Investigating Epistemic Stances in Game Play Through Learning Analytics

The authors apply techniques of statistical computing to data logs to investigate the patterns in students' play of The Fuzzy Chronicles and how these patterns relate to learning outcomes related to Newtonian kinematics. This chapter has two goals. The first goal is to investigate the basic claims of the proposed two-system framework for game-based learning (or 2SM) that may serve as part of a general-use explanatory framework for educational gaming. The second goal is to explore and demonstrate the use of automated log files of student play as evidence of learning through educational data mining techniques. These goals were pursued via two research questions. The first research question examines whether students playing the game showed evidence of dichotomous fast/slow modes of solution. A second research question investigates the connection between conceptual understanding and student performance in conceptually-laden challenges. Implications in terms of game design, learning analytics, and refinement of the 2SM are discussed.

Een goed begin

Well begun is half done. Deontic and epistemic authority in the opening phase of medical consultations Context: An effective consultation opening with attention to patient participation not only increases patient satisfaction, but is also a prerequisite for shared decision making, which may improve health outcomes and reduce healthcare costs. Methods: Using conversation analysis, we examined linguistic and structural characteristics of 41 video recorded consultation openings of medical specialists at a large Dutch teaching hospital. The main purpose was to give an overview of how doctors and patients interactionally shape deontic and epistemic authority. Results: Conversation analysis showed different ways in which doctors open their consultations and patients’ reactions to this. Agenda setting occurred in 6 cases, this was always the doctor’s agenda. Most of the doctors’ utterances during this phase displayed a high deontic stance and none of the patients were invited to discuss their expectations or goals for the consultation. 30 doctors started with their opening question, which in itself also reflects a high deontic stance. During the opening questions, the doctors’ epistemic stances differed. Conclusion: During the consultation openings, the doctor was clearly in charge of the conversation and often did not explore the knowledge domain of the patient. This can limit patient participation and can hinder shared decision making in the consultation.

Subatomic Particles, Epistemic Stances, and Kantian Antinomies

In Scientific Ontology, Chakravartty diagnoses a “dramatic conflict” between empiricism and metaphysics and aims to overcome that conflict by opting for a modern-day variant of Pyrrhonism, i.e. by appreciating the equal strength (isostheneia) of the arguments for and against the empiricist and metaphysical positions, and by achieving tranquility (ataraxia) by suspending judgment or remaining speechless in the face of that isostheneia. In this paper, I want to argue that instead of remaining speechless in the face of the isostheneia of the arguments for and against the empiricist and metaphysical positions, we should adopt a position that remains underrated in Chakravartty’s analysis: a position that amounts to a modern-day variant of the Kantian combination of transcendental idealism and empirical realism, and that like the original Kantian combination, is capable of solving many instances of the dramatic conflict between empiricism and metaphysics and, in particular, a conflict that is the talk of the town in philosophy of science these days—the conflict between ontic-structural realism and Lewisian metaphysics.

Disciplines in the Scientonomic Ontology

The role of categories of knowledge, or disciplines, in science has not previously been explored in scientonomy. While disciplinary communities devoted to the production of knowledge are a modern phenomenon, the practice of dividing knowledge into categories is a universal feature of science. Although at any moment of time, many questions and theories can be part of a given discipline, not all of these are essential to the discipline. We show that two components are essential to a discipline: the discipline’s core questions as well as the discipline’s delineating theory, a second-order theory that identifies these questions as essential to the discipline. If the questions of one discipline are a proper subset of the questions of another discipline, the former discipline is a subdiscipline of the latter. Since a discipline is a complex entity consisting of questions and a theory, epistemic agents can take epistemic stances towards disciplines. A discipline is said to be accepted if its core questions and its delineating theory are all accepted. To illustrate the applicability of these new concepts, the transition from physical to biological anthropology is discussed.

Framing in interactive academic talk

Framing involves how language users conceptualize what is happening in interaction for situated interpretation of roles, purposes, expectations, and sequences of action, thus show significant conceptual relevance to the analysis of routinized institutional communication. Having established a working definition of framing based on an intensive review of previous research, this study investigates university students’ and tutors’ framing behaviors in interactive small group talk. Two types of framing-in-interaction, -alternate framing of a single situation and co-framing within/beyond speaker role boundary-, are identified, examined, and characterized from a conversation-analytic perspective. The findings suggest that alternate framings co-occur with traceable interactional devices for sequential organization when the single situation at talk takes on divergent meaning potentials to be accessed. Co-framings happen when at least one (group) of participants is highly goal-oriented, showing conditional relevance to the prior courses of action and more explicit negotiation of epistemic stances. Framing, therefore, can be arguably taken as a global organization resource to characterize contextualization in institutional communication.

Knowledge negotiation and interactional power: epistemic stances in Arabic–Swedish antenatal care consultations

This article concerns knowledge negotiations as an aspect of interactional power in three-way interaction between Arabic-speaking women, Swedish-speaking midwives and interpreters in Swedish antenatal care. The notion of epistemic stance is used to investigate how all three participants negotiate knowledge, and how this affects the ongoing consultation. The data consist of audio recordings of 33 consultations, involving five midwives. Using an interaction analytical approach, the study focuses on sequences where the pregnant woman makes her voice heard, possibly challenging the midwife or the Swedish antenatal care programme. Three different ways in which the epistemic stances of the participants unfold interactionally are analysed: (1) the midwife and the pregnant woman mutually adjusting their knowledge claims, (2) the pregnant woman unsuccessfully attempting to claim knowledge and (3) participants jointly asserting the midwife’s knowledge. Importantly, all three participants wield their interactional power through various ways of negotiating knowledge, which contrasts with the idea of the interpreter as fully neutral and detached. The knowledge claims of the pregnant women and the midwives in the data are also shown to be highly dependent on the interpreters’ competence and performance.

A Thousand Flowers on the Road to Epistemic Anarchy: Comments on Chakravartty's Scientific Ontology

ABSTRACTI introduce the symposium on Anjan Chakravartty's Scientific Ontology by summarizing the book's main claims. In my commentary, I first challenge Chakravartty's claim that naturalized metaphysics cannot be indexed to science simpliciter. Second, I argue that there are objective truths regarding what conduces to particular epistemic aims, and that Chakravartty is therefore too permissive regarding epistemic stances and their resultant ontologies. Third, I argue that it is unclear what stops epistemic stances from having unlimited influence. Finally, I argue that Chakravartty's epistemic stance voluntarism is inadequately motivated and lacks empirical support for its psychological content.

Risk, Reward, and Scientific Ontology: Reply to Bryant, Psillos, and Slater

ABSTRACTScientific Ontology: Integrating Naturalized Metaphysics and Voluntarist Epistemology contends that ontological commitments associated with scientific inquiry are infused with philosophical commitments. Interpretations of scientific ontology involve (what I call) metaphysical inferences, and furthermore, there are different ways of making these inferences, on the basis of different but nonetheless rational epistemic stances. If correct, this problematizes any neat distinction between naturalized and other metaphysics, and dissolves any presumption of there being a uniquely correct answer to ontological questions connected to the sciences. In this paper, I consider some weighty challenges to these contentions by Amanda Bryant, Stathis Psillos, and Matthew Slater.