Improvisation's Ethical and Epistemological Challenge

Author(s):  
Randy Fertel
Philosophy ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hallvard Lillehammer

AbstractIntuitions are widely assumed to play an important evidential role in ethical inquiry. In this paper I critically discuss a recently influential claim that the epistemological credentials of ethical intuitions are undermined by their causal pedigree and functional role. I argue that this claim is exaggerated. In the course of doing so I argue that the challenge to ethical intuitions embodied in this claim should be understood not only as a narrowly epistemological challenge, but also as a substantially ethical one. I argue that this fact illuminates the epistemology of ethical intuitions.


Bioethica ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Ελένη Ρεθυμνιωτάκη (Eleni Rethimiotaki)

Nearly half a century now, the regulation of biomedical research and its technological applications, particularly in medical practice, takes place through a novel combination of positive sciences with humanities, philosophy and social theory of science. However, their combination is still a challenge both practically and theoretically. The practical challenge is how scientific and technological progress combined to the economic and social development it brings is harmonized with the protection of natural and social goods as well as the respect for individual freedoms. Besides, the regulation of biomedicine consists an epistemological challenge for philosophy and theory of science. The work of the deceased Thanassis Papachristou, Professor of Law School of the National and Kapodistrian University in Athens and a former member of the National Bioethics Committee, has been a pioneer precisely because he perceived the dual challenge being simultaneously a civilist and a sociologist of law.The article explains first the reasons why his work opens up to a dynamic view of the regulation of biomedicine. Second, it proceeds further and after quoting the basic theoretical assumptions of the epistemological example of complexity, it develops arguments in favor of its adoption for the interpretation and description of bioethics with bio-law and their combination in the modern model of regulation of biomedicine. Thirdly, the article exposes some thoughts about the implementation of the complexity paradigm in the case pf the Greek model of regulation of biomedicine and the dynamics of bioethics development within it.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 205395171882381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Resnyansky

This paper aims to contribute to the development of tools to support an analysis of Big Data as manifestations of social processes and human behaviour. Such a task demands both an understanding of the epistemological challenge posed by the Big Data phenomenon and a critical assessment of the offers and promises coming from the area of Big Data analytics. This paper draws upon the critical social and data scientists’ view on Big Data as an epistemological challenge that stems not only from the sheer volume of digital data but, predominantly, from the proliferation of the narrow-technological and the positivist views on data. Adoption of the social-scientific epistemological stance presupposes that digital data was conceptualised as manifestations of the social. In order to answer the epistemological challenge, social scientists need to extend the repertoire of social scientific theories and conceptual frameworks that may inform the analysis of the social in the age of Big Data. However, an ‘epistemological revolution’ discourse on Big Data may hinder the integration of the social scientific knowledge into the Big Data analytics.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document