This paper attempts to fill an epistemological gap in our theorizing about love with a sketch of an epistemology of love that unfolds by addressing Whitney Houston’s famous epistemological questions pertaining to how we can know whether another loves us. After arguing for three possible sources of the knowledge of love, it offers initial answers to how the knowledge of the presence or absence of another’s love can be acquired from the relevant possible sources previously (...) established. These initial answers, though, are unsatisfying because they invite more difficult questions that are then addressed, such as those pertaining to the kinds of things that constitute love’s expressions along with how to detect these expressions given the possibility of false positives. Addressing these questions ultimately leads to a sharpened, Aristotle-inspired account of how to acquire the knowledge of the presence or absence of another’s love by inferring it, respectively, from the successful or failed detection of love’s expressions. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to encourage a reconfiguration of the discussion about typology in biology away from the metaphysics of essentialism and toward the epistemology of classifying natural phenomena for the purposes of empirical inquiry. First, I briefly review arguments concerning ‘typological thinking’, essentialism, species, and natural kinds, highlighting their predominantly metaphysical nature. Second, I use a distinction between the aims, strategies, and tactics of science to suggest how a shift from metaphysics to epistemology might be (...) accomplished. Typological thinking can be understood as a scientific tactic that involves representing natural phenomena using idealizations and approximations, which facilitates explanation, investigation, and theorizing via abstraction and generalization. Third, a variety of typologies from different areas of biology are introduced to emphasize the diversity of this representational reasoning. One particular example is used to examine how there can be epistemological conflict between typology and evolutionary analysis. This demonstrates that alternative strategies of typological thinking arise due to the divergent explanatory goals of researchers working in different disciplines with disparate methodologies. I conclude with several research questions that emerge from an epistemological reconfiguration of typology. (shrink)

Technology Education offers an authentic and invaluable range of skills, knowledge, capabilities, contexts and ways of thinking for learners in the 21st century. However, it is recognised that it occupies a comparatively less defined and more fragile curricular position than associated, but longer established, subjects such as Mathematics and Science. While recognising that no single factor lies behind such a condition, this paper draws upon thinking in the philosophy of technology, technology education and the ontology of artefacts to argue that (...) transformation may be considered as an epistemic source for technology in a similar way to ‘proof’ within Mathematics and ‘interpretation’ within Science. Encapsulating technology's intimate relationship with materials, it is ultimately argued that the transformation of a technical artefact from an ill-defined into a well-defined ontological state constitutes a prime source of technological knowledge for pupils. Moreover, it provides an alternative route into further consideration about the nature of the domain, epistemology and curricular identity of the subject. (shrink)

Technology Education offers an authentic and invaluable range of skills, knowledge, capabilities, contexts and ways of thinking for learners in the 21st century. However, it is recognised that it occupies a comparatively less defined and more fragile curricular position than associated, but longer established, subjects such as Mathematics and Science. While recognising that no single factor lies behind such a condition, this paper draws upon thinking in the philosophy of technology, technology education and the ontology of artefacts to argue that (...) transformation may be considered as an epistemic source for technology in a similar way to ‘proof’ within Mathematics and ‘interpretation’ within Science. Encapsulating technology's intimate relationship with materials, it is ultimately argued that the transformation of a technical artefact from an ill-defined into a well-defined ontological state constitutes a prime source of technological knowledge for pupils. Moreover, it provides an alternative route into further consideration about the nature of the domain, epistemology and curricular identity of the subject. (shrink)

Technology Education offers an authentic and invaluable range of skills, knowledge, capabilities, contexts and ways of thinking for learners in the 21st century. However, it is recognised that it occupies a comparatively less defined and more fragile curricular position than associated, but longer established, subjects such as Mathematics and Science. While recognising that no single factor lies behind such a condition, this paper draws upon thinking in the philosophy of technology, technology education and the ontology of artefacts to argue that (...) transformation may be considered as an epistemic source for technology in a similar way to ‘proof’ within Mathematics and ‘interpretation’ within Science. Encapsulating technology's intimate relationship with materials, it is ultimately argued that the transformation of a technical artefact from an ill-defined into a well-defined ontological state constitutes a prime source of technological knowledge for pupils. Moreover, it provides an alternative route into further consideration about the nature of the domain, epistemology and curricular identity of the subject. (shrink)

It is a common complaint that antireductionist arguments are primarily negative. Here I describe an alternative nonreductionist epistemology based on considerations taken from multidisciplinary research in biology. The core of this framework consists in seeing investigation as coordinated around sets of problems (problem agendas) that have associated criteria of explanatory adequacy. These ideas are developed in a case study, the explanation of evolutionary innovations and novelties, which demonstrates the applicability and fruitfulness of this nonreductionist epistemological perspective. This account also (...) bears on questions of conceptual change and theory structure in philosophy of science. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota, 831 Heller Hall, 271 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55455; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

