Empiricism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William P. Alston
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Knowledge ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
Empirical Theory ◽  
Sense Experience ◽  
Types Of Knowledge ◽  
Trace Back ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Five Senses

In all its forms, empiricism stresses the fundamental role of experience. As a doctrine in epistemology it holds that all knowledge is ultimately based on experience. Likewise an empirical theory of meaning or of thought holds that the meaning of words or our concepts are derivative from experience. This entry is restricted to epistemological empiricism. It is difficult to give an illuminating analysis of ‘experience’. Let us say that it includes any mode of consciousness in which something seems to be presented to the subject, as contrasted with the mental activity of thinking about things. Experience, so understood, has a variety of modes – sensory, aesthetic, moral, religious and so on – but empiricists usually concentrate on sense experience, the modes of consciousness that result from the stimulation of the five senses. It is obvious that not all knowledge stems directly from experience. Hence empiricism always assumes a stratified form, in which the lowest level issues directly from experience, and higher levels are based on lower levels. It has most commonly been thought by empiricists that beliefs at the lowest level simply ‘read off’ what is presented in experience. If a tree is visually presented to me as green I simply ‘register’ this appearance in forming the belief that the tree is green. Most of our beliefs – general beliefs for example – do not have this status but, according to empiricism, are supported by other beliefs in ways that eventually trace back to experience. Thus the belief that maple trees are bare in winter is supported by particular perceptual beliefs to the effect that this maple tree is bare and it is winter. Empiricism comes in many versions. A major difference concerns the base on which each rests. A public version takes beliefs about what we perceive in the physical environment to be directly supported by experience. A phenomenalist version supposes that only beliefs about one’s own sensory experience are directly supported, taking perceptual beliefs about the environment to get their support from the former sort of beliefs. The main difficulties for a global empiricism (all knowledge is based on experience) come from types of knowledge it is difficult to construe in this way, such as mathematical knowledge.

scholarly journals The Scepticism of Descartes’s Meditations

2011 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-279
Author(s):  
James Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Euclidean Space ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Controlling Factor ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Will ◽  
Aristotelian Science ◽  
The Subject

What I’m suggesting is that the model for Descartes’s defence of Renaissance science would be Aquinas’s own defence of thirteenth-century Aristotelian science, except that the coherence of the will took on the role of the consistency of concepts, as the controlling factor in the analyses of all types of science. As a result, the new science would incorporate the awareness of Platonic ideas and the divisibility of Euclidean space as equally valid input into a dialectical knowledge of sensory experience. You can read the early arguments to doubt the reality of sensory experience and reason as a way of dividing out the experience of the will in affirming or denying an object’s nature, as the subject for subsequent inquiry.

scholarly journals Practices of Maleficium in English Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-80
Author(s):  
Shaymaa F. Hasan
Keyword(s):  
English Literature ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Religion And Science ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Trace Back ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Black Magic ◽  
Witch Hunts

There is a long tradition among scholars to establish a link between the practice of black magic and culture. Black magic is seen as a category under which various beliefs and practices which are usually separated from religion and science are placed. These practices are most of the time associated with evil and demons. It has been observed that the role of black magic and witchcraft influenced Western societies to a large extent as it was not only the subject of literature but also of the interest to the whole society. Fears of witchcraft and black magic grew more intense and consequently led to “witch hunts” in many Western societies. In this paper, I argue that in English literature, the practice of black magic and witchcraft has been represented as a cultural practice. My paper provides a quick survey to trace back the practices of witchcraft in selected literary works from English literature. In my analysis, I focus of how the practice of black magic and sorcery is embedded within the texts to reflect people’s obsession of it. For the sake of my argument, I will use the word “Maleficium” as an umbrella term to refer to all the practices, which include: Black magic, witchcraft, sorcery, necromancy, and voodoo

scholarly journals Greimas’s Semiotics: Between Structuralism and Phenomenology

Problemos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 96 ◽  
pp. 83-95
Author(s):  
Dalius Jonkus
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Experience ◽  
The Body ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Daily Experience ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Inner Tension

Greimas’s semiotics is characterized by an inner duality. This is the inner tension between structuralism and phenomenology. The aim of the paper is to reveal the relationship between structuralism and phenomenology in semiotics. Structuralism and phenomenology have a different understanding of the role of the subject in creating and understanding meanings. Early Greimas understood value systems through the linguistic prism and eliminated the discursive system’s subject itself. Late Greimas’s approach to the subject changed and coincided with the subject of daily experience, who was involved in the selection and creation of meanings. Greimas’s semiotics came closer to phenomenology, but only partially. The concept of bodily and sensory experience in Greimas’s semiotics is constructed from objectivistic positions of science. The body and sensual perception are understood as intermediaries between the inner and outer worlds.

