scholarly journals The Uses of Cognition in Policy Analysis: A First Appraisal

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodolphe Gouin ◽  
Jean-Baptiste Paul Harguindéguy
Keyword(s):  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Cognitive Approaches ◽  
Conceptual Transfer ◽  
Common Label

Cognitive approaches have become very fashionable in the field of policy analysis. Nevertheless, despite a common label, cognitive policy analyses vary greatly from one author to the next. So, are policy analysts talking about the same thing? Drawing on the dichotomy established by Sperber between soft cognition and hard cognition, we guess that not all authors seek to transfer theoretical assumptions from one scientific discipline to another. In order to demonstrate this hypothesis, we propose to round out these formal categories with additional sub-divisions based on the degree of conceptual transfer from cognitive science to policy analysis..

On responsiveness: Interfacing hermeneutics and discourse interpretation

2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 645-653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Bell
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Sociocultural Context ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Discourse Studies ◽  
Discourse Interpretation ◽  
Cognitive Approaches ◽  
Old Testament Studies

The nine responses to my focus article ‘Re-constructing Babel: Discourse analysis, hermeneutics and the Interpretive Arc’ are cross-disciplinary, as is the article itself. They come from discourse studies (Van Dijk, Billig, Wodak), cognitive science (Tepe, Yeari and Van den Broek, Van Dijk), Old Testament studies (Billig), hermeneutics (Pellauer, Scott-Baumann), history (Gardner) and literature (Pratt). I identify and address five main issues which I see these responses raising for discourse interpretation: the role of author intent and the original sociocultural context in interpretation; principles of translation, particularly in relation to the Babel story; issues of certainty and subjectivism in interpretation, again including the Babel story; the role and limitations of cognitive approaches, and the potential of images like ‘unfolding the matter of the text’ to be realized in teaching hands-on discourse work; and finally a call to new listening in the encounter with hermeneutics, as a route to freshening the field I like to call Discourse Interpretation.

Democratic Communities, Equity, and Excellence: A Deweyan Reframing of Educational Policy Analysis

1994 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Kahne
Keyword(s):  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Educational Policy ◽  
Academic Excellence ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Democratic Community ◽  
Educational Policy Analysis ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Democratic Communities ◽  
The Impact

Concern for academic excellence and equity often structures the work of mainstream policy analysts. These matters certainly deserve careful attention, but this focus often obscures many other important concerns. In particular, analysts are often inattentive to the relation between educational policy and the creation of democratic communities. To highlight the impact of this omission, I examine mainstream debates over tracking policy. While exploring these debates, I consider how placing greater attention on Deweyan notions of democratic community might enrich policy dialogues and alter the form and focus of mainstream policy discussions.

Consonance and Dissonance

2018 ◽  
pp. 436-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Rehding
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
Fundamental Importance ◽  
Joseph Haydn ◽  
Alban Berg ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Cognitive Approaches ◽  
Simultaneous Intervals ◽  
Consonance And Dissonance

Despite their fundamental importance to music theory, consonance and dissonance are surprisingly slippery concepts. They cannot unequivocally be identified as acoustical, aesthetic, physiological, psychological, or cultural-historical. This chapter examines a wide range of approaches to consonance/dissonance, focusing on four debates: the age-old sensus/ratio discussion, contrapuntal treatises, non-Western evidence from cognitive science, and evolutionary arguments. The discussion includes musical examples by Joseph Haydn, Alban Berg, Tsimane′ singing, and various European compositions from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. It is impossible to fully close the gap between different approaches, in part because different definitions take their starting points in different objects: cognitive approaches work with sounds while music-theoretical traditions work with notes and intervals. But the diversity of approaches opens up new angles on certain conflations that music theory often tolerates—such as the equivocation between successive and simultaneous intervals—to illustrate how the consonance/dissonance pair functions in different contexts.

scholarly journals Geodiversity and geoheritage: New approach to the interpretation of the terms

2010 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sava Simic ◽  
Ljiljana Gavrilovic ◽  
Predrag Djurovic
Keyword(s):  
Future Development ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Geographical Environment ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
The Future

Incomplete definitions of geodiversity and geoheritage caused the domination of clearly geological approach to these scientific problems. That is the reason why some of the integral elements of geographical environment were neglected. Wrong theoretical assumptions reflected negatively the determination and advancement of this scientific discipline. The reasons for such condition are mentioned in the paper, as well as the necessity of different and more comprehensive perspective of geodiversity and geoheritage, by which the directions of the future development are implied. .

