Conceiving Prime Matter in the Middle Ages: Perception, Abstraction and Analogy

In its formlessness and potentiality, prime matter is a problematic entity of medieval metaphysics and its ontological limitations drastically affect human possibility of conceiving it. In this article, I analyse three influential strategies elaborated to justify an epistemic access to prime matter. They are incidental perception, negative abstraction, and analogy. Through a systematic and historical analysis of these procedures, the article shows the richness of interpretations and theoretical stakes implied by the conundrum of how prime matter can be known by human beings. In particular, the reasons behind the later medieval acceptance of analogy as the main way to unveil prime matter become clearer by pointing out the correlation between the ontological and epistemological levels of the medieval examination of prime matter.

“Friends don’t let friends skip rat day”

Building on literature detailing the use of internet memes online, this chapter analyzes the repetition of memes offline in the everyday face-to-face conversations of Millennial friends in their late twenties, who appropriate texts from memes to serve particular functions in their talk. When these speakers encounter interactional dilemmas due to epistemic (knowledge) imbalances, they make references to internet memes, which allow the epistemic territory of talk to shift to a topic to which at least most of the speakers have epistemic access. These epistemic shifts underlie the construction of play frame laminations, allowing for different structures of participation and conversational involvement around shared knowledge of the memes, which serve for group identity construction. At the same time, this chapter highlights how the references to internet memes in particular invoke various cultural stereotypes. This chapter contributes to understanding how intertextual references to different forms of media can resolve interactional dilemmas in conversation by shifting epistemics and laminating frames, ultimately reinforcing a group identity based on shared knowledge.

Phubbing and Social Intelligence: Role-Playing Experiment on Bystander Inaccessibility

Smartphone use has changed patterns of online and offline interaction. Phubbing (i.e., looking at one’s phone instead of paying attention to others) is an increasingly recognized phenomenon in offline interaction. We examined whether people who phub are more likely to have lower social intelligence, whether phubbing is considered more annoying than being ignored due to reading a magazine, and if people describe smartphones and magazines differently as sources of social distraction. We collected two survey samples (N = 112, N = 108) for a cartoon-based role-playing experiment (the Bystander Inaccessibility Experiment) in which a smartphone user and a person reading a magazine ignored the respondents’ conversational initiatives. Annoyance in each scenario was measured, and written accounts were collected on why the respondents rated the scenarios the way they did. Other measures used included the Generic Scale of Phubbing, Generic Scale of Being Phubbed, and Tromsø Social Intelligence Scale. The results showed that participants in both samples were more annoyed by phubbing than by being ignored due to reading a magazine. Linear regression analyses showed that phubbing was associated with lower social intelligence, even after adjusting for confounding factors. The annoyingness of phubbing was explained with negative attitudes toward smartphones, which were assumed to be used for useless endeavors, while magazines were more appreciated and seen as more cultivating. The role of bystanders’ epistemic access to the smartphone user’s activities is discussed.

Phubbing and Social Intelligence: Role-Playing Experiment on Bystander Inaccessibility

Smartphone use has changed patterns of online and offline interaction. Phubbing (i.e., looking at one’s phone instead of paying attention to others) is an increasingly recognized phenomenon in offline interaction. We examined whether people who phub are more likely to have lower social intelligence, whether phubbing is considered more annoying than being ignored due to reading a magazine, and if people describe smartphones and magazines differently as sources of social distraction. We collected two survey samples (N = 112, N = 108) for a cartoon-based role-playing experiment (the Bystander Inaccessibility Experiment) in which a smartphone user and a person reading a magazine ignored the respondents’ conversational initiatives. Annoyance in each scenario was measured, and written accounts were collected on why the respondents rated the scenarios the way they did. Other measures used included the Generic Scale of Phubbing, Generic Scale of Being Phubbed, and Tromsø Social Intelligence Scale. The results showed that participants in both samples were more annoyed by phubbing than by being ignored due to reading a magazine. Linear regression analyses showed that phubbing was associated with lower social intelligence, even after adjusting for confounding factors. The annoyingness of phubbing was explained with negative attitudes toward smartphones, which were assumed to be used for useless endeavors, while magazines were more appreciated and seen as more cultivating. The role of bystanders’ epistemic access to the smartphone user’s activities is discussed.

