The paper looks at challenges related to the ideas of integration and knowledge systems in extra-academic transdisciplinarity. Philosophers of science are only starting to pay attention to the increasingly common practice of introducing extra-academic perspectives or engaging extra-academic parties in academic knowledge production. So far the rather scant philosophical discussion on the subject has mainly concentrated on the question whether such engagement is beneficial in science or not. Meanwhile, there is quite a (...) large and growing literature on extra-academic TD, mostly authored by non-philosophers, seeking to develop TD research practices. We examine this literature in the light of recent discussions in pluralist philosophies of science. Some philosophical pluralists see the increase of extra-academic collaboration and participation in science as a potentially positive development. However, certain views promoted in the non-philosophical literature on extra-academic TD appear problematic in the light of the pluralistic discussions. For instance, the literature on TD appears to be overly optimistic with regard to integration, and the notion of knowledge systems used in it is problematic. We believe it would be worthwhile for scientific pluralists sympathetic to the aims of TD to look more closely into the complex settings in which extra-academic collaboration and participation happens in actual TD projects, and to offer constructive criticisms, exploiting insights developed within pluralist philosophy of science. (shrink)

When introduced around 1925, interdisciplinarity, grounded in the notion of the unity of knowledge, was meant to reconnect the fragmented and specialized disciplines of academia. However, interdisciplinary research became more and more challenging as the plurality and heterogeneity of disciplinary perspectives and insights increased. Insisting on this divergence and diversity, Julie Thompson Klein has nonetheless contributed in important ways to convergence in interdisciplinarity with her work on the process of integration as interdisciplinarity's defining feature. Of course, she is aware that (...) the increasing inclusion of extra-academic stakeholders in transdisciplinary research constitutes a fundamental challenge to integrative interdisciplinarity. This challenge implies that next to academic contributions, experiential knowledge, interests, and norms must be recognized as valuable to the process, and stakeholder expectations of applicable results must be met. Exploring the future by extending this crucial development further, this article focuses on the actionability of knowledge as an additional criterion for effective interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, as it is in Action Research. With action options for stakeholders being an important goal for such research, it is argued that joint deliberation about these options must be part of the process, aiming for reflective equilibrium. At the same time, an important role for imagination is defended, enabling adequate consideration of action options with their ramifications and implications. The future of interdisciplinarity, it is concluded, will entail an important role for the actionability criterion and for the related role of imagination of potential outcomes, much greater roles than these now have. (shrink)

When introduced around 1925, interdisciplinarity, grounded in the notion of the unity of knowledge, was meant to reconnect the fragmented and specialized disciplines of academia. However, interdisciplinary research became more and more challenging as the plurality and heterogeneity of disciplinary perspectives and insights increased. Insisting on this divergence and diversity, Julie Thompson Klein has nonetheless contributed in important ways to convergence in interdisciplinarity with her work on the process of integration as interdisciplinarity's defining feature. Of course, she is aware that (...) the increasing inclusion of extra-academic stakeholders in transdisciplinary research constitutes a fundamental challenge to integrative interdisciplinarity. This challenge implies that next to academic contributions, experiential knowledge, interests, and norms must be recognized as valuable to the process, and stakeholder expectations of applicable results must be met. Exploring the future by extending this crucial development further, this article focuses on the actionability of knowledge as an additional criterion for effective interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, as it is in Action Research. With action options for stakeholders being an important goal for such research, it is argued that joint deliberation about these options must be part of the process, aiming for reflective equilibrium. At the same time, an important role for imagination is defended, enabling adequate consideration of action options with their ramifications and implications. The future of interdisciplinarity, it is concluded, will entail an important role for the actionability criterion and for the related role of imagination of potential outcomes, much greater roles than these now have. (shrink)

[This book replaces the - discontinued - first edition of 'Introduction to Interdisciplinary Research' (2016, by Menken & Keestra)] We are increasingly realizing that, as a result of technological developments and globalization, problems are becoming so complex that they can only be solved through cooperation between scientists from different disciplines. Healthcare, climate change, food security, globalization, and quality of life are just a few examples of issues that require scientists to work across disciplines. In many cases, extra-academic stakeholders (...) must be involved in order to arrive at robust solutions. Young academics are being called on to step beyond the boundaries of traditional disciplines to contribute to addressing fundamental, often societal problems. As a result of these developments, an interdisciplinary approach is becoming increasingly necessary and popular in higher education. Students need to learn more about how to integrate and apply knowledge, methods, and skills from different fields. The crucial step of integration within interdisciplinary research is treated extensively in this textbook, which contains a comprehensive ‘interdisciplinary integration toolbox’. In addition, students must learn to collaborate in teams. An Introduction to Interdisciplinary Research serves as a systematic manual to guide students through this interdisciplinary research process. (shrink)

One of the more sustained efforts to think beyond current academic structures has been launched by CIRET, the International Centre for Transdisciplinary Research, in Paris. This centre was involved in the First World Congress of Transdisciplinarity, in Portugal, 1994, and another international congress in Locarno, Switzerland, in early May 1997. They have a project with UNESCO on transdisciplinarity, and are involved in the World Conference on Higher Education, to be held in Paris at the end of September (...) 1998. (shrink)

