Information is not Knowledge

The article of the Swiss philosopher, cultural theorist and public figure Denis the Rougemont (1906-1985) who wrote in French, is devoted to the relevant problems of the society computerization and the transformation of the essence of knowledge under the influence of advanced information technologies. First published in 1981 the article remains topical still now. The ideas of Denis de Rougemont are especially important nowadays when the distant mode of education and work are gradually introduced in our everyday life. The author does not limit himself to just naming the risks related to the results of uncontrolled latest information technologies introduction into the usual human activity processes, but denotes each of them specifically while suggesting the way to minimize likely damage. Besides the author studies the nature of genuine knowledge and difference from the informational ersatz offered by our digital epoch. Analyzing the basic concepts the author logically proves that such human faculties as memory and intellect can’t be attributed to computer, though they’ve already entered our speech as customary in relation to it. This is the first publication of Denis Rougemont’s article in Russian.

Structured Industry Workshops as Methodology: Researching National Screen Agencies and Policies

This article explores the advantages of ‘structured industry workshops’ as a methodology for obtaining nuanced empirical data about the practices and ‘behind the scenes’ workings of national screen agencies, organizations, institutions and stakeholders. The article argues that structured industry workshops with industry informants in the media industries have five major methodological benefits. The workshops facilitate access to and interest from elite or expert informants who can otherwise be hard to attract; they counter the risk of spin and ‘corporate scripts; they provide a valuable forum for not only finding out what practitioners think, but also how they discuss and engage with other practitioners; they can be a pathway to industry and policy change as well as future academic inquiry; and finally, structured industry workshops can help establish a platform for sustained dialogue and industry-academy collaborations, with genuine knowledge exchange and co-production as well as potential for impact.

Evidential Pluralism and Epistemic Reliability in Political Science: Deciphering Contradictions between Process Tracing Methodologies

Evidential pluralism has been used to justify mixed-method research in political science. The combination of methodologies within (qualitative) case study analysis, however, has not received as much attention. This article applies the theory of evidential pluralism to causal inference in the case study method process tracing. I argue that different methodologies for process tracing commit to distinct fundamental theories of causation. I show that, problematically, one methodology may not recognize as genuine knowledge the fundamental claims of the other. By evaluating the epistemic reliability of these fundamental claims, we can find a way out of such conflicts and rescue pluralism.

Niebuhr’s Background: Family, Church, and Society

This chapter explores the first four decades of Reinhold Niebuhr’s life, a period that offers many clues as to why his work has remained relevant up to the present day. Whereas many scholars tend to divide Niebuhr’s development into stages—a Social Gospel phase, a Marxist or Christian socialist phase, and a final period of liberal realism—this chapter identifies several lines of continuity from Niebuhr’s early life onwards that help to explain the distinctive contours and continued appeal of his best-known work, Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932). It focuses especially on three themes that carried through from the 1920s to the 1950s: the centrality of power and group conflict; the explanatory insufficiency of religious liberalism and the social sciences; and the capacity of religion to provide genuine knowledge about human nature.

When a Circle Becomes the Letter O: Young Children’s Conceptualization of Learning and Its Relation With Theory of Mind Development

In two independent yet complementary studies, the current research explored the developmental changes of young children’s conceptualization of learning, focusing the role of knowledge change and learning intention, and its association with their developing theory of mind (ToM) ability. In study 1, 75 children between 48 and 86 months of age (M = 65.45, SD = 11.45, 36 girls) judged whether a character with or without a genuine knowledge change had learned. The results showed that younger children randomly attributed learning between genuine knowledge change and accidental coincidence that did not involve knowledge change. Children’s learning judgments in familiar contexts improved with age and correlated with their ToM understanding. However, the correlation was no longer significant once age was held constant. Another sample of 72 children aged between 40 and 90 months (M = 66.87, SD = 11.83, 31 girls) participated in study 2, where children were asked to judge whether the story protagonists intended to learn and whether they eventually learned. The results suggested that children over-attributed learning intention to discovery and implicit learning. Stories with conflict between the learning intention and outcome appeared to be most challenging for children. Children’s intention judgment was correlated with their ToM understanding, and ToM marginally predicted intention judgment when the effect of age was accounted for. The implication of the findings for school readiness was discussed. Training studies and longitudinal designs in the future are warranted to better understand the relation between ToM development and children’s learning understanding.