The epistemology of religion is the branch of epistemology concerned with the rationality, the justificatory status and the knowledge status of religious beliefs – most often the belief in the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and loving God as conceived by the major monotheistic religions. While other sorts of religious beliefs – such as belief in an afterlife or in disembodied spirits or in the occurrence of miracles – have also been the focus of considerable attention from epistemologists, (...) I shall concentrate here on belief in God. There were a number of significant works in the epistemology of religion written during the early and mid Twentieth Century. The late Twentieth Century, however, saw a surge of interest in this area, fuelled by the work of philosophers such as William Alston, Alvin Plantinga and Linda Zagzebski amongst others. Alston, Plantinga and Zagzebski succeeded in importing, into the epistemology of religion, various new ideas from mainstream epistemology – in particular, externalist approaches to justification, such as reliabilism, and virtue theoretic approaches to knowledge (see, for instance, Alston, 1986, 1991, Plantinga, 1988, 2000, Zagzebski, 1993a, 1993b). This laid fertile ground for new research – questions about the justificatory and knowledge status of belief in God begin to look very different when viewed through the lens of theories such as these. I will begin by surveying some of this groundbreaking work in the present article, before moving on to work from the last five years – a period in which the epistemology of religion has again received impetus from a number of ideas from mainstream epistemology; ideas such as pragmatic encroachment, phenomenal conservatism and externalist theories of evidence. (shrink)

Contextualist scholars working on the rhetoric of corporeal presence in seventeenth-century English religious lyrics have naturally focused their attention on sacramental discourse of the Reformation era. As part of the Common Knowledge symposium on the future of contextualism, this full-length monograph, serialized in installments, argues that the contextualist focus on a single and time-limited “epistemic field” has resulted in a less than adequately ramified understanding of the poetry of John Donne, George Herbert, Aemilia Lanyer, and John Milton. What the contextualist (...) approach misses is that even the religious discourses of the period were tied to a long and in no way local epistemological debate about signs and their meaning, whose roots are to be found in Greek and Latin rhetorical theory. This first installment of “Tokens of Love” commences a discussion of the role of classical pagan sign-theory in the development of Reformation sacramental discourse. (shrink)

Evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-devo) is a vibrant area of contemporary life science that should be (and is) increasingly incorporated into teaching curricula. Although the inclusion of this content is important for biological pedagogy at multiple levels of instruction, there are also philosophical lessons that can be drawn from the scientific practices found in Evo-devo. One feature of particular significance is the interdisciplinary nature of Evo-devo investigations and their resulting explanations. Instead of a single disciplinary approach being the most explanatory or (...) fundamental, different methodologies from biological disciplines must be synthesized to generate empirically adequate explanations. Thus, Evo-devo points toward a non-reductionist epistemology in biology. I review three areas where these synthetic efforts become manifest as a result of Evo-devo’s practices (form versus function reasoning styles; problem-structured investigations; idealizations related to studying model organisms), and then sketch some possible applications to teaching biology. These philosophical considerations provide resources for life science educators to address (and challenge) key aspects of the National Science Education Standards and Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy. (shrink)

Although natural philosophers have long been interested in individuality, it has been of interest to contemporary philosophers of biology because of its role in different aspects of evolutionary biology. These debates include whether species are individuals or classes, what counts as a unit of selection, and how transitions in individuality occur evolutionarily. Philosophical analyses are often conducted in terms of metaphysics (“what is an individual?”), rather than epistemology (“how can and do researchers conceptualize individuals so as to address some (...) of their scientific goals?”). We review several philosophical distinctions in order to shift attention from metaphysics to epistemology. Many controversies involve epistemological differences rather than metaphysical disagreement. This implies that a pluralist stance about individuality in biology is warranted and has metaphysical consequences because the pluralism emerges from the diversity of scientific interests that investigate the complexity of living phenomena. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The Old Problem (Agenda) of the Ontogeny of Form Explaining the Ontogeny of Form Epistemological Issues: Representation Epistemological Issues: Explanation Epistemological Issues: Methodology Unexplored Issues and Summary Acknowledgment References.

Developmental biology is the science that investigates how a variety of interacting processes generate an organism’s heterogeneous shapes, size, and structural features that arise on the trajectory from embryo to adult, or more generally throughout a life cycle. It represents an exemplary area of contemporary experimental biology that focuses on phenomena that have puzzled natural philosophers and scientists for more than two millennia. Philosophers of biology have shown interest in developmental biology due to the potential relevance of development for understanding (...) evolution, the theme of reductionism in genetic explanations, and via increased attention to the details of particular research programs, such as stem cell biology. Developmental biology displays a rich array of material and conceptual practices that can be analyzed to better understand the scientific reasoning exhibited in experimental life science. This entry briefly reviews some central phenomena of ontogeny and then explores four domains that represent some of the import and promise of conceptual reflection on the epistemology of developmental biology. (shrink)

In this essay, I discuss and defend Augustine’s and Aquinas’s respective epistemologies of faith. This entails analyzing central claims both thinkers make in order to determine the ways in which the true beliefs about God the faithful form and hold are reasonable as well as properly grounded. In the first two sections of the essay, I highlight what I take to be some of Augustine’s enduring epistemological insights concerning the reasonableness and origins of faith. I read Aquinas’s own account of (...) faith in a distinctly Augustinian light, so in the third section of the essay, I turn to Aquinas to explain more fully how faith-beliefs are adequately or rationally grounded—that is, based on a specifically truth-conducive ground. Like Augustine, Aquinas sees love, or desire more broadly, as an essential component of faith (specifically what Aquinas calls “formed faith”): it is our love of God, infused in our will by God’s grace, that draws us to believe what our intellect also recognizes in the infused “light of faith” to be true revelations from God. In the final section of the essay, I consider and then counter three main objections to my reading of Augustine and Aquinas. Thus, by the end of the essay, I not only discuss some of the main features of the accounts of faith that Augustine and Aquinas respectively offer; I also defend those accounts, as well as the epistemology of faith that I derive from them. (shrink)