Lately the concept of flânerie has raised an intense academic debate: The flâneur can be found much more frequently, not only in literary texts and in literary studies, but also in cultural and historical sciences, postcolonial studies, anthropology, and philosophy as well as in the field of popular science. Starting with a review of literary and philosophical traditions and the further developments of the concept of flâneur, this article aims to explore the epistemological implications of flânerie and to read (...) them both in a transdisciplinary perspective and in terms of complexity theory. (shrink)

Within the past 40 years, feminist studies/women’s studies/gender studies/studies in gender and sexuality has effectively grown into a globally practised academic discipline while simultaneously resisting the notion of disciplinarity and strongly advocating multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity. In this article, I argue that gaining identity through refusing an identity can be viewed as being a constitutive paradox of gender studies. Through exploring gender studies as a transdisciplinary intellectual discipline, which came into existence in very particular multidisciplinary historical conditions of (...) the feminist movement, I suggest that transdisciplinarity within gender studies takes on a meaning which results in a radical problematization of the academic goal of ‘knowledge production’. Instead of such ‘knowledge production’, transdisciplinarity in gender studies promotes intervention which reaches beyond the concepts of accountability, innovation and corporate management. I argue that Jacques Derrida’s promotion of the Collège International de Philosophie in 1982 in its particular relationship to the tradition of philosophy provides a parallel example of such an attitude. Adding to Joan Scott’s and Clare Hemmings’s insights on gender studies in terms of critique and transformation, I argue that transdisciplinarity as practice of ‘intervention’ is crucial for the construction of gender studies disciplinary identity, based upon apparent non-identity. (shrink)

Little work has been done on beliefs toward academic misconduct in Ukraine. This study explored the beliefs of Ukrainian students toward various forms of academic misconduct and compared the results to the U.S. undergraduate students (N = 270). Twenty-two forms of cheating, plagiarism, and questionable academic behaviors were grouped in five categories: unilateral cheating, collective cheating, falsification gaining favoritism, and performing extra work to receive better grades. Cross-cultural comparisons of beliefs were pivotal in this study. Results (...) indicated that, in general, Ukrainian students are less likely to believe that academic misconduct is wrong compared to their U.S. counterparts, as well as seem to have different beliefs on what is and isn’t academic misconduct. Recommendations are proposed to help students change their beliefs and to reduce academic dishonesty. These recommendations also have application purposes outside of Ukraine. (shrink)

The concept of ‘problem’ has been recently promoted by the official academic institutions and put at the centre of a new field of research, self-styled ‘transdisciplinary studies’, in order to provide a foundation to a resolutely transdisciplinary approach to research and thought in general. The paper notes that the same move can be found in Deleuze’s philosophy, which provides us with what the technocratic image of thought advocated by transdisciplinary studies ultimately cannot provide: a positive concept of problems where (...) those are not negative moments but originary and active matrices of thought. It then argues that Deleuze owes this concept to the French epistemological tradition, and more specifically to Bachelard, where it is nothing other than the concept of structure. It ends by explicating what particular version of structuralism Deleuze was thus led to construct in order to account for the role of problems in a radically transdisciplinary account of thought: it is the fact that all structures are multi-structured that grounds the essentially transdisciplinary nature of thought. The fact that we could think differently is precisely what makes us think. (shrink)

This article presents narratives from 13 Indigenous early career academics (ECAs) at one university in Auckland, New Zealand. These experiences are likely to represent those of Indigenous Māori and Pasifika ECAs nationally, given the small, centralised nature of the national academy of Aotearoa New Zealand. The narratives contain testimony, fictionalised vignettes of experience, and poetic expressions. Meeting the demands of an academic role in one’s first years of working at a university is a big deal for anyone; the (...) class='Hi'>extra pressures and challenges for Indigenous Māori and Pacific staff are immense, yet little understood by White ‘others.’ A writing workshop was the initial catalyst of this collective writing project. Through these insider narratives, this article presents a collective description of, and response to, the experience of Māori and Pasifika early career academics. (shrink)

As an important tool for supervisors to intervene subordinates’ work and influence their performance, supervisor feedback has gradually become a new academic research hotspot. In this study, we build and verify a theoretical model to explore the different effects of supervisor positive and negative feedback on subordinate in-role and extra-role performance, and the moderating role of regulatory focus in these relationships. With data from pairing samples of 403 Chinese employees and their direct supervisors, the results indicate that supervisor (...) positive feedback is positively related to subordinate in-role and extra-role performance. Supervisor negative feedback is positively related to subordinate in-role performance and negatively related to subordinate extra-role performance. Regulatory focus of subordinate can moderate the influence of supervisor positive feedback on subordinate in-role and extra-role performance, but it cannot moderate the influence of supervisor negative feedback on subordinate in-role and extra-role performance. That means when subordinates have promotion focus, the influence of supervisor positive feedback on their in-role performance and extra-role performance was stronger than those with prevention focus. These results further enrich the research on the relationship between supervisor feedback and subordinate performance, especially the different effects of positive and negative feedback from supervisor on subordinate with different regulatory focus. All conclusions from the analyses above not only further verify and develop some previous points on supervisor feedback and subordinate performance, but also derive certain management implications for promoting subordinate in-role and extra-role performance from the perspective of supervisor positive and negative feedback. (shrink)

