The relevance of expertise to professional education and practice is explored in this collection of original contributions from educationalists, philosophers and psychologists. Discusses the increasingly prominent debates about the nature of know-how in mainstream analytical epistemology Illuminates what is involved in professional expertise and the implications of a sound understanding of professional expertise for professional education practice, curriculum design and assessment All contributions are philosophically grounded and reflect interdisciplinary advances in understanding expertise.

An exciting introduction to the contribution which the later Wittgenstein made to the philosophy of religion. Although his writings on the subject have been few, Wittgenstein developed influential and controversial theories on both religion which emphasize the distinctive nature of religious discourse and how this nature can be misunderstood when viewed in direct competition with science. The contributors of this collection shed new light on the perennial debate between faith and reason. The result is a collection that is both informative (...) and stimulating. (shrink)

Questions about the relationship between linguistic competence and expertise will be examined in the paper. Harry Collins and others distinguish between ubiquitous and esoteric expertise. Collins places considerable weight on the argument that ordinary linguistic competence and related phenomena exhibit a high degree of expertise. His position and ones which share close affinities are methodologically problematic. These difficulties matter because there is continued and systematic disagreement over appropriate methodologies for the empirical study of expertise. Against Collins, it will be argued (...) that the term ‘expertise’ should be reserved for expertise (esoteric experts) and exclude everyday performance (ubiquitous experts). Wittgensteinian ideas will be employed to maintain that it is mistaken and misleading to derive substantive conclusions about the epistemology of expertise from ordinary linguistic competence and vice versa. Significant attention will be devoted to the notion of following a rule with particular reference to the intelligibility of tacit rule following. A satisfactory theoretical approach to expertise should not involve making important claims about ordinary linguistic competence. (shrink)

_Wittgenstein and Philosophy of Religion_ sheds new light on the perennial debate between faith and reason. It highlights the disagreements between Wittgenstein and religious sceptics, resulting in a collection that is both informative and stimulating. The themes discussed include Wittgenstein's views on creation, magic and free will, and Wittgenstein's thought is compared to that of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and contemporary reformed epistemologists.

This volume brings together a number of related contributions on the topic of expertise and education. Expertise is a topic that is beginning to receive more attention in the Philosophy of Education and discussions are closely related to the epistemological debate concerning the nature of know-how which has also burgeoned in recent years within ‘mainstream’ epistemology. More specifically, this volume focuses on the relevance of expertise to professional education and practice, with the aim on shedding light on what is involved (...) in professional expertise and the implications of a sound understanding of professional expertise for professional education. Although all contributions have roots in philosophical discussion, there is an element of cross-disciplinarity among them, reflecting the advances that have been made to our understanding of expertise from psychology in particular. (shrink)

Ideas from Wittgenstein are developed to provide suggestions about how both the nature and acquisition of normative cognition in the cognitive science of religion might be understood. As part of this there is some consideration of more general issues about the nature and status of claims in the cognitive science of religion and of appropriate methodologies for the cognitive study of religion. The gaining, production, distribution and implementation of social concepts and norms involves the possession of certain cognitive skills and (...) the ability to use symbols, concepts and norms as normative cognitive tools. Normative cognition is connected to social facts which are construed in Searle’s sense as being any facts involving collective intentionality. For example, socially shared belief systems which are concerned with the ideological bases for the distribution and exercise of power are large systems of social facts whose functions involve the generation of norms. Social facts can be included in Wittgenstein’s account of meaning being socially constructed by a community of language users. Such inclusion enables his ideas, especially those from On Certainty about world pictures, to be usefully employed to clarify the ontological and epistemological status of social facts in a way which does not involve reification along with articulating their significance for normative cognition. World pictures include social facts with socially shared belief systems being a significant constitutive element. (shrink)

Intellectualism encompasses a range of positions which all share a commitment to the view that all know‐how can be rendered as know‐that. The starting point for Luntley's account arises from his response to the highly influential Dreyfus and Dreyfus phenomenological model of expertise which charts the path from novice to expert. According to the model, formal instruction starts with rules but they seem to give way to more flexible responses as one approaches expertise. The model claims that expertise is a (...) matter of discriminating perception which enables an appropriate response to the richness of the context thereby permitting the successful intuitive situational response that is the hallmark of expertise. The range and complexity of expert knowledge requires a proliferation of types of knowledge, postulating such proliferation would be a serious philosophical error. For Luntley the model of expertise treats the discriminating perception typical of many sorts of expertise. (shrink)