Günter Wagner’s Homology, Genes, and Evolutionary Innovation collects and synthesizes a vast array of empirical data, theoretical models, and conceptual analysis to set out a progressive research program with a central theoretical commitment: the genetic theory of homology. This research program diverges from standard approaches in evolutionary biology, provides sharpened contours to explanations of the origin of novelty, and expands the conceptual repertoire of evolutionary developmental biology. I concentrate on four aspects of the book in this essay review: the genetic (...) theory of homology and character identity networks; the implications for how we explain evolutionary novelties; the expanded set of concepts surrounding homology, and the epistemological conflicts between Wagner’s viewpoint and functionally-oriented evolutionary biology, as well as differences with other Evo–devo researchers. Together these have ramifications for how we interpret different explanatory approaches to evolutionary phenomena and understand relationships between the usefulness of concepts and the reality they represent. (shrink)

The ubiquity of top-down causal explanations within and across the sciences is prima facie evidence for the existence of top-down causation. Much debate has been focused on whether top-down causation is coherent or in conflict with reductionism. Less attention has been given to the question of whether these representations of hierarchical relations pick out a single, common hierarchy. A negative answer to this question undermines a commonplace view that the world is divided into stratified ‘levels’ of organization and suggests that (...) attributions of causal responsibility in different hierarchical representations may not have a meaningful basis for comparison. Representations used in top-down and bottom-up explanations are primarily ‘local’ and tied to distinct domains of science, illustrated here by protein structure and folding. This locality suggests that no single metaphysical account of hierarchy for causal relations to obtain within emerges from the epistemology of scientific explanation. Instead, a pluralist perspective is recommended—many different kinds of top-down causation (explanation) can exist alongside many different kinds of bottom-up causation (explanation). Pluralism makes plausible why different senses of top-down causation can be coherent and not in conflict with reductionism, thereby illustrating a productive interface between philosophical analysis and scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Labyrinths of Love is an interdisciplinary examination of the self, psyche, and soul, providing a comparative analysis from religious, paranormal research and transpersonal theory perspectives. The work creates a unique synthesis that unfolds what it means to be human and demonstrates a visionary epistemology of the self.

A fantastic read for any scholar or student interested in philosophy, epistemology, or ontology.

When parents see their children’s problems as opportunities to build the relationship instead of as a negative, burdensome irritation, it totally changes the nature of parent-child interaction.... When a child comes to them with a problem ... their paradigm is, “Here is a great opportunity for me to really help my child and to invest in our relationship.”... [S]trong bonds of love and trust are created as children sense the value parents give to their problems and to them as (...) individuals .Many of us will know the scenario: sitting peacefully in a chair after a hard day’s work, reading a novel and listening to some music, when in comes a teenager with a tale to tell, perhaps a burden to share. Our relaxed restfulness is interrupted, a problem is presented: how do we respond? Parents such as Covey describes focus on building the bonds of trust: they choose to know the situation as ethically-qualified; they are responsive to the “pedagogical moment” . While entering empathically into their child’s concerns, they continue to attend to the norms of faithfulness that obtain in such a situation with a special force. (shrink)

This paper focuses on abstraction as a mode of reasoning that facilitates a productive relationship between philosophy and science. Using examples from evolutionary developmental biology, I argue that there are two areas where abstraction can be relevant to science: reasoning explication and problem clarification. The value of abstraction is characterized in terms of methodology (modeling or data gathering) and epistemology (explanatory evaluation or data interpretation).

Reductionism encompasses a set of ontological, epistemological, and methodological claims about the relation of different scientific domains. The basic question of reduction is whether the properties, concepts, explanations, or methods from one scientific domain (typically at higher levels of organization) can be deduced from or explained by the properties, concepts, explanations, or methods from another domain of science (typically one about lower levels of organization). Reduction is germane to a variety of issues in philosophy of science, including the structure of (...) scientific theories, the relations between different scientific disciplines, the nature of explanation, the diversity of methodology, and the very idea of theoretical progress, as well as to numerous topics in metaphysics and philosophy of mind, such as emergence, mereology, and supervenience. (shrink)

Purpose. The paper considers the fear of social alienation of love. It is within the limits of psychoanalytic epistemology, the analysis of which will be presented in the article, the tendencies to monotony and universal solutions with an emphasis on ensuring the objectivity of the problem of gender alienation, to be more exact, the fear of love, which causes the gender process, are viewed most reliably. In view of the above the purpose of the paper is to (...) investigate the conceptual contradictions associated with the reconstruction of basic measurements of the fear of alienation of love within different ideological approaches; to reveal the most significant contradictions that manifest themselves in the differences between secular and religious frames; to determine a philosophical and fundamental foundation for the types of fear: metaphysical, transcendental and social, which to some extent have influenced the development of a gender tradition. The paper investigates the fear of alienation of love, not as an instinct or psychological experience, or as a social factor, but as a correlation between the functional types of fear and the peculiarities of social and cultural processes, and it acts as a dependence of the European societies on the various functional forms of fear of love that influence the processes of social transformations. Theoretical basis. The authors determine that in the gender approach the subject, who is cognized, has specific desires and interests. The process of cognation is local, contextual, in which physiologically and spiritually the fear of alienation of love is closely linked to the conditions of existence of people, with the arrangement of social and individual life. In modern civilization, true love with some exceptions, is fleeting. It is now hindered by the burdens of life, and ideological settings, which go only from the "I", and not from the common "I and You", contributing to frustration and alienation. Originality. The emphasis is placed on the fact that the fear of alienation of love, as a way of identifying the essential characteristics of "I", acts as an existential, which concentrates on the sense-life range of problems. The range of problem in a single topic is in the "point I", surrounded by gender boundaries, it contains as a condition for its manifestation the personality distancing – free or forced consolidation and assertion of the autonomy of the individual. Alienation of love as an existential admits in the register of the intimate, intentional for self-perception, internal state to organize and identify with the "authentic I". Conclusions. The article establishes that gender identity under the conditions of modern socio-psychological crisis is associated with forming a special "picture of fear, anxiety, loneliness" as a part of that internal and external world, generated by alienation from society. The fear of alienated love acts as the essential existential of human being, which is a necessary existential condition of the existential tension that occurs as an antipode and a characteristic of courage, asceticism, and the "beginning of wisdom". The considered phenomenon of the fear of alienation of love is interpreted as the result of the ontological and gender alienation of a person who has lost a sense of security and plunged into a continuous interindividual rivalry. (shrink)