Over the past decades, we have witnessed calls for greater transdisciplinary engagement between scientific and societal actors to develop more robust answers to complex societal challenges. Although there seems to be agreement that these approaches might nurture innovations of a new kind, we know little regarding the research practices, their potential, and the limitations. To fill this gap, this article investigates a funding scheme in the area of transdisciplinary sustainability research. It offers a detailed analysis of the imaginaries and expectations (...) on which the funding scheme rests and how researchers actually practice transdisciplinarity within the respective projects. Identifying three ideal typical models of science–society relations at work, attention is paid to how, where, and when societal and scientific arenas get entangled. This article discusses the tensions between classical academic values and efforts to open research to society, the prevailing power structures that make societal participation challenging, the importance of place and technopolitical cultures, and how temporal project structures impede more radical openings to new ways of knowledge production. We finally emphasize that transdisciplinary knowledge production can only become a serious option for addressing societal challenges if broader changes are made to the knowledge regimes in place. (shrink)

he Troy controversy (2001–2005) illustrates the substantial impact of mass media on academic discourse among specialists. Triggered by a disputed exhibition, the controversy breaks out in the mass media and quickly escalates. In leading newspapers, Germany’s most renowned archeologists discuss findings and their interpretation in Troy research fiercely. The public Troy controversy is best characterized as an inter-specialist debate since lay people virtually have no say. The chapter provides an overview of the course that the public and the subsequent (...) academic controversy take over time. This is followed by a detailed account of the public debate’s argumentative structure. The analysis shows that the public debate exerts a catalytic influence on academic discussion - not simply as a result of the mass media’s pervasiveness and their amplification potential but by virtue of the discursive configuration of the mass media controversy. (shrink)

Scientists are typically responsible for greater greenhouse gas emissions than the general population. These ‘extra’ emissions are largely due to frequent travel, often by airplane, to professional and academic meetings. In the following commentary, we explore how employing mixed modes of transportation, particularly by prioritizing train travel, can significantly reduce the environmental costs associated with attending conferences. Estimating travel distances for attendants to recent meetings, we demonstrate that the proposed strategy has the potential to decrease emissions, even when (...) considering exotic, remote (and potentially enticing) locations. Our suggestions are easy to implement, can be combined with previous proposals for reducing emissions, and provide an opportunity for scientists to convey an important message to the general public. This message is not confined to our particular example and we hope that it will encourage ecologists, sociologists and other scientists, historians and philosophers to pursue additional creative behavioural solutions in order to reduce our impact on an increasingly stressed ecosphere. (shrink)

Through a discussion of three pedagogical instances--based on classroom discourse, student writing, and program development--the authors examine education as an academic field, arguing that its disciplinary practices and perspectives invite interdisciplinarity and extra-disciplinarity to bridge from the academy to issues, problems, and strengths beyond it. Interdisciplinarity--understood as temporary “groundlessness”--emerges as a means to apprehend and respond to problems that in the context of past frustrations and failures may seem insurmountable; the willingness to not-know inspires new paradigms, experiences, and (...) relationships. Extra-disciplinarity highlights the many chords running between academe and the rest of the world. Using this framework, we discuss the featured pedagogical instances as small-scale models for changing the power structures that have historically silenced some perspectives and knowledges, thus opening these structures to new inputs and connections. We conclude that while this work has no guarantees and is never complete, we must keep trying to connect beyond our academic disciplines and ourselves, both to learn and to more effectively impact the world. (shrink)

The first book to be devoted to the logic behind the application of ethical theories, this collection of essays explores the question of how many different moral traditions (utilitarianism, natural rights theory, Marxism, Christian moral theology, and Kantianism among others) view the relation between theory and concrete judgments. By considering many applications of moral theory in medical ethics the authors illustrate their point.

Slovenian philosopher bad boy Slavoj Žižek is one of the most famous intellectuals in the world. He publishes at a breakneck speed and lectures around the world. He has an unmistakable speaking style and set of mannerisms that have made him ripe material for internet humor and meme culture. YouTube clips of his talks, interviews, and media appearances often have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of views. How did an intellectual from a remote Eastern European country come (...) to such notoriety? In this book, sociologist Eliran Bar-El plumbs the "phenomenon called 'Žižek;'" its origin, emergence, and development over the years. He begins with Žižek's early years as a thinker and political figure in Slovenian civil society. There, Žižek became a philosopher, immersed himself in Marxist debates both within academia as well as in activist circles, and even ran for office. Bar-El then turns to Žižek's emergence in the English-speaking world as an intellectual celebrity in the 1990s and the development and perfection of his unique performative style and rhetorical arsenal (Žižek's language of "Hegelacanese"). Post 9/11, Žižek goes global, becoming a well-known op-ed writer and TV commentator on pop culture and large-scale global events such as the War on Terror, the financial crisis of 2008, and the Arab Spring of 2011. Things took a turn when Žižek was almost entirely estranged from the normal workings of academia and increasingly became the target of other of other thinkers-Noam Chomsky, notably-who singled him out as an example of intellectual imposture, as well as others outraged by the non-politically correct views he professes. Ultimately, Bar-El shows how Žižek harnessed the power of the digital era in his own self-fashioning as an intellectual, remaking and capitalizing on the shifting intellectual landscape and what Bar-El calls our "knowledge societies." Throughout the book, Bar-El shows how Žižek has navigated different audiences and publics, developing a hybrid language capable of speaking to specialists and laypeople alike, using globally traumatic events as the subject of his often irreverent analyses, combining high and low registers, and flaunting his own lack of expertise and specialization and his "outsider" status as a way to form a substantial extra-academic public and to engage with current events. (shrink)