Top-Down Processing and Visual Reorientation Illusions in a Virtual Reality Environment

2004 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 143-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred W. Mast ◽  
Charles M. Oman
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Line Length ◽  
Perceptual Cues ◽  
Virtual Reality Environment ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Test Conditions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Processing Mechanisms

The role of top-down processing on the horizontal-vertical line length illusion was examined by means of an ambiguous room with dual visual verticals. In one of the test conditions, the subjects were cued to one of the two verticals and were instructed to cognitively reassign the apparent vertical to the cued orientation. When they have mentally adjusted their perception, two lines in a plus sign configuration appeared and the subjects had to evaluate which line was longer. The results showed that the line length appeared longer when it was aligned with the direction of the vertical currently perceived by the subject. This study provides a demonstration that top-down processing influences lower level visual processing mechanisms. In another test condition, the subjects had all perceptual cues available and the influence was even stronger.

The future role of the psychiatrist in Europe – a UEMS perspective

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (01) ◽  
pp. 35-42
Author(s):  
M. Hermans
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
General Interest ◽  
Future Role ◽  
Personal Opinion ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many

SummaryThe author presents his personal opinion inviting to discussion on the possible future role of psychiatrists. His view is based upon the many contacts with psychiatrists all over Europe, academicians and everyday professionals, as well as the familiarity with the literature. The list of papers referred to is based upon (1) the general interest concerning the subject when representing ideas also worded elsewhere, (2) the accessibility to psychiatrists and mental health professionals in Germany, (3) being costless downloadable for non-subscribers and (4) for some geographic aspects (e.g. Belgium, Spain, Sweden) and the latest scientific issues, addressing some authors directly.

Alignment

2016 ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Pier Giuseppe Rossi
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Enactive Approach ◽  
The World ◽  
Strategic Role ◽  
Education Today ◽  
Current Context ◽  
The Subject

The subject of alignment is not new to the world of education. Today however, it has come to mean different things and to have a heuristic value in education according to research in different areas, not least for neuroscience, and to attention to skills and to the alternation framework.This paper, after looking at the classic references that already attributed an important role to alignment in education processes, looks at the strategic role of alignment in the current context, outlining the shared construction processes and focusing on some of the ways in which this is put into effect.Alignment is part of a participatory, enactive approach that gives a central role to the interaction between teaching and learning, avoiding the limits of behaviourism, which has a greater bias towards teaching, and cognitivism/constructivism, which focus their attention on learning and in any case, on that which separates a teacher preparing the environment and a student working in it.

Mathematics Textbook as an Object of Research/Matematički udžbenik kao predmet istraživanja

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dubravka Glasnović Gracin
Keyword(s):  
Mathematics Education ◽  
Mathematical Knowledge ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Mathematics Textbooks ◽  
Mathematics Textbook ◽  
Mathematics Book

AbstractA mathematics textbook can be described as an officially authorized and pedagogically designed mathematics book written to provide mathematical knowledge to students. This description suggests the authority of the textbook - because it has been authorized by an administrative source and because it deals with authorized knowledge. This paper provides an overview of research on mathematics textbooks. The emphasis is on questions concerning the extent to which and how textbooks are used in mathematics education in Croatia and in the world.Research results show that mathematics textbooks are widely used in mathematics education worldwide. This finding points to the need for research on the content and structure of textbooks. Such studies are combined with the associated results on how textbooks are used in the classroom and which methods teachers apply in using textbooks in mathematics education. The results of the empirical studies show that teachers use textbooks for lesson preparation and pupils use mathematics textbooks for exercises to a great extent. These results imply that such an important role of textbooks in mathematics education deserves additional attention, with the goal of understanding and improving mathematics education.Key words: mathematics education; overview; research on textbook---SažetakMatematički udžbenik može se opisati kao službeno autorizirana i pedagoki osmiljena matematička knjiga napisana s ciljem da učenicima ponudi matematičke sadržaje. Taj opis sugerira autoritet udžbenika jer ga je autorizirao administrativni izvor i jer sadrži autorizirano znanje. Ovaj članak daje pregled istraživanja matematičkih udžbenika, a naglasak je na pitanjima u kojoj mjeri i kako se udžbenici koriste u nastavi matematike u Hrvatskoj i u svijetu.Rezultati raznih istraživanja pokazuju da se udžbenici u velikoj mjeri koriste u nastavi matematike irom svijeta. Taj nalaz ukazuje na potrebu za istraživanjem sadržaja i strukture matematičkih udžbenika. Uz to, prikazani su rezultati istraživanja o tome na koji se način udžbenici koriste u razredu i koje metode nastavnici prakticiraju prilikom upotrebe udžbenika na nastavi. Rezultati empirijskih studija pokazuju da nastavnici udžbenike većinom koriste za pripremu nastavnog sata, a učenici udžbenike koriste u najvećoj mjeri za vježbanje. Ti rezultati ukazuju na to da tako važna uloga udžbenika u matematičkom obrazovanju zaslužuje dodatnu pažnju s ciljem razumijevanja i poboljanja nastave matematike.Ključne riječi: istraživanje udžbenika; nastava matematike; pregled.