Luigi Gioia provides a fresh description and analysis of Augustine's monumental treatise, De Trinitate, working on a supposition of its unity and its coherence from structural, rhetorical, and theological points of view. The main arguments of the treatise are reviewed first: Scripture and the mystery of the Trinity; discussion of 'Arian' logical and ontological categories; a comparison between the process of knowledge and formal aspects of the confession of the mystery of the Trinity; an account of the so called 'psychological (...) analogies'. These topics hold a predominantly instructive or polemical function. The unity and the coherence of the treatise become apparent especially when its description focuses on a truly theological understanding of knowledge of God: Augustine aims at leading the reader to the vision and enjoyment of God the Trinity, in whose image we are created. This mystagogical aspect of the rhetoric of De Trinitate is unfolded through Christology, soteriology, doctrine of the Holy Spirit and doctrine of revelation. At the same time, from the vantage point of love, Augustine detects and powerfully depicts the epistemological consequences of human sinfulness, thus unmasking the fundamental deficiency of received theories of knowledge. Only love restores knowledge and enables philosophers to yield to the injunction which resumes philosophical enterprise as a whole, namely 'know thyself'. (shrink)

In search of our highest capacities, cognitive scientists aim to explain things like mathematics, language, and planning. But are these really our most sophisticated forms of knowing? In this paper, I point to a different pinnacle of cognition. Our most sophisticated human knowing, I think, lies in how we engage with each other, in our relating. Cognitive science and philosophy of mind have largely ignored the ways of knowing at play here. At the same time, the emphasis on discrete, rational (...) knowing to the detriment of engaged, human knowing pervades societal practices and institutions, often with harmful effects on people and their relations. There are many reasons why we need a new, engaged—or even engaging—epistemology of human knowing. The enactive theory of participatory sense-making takes steps towards this, but it needs deepening. Kym Maclaren’s idea of letting be invites such a deepening. Characterizing knowing as a relationship of letting be provides a nuanced way to deal with the tensions between the knower’s being and the being of the known, as they meet in the process of knowing-and-being-known. This meeting of knower and known is not easy to understand. However, there is a mode of relating in which we know it well, and that is: in loving relationships. I propose to look at human knowing through the lens of loving. We then see that both knowing and loving are existential, dialectic ways in which concrete and particular beings engage with each other. (shrink)

Luigi Gioia provides a fresh description and analysis of Augustine's monumental treatise, De Trinitate, working on a supposition of its unity and its coherence from structural, rhetorical, and theological points of view. The main arguments of the treatise are reviewed first: Scripture and the mystery of the Trinity; discussion of 'Arian' logical and ontological categories; a comparison between the process of knowledge and formal aspects of the confession of the mystery of the Trinity; an account of the so called 'psychological (...) analogies'. These topics hold a predominantly instructive or polemical function. The unity and the coherence of the treatise become apparent especially when its description focuses on a truly theological understanding of knowledge of God: Augustine aims at leading the reader to the vision and enjoyment of God the Trinity, in whose image we are created. This mystagogical aspect of the rhetoric of De Trinitate is unfolded through Christology, soteriology, doctrine of the Holy Spirit and doctrine of revelation. At the same time, from the vantage point of love, Augustine detects and powerfully depicts the epistemological consequences of human sinfulness, thus unmasking the fundamental deficiency of received theories of knowledge. Only love restores knowledge and enables philosophers to yield to the injunction which resumes philosophical enterprise as a whole, namely 'know thyself'. (shrink)

This paper shows how Maria Montessori's thought can enrich contemporary virtue epistemology. After a short overview of her ‘interested empiricist’ epistemological framework, I discuss four representative intellectual virtues: sensory acuity, physical dexterity, intellectual love, and intellectual humility. Throughout, I show how Montessori bridges the divide between reliabilist and responsibilist approaches to the virtues and how her particular treatments of virtues offer distinctive and compelling alternatives to contemporary accounts. For instance, she emphasizes how sensory acuity is a virtue for (...) which one can be responsible, highlights the embodied nature of cognition through a focus on physical dexterity, interprets intellectual love as a way of loving the world rather than as a love that takes knowledge as its object, and presents an alternative account of intellectual humility to contemporary emphases on the interpersonal dimensions of this virtue. (shrink)

Reimagining Eroticism through Embodied Aesthetics: A Feminist Reading 1. The Epistemological and Ethical Aspects of the Arts of Love In the debate of contemporary thought and its intersections with philosophy, aesthetics, and the politics of the self, Richard Shusterman’s Ars Erotica (AE) makes a significant and inspiring contribution. The book delves into the intricate relationship between aesthetics and eroticism, offering a unique perspective on the relation between the ancient notion of d...