The study of highly imagistic representations of Spinoza's philosophy found in popular, extra‐academic literature is essential for building a rational view on Spinoza's philosophy. Popular literature on Spinoza is an ineliminable condition of academic literature on Spinoza. The cementing of Spinoza's popularity belongs to a larger history of Spinoza's reception. This chapter examines two late‐nineteenth and early‐twentieth century works on Spinoza. Jules Prat's idiosyncratic blend of Spinozism and left‐wing French Republicanism stands out as a historically and philosophically (...) rich approach to Spinoza that has hardly been studied thus far. The chapter also examines the fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Bernard Malamud. One common feature to Singer and Malamud is the way that they root their Spinozists in a Jewish world. In this, they are forerunners of the ongoing popular preoccupation with Spinoza's own relation to Judaism. (shrink)

This article focuses on epistemic challenges related to the democratisation of scientific knowledge production, and to the limitations of current social accounts of objectivity. A process of ’democratisation’ can be observed in many scientific and academic fields today. Collaboration with extra-academic agents and the use of extra-academic expertise and knowledge has become common, and researchers are interested in promoting socially inclusive research practices. As this development is particularly prevalent in policy-relevant research, it is important that (...) the new, more democratic forms of research be objective. In social accounts of objectivity only epistemic communities are taken to be able to produce objective knowledge, or the entity whose objectivity is to be assessed is precisely such a community. As I argue, these accounts do not allow for situations where it is not easy to identify the relevant epistemic community. Democratisation of scientific knowledge production can lead to such situations. As an example, I discuss attempts to link indigenous oral traditions to floods and tsunamis that happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago. (shrink)

Many philosophers of science have recently argued that extra-academic participation in scientific knowledge production does not threaten scientific objectivity. Quite the contrary: citizen science, participatory projects, transdisciplinary research, and other similar endeavours can even increase the objectivity of the research conducted. Simultaneously, researchers working in fields where such participation is common have expressed worries about various ways in which it can result in biases. In this paper I clarify how these arguments and worries can be compared, and how (...) extra-academic participation can both increase and threaten the objectivity of the research conducted. (shrink)

Applied analytical political philosophy has not been a thriving enterprise in the United States in recent years. Certainly it has made little discernible impact on public culture. Political philosophers absorb topics and ideas from the Zeitgeist, but it shows little inclination to return the favor. After the publication of his monumental work A Theory of Justice back in 1971, John Rawls became a deservedly famous intellectual, but who has ever heard political critics or commentators refer to the difference principle or (...) fair equality of opportunity in discussions aimed at a wide audience? Writing philosophically astute and beautifully accessible prose, often in not strictly academic journals of opinion, Ronald Dworkin has been in some ways the very model of a public intellectual, but the only reference to his opinions that I have seen in any newspaper occurred in a New York Times review of a restaurant near London along the Thames (as I recall, Dworkin was quoted as saying it was at the very least the best restaurant in the northern hemisphere). You might chalk up the situation to the fact that political philosophers tend to be liberal and the public political culture in the United States has been growing decidedly conservative, but that mismatch can hardly be the whole story. Right-wing libertarianism is a popular doctrine, but Robert Nozick’s classical and never superseded 1974 exploration of that view in his brilliant Anarchy, State, and Utopia is not cited. Nor is there a significant literature that seeks to derive practical policy recommendations from Nozick’s theory and relevant factual claims. Moreover, the isolation of political philosophy stands in marked contrast to the wide influence of theory in some disciplines. For example, consider the enormous germinating impact of Richard Posner’s ideas on law and economics over the past thirty years on academic and extra-academic American legal culture. (shrink)

The question of philosophy’s relevance to extra-academic concerns is much with us today. Plato tells us that, once the philosopher has seen the truth in the full light of the sun, she must return to the cave, there to put knowledge to work in making a better world, even though, being temporarily unaccustomed to the dark, she risks ridicule from those still in thrall to illusion. This paper reflects upon the life and career of Otto Neurath as a (...) modern exemplification of this ideal of philosophical engagement. In spite of, or, perhaps, because of his never having held an academic appointment, Neurath made a difference for the good in human affairs. The key components of what I term Neurath’s “philosophy of science in action” are explicated in order to understand how that could be. Foregrounded are Neurath’s socialism, his own version of the thesis of the empirical underdetermination of theory by evidence, his anti-metaphysical stance, and his commitment to physicalism and the unity of science. The paper concludes with a discussion of the contemporary relevance of Neurath’s model of engaged philosophy of science. (shrink)

Research collaborations beyond the boundaries of science—such as transdisciplinary, participatory or co-research projects—usually aim at increasing the societal impact of the research conducted. In the literature discussing such collaborations, as well as in science policy endorsing them, it is generally assumed that the wanted societal impact is achieved through exchange that contributes to knowledge production and to the results of the research. However, collaboration beyond the boundaries of science can help a research project reach its societal impact goals even if (...) it does not contribute to the epistemic outcomes of the project at all. Instead, other kinds of contributions from the extra-academic partners, and what the extra-academic partners receive from the collaboration, can be crucial. Recognizing this helps us to better understand existing practices, and to identify potentially interesting forms of collaboration beyond the boundaries of science. (shrink)