Does Policy Analysis Matter?

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Decision Processes ◽  
Key Indicator ◽  
Professional Class ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Regulatory Bodies

How well can democratic decision making incorporate the knowledge and expertise generated by public policy analysts? This book examines the historical development of policy analysis (a new professional class of advisors that began developing during the 1950s in the United States), as well as its use in legislative and regulatory bodies and in the federal executive branch. The chapters show that policy-analytic expertise effectively improves governmental services only when it complements democratic decision making. When successful, policy analysis fosters valuable new ideas, better use of evidence, and greater transparency in decision processes. The book concludes by assessing the development and impact of the policy-analytic profession and suggests that the growth in the voluntary employment of analysts not only by governments of all types as well as private sector and nonprofit agencies is a key indicator of the profession's effectiveness and value.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Hird
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Systems Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Objective Functions ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Political Origins

Policy analysis traverses and aims to bridge the space between truth and power. Indeed, policy analysts are trained to be in a position to ‘speak truth to power.’ With its political origins in the United States during the progressive era, the operational origins of policy analysis occurred in the 1950s when both truth and power were more clearly defined and when those in power presumably were interested in truth. Policy analysis emerged from systems analysis, which was applied successfully to clearly delineated problems with unambiguous objective functions....

scholarly journals Textual meaning and its place in a theory of language

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lesley Jeffries
Keyword(s):  
Big Bang ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Television Show ◽  
The Core ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Big Bang Theory ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
The One ◽  
The Big Bang ◽  
Textual Meaning

Abstract Following the development of a framework for critical stylistics (Jeffries 2010) and the explication of some of the theoretical assumptions behind this framework (Jeffries 2014a, 2014b, 2015a, 2015b), the present article attempts to put this framework into a larger theoretical context as a way to approach textual meaning. Using examples from the popular U.S. television show, The Big Bang Theory, I examine the evidence that there is a kind of textual meaning which can be distinguished from the core propositional meaning on the one hand and from contextual, interpersonal meaning on the other. The specific aim, to demonstrate a layer of meaning belonging to text specifically, is set within an argument which claims that progress in linguistics can better be served by adherence to a rigorous scientific discipline.

scholarly journals Putting Distribution First

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Hockett
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
The Many

AbstractIt is common for normative legal theorists, economists and other policy analysts to conduct and communicate their work mainly in maximizing terms. They take the maximization of welfare, for example, or of wealth or utility, to be primary objectives of legislation and public policy. Few if any of these theorists seem to notice, however, that any time we speak explicitly of maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing other things and of equalizing yet other things. Fewer still seem to recognize that we effectivelyTo attend systematically to this form of inter-translatability, with a view in particular to that which maximization formulations latently prescribe that we distribute and equalize, might be called “putting distribution first.” It is explicitly to recognize the fact that all law and policy are implicitly as equalizing and citizen-defining as they are aggregative and maximizing, and to trace the many salient consequences that stem from this fact. It is likewise to recognize that all law and policy treat us as equals in some respects and as non-equals in other respects. Putting distribution first by attending explicitly to these “respects” yields greater transparency about how well or poorly our laws and policies manage to identify, count, and treat us as equals in theThis Article works to lay out with care how to put distribution first in normative legal and policy analysis. The payoffs include both a workable method by which to test proposed maximization norms systematically for their normative propriety, and an attractive distributive ethic that can serve as a workable normative touchstone for legal and policy analysis. Indeed, the Article concludes, much — though not yet quite all — of our law can illuminatingly be interpreted as giving inchoate expression to just such an ethic.

scholarly journals Human-computer interaction as science

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Reeves
Keyword(s):  
Human Computer Interaction ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Title Page ◽  
Input Devices ◽  
Research Communities ◽  
Core Idea ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Computer Interaction

<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>The human-computer interaction (HCI) has had a long and troublesome relationship to the role of ‘science’. HCI’s status as an academic object in terms of coherence and adequacy is often in question—leading to desires for establishing a true scientific discipline. In this paper I explore formative cognitive science influences on HCI, through the impact of early work on the design of input devices. The paper discusses a core idea that I argue has animated much HCI research since: the notion of scientific design spaces. In evaluating this concept, I disassemble the broader ‘picture of science’ in HCI and its role in constructing a disciplinary order for the increasingly diverse and overlapping research communities that contribute in some way to what we call ‘HCI’. In concluding I explore notions of rigour and debates around how we might reassess HCI’s disciplinarity.</span></p></div></div></div>

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