Reduction and reductionism have been central philosophical topics in analytic philosophy of science for more than six decades. Together they encompass a diversity of issues from metaphysics and epistemology. This article provides an introduction to the topic that illuminates how contemporary epistemological discussions took their shape historically and limns the contours of concrete cases of reduction in specific natural sciences. The unity of science and the impulse to accomplish compositional reduction in accord with a layer-cake vision of the sciences, (...) the seminal contributions of Ernest Nagel on theory reduction and how they strongly conditioned subsequent philosophical discussions, and the detailed issues pertaining to different accounts of reduction that arise in both physical and biological science (e.g., limit-case and part-whole reduction in physics, the difference-making principle in genetics, and mechanisms in molecular biology) are explored. The conclusion argues that the epistemological heterogeneity and patchwork organization of the natural sciences encourages a pluralist stance about reduction. (shrink)

In this chapter, we argue that it’s possible to lose your faith in God by the actions of other people. In particular, we argue that spiritually violent religious trauma, where religious texts are used to shame a person into thinking themselves unworthy of God’s love, can cause a person to stop engaging in activities that sustain their faith in God, such as engaging in the worship of God. To do this, we provide an analysis of faith, worship, and (...) class='Hi'>love on which to have faith in God is to have an attitude of worship to him; to have such an attitude of worship to God is to love him; and to love God is to desire union with him. We apply this analysis particularly to the case of LGBT Christians and their experience in the church today. (shrink)

Current analytical philosophies of romantic love tend to identify the essence of such love with one specific element, such as concern for the beloved person, valuing the beloved person or the union between the lovers. This paper will deal with different forms of the union theory of love which takes love to be the physical, psychic or ontological union of two persons. Prima facie, this theory might appear to be implausible because it has several contra-intuitive implications, (...) and yet, I submit, it is more coherent and attractive than it seems to be. I shall distinguish three specific models and thereby offer a differentiated account of the union theory which has not previously been provided in the literature. I will claim that two of these models should be rejected. I shall then defend the third model against certain possible objections ; but nevertheless, I shall conclude by showing how this model, too, faces further significant objections which ultimately expose the limits of the union theory of love. In conclusion, I will sketch the outlines of a non-reductive cluster theory of love. (shrink)

I make a contribution to the sociology of epistemologies by examining the neuroscience literature on love from 2000 to 2016. I find that researchers make consequential assumptions concerning the production or generation of love, its temporality, its individual character, and appropriate control conditions. Next, I consider how to account for these assumptions’ being common in the literature. More generally, I’m interested in the ways in which epistemic communities construe, conceive of, and publicly represent and work with their objects (...) of inquiry—and what’s thereby assumed about them and about the world. I argue that these implicit or explicit assumptions are a distinct type of explanandum, whose distinctiveness sociology hasn’t adequately appreciated and taken advantage of. I think it should and I hope it will. (shrink)

Though its actual nature and content remain debatable, the importance of love in human relations is indubitable. This paper attempts an exploration of the phenomenon of love in the institution of marriage in Esan traditional culture. It questions the reality or ontology of love or its epistemic content within the said culture. In other words, the question is, is there love in the Esan traditional marriage system? If there is none, then it is an ontological issue. (...) And if there is, with what epistemological framework can it be accessed? To this end, the paper employs what could be regarded as a working definition of love which could include notions such as commitment, care, intimacy, and self-giving. With this understanding, the paper interrogates the doctrine of love among the Esan people and sets out how gender is implicated in the conception of love and marriage in traditional Esan society. (shrink)

Reductionism concerns a set of ontological and epistemological claims, and methodological strictures based on them, about the relationship between two different scientific domains. The critical assumption is that one of these domains is privileged over the other in the sense that the concepts, rules, laws, and other elements of the privileged domain can be used to specify, constitute, or account for those of the other “reduced” domain. This specification often consists of explanation, such that the “reducing” domain is epistemically privileged (...) over the reduced one. Explanations of this type are “reductionist” (or, are “reductions”) and reductionism is then the thesis that such explanations will always be forthcoming or at least are possible in principle. Reductionism is most plausible if the entities of the reduced domain can be interpreted as arising from (e.g., as aggregates of) entities of the reduced domain. This ontological claim is controversial but motivates many reductionist theses and associated scientific research programs. Thus, epistemological and ontological claims about reductionism have the methodological implication that they should govern and guide scientific research. When such research proves to be fruitless over a period of time, the associated reductionist claims themselves become suspect. Although issues connected with reductionism arise in the physical and social sciences, most attention to reductionism in philosophy of science over the last few decades has focused on the biological sciences, especially after the advent of molecular biology made it plausible to believe that biological phenomena can be uniformly explained (in detail) from their physical basis. However, the program of finding such explanations has a long philosophical history often couched in terms of seeking “mechanical,” “mechanistic,” or “materialistic” explanations. The contrast here is with traditional vitalism and various forms of teleology and holism. (shrink)

psychiatric diagnoses such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a rapidly growing and globally increasing phenomenon, not least in different educational contexts such as in family and in school. Children and youths labelled as ADHD are challenging normative claims in terms of nurturing and education, whereas those labelled as ADHD are considered a risk for society to handle. The dominant paradigm regarding ADHD is biomedical, where different levels of attention and activity-impulsivity are perceived as neurobiological dys/functions within the brain best (...) managed by means of an individual diagnosis and instrumental pedagogy. The majority of those labelled as having ADHD encounter a dominant educational model in the form of what is referred to in this article as neurobehaviorism, which is based on onto-epistemological violence. As opposed to this act of violence against being—and against the psychiatrized subject—a less violent educational model is proposed, based on French philosopher Alain Badiou’s ontological examination of being and his concept of love as a truth procedure. In terms of the latter, the focus is on the potential of the encounter as a ‘Two scene of love’. Here, the encounter is a place where it is possible to create new truths and subjects, instead of taking the individual diagnosis as an axiom which only leads to individuals having fixed identities codified in a hierarchical order. This argument is drawn from the ‘mathematical’ formula 1 + 1 = ♥, which originates from an online forum for people who have come into contact with ADHD in one way or another. (shrink)