The article presents a review of the current literature on Wittgenstein’s notion of a criterion. It essentially deals with developments since Lycan’s survey article on the topic and examines the most important pieces contemporary with or prior to it. Different views on various aspects of criteria are considered and summarised. Particular attention is paid to the role criteria play in the philosophy of mind. A framework in which criteria are regarded as states of affairs is used to provide uniformity in (...) the presentation of the accounts. The connections between and implications of varlous positions on aspects of criteria are assessed. No overall perspective on criteria is given and the question of whether the proposed accounts in the literature are adequate interpretations of Wittgenstein’s texts is not covered. (shrink)

A conceptual ontology was used to semantically enrich the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen’s taxonomy for Wittgenstein Source to facilitate improved searching in the areas of the philosophies of mathematics and psychology. The classes and sub-classes of the multilingual taxonomy were employed to further refine the ways in which themes in these areas of philosophy could be organised. The taxonomy was intended to facilitate the identification of thematic similarities between remarks in instances where this similarity might not be (...) apparent with free text search and in cases where the classified subject of the remarks differed. The approach taken to constructing the taxonomy allows for both its alteration and potential expansion. (shrink)

The article presents a review of the current literature on Wittgenstein’s notion of a criterion. It essentially deals with developments since Lycan’s survey article on the topic and examines the most important pieces contemporary with or prior to it. Different views on various aspects of criteria are considered and summarised. Particular attention is paid to the role criteria play in the philosophy of mind. A framework in which criteria are regarded as states of affairs is used to provide uniformity in (...) the presentation of the accounts. The connections between and implications of varlous positions on aspects of criteria are assessed. No overall perspective on criteria is given and the question of whether the proposed accounts in the literature are adequate interpretations of Wittgenstein’s texts is not covered. (shrink)

As most engineering design proceeds by modifying past designs and reusing and adapting existing components and solution principles, a significant part of the knowledge engineers employ in design is encapsulated in the past designs they are familiar with. References to past designs, as well as encounters with them, serve to invoke the knowledge associated with them and constructed from them. This chapter argues that much of this knowledge is tacit consisting in and/or made available by the perceptual recognition of features (...) and situations, using a discussion of design margins to illustrate how engineers use tacit knowledge in reasoning about the properties of new designs. (shrink)

Some issues raised by the notion of surveyability and how it is represented mathematically are explored. Wright considers the sense in which the positive integers are surveyable and suggests that their structure will be a weakly finite, but weakly infinite, totality. One way to expose the incoherence of this account is by applying Wittgenstein's distinction between intensional and extensional to it. Criticism of the idea of a surveyable proof shows the notion's lack of clarity. It is suggested that this concept (...) should be replaced by that of a feasible operation, as strict finitism aims to understand the boundaries of legitimate mathematical knowledge. (shrink)

This volume offers selected papers exploring issues arising from scientific discovery in the social sciences. It features a range of disciplines including behavioural sciences, computer science, finance, and statistics with an emphasis on philosophy. The first of the three parts examines methods of social scientific discovery. Chapters investigate the nature of causal analysis, philosophical issues around scale development in behavioural science research, imagination in social scientific practice, and relationships between paradigms of inquiry and scientific fraud. The next part considers the (...) practice of social science discovery. Chapters discuss the lack of genuine scientific discovery in finance where hypotheses concern the cheapness of securities, the logic of scientific discovery in macroeconomics, and the nature of that what discovery with the Solidarity movement as a case study. The final part covers formalising theories in social science. Chapters analyse the abstract model theory of institutions as a way of representing the structure of scientific theories, the semi-automatic generation of cognitive science theories, and computational process models in the social sciences. The volume offers a unique perspective on scientific discovery in the social sciences. It will engage scholars and students with a multidisciplinary interest in the philosophy of science and social science. (shrink)

The difficulties about other minds are deep and of central philosophical importance. This text explores attempts to apply Wittgenstein's concept of criteria in explaining how we can know other minds and their properties. It is shown that the use of criteria for this purpose is misguided.

Livings things are so very strange -- The quest for a theory of life -- Understanding 'understanding' -- Stability and instability -- The knotty origin of life problem -- Biology's crisis of identity -- Biology is chemistry -- What is life?