The present study aims, on the one hand, to reflect on reading practices within the university library, describing and explaining the various possibilities and their connection with the purpose of university education, and on the other hand to demonstrate as an extra reading activity teaching at the academy – a reading group – can provide meaningful reading experiences for those involved. To this end, the study develops a theoretical reflection, based on a literature review, which highlights the contributions of (...) literary reading and reading groups in an academic context to the dynamics of lifelong learning. Then, interviews with participants in a reading group, carried out in a university library, are analysed, seeking to explore the impact of the experiences declared in this area on their daily lives. It is concluded that the reading groups assume themselves as an essential strategy to promote literary reading and learning transversal skills, namely academic skills based on critical reflection, orality and relational interaction, revealing, at the same time, the intertwining the reading hared with the daily lives of each of the participants, which goes beyond life in the gym. The study leaves clues to an extensive field of reflection and action. (shrink)

As we approach the end of the twentieth century, the ways in which knowledge--scientific, social, and cultural--is produced are undergoing fundamental changes. In The New Production of Knowledge, a distinguished group of authors analyze these changes as marking the transition from established institutions, disciplines, practices, and policies to a new mode of knowledge production. Identifying such elements as reflexivity, transdisciplinarity, and heterogeneity within this new mode, the authors consider their impact and interplay with the role of knowledge in social (...) relations. While the knowledge produced by research and development in science and technology is accorded central focus, the authors also outline the changing dimensions of social scientific and humanities knowledge and the relations between the production of knowledge and its dissemination through education. Placing science policy and scientific knowledge within the broader context of contemporary society, this book will be essential reading for all those concerned with the changing nature of knowledge, with the social study of science, with educational systems, and with the correlation between research and development and social, economic, and technological development. "Thought-provoking in its identification of issues that are global in scope; for policy makers in higher education, government, or the commercial sector." --Choice "By their insightful identification of the recent social transformation of knowledge production, the authors have been able to assert new imperatives for policy institutions. The lessons of the book are deep." --Alexis Jacquemin, Universite Catholique de Louvain and Advisor, Foreign Studies Unit, European Commission "Should we celebrate the emergence of a 'post-academic' mode of postmodern knowledge production of the post-industrial society of the 21st Century? Or should we turn away from it with increasing fear and loathing as we also uncover its contradictions. A generation of enthusiasts and/or critics will be indebted to the team of authors for exposing so forcefully the intimate connections between all the cognitive, educational, organizational, and commercial changes that are together revolutionizing the sciences, the technologies, and the humanities. This book will surely spark off a vigorous and fruitful debate about the meaning and purpose of knowledge in our culture." --Professor John Ziman, (Wendy, Janey at Ltd. is going to provide affiliation. Contact if you don't hear from her.) "Jointly authored by a team of distinguished scholars spanning a number of disciplines, The New Production of Knowledge maps the changes in the mode of knowledge production and the global impact of such transformations. . . . The authors succeed . . . at sketching out, in very large strokes, the emerging trends in knowledge production and their implications for future society. The macro focus of the book is a welcome change from the micro obsession of most sociologists of science, who have pretty much deconstructed institutions and even scientific knowledge out of existence." --Contemporary Sociology "This book is a timely contribution to current discussion on the breakdown of and need to renegotiate the social contract between science and society that Vannevar Bush and likeminded architects of science policy constructed immediately after World War II. It goes far beyond the usual scattering of fragmentary insights into changing institutional landscapes, cognitive structures, or quality control mechanisms of present day science, and their linkages with society at large. Tapping a wide variety of sources, the authors provide a coherent picture of important new characteristics that, taken altogether, fundamentally challenge our traditional notions of what academic research is all about. This well-founded analysis of the social redistribution of knowledge and its associated power patterns helps articulate what otherwise tends to remain an--albeit widespread--intuition. Unless they adapt to the new situation, universities in the future will find the centers of gravity of knowledge production moving even further beyond their ken. Knowledge of the social and cognitive dynamics of science in research is much needed as a basis of science and technology policymaking. The New Production of Knowledge does a lot to fill this gap. Another unique feature is its discussion of the humanities, which are usually left out in works coming out of the social studies of science." --Aant Elzinga, University od Goteborg. (shrink)

Words are not just labels for conceptual categories. Words construct conceptual categories, frame situations and influence behavior. Where do they get their meaning? This book describes how words acquire their meaning. The author argues that mechanisms based on associations, pattern detection, and feature matching processes explain how words acquire their meaning from experience and from language alike. Such mechanisms are summarized by the distributional hypothesis, a computational theory of meaning originally applied to word occurrences only, and hereby extended to (...) class='Hi'>extra-linguistic contexts. By arguing in favor of the cognitive foundations of the distributional hypothesis, which suggests that words that appear in similar contexts have similar meaning, this book offers a theoretical account for word meaning construction and extension in first and second language that bridges empirical findings from cognitive and computer sciences. Plain language and illustrations accompany the text, making this book accessible to a multidisciplinary academic audience. (shrink)