While parents have long received guidance on how to raise children, a relatively new element of this involves explicit references to infant brain development, drawing on brain scans and neuroscientific knowledge. Sometimes called ‘brain-based parenting’, this has been criticised from within sociological and policy circles alike. However, the engagement of parents themselves with neuroscientific concepts is far less researched. Drawing on 22 interviews with parents/carers of children living in Scotland, this article examines how they account for their use of concepts (...) and understandings relating to neuroscience. Three normative tropes were salient: information about children’s processing speed, evidence about deprived Romanian orphans in the 1990s, and ideas relating to whether or not children should ‘self-settle’ when falling asleep. We interrogate how parents reflexively weigh and judge such understandings and ideas. In some cases, neuroscientific knowledge was enrolled by parents in ways that supported biologically reductionist models of childhood agency. This reductionism commonly had generative effects, enjoining new care practices and producing particular parent and infant subjectivities. Notably, parents do not uncritically adopt or accept neurobiological and/or psychological knowledge; rather, they reflect on whether and when it is applicable to and relevant for raising their children. Thus, our respondents draw on everyday epistemologies of parenting to negotiate brain-based understandings of infant development and behaviour, and invest meaning in these in ways that cannot be fully anticipated within straightforward celebrations or critiques of the content of parenting programmes drawing on neuropsychological ideas. (shrink)

Nobody wants unnatural kinds. Just as we prefer all natural ingredients in our food, so also we prefer natural kinds in our ontology and epistemology. Philosophers contrast natural with merely “conventional” kinds, and scientists advocate for natural rather than artificial classification systems. A central plank of the desired naturalness is “mind independence”—the property of existing independent of human interests and desires. Natural kinds are discovered, not made. They reflect the structure of the world (“nature’s joints”) and for this reason (...) justify the practice of inductive inference. Conventional kinds, by contrast, are dependent on human classificatory activities. They are created with an end in view and therefore lack “a real existence in nature” (J. S. Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive [London: Longmans, 1843], 1:165). Since their existence is dependent on human activities, nominal kinds need not track nature’s joints. Because scientists are interested in groupings that really exist in nature—not those fabricated for human purposes—their classificatory practices aim to achieve natural-kind classifications. Achieving these classifications is crucial to the success of science. (shrink)

Reduction and reductionism have been central philosophical topics in analytic philosophy of science for more than six decades. Together they encompass a diversity of issues from metaphysics and epistemology. This article provides an introduction to the topic that illuminates how contemporary epistemological discussions took their shape historically and limns the contours of concrete cases of reduction in specific natural sciences. The unity of science and the impulse to accomplish compositional reduction in accord with a layer-cake vision of the sciences, (...) the seminal contributions of Ernest Nagel on theory reduction and how they strongly conditioned subsequent philosophical discussions, and the detailed issues pertaining to different accounts of reduction that arise in both physical and biological science (e.g., limit-case and part-whole reduction in physics, the difference-making principle in genetics, and mechanisms in molecular biology) are explored. The conclusion argues that the epistemological heterogeneity and patchwork organization of the natural sciences encourages a pluralist stance about reduction. (shrink)

In this book, two philosophers use their training in arguments and reasoning to uncover the role of ungrounded beliefs when we fall in love. They illustrate the fallacies of love by drawing on personal experiences, literary characters and two imaginary individuals, providing examples of ungrounded beliefs in Aesop's Fables, Cinderella and Don Giovanni amongst others to illustrate love as an inexhaustible source of misperceptions, misunderstandings and misconceptions.

Context: I extend the enactive account of loving in romantic relationships that I developed with Hanne De Jaegher to the love of nature. Problem: I challenge a universal conceptualization of love of nature that does not account for the differences that are inherent to nature. As an alternative, I offer a situated account of loving a place as participatory sense-making. However, a question arises: How is it possible to communicate with the other-than-human? Method: I use panpsychist and enactive (...) conceptual tools to better define this situated approach to the love of nature and to reply to the research question. In particular, I focus on Mathews’s “becoming native” and the generative tensions that unfold in a dialectic of encounter when a common language is not shared. Results: The fundamental difference experienced in encountering the other-than-human is generative for building up the human-Earth connection if we let each other be listened to. I describe the ethical dimension that permeates this type of “enactive listening” at the core of a situated account of love of nature. Implications: Love of nature is of paramount importance in our current climate crisis characterized by environmental anxiety, despair, and anger. A situated love of nature emphasizes the importance of community-based local interventions to preserve the Earth. Love, thus understood as a fundamental moral and political power, is a catalyst for environmental activism. Constructivist content: My article links to participatory sense-making as defined by De Jaegher and Di Paolo, and De Jaegher’s loving epistemology. It offers a broader understanding of participatory sense-making that includes the other-than-human. It also introduces the new concept of “enactive listening.”. (shrink)

