The Reception of Boethian Topics in the Early Middle Ages

The purpose of this study is to focus on the coexistence, during the transmission of the doctrine on the Topics in the early Middle Ages, of two different interpretations: although both emerge from two commentaries on Cicero’s Topics, however, they gave rise to two different readings: the one transmitted by Marius Victorinus (ca. 280-365 AC) who thought the topics almost exclusively in the service of Rhetoric, the other conceived by Boethius (ca. 480-524 AC) who intended to restore the centrality that the Topics had in the Aristotelian Logic, by subordinating the rethorical Topics to dialectical Topics. My conclusion is that the Early Middle Ages can be considered, from an epistemological point of view, as a long boetiana aetas. Although the corpus of Boethius’s logical writings was not yet available until the second half of the 11th century, Boethius’s methodological approach on the Topics somehow continued to support the slow but constant absorption of the topical doctrine into the new Christian sensibility.

Scholar Entangled: The Unattainable Detachment in Social Inquiry

The practice of social studies continues to be a complicated scientific endeavor. From an epistemological point of view, the social sciences, unlike the natural sciences, do not conform to the predominant definition of science. The existing differences among expositions of “science,” “inquiry,” and “studies” lie with the contested role of the intellectual who is embarked on understanding the social realm. The “maturity” of the social sciences is usually discussed in the context of objectivity and rationality. But continuing epistemological debates would be insufficient without reference to the scholar as a human studying humans. The philosophy of science has focused mainly on the procedures of knowledge accumulation, neglecting social context and its implications for inquiry. To address this neglect, this essay sets out first to retrace doubts about the role of the scholar that emerged with the institutionalization of the social sciences at the outset of the twentieth century and then to rethink these issues in terms of recent scientific developments. What surfaces is a new, participatory role for scholars that demands responsible contextualization and a broader conception of causal stories.

Prospective and Mental Change in Decision-Making in Critical Scenarios of Organizations (Review Article)

We understand from the study of neuroscience that our mind has the power to change according to the social and cultural context in which we operate. The purpose of this research was to present epistemological theory, its importance in influencing decision-making, and strategic approaches from the perspective of complexity and neuroscience. For this, an in-depth bibliographic review was carried out based on the epistemological point of view and critical reading of published articles. The results demonstrated considerations about the presence of multiple philosophical traditions in the scientific process; the role of leadership and neuroscience as the axis of knowledge and their value for decision-making; and how, based on the paradigmatic dialectic, a new mental model and innovative foresight are useful for understanding the structures that require new models of planning for the future where possible and desirable. Thus, we conclude that a change of mentality to a new philosophy of interpretation of reality is important for the complexity of the construction of the future. Keywords: neurosciences, quality, managerial skills, neuroliderazgo. Resumen Desde la neurociencia nuestra mente tiene el poder de cambiar de acuerdo al contexto social y cultural en la que nos desenvolvemos, para ello hay que darle al cerebro la importancia de algo nuevo. El artículo tiene como propósito presentar la teoría epistemológica, y su importancia para formar mentes y pensamientos positivos para la toma de decisiones, y mejorar los enfoques estratégicos desde la perspectiva de la complejidad y la neurociencia; para ello se realizó una revisión bibliográfica a profundidad basados en dos enfoques desde lo epistemológico y la lectura crítica de artículos publicados. Frente a tal escenario, se pretende exponer consideraciones acerca de la presencia de estas tres tradiciones filosóficas en la manera científica argumentado liderazgo y neurociencia como eje del conocimiento y sobre su valor para la toma de decisiones fundamentados en la dialéctica paradigmática hacia un nuevo modelo mental e innovador, la prospectiva es útil para comprender las estructuras que requieren nuevos modelos de planificación del futuro en lo posible y lo deseable. En el nivel académico esta la respuesta a la complejidad para la construcción del futuro, es importante un cambio de mentalidad que este sujeto a una nueva filosofía de interpretación de la realidad. Palabras claves: neurociencias, calidad, habilidades directivas, neuroliderazgo.

SOBRE A ESPACIALIDADE E OS PROPÓSITOS DA EDUCAÇÃO GEOGRÁFICA

A geografia é muitas vezes vista no senso comum como um conjunto de conhecimentos sobre as caraterísticas de lugares, regiões e/ou territórios. Ao mesmo tempo, no ambiente acadêmico ainda são recorrentes as reflexões acerca da natureza epistemológica desta ciência. Este artigo é fruto de uma pesquisa de doutorado em geografia em andamento e pretende contribuir com as reflexões sobre as relações entre saberes científicos e escolares. Quais devem ser os propósitos e objetivos da educação geográfica realizada em contextos escolares? O que a educação geográfica apresenta de singular do ponto de vista epistemológico e que a diferencia de outros campos do conhecimento, disciplinas e visões do senso comum? As reflexões presentes neste trabalho se somam a outras publicações recentes na geografia brasileira e britânica que apontam para a importância da espacialidade dos fenômenos como ponto de partida para um raciocínio realmente geográfico. Palavras-chave Educação geográfica, Geografia escolar, Raciocínio geográfico. SPATIALITY AND THE PURPOSES OF GEOGRAPHICAL EDUCATION Abstract Geography is often seen in common sense as a body of knowledge about the characteristics of places, regions and / or territories. At the same time, reflections on the epistemological nature of this science are still recurring in the academic environment. This article is the result of an ongoing PhD research in geography and aims to contribute to reflections on the relationship between scientific and school knowledge. What should be the purposes and objectives of geographic education carried out in school contexts? What is unique about geographic education from an epistemological point of view and what differentiates it from other fields of knowledge, disciplines and common sense views? The reflections present in this work are added to other recent publications in Brazilian and British geography that point to the importance of the spatiality of phenomena as a starting point for a truly geographic thinking. Keywords Geographic education, School geography, Geographic thinking.