TheOrvosi Hetilap (Hungarian Medical Journal)in the network of medical journals

2014 ◽  
Vol 155 (22) ◽  
pp. 876-879
Author(s):  
András Schubert
Keyword(s):  
Medical Journal ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Network ◽  
Scientific Journals ◽  
Scientific Enterprise ◽  
Medical Journals ◽  
The Subject

The role of networks is swiftly increasing in the production and communication of scientific knowledge. Network aspects have, therefore, an ever growing importance in the analysis of the scientific enterprise, as well. The present paper demonstrates some techniques of studying the network of scientific journals on the subject of seeking the position of Orvosi Hetilap (Hungarian Medical Journal) in the international journal network. Orv. Hetil., 2014, 155(22), 876–879.

The Impact of Quantitative Easing on Emerging Markets – Literature Review

e-Finanse ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 67-76
Author(s):  
Piotr Bartkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Emerging Markets ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Quantitative Easing ◽  
Methodological Choices ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Sufficient Precision

AbstractThe article presents the results of the review of the empirical literature regarding the impact of quantitative easing (QE) on emerging markets (EMs). The subject is of interest to policymakers and researchers due to the increasingly larger role of EMs in the world economy and the large-scale capital flows occurring after 2009. The review is conducted in a systematic manner and takes into consideration different methodological choices, samples and measurement issues. The paper puts the summarized results in the context of transmission channels identified in the literature. There are few distinct methodological approaches present in the literature. While there is a consensus regarding the direction of the impact of QE on EMs, its size and durability have not yet been assessed with sufficient precision. In addition, there are clear gaps in the empirical findings, not least related to relative underrepresentation of the CEE region (in particular, Poland).

Contemporary Machiavellian theses "The strategy of the role of the absurd state as a model"

2020 ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Ali Hussein Hameed ◽  
Saif Hayder AL.Husainy
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Information Revolution ◽  
Main Hypothesis ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Area Of Influence ◽  
The Right ◽  
Modern Technologies

In the anarchism that governs the nature and patterns of international relations characterized by instability and uncertainty in light of several changes, as well as the information revolution and the resulting developments and qualitative breakthroughs in the field of scientific and advanced technological knowledge and modern technologies.  All of these variables pushed toward the information flow and flow tremendously, so rationality became an indispensable matter for the decision maker as he faces these developments and changes. There must be awareness and rationality in any activity or behavior because it includes choosing the best alternative and making the right decision and selecting the information accurately and mental processing Through a mental system based on objectivity, methodology, and accumulated experience away from idealism and imagination, where irrationality and anarchy are a reflection of the fragility of the decision-maker, his lack of awareness of the subject matter, his irresponsibility, and recklessness that inevitably leads to failure by wasting time and Effort and potential. The topic acquires its importance from a search in the strategies of the frivolous state and its characteristics with the ability to influence the regional, and what it revealed is a turning point in how to adapt from the variables and employ them to their advantage and try to prove their existence. Thus, the problem comes in the form of a question about the possibility of the frivolous state in light of the context of various regional and international events and trends. The answer to this question stems from the main hypothesis that (the aim which the frustrating state seeks to prove is that it finds itself compelled to choose several strategies that start from the nature of its characteristics and the goals that aim at it, which are centered in the circle of its interests in the field of its struggle for the sake of its survival and area of influence).

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