By entitling her recent collection of essays on philosophy and literature Love's Knowledge , Martha Nussbaum signals her commitment to giving a positive answer to the question posed by the title of this paper. If love can deliver or lay claim to knowledge, then moods must be thought of as having a cognitive significance, and so must not only permit but require the attentions of the epistemologist. As Nussbaum points out, such a conclusion runs counter to a central (...) strand of thinking in both ancient and modern philosophy. The rational or cognitive side of human nature is often defined in contrast to its affective or emotional side, the latter being understood as having no role to play in the revelation of reality. On the contrary, where reason and the senses can combine to disclose the way things are, moods typically cloud that cognitive access by projecting a purely subjective colouration onto the world and leading us to attribute properties or qualities to it which have at best a purely personal and internal reality. (shrink)

This paper argues that, by construing emotion as epistemologically subversive, the Western tradition has tended to obscure the vital role of emotion in the construction of knowledge. The paper begins with an account of emotion that stresses its active, voluntary, and socially constructed aspects, and indicates how emotion is involved in evaluation and observation. It then moves on to show how the myth of dispassionate investigation has functioned historically to undermine the epistemic authority of women as well as other social (...) groups associated culturally with emotion. Finally, the paper sketches some ways in which the emotions of underclass groups, especially women, may contribute to the development of a critical social theory. (shrink)

What is an epistemological crisis? Consider, first, the situation of ordinary agents who are thrown into such crises. Someone who has believed that he was highly valued by his employers and colleagues is suddenly fired; someone proposed for membership of a club whose members were all, so he believed, close friends is blackballed. Or someone falls in love and needs to know what the loved one really feels; someone falls out of love and needs to know how he (...) or she can possibly have been so mistaken in the other. For all such persons the relationship of seems to is becomes crucial. It is in such situations that ordinary agents who have never learned anything about academic philosophy are apt to rediscover for themselves versions of the other-minds problem and the problem of the justification of induction. They discover, that is, that there is a problem about the rational justification of inferences from premises about the behaviour of other people to conclusions about their thoughts, feelings, and attitudes and of inferences from premises about how individuals have acted in the past to conclusions expressed as generalizations about their behaviour - generalizations which would enable us to make reasonably reliable predications about their future behaviour. What they took to be evidence pointing unambiguously in some one direction now turns out to have been equally susceptible of rival interpretations. Such a discovery is often paralysing, and were we all of us all of the time to have to reckon with the multiplicity of possible interpretations open to us, social life as we know it could scarcely continue. For social life is sustained by the assumption that we are, by and large, able to construe each other's behaviour - that error, deception, self-deception, irony and ambiguity, although omnipresent in social life, are not so pervasive as to render reliable reasoning and reasonable action impossible. But can this assumption in any way be vindicated? (shrink)

: In neocolonial contexts of globalization, the epistemological terrain of radical diversity poses significant ethical challenges to transnational feminisms. In view of historical associations between knowledge and discourses of love which were conditioned by imperialist brands of humanism and benevolence under colonialism, this paper argues for a deconstructionist approach to conceptualizing love in relation to knowledge and for an ethics that severs the association with benevolence, instead making alterity the basis for its account.

The aim of this essay is to analyze the notion of “loving, knowing ignorance,” a type of “arrogant perception” that produces ignorance about women of color and their work at the same time that it proclaims to have both knowledge about and loving perception toward them. The first part discusses Marilyn Frye's accounts of “arrogant” as well as of “loving” perception and presents an explanation of “loving, knowing ignorance.” The second part discusses the work of Audre Lorde, Elizabeth Spelman, and (...) María Lugones in their attempts to deal with the issue of arrogant perception within feminism, and examines how Lugones's notion of “‘world’-traveling” may help us deal with “loving, knowing ignorance.” Ultimately, the author suggests that we need to become aware of instances of “loving, knowing ignorance,” especially if we are to stay true to Third Wave feminism's commitment to diversity. (shrink)

The present article explores the epistemological conditions of intercultural encounters. Based on an analysis of Raimon Panikkar's intercultural hermeneutics, we argue that intercultural encounters cannot take place adequately when they are based on purely rhetorical rationality or rational persuasion. We point to the limitations of grounding intercultural relationships on dialectical dialogue and, therefore, of educating them by simply enhancing discursive capacities. We underline the need for other epistemological conditions that should be fostered in order to move forward on the path (...) to actual interculturality. These can be summarised by what Panikkar calls "conversion", an epistemic framework of love—personal relationality, that goes beyond objectifying rationality—for the communication between (culturally different) subjects. We conclude that the culturally diverse human condition refers to being encountered and being understood on a level that is not merely logical or linguistic. What can be understood of a person with another cultural background goes beyond what can be comprehended by logical rationality or captured by veritative judgements about objects. In other words, in intercultural encounters, ontological, rather than merely logical truth is at stake, which means that the presence of the other can lead to experiences of meaning: it reveals a being that calls for conversion. Conversion demands an ontic action on the part of the subject, not merely an epistemological one, that cancels the violence that rational persuasion might entail. (shrink)