This study was conducted from May to June 2005 to describe the demographic characteristics and factors that affect the VCT acceptance as well as the HIV prevalence among youth VCT acceptors in Addis Ababa. Both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection were employed. The quantitative data was generated from a two years (October 2002 to December 2004) VCT service utilization data obtained from four youth centers located in Addis Ababa. The data was analysed using univariate and multivariate (...) analysis and results were presented in the form of text, table and figures. The significance and level of associations between independent and dependant variables was computed using X2 tests and odds ratios with 95% confidence interval. The qualitative data was presented in a form of narrations using excerpts. During the period a total of 3220, youth age 15 - 24 years have sought VCT service from the four youth centres VCT service outlets. Higher proportions of females (60.2%) and youth in the age category of 20 – 24 years (58.0%) have accessed the service. The major reasons given for seeking VCT were found to be similar for male and female acceptors. About 71.2% said that they sought for VCT service because they wanted to know their HIV status, 9.5% reported because they were suspicious of being infected with HIV and 5.0% tested because they wanted to go aboard. The HIV prevalence rate is found to be significantly higher, (p = 0.00), among females 9.2 % than in males 1.7 %. Gender segregated multivariate analysis of risk factors indicated significant association of HIV infection with lack of formal education for both males and female: for males P= 0.045, OR = 18.3, 95% CI: 1.1 – 317.7 and for females P=0.00, OR=19.4, 95 % CI: 5.1 – 73.8. Additionally for females HIV infection is markedly associated with being widowed and commercial sex worker. The most common barrier for youth in Addis from accessing VCT were found to be: fear of being emotionally affected if found out HIV positive, stigma and discrimination, lack of money to pay for VCT service, absence of care and support services for people who are already infected. The challenges encountered by youth VCT counsellors were stress, absence of medical care for PLWHA, inadequacy of budget, lack of counsellors and supportive supervision. This study showed high burden of HIV infection among female youth and the risk factors associated with it. Formal education for both females and males is strongly recommended. Female focused HIV prevention interventions are indicated. Additional recommendations are also made in relation to barriers to access youth VCT and for the challenges encountered by youth VCT service providers. (shrink)

Recognizing the links between childhood trauma and delinquency, many juvenile delinquency systems now emphasize trauma-informed care. This commentary examines established and emerging research on childhood trauma among American Indian and Alaska Native children and contrasts the development and implementation of “trauma-informed” approaches in state and tribal juvenile systems. It identifies three key innovations present in tribal models and calls for further research to identify best practices that work for Native children and tribal communities.

Mark Jago presents an original philosophical account of meaningful thought: in particular, how it is meaningful to think about things that are impossible. We think about impossible things all the time. We can think about alchemists trying to turn base metal to gold, and about unfortunate mathematicians trying to square the circle. We may ponder whether God exists; and philosophers frequently debate whether properties, numbers, sets, moral and aesthetic qualities, and qualia exist. In many philosophical or mathematical debates, when (...) one side of the argument gets things wrong, it necessarily gets them wrong. As we consider both sides of one of these philosophical arguments, we will at some point think about something that’s impossible. Yet most philosophical accounts of meaning and content hold that we can’t meaningfully think or reason about the impossible. -/- In The Impossible, Jago argues that we often gain new information, new beliefs, and, sometimes, fresh knowledge through logic, mathematics, and philosophy. That is why logic, mathematics, and philosophy are useful. We therefore require accounts of knowledge and belief, of information and content, and of meaning which allow space for the impossible. Jago’s aim in this book is to provide such accounts. He gives a detailed analysis of the concept of hyperintensionality, whereby logically equivalent contents may be distinct, and develops a theory in terms of possible and impossible worlds. Along the way, he provides a theory of what those worlds are and how they feature in our analysis of normative epistemic concepts: knowledge, belief, information, and content. (shrink)

Karen Neander’s (1991a, b) Selected Effects (SE) theory of biological proper functions argues that the function of a trait is the action for which it was “caused” to be selected by natural selection. Her life’s work has already left a lasting impact, however SE theory has yet to be more properly formalized as a conceptual analysis of biological functions. Although other SE theories have sought to build upon Neander’s work (e.g., Garson, 2017), there remains an ambiguity in the theory’s use (...) of causal descriptors. For the success of her successors, delineating the function of causality for SE theory is of utmost importance. Here, I systematize Neander’s theory according to the different senses of causation inherent to it. I argue that structuring SE theory in terms of causal transitivity and intransitivity reveals that Neander’s analysis not only supersedes her detractors but likely exposes areas of vulnerability in others’ SE theory derivatives. (shrink)