I am an academically trained philosopher who has taught and written about medical ethics for three decades, who has done extra-mural ethics consultation in clinical and other settings for two decades, and who has served as an expert ethics witness in the courts for more than ten years. Trained as a traditional academic, none of these three pursuits have come easily. Like most philosophers, my education did not prepare me for such responsibilities. Indeed, regardless of a bioethicist's initial (...) background - i.e., health care, law, theology or philosophy - it is invariably necessary to build upon foundational knowledges and abilities in gearing up for work as a health care ethics consultant.Edward J. Imwinkelreid has prepared a remarkable overview of the work of the expert ethics witness from the point of view of the law of evidence. My perspective as a philosopher, an ethicist, and an expert witness, stands in contrast with his. (shrink)

I am an academically trained philosopher who has taught and written about medical ethics for three decades, who has done extra-mural ethics consultation in clinical and other settings for two decades, and who has served as an expert ethics witness in the courts for more than ten years. Trained as a traditional academic, none of these three pursuits have come easily. Like most philosophers, my education did not prepare me for such responsibilities. Indeed, regardless of a bioethicist's initial (...) background - i.e., health care, law, theology or philosophy - it is invariably necessary to build upon foundational knowledges and abilities in gearing up for work as a health care ethics consultant.Edward J. Imwinkelreid has prepared a remarkable overview of the work of the expert ethics witness from the point of view of the law of evidence. My perspective as a philosopher, an ethicist, and an expert witness, stands in contrast with his. (shrink)

This article situates current debates about transdisciplinarity within the deeper history of academic disciplinarity, in its difference from the notions of inter- and multi-disciplinarity. It offers a brief typology and history of established conceptions of transdisciplinarity within science and technology studies. It then goes on to raise the question of the conceptual structure of transdisciplinary generality in the humanities, with respect to the incorporation of the 19th- and 20th-century German and French philosophical traditions into the anglophone humanities, (...) under the name of ‘theory’. It identifies two distinct – dialectical and anti-dialectical, or dialectical and transversal – transdisciplinary trajectories. It locates the various contributions to the special issue of which it is the introduction within this conceptual field, drawing attention to the distinct contribution of the French debates about structuralism and its aftermath – those by Serres, Foucault, Derrida, Guattari and Latour, in particular. It concludes with an appendix on Foucault’s place within current debates about disciplinarity and academic disciplines. (shrink)

Bioethicists, like many other academics, have a tendency to try to make things general and simpler by eliminating context. Particulars, such as race, economic class, and gender, often seem to be lost in this ocean of generality and abstraction. But in losing them, we are neglecting the analysis of serious moral problems and, with it, the possibility of offering some kind of solution to such problems. This article argues that particulars do matter very much. We will focus ourattention here on (...) gender. We will argue that ignoring questions of gender when evaluating genetic technologies is seriously problematic because it might lead to further injustices against women. Proceeding with a noncontextual understanding of genetic technologies will likely disregard the unjust ways in which the health care system treats women, as well as the ways in which genetic technologies impose extra burdens on them. (shrink)

Beyond Interdisciplinarity examines the broadening meaning of core concept across academic disciplines and other forms of knowledge. In this book, Associate Editor of The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity and internationally recognized scholar Julie Thompson Klein depicts the heterogeneity and boundary work of inter- and trans-disciplinarity in a conceptual framework based on an ecology of spatializing practices in transaction spaces, including trading zones and communities of practice. The book includes both "crossdisciplinary" work (encompassing multi-, inter-, and trans-disciplinary forms) as well (...) as "cross-sector" work (spanning disciplines, fields, professions, government and industry, and communities). The first section of the book defines and explains boundary work, discourses of interdisciplinarity, and the nature of interdisciplinary fields. In the second section, Klein examines dynamics of working across disciplines, including communication, collaboration, and learning with concrete examples and lessons from research projects and programs that transcend traditional fields. The closing chapter examines reasons for failure and success then presents gateways to literature and other resources. Throughout the book, Klein emphasizes the roles of contextualization and historical change while factoring in the shifting relationship of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, ascendancy of transdisciplinarity, and intersections with other constructs including Mode 2 knowledge production, convergence, team science, and postdisciplinarity. The conceptual framework she provides also includes the role of boundary objects, agents, and organizations in brokering differences and creating for platforms for change. Klein further explains why translation, interlanguage, and a communication boundary space are vital to achieving intersubjectivity and collective identity. They foster not only pragmatics of negotiation and integration but also reflexivity, transactivity, and co-production of knowledge with stakeholders beyond the academy. Rhetorics of holism and synthesis compete with instrumentalities of problem solving and transgressive critiques. However, typical warrants today include complexity, contextualization, collaboration, and socially-robust knowledge. Crossing boundaries remains complex, but this book guides readers through the density of pertinent literature while expanding understandings of crossdisciplinary and cross-sector work. (shrink)