With all the jumble of human disagreements, how can we know? Can the Christian church think coherently about knowledge? Can it regain confidence in teaching what it knows? In an increasingly divided and pessimistic postmodern world this book offers a theology for epistemology and for pedagogy that aims to be faithful and fruitful. Building on Karl Barth, it argues that God's knowing guides how humans know. We should imitate God's epistemic stance--his love--for that is the best model for (...) knowing anything. The Trinitarian theme in Barth identifies three key concepts: committedness, openness, and relationality. These mean being committed and open towards what we wish to know. Relational open committedness also profoundly clarifies and shapes what love means in knowing and in teaching. This book unpacks an epistemology and pedagogy of love. Wouldn't you love to know? (shrink)

In Saint Augustine’s works, especially in The City of God, The Confessions, and On Free Choice of the Will, he offers three features integral to his epistemology: love, reason, and presupposition. By love, Augustine argues that virtuous lovers of God will know the Truth more than those with disordered loves. By reason, Augustine held that reason must guide the journey to Truth. By presupposition, Augustine claimed that the search for Truth only starts from Christian doctrine. While modern (...) philosophers might see a tension when simultaneously holding these three principles in his epistemology, Augustine claimed they were mutually supportive. This article offers an overview of love, reason, and presupposition in Augustine’s theory of knowledge. Furthermore, this bold epistemology can be an encouragement and model for contemporary epistemologists who might try to avoid tension in their theories of knowledge altogether. (shrink)

This article provides a philosophical account of love in relation to contemporary Marxist and post-structuralist conceptions of politics. Shifting the emphasis away from both the ontological question, “what is love?,” and the epistemological question, “how do we acquire certainty about love?,” this article advances a pedagogical question: how might love enable us to learn? To answer this question we turn to the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. After examining (...) the tensions between ontological and ideological conceptions of love, we explore Hardt and Negri’s work on love as part of the affective labour of the “multitude.” We then trace the development of Deleuze’s early work on love as an apprenticeship to signs to his later exploration of love in relation to multiplicity. In doing so, this article seeks to renovate the concept of love itself, framing it in terms of difference rather than merging and unity, and locating it outside the confines of the heterosexual couple and nuclear family. (shrink)

The Phenomenology of Sex, Love, and Intimacy presents a phenomenological exploration of love as it manifests itself through sexual desires and intimate relationships. Setting up a unique dialogue between psychology and philosophy, Susi Ferrarello offers a perspective through which clinicians can inform their practice on diverse issues of human sexuality. Drawing on Husserl's phenomenology, Ferrarello's analysis of love spans a range of disciplines including psychology, theology, biology, epistemology, and axiology, as well as areas related to gender, (...) consent, and political control. Combining Husserlian perspectives on ethics with a focus on lived-experience, this text will deepen therapists' understanding of love as the subject of interdisciplinary inquiry and enable them to locate questions of sexuality and intimacy within an academic framework. With key theoretical principles included to allow clinicians to think through and clarify their practice, this book will be a valuable tool for sex therapists, marriage and family therapists, and counselors, as well as psychology and philosophy students alike. (shrink)

“Rational beings pursue and value truth. Intellectual conduct is to be judged, accordingly, by how well it aids our pursuit of that ideal.” What does this mean, and is it true? Even if intelligent life had never evolved or otherwise existed, Venus would still have orbited the Sun, so it would still have been true that Venus orbited the Sun. It is not the being thus true of what is true that we value indiscriminately. Some truths are good, but not (...) all, far from it. In loving the truth, then, what we value is not the being true of the truths. What we value in pursuing truth is rather our grasping it, our having it. What does this mean? Only through believing it does one relevantly have a truth : we have the truth that snow is white by believing that snow is white. In pursuing the truth what we want is true beliefs. Suppose you enter your dentist’s waiting room and find all the magazines taken. Deprived of reading matter, you’re sure to doze off, but you need no sleep. Are you then rationally bound to reach for the telephone book in pursuit of truth? Were you not to do so, you would forfeit a chance to pluck some desired goods within easy reach. If random telephone numbers do not elicit a wide enough yawn, consider a randomly selected cubic foot of the Sahara. Here is a trove of facts, of the form grain x is so many millimeters in direction D from grain y, than which few can be of less interest. Or take some bit of trivia known to me at the moment: say, that it was sunny in Rhode Island at noon on October 21, 1999. I confess that I will not rue my loss of this information, nor do I care either that or how early it will be gone. As interpreted so far, the view that we rationally want truth as such reduces to absurdity, or is at best problematic. What then is it we want in pursuing truth? If it is not after all true beliefs indiscriminately, what then is it? A manageable number of true beliefs? Obviously not; it is not just a matter of numbers. (shrink)

One of the most famous and identifiable of Spinoza’s ideas is his amor Dei intellectualis (the intellectual love of God). It has been argued that this concept is somewhat alien to the main tenets of the Ethics, especially since it is reminiscent of more orthodox religious relations to God, and has a certain mystical (and so, nonrational) quality.In this paper, I will show that it is a consistent development of Spinoza’s interconnected and elaborate theories of knowledge and the affects. (...) Spinoza discusses three kinds of love: passionate love, friendship and the intellectual love of God.The intellectual love of God is nothing but a necessary outcome of Spinoza’s rationalistic project as a whole. Moreover, by culminating his ethical theory with such a concept, Spinoza is placing himself in a rich tradition of thinkers who develop epistemological and ethical systems that put love (either as eros or philia) as the backbone of their philosophy. In order to illustrate the similarities between Spinoza’s philosophical use of love and that of his predecessors, I will address salient features of Plato’s and Aristotle’s thought, emphasizing the relationship between love and ethics, as well as the nature of the philosophical impulse. (shrink)