Rongomātau – ‘sensing the knowing’: An Indigenous Methodology Utilising Sensed Knowledge From the Researcher

The paper offers a methodology, stimulated by an Indigenous-Māori context, called rongomātau, or ‘sensing the knowing’. Rongomātau recognises the researcher as an absorbent being, with capabilities to feel into the energetic lives of others. More specifically, participant energies can be sensed and imprinted onto researchers. Sensing and identifying the felt world of another is done through recognising the researcher’s own embodied emotions. The intention of this paper is to provide a methodology for interpreting the ‘imprinted’ sensing onto the researcher and for its meaningful analysis. Traditional Western philosophies of knowledge creation have tended to regard bodily ways of knowing other than the five traditional (in Western terms) bodily senses as incapable of contributing to genuine knowledge. However, Indigenous communities have not marginalised their bodies from the generation of knowledge and have paradigms that reflect sensing and its integration into knowledge. The paper demonstrates how Indigenous concepts and language can be utilised to bring new perspectives to sensing in research. To do so, the author provides an insider account of her own imprinted sensed experiences in conducting a specific research project and how these contributed to her findings. The methodology involves the collection and analysis of data through a frame of three dimensions: connecting in (self-inner world), connecting out (external physical world) and connecting to the whole (higher/spiritual consciousness), to achieve holistic ways of theorising. The rongomātau methodology is applicable in non-Indigenous contexts and can help researchers integrate their senses into research. Methodologies that help researchers interpret and give meaning to their sensing experiences remain largely unavailable. This paper begins to address that gap.

Newman, Marcel, and Personal Knowledge

This article suggests that the religious epistemology of John Henry Newman can be enhanced if read through the philosophical lens of Gabriel Marcel. After briefly describing Newman’s epistemology as it appears in his most philosophically mature work, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, and with particular attention paid to the illative sense, the charge of relativism will be considered. The answer to this concern of relativism is found in embryo in the pages of the Grammar itself, when it highlights not only the personal nature of assent but also suggests a communal dimension. To make this point explicit, I suggest reading Newman’s epistemology through the lens of Marcel’s philosophy. While being akin to Newman in terms of what constitutes genuine knowledge and one’s attainment of it, Marcel provides a richer philosophical story as to why our knowing is both personal and communal. To this end, the Marcelian understanding of situated existence and testimony will be explored. In sum, a Marcelian optic helps to supplement Newman’s epistemology while not detracting from it.

Shape as a Cognitive Archetype of the English Linguoculture

The article is devoted to revealing the cultural and historic continuity of eidetic and abstract thinking and their structural parallelism. The author describes the cognitive archetype “Shape” in English linguoculture, shows what subject areas are modelled by using the above-mentioned archetype (mental states / properties, action and its effect, objective circumstances etc.) and points out the importance of the cognitive archetype in question for modern abstract thinking and modelling of reality. The role of the cognitive archetype “Configuration of objects” for abstract thinking and modelling of reality is emphasized. In particular, it has been demonstrated that among representatives of English linguoculture the image of a straight line is often associated with simplicity, truthfulness, honesty, sincerity, rejecting ambiguity in expressing thoughts, spontaneity, whereas the image of a curved line is often associated with complexity, deceit, insincerity, hypocrisy, resourcefulness, fraud, wrongness, deviation from the norm, standard, from a simple and clear presentation of thoughts. The author notes that the numerous language examples given in the article indicate an important circumstance in the field of cognitive science: a person does not believe that he has deeply understood the structure and essence of a non-perceivable object until he imagines its spatial outlines. The author states that information about the environment is received through sensory channels, with further processing of the information received through the channels, constructing abstract notions from sensory images, but, as can be seen from the examples, never loses connection with the images. The author also notes that man is an intelligent primate; his picture of the world, figuratively speaking, is a building of the human mind based on ape’s sensations. But the sensations that man has inherited from his animal ancestors do not prevent him from gaining genuine knowledge, developing abstract thinking, and achieving an adequate understanding of the world.

On the limits of experimental knowledge

To demarcate the limits of experimental knowledge, we probe the limits of what might be called an experiment. By appeal to examples of scientific practice from astrophysics and analogue gravity, we demonstrate that the reliability of knowledge regarding certain phenomena gained from an experiment is not circumscribed by the manipulability or accessibility of the target phenomena. Rather, the limits of experimental knowledge are set by the extent to which strategies for what we call ‘inductive triangulation’ are available: that is, the validation of the mode of inductive reasoning involved in the source-target inference via appeal to one or more distinct and independent modes of inductive reasoning. When such strategies are able to partially mitigate reasonable doubt, we can take a theory regarding the phenomena to be well supported by experiment. When such strategies are able to fully mitigate reasonable doubt, we can take a theory regarding the phenomena to be established by experiment. There are good reasons to expect the next generation of analogue experiments to provide genuine knowledge of unmanipulable and inaccessible phenomena such that the relevant theories can be understood as well supported. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The next generation of analogue gravity experiments’.