In bringing together a global community of philosophers, Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science develops novel perspectives on epistemology and philosophy of science by demonstrating how frameworks from academic philosophy (e.g. standpoint theory, social epistemology, feminist philosophy of science) and related fields (e.g. decolonial studies, transdisciplinarity, global history of science) can contribute to critical engagement with global dimensions of knowledge and science. -/- Global challenges such as climate change, food production, and infectious diseases raise complex questions about scientific (...) knowledge production and its interactions with local knowledge systems and social realities. As academic philosophy provides relatively little reflection on global negotiations of knowledge, many pressing scientific and societal issues remain disconnected from core debates in epistemology and philosophy of science. -/- This book is an invitation to broaden agendas of academic philosophy by presenting epistemology and philosophy of science as globally engaged fields that address heterogeneous forms of knowledge production and their interactions with local livelihoods, practices, and worldviews. This integrative ambition makes the book equally relevant for philosophers and interdisciplinary scholars who are concerned with methodological and political challenges at the intersection of science and society. (shrink)

The Territories of Human Reason is the first major study to explore the emergence of multiple situated rationalities. It focuses on the relation of the natural sciences and Christian theology, but its approach can easily be extended to other disciplines. It provides a robust intellectual framework for discussion of transdisciplinarity, which has become a major theme in many parts of the academic world. McGrath offers a major reappraisal of what it means to be 'rational' which will have significant (...) impact on older discussions of this theme. He sets out to explore the consequences of the seemingly inexorable move away from the notion of a single universal rationality towards a plurality of cultural and domain-specific methodologies and rationalities. This groundbreaking volume will provoke intense discussion and debate. (shrink)

Ernst Mach was already an international successful experimental physicist and scientist, when he, after professorships for Mathematics and Physics in Graz and Experimental Physics in Prague, took over the chair for “Philosophy, particularly for the History and Theory of the Inductive Sciences”, at the University of Vienna in 1895. This turn from the natural sciences to philosophy was really an exception in the academic field.Given his strong as well as controversial history of influence in philosophy and in the sciences (...) Mach’s own pessimistic statement about the emergence of aprioristic currents at the beginning of the twentieth century is surprising and in need of an explanation.The article deals with Mach’s appointment in Vienna and Mach’s autobiographical fragments on his relation to academic philosophy from a today’s point of view. It appears that Mach can be regarded as a pioneer and predecessor of a topical “historical epistemology”, “history and philosophy of science”, and above all as a theorist and practitioner of inter- and transdisciplinarity. If he is to be regarded a philosopher, it is mainly in the context of naturalism, pragmatism and common sense philosophy – as general theory of research. (shrink)

This book examines the role of the EU in ensuring privacy and data protection on the internet. It describes and demonstrates the importance of privacy and data protection for our democracies and how the enjoyment of these rights is challenged by, particularly, big data and mass surveillance. The book takes the perspective of the EU mandate under Article 16 TFEU. It analyses the contributions of the specific actors and roles within the EU framework: the judiciary, the EU legislator, the independent (...) supervisory authorities, the cooperation mechanisms of these authorities, as well as the EU as actor in the external domain. Article 16 TFEU enables the Court of the Justice of the EU to play its role as constitutional court and to set high standards for fundamental rights protection. It obliges the European Parliament and the Council to lay down legislation that encompasses all processing of personal data. It confirms control by independent supervisory authorities as an essential element of data protection and it gives the EU a strong mandate to act in the global arena. The analysis shows that EU powers can be successfully used in a legitimate and effective manner and that this subject could be a success story for the EU, in times of widespread euroskepsis. It demonstrates that the Member States remain important players in ensuring privacy and data protection. In order to be a success story, the key stakeholders should be prepared to go the extra mile, so it is argued in the book. The book is based on academic research for which the author received a double doctorate at the University of Amsterdam and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels. It builds on a long inside experience within the European institutions, as well as within the community of data protection and data protection authorities. It is a must read in a time where the setting of EU privacy and data protection is changing dramatically, not only as a result of the rapidly evolving information society, but also because of important legal developments such as the entry into force of the General Data Protection Regulation. This book will appeal to all those who are in some way involved in making this regulation work. It will also appeal to people interested in the institutional framework of the European Union and in the role of the Union of promoting fundamental rights, also in the wider world.. (shrink)

Based on a mixed-methods study involving triad tasks and ethnobiological models, we analyze local categories and knowledge of key ethnospecies of fish exploring partial overlaps between artisanal fishers’ and academic knowledge in a fishing community in northeast Brazil. We argue that fishers’ and academic knowledge overlaps may provide common ground for transdisciplinary collaboration, while their partiality requires reflection on epistemological and ontological differences. Here, we show how knowledge of artisanal fishers can complement academic knowledge and bring about (...) tensions that need to be addressed through intercultural dialogue. By integrating a general philosophical framework of partial overlaps with a mixed-methods study on fishers’ knowledge, we show how ethnobiology can contribute to reflective and empirically-grounded transdisciplinary practices. (shrink)