The oracles of science: On grant peer review and competitive funding

From a purely epistemological point of view, evaluating and predicting the future success of new research projects is often considered very difficult. Is it possible to forecast important findings and breakthrough in science, and if not, then what is the point trying to do it anyway? Still, that is what funding agencies all over the world expect their reviewers to do, but a number of previous studies has shown that this form of evaluation of innovation, promise and future impact are a fundamentally uncertain and arbitrary practice. This is the context that I will discuss in the present essay, and I will claim that there is a deeply irrational element embedded in today’s heavy reliance on experts to screen, rank and select among the increasing numbers of good research projects, because they can, in principal, never discern the true potential behind the written proposals. Hence, I think it is motivated to see grant peer review as an ‘oracle of science’. My overall focus will be on the limits of competitive funding and also that the writing and reviewing of proposals is a waste of researchers’ precious time. And I will propose that we really need to develop new ways of thinking about how we organize research and distribute opportunities within academia.

An epistemological analysis of the use of reputation as evidence

Rules 405(a) and 608(a) of the Federal Rules of Evidence allow the use of testimony about a witness’s reputation to support or undermine his or her credibility in trial. This paper analyses the evidential weight of such testimony from the point of view of social epistemology and the theory of social networks. Together they provide the necessary elements to analyse how reputation is understood in this case, and to assess the epistemic foundation of a reputational attribution. The result of the analysis will be that reputational testimony is extremely weak from an epistemological point of view, and that in many cases there are more reliable substitutes that achieve a similar purpose. The obvious fix, in my view, is to eliminate the use of reputation testimony to support or undermine the credibility, honesty, chastity or peacefulness of a witness

Álgebra Lineal y Geometría Analítica en carreras de Ingeniería: reporte de investigaciones

In this paper, 168 researches on Linear Algebra (LA) and Analytic Geometry (AG) at the university are analyzed, with the objective of knowing if these researches deal with the phenomenon of the split between this knowledge and to investigate about the main topics that guide the research on these subjects. An analysis is made using qualitative techniques obtaining a categorization in an inductive way. The results allow us to conclude that the split between LA and AG that operates in the study programs is not addressed by the researchers. Most focus on describing and analyzing students' difficulties with this knowledge, and among the proposals for teaching, the incorporation of software stands out. Only a minority consider, from an epistemological point of view, the benefits of a hybrid teaching between LA and AG.

Metamodernism as a discourse of a new anthropological myth

The present paper concerns the discourse of metamodernism problem as a type of the anthropological myth. The anthropological myth is considered as a project for describing reality, which models a systematic consistent idea of a human being, reality, status of reality and develops ethic, aesthetic, axiological views of a subject. The article aims to determine the peculiarities of metamodernism as a fictional discourse of the anthropological myth on the basis of XXI century European novel analysis. The analysis is carried out with the use of the comparative method, contextual description methods, axiomatic method, discourse analysis method etc. The topicality of the undertaken research is determined by the appearance of a new fictional discourse in art at the beginning of the XXI century as well as a new aesthetic paradigm, not described yet. The texts of Western European novels written in the first two decades of the XXI century reveal authors’ consistent refusal of the principles traditionally viewed as post-modernist – novels featuring a simulated nature of reality, novels problematizing the relationships between the signifying and the signified, decentralizing the subject etc. The attempts to describe a particular cultural situation as an alternative to postmodernism have been taken since the 80’s of the XX century; metamodernism acts as one of such projects for describing the modern cultural situation. The paper analyzes the interpretation models referring to XXI century art on the basis Western European novels of XXI century. The author of the paper concludes that metamodernism as a fictional discourse of the new anthropological myth reflects a different idea of the reality. Metamodernism as a cultural project aims to “return” ontology, assume the availability of reality outside the cognizing subject’s consciousness, and surpass the iconic nature of reality. From the epistemological point of view, metamodernism offers cognition of the world and “Ego” via experience of “Another Ego”.

On the Issue of the Relationship Between Basic and Applied Knowledge. Methodological Aspect

The article discusses the current methodological problems of the relationship between theoretical and applied knowledge in the context of the development of new industrial revolution technologies. In the course of the study, it was argued that the basic linear-chain model of the relation of applied knowledge has been replaced by the model of emergent-exponential relation, which is important not only from the epistemological point of view, but also in the context of the development of science in terms of substantiating the need for implementation.

Introduction

This introductory chapter seeks a preliminary clarification of what prejudice is and why it is a cause of persistent normative concern. It then distinguishes between two normative vocabularies in which that concern can be framed: the moral and the epistemic. When we consider prejudice from a moral point of view, we are concerned with the harms suffered by people who are targeted by prejudiced beliefs, and the moral responsibilities incurred by those who hold these beliefs. When we consider prejudice from an epistemological point of view we are concerned with the cognitive processes by which people come to hold these beliefs. This book is primarily focused on the epistemology of prejudice: the first order of the day is to explain why we should not hope to ground our account of the moral wrongs flowing from prejudice in an account of the epistemic wrongs committed by those who hold these beliefs.