Curriculum contexts, recontextualisation and attention for higher-order thinking

Tasks are crucial for gaining access to powerful knowledge in geography and for fostering higher-order thinking in lessons; therefore, they are key to subject-specific pedagogy. After analysing tasks in geography textbooks for upper secondary education, it was revealed that higher-order thinking barely occurs in textbooks in the Netherlands and is more frequent in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Subsequently, both curriculum contexts were systematically compared to determine factors that influence the use of tasks. The results show that evaluative rules play a crucial role. The assessment in North Rhine-Westphalia focuses on higher-order thinking and how this becomes visible in students’ work. Dutch assessment concentrates on students handling an outlined body of knowledge in defined settings. This raises questions of epistemic access, as students are less prepared for the skills expected at university level. Finally, we observed the importance of alignment between official institutions, the discipline of subject-specific pedagogy and support for teachers when it comes to fostering higher-order thinking in geography education.

Collaborative construction of turn constructional units in responsive positions of question-answer sequences in Mandarin conversation

This paper explores the features and interactional functions of collaboratively constructed TCUs (CCTs) in responsive positions of question-answer sequences in Mandarin daily conversations. Adopting the methodologies of Conversation Analysis, Interactional Linguistics and Multimodal Analysis, the study explores the sequential features of the CCTs and bodily-visual resources co-occurring with the CCTs, such as gaze orientations and gestures. Two categories have been identified based on the participants’ roles in the question-answer sequences. First, the answerer initiates the response to the question, and the questioner collaboratively completes the response. The analysis shows that the questioners are not conveying the action of answering the question but assuming the answer to the question. Second, one answerer initiates the response to the question, and another one collaboratively completes the response. The data demonstrates that this type of CCTs usually involves the two question-recipients with more or less equal epistemic access to the referent.

Opacity thought through: on the intransparency of computer simulations

Computer simulations are often claimed to be opaque and thus to lack transparency. But what exactly is the opacity of simulations? This paper aims to answer that question by proposing an explication of opacity. Such an explication is needed, I argue, because the pioneering definition of opacity by P. Humphreys and a recent elaboration by Durán and Formanek are too narrow. While it is true that simulations are opaque in that they include too many computations and thus cannot be checked by hand, this doesn’t exhaust what we might want to call the opacity of simulations. I thus make a fresh start with the natural idea that the opacity of a method is its disposition to resist knowledge and understanding. I draw on recent work on understanding and elaborate the idea by a systematic investigation into what type of knowledge and what type of understanding are required if opacity is to be avoided and why the required sort of understanding, in particular, is difficult to achieve. My proposal is that a method is opaque to the degree that it’s difficult for humans to know and to understand why its outcomes arise. This proposal allows for a comparison between different methods regarding opacity. It further refers to a kind of epistemic access that is important in scientific work with simulations.

Conclusions

This concluding chapter summarizes the Evidential Account that is comprised of the Interpersonal Justification Argument, the Expression of Will View, and the Due Diligence Principle. After elaborating how the account applies, this chapter surveys remaining doubts that we may have about this account. Doubts are inevitable because there is a tension between two attractive thoughts. On the one hand, there is a pull to thinking that a consent-giver should be able to control the scope of their consent. On the other hand, there is a pull to thinking that the consent-receiver should have epistemic access to the scope of the consent. Since the consent-giver may fail to control the epistemic access of the consent-receiver, these thoughts cannot be fully reconciled, and so any account will miss out on something attractive. After discussing how the Evidential Account responds to this tension, this book ends by revisiting the topic of sexual deception. The Evidential Account entails an expansive view of sexual misconduct in so far as the account implies that many sexual deceivers engage in non-consensual sex with their victims.

Knowledge of future contingents

This paper addresses the question whether future contingents are knowable, that is, whether one can know that things will go a certain way even though it is possible that things will not go that way. First I will consider a long-established view that implies a negative answer, and draw attention to some endemic problems that affect its credibility. Then I will sketch an alternative line of thought that prompts a positive answer: future contingents are knowable, although our epistemic access of them is limited in some important respects.