Against Nature – Chapter Abstracts Chapter 1. A Transdisciplinary Approach. In this short book you will find philosophy – metaphysical and political - economics, critical theory, complexity theory, ecology, sociology, journalism, and much else besides, along with the signposts and reference texts of the Information Systems field. Such transdisciplinarity is a challenge for both author and reader. Such books are often problematic: sections that are just old hat to one audience are by contrast completely new and difficult to another. (...) My hope is that in the interconnections, arguments and thrust of this polemic, readers will discover both interest and insight, alongside a range of new avenues to explore. This introductory chapter sets the scene – today’s digital world of Tech Giants and Fake News, its roots in the philosophical arguments of the 1920s, and the book’s key claims: (i) that the early 20th century philosophical grounding of today’s digital revolution is culpable in digital’s (growing) contribution to the ecological catastrophe unfolding in the 21st century; (ii) that process philosophy offers a new way to rethink that philosophical grounding, and reshape the digital revolution to support strategies to counter that catastrophe. Chapter 2. The Problem with Digital. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the research approaches in information systems as an academic field, before turning to the deeper roots of its malaise, in individualism, and its looming consequences. The three branches of Information Systems research, in academia, prove to be a useful lens through which to understand the field: Positivism, Interpretivism, and the Critical stance taken by this book. The ‘scientism’ at the root of positivism is examined, and the positivism in Information Systems critiqued as a historically contingent response to the ascendancy of a new brand of economics in Business Schools after the Second World War. But the computational market-fundamentalist form of economics sponsored in the 1950s (and applied by governments since the 1970s) centred around notions of the individual rational actor as an information processor. The philosophical underpinning of methodological and possessive individualism in this approach is exposed, and its influence upon the development – long before computing – of the science of ecology, and our notion of ecosystems, introduced. Chapter 3. The Future Does Not Exist. The philosophical core of the book, this chapter introduces process philosophy. Through an examination of the irreversible reality of subjectivity, Bergson’s famous notion of the durée reélle, and Whitehead’s critique of the bifurcation of subject and object, are introduced. The causally closed ‘time’ of positive science determines existence from the beginning to the end of the universe, be it three seconds or three trillion years. But the reality, of course, is that the future does not exist: our choices are real, and only one of myriad potential futures comes into being at each moment. As Bergson insists, durational succession exists, I am conscious of it; it is a fact. Bergson’s star – once the brightest of any living philosopher in the world – faded almost as quickly as it rose, under the onslaught from the logical positivists whose verificationism insisted that any proposition has no factual meaning if no evidence of observation can count for or against it: all ethics, aesthetics, romance, and metaphysics – and the very subjectivity with which duration is experienced - were thus closed down and dismissed. In this chapter it is reintroduced, to a new audience. Chapter 4. The World in a New Light. Many fundamental problems in the world can be seen as resulting from the false philosophy of bifurcation, fixity, and the reification of abstractions critiqued by process philosophy. Being – with all the isolation and focus upon the individual that it entails – must, if we are to address these problems, be seen as secondary to Becoming, with all the connection, interrelatedness, and complex collectivity that it implies. Choices become clearer, between positivism and interpretivism, between accents upon individualism or collectivism, between reductionist and complex adaptive systems approaches. The systemic individualism in Anglo-American societies can be regarded as actually harmful: the Tech Giants severing ties and bonds rather than connecting us; algebraic ecological models actually breaking the co-dependencies and co-requisites upon which real – complex - ecological health depends. Positivism, built as it is upon methodological individualism, seen in the light of process philosophy, becomes a danger to personal psychological balance – cutting us off from one another; a danger to the social fabric – undermining and impoverishing our civic life; and a danger to the ecological health of the planet – ignoring the immense (eco)systemic impact of our activities over the last centuries upon everything around us in the natural world. Chapter 5. A Theoretical Manifesto for Green IT. We are not islands, and in a process-relational social organisation much must be held in common. We are individuals, but we cannot survive alone. Four different perspectives on individualism show it to be little more than greed. An ecological economics reintegrating the household, the social, the supportive State, and – crucially – the life-giving earth into our polities is introduced and promoted. I introduce the concept of ‘Infomateriality’ – a non-bifurcated digital world where the physical bodies of people - fingers touching keyboards and eyes scanning screens - are as much ‘hardware’ as cabling, circuitboards and haptic interfaces, and the social practices, power relations, and embedded politics within IT artefacts define all such techné as fundamentally social. Abstract divisions are false, and whole, socially embedded systems should be the focus of IS, and from a philosophically and sociologically much deeper perspective. ‘Tech for Good’ is held up as movement in the right direction. My hope is that this book will help promote action, in the field of information systems, toward a better world, where Green Tech for Good is deployed for Nature, rather than against it. (shrink)

In higher education, interdisciplinarity involves the design of subjects that offer the opportunity to experience ‘different ways of knowing’ from students’ core or preferred disciplines. Such an education is increasingly important in a global knowledge economy. Many universities have begun to introduce interdisciplinary studies or subjects to meet this perceived need. This chapter explores some of the issues inherent in moves towards interdisciplinary higher education. Definitional issues associated with the term ‘academic discipline’, as well as other terms, including ‘multidisciplinary’, (...) ‘cross-disciplinary’, ‘pluridisciplinarity’, ‘transdisciplinarity’ and ‘interdisciplinary’ are examined. A new nomenclature is introduced to assist in clarifying the subtle distinctions between the various positions. The chapter also outlines some of the pedagogical and epistemological considerations which are involved in any move from a conventional form of educational delivery to an interdisciplinary higher education, and recommends caution in any implementation of an interdisciplinary curriculum. (shrink)

In this consensus report by a diverse group of academics who conduct and/or are concerned about social and behavioral genomics (SBG) research, the authors recount the often‐ugly history of scientific attempts to understand the genetic contributions to human behaviors and social outcomes. They then describe what the current science—including genomewide association studies and polygenic indexes—can and cannot tell us, as well as its risks and potential benefits