak institution, have been transformed. The socio-economic transformation caused by urbanization has also caused significant effects on the life of Alevis. It is necessary to compare the status of dede institution in the past with its current status in order to better understand this situation. There are great differences between the new and the old qualifications and functions of dedes in the new social order. The functions of Dede institution have either disappeared with time, or have continued with various changes along with the new conditions and new needs of the society. The change is still continuing.

Philosophy and science in Adam Smith’s ‘History of Astronomy’

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kwangsu Kim
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
History Of Astronomy ◽  
Basic Criterion ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Validation

This article casts light on the intimate relationship between metaphysics and science in Adam Smith’s thought. Understanding this relationship can help in resolving an enduring dispute or misreading concerning the status and role of natural theology and the ‘invisible hand’ doctrine. In Smith’s scientific realism, ontological issues are necessary prerequisites for scientific inquiry, and metaphysical ideas thus play an organizing and regulatory role. Smith also recognized the importance of scientifically informed metaphysics in science’s historical development. In this sense, for Smith, the metaphysico-scientific link (i.e. metaphysically coherent conjecture), was a basic criterion of scientific validation by Inference to the Best Explanation. Furthermore, Smith’s comments implicitly suggest that in scientific progress there is a dialectic between metaphysics and science. These themes are illustrated primarily through his writings on the history of astronomy.

The study of interfacial reactions of nickel thin films on GaAs

1983 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 156-157
Author(s):  
L.J. Chen ◽  
Y.F. Hsieh
Keyword(s):  
Thin Films ◽  
Integrated Circuits ◽  
Interfacial Reactions ◽  
Metal Contacts ◽  
Nickel Thin Films ◽  
Thin Foils ◽  
The Status ◽  
Si Doped ◽  
Electron Microscopes

One measure of the maturity of a device technology is the ease and reliability of applying contact metallurgy. Compared to metal contact of silicon, the status of GaAs metallization is still at its primitive stage. With the advent of GaAs MESFET and integrated circuits, very stringent requirements were placed on their metal contacts. During the past few years, extensive researches have been conducted in the area of Au-Ge-Ni in order to lower contact resistances and improve uniformity. In this paper, we report the results of TEM study of interfacial reactions between Ni and GaAs as part of the attempt to understand the role of nickel in Au-Ge-Ni contact of GaAs.N-type, Si-doped, (001) oriented GaAs wafers, 15 mil in thickness, were grown by gradient-freeze method. Nickel thin films, 300Å in thickness, were e-gun deposited on GaAs wafers. The samples were then annealed in dry N2 in a 3-zone diffusion furnace at temperatures 200°C - 600°C for 5-180 minutes. Thin foils for TEM examinations were prepared by chemical polishing from the GaA.s side. TEM investigations were performed with JE0L- 100B and JE0L-200CX electron microscopes.

Strategic Role of Zakat in Multidimensional Quality of Life in Sijunjung, Indonesia

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-72
Author(s):  
Herlin Hamimi ◽  
Abdul Ghafar Ismail ◽  
Muhammad Hasbi Zaenal
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Absolute Poverty ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Status ◽  
Being There ◽  
The Impact

Zakat is one of the five pillars of Islam which has a function of faith, social and economic functions. Muslims who can pay zakat are required to give at least 2.5 per cent of their wealth. The problem of poverty prevalent in disadvantaged regions because of the difficulty of access to information and communication led to a gap that is so high in wealth and resources. The instrument of zakat provides a paradigm in the achievement of equitable wealth distribution and healthy circulation. Zakat potentially offers a better life and improves the quality of human being. There is a human quality improvement not only in economic terms but also in spiritual terms such as improving religiousity. This study aims to examine the role of zakat to alleviate humanitarian issues in disadvantaged regions such as Sijunjung, one of zakat beneficiaries and impoverished areas in Indonesia. The researcher attempted a Cibest method to capture the impact of zakat beneficiaries before and after becoming a member of Zakat Community Development (ZCD) Program in material and spiritual value. The overall analysis shows that zakat has a positive impact on disadvantaged regions development and enhance the quality of life of the community. There is an improvement in the average of mustahik household incomes after becoming a member of ZCD Program. Cibest model demonstrates that material, spiritual, and absolute poverty index decreased by 10, 5, and 6 per cent. Meanwhile, the welfare index is increased by 21 per cent. These findings have significant implications for developing the quality of life in disadvantaged regions in Sijunjung. Therefore, zakat is one of the instruments to change the status of disadvantaged areas to be equivalent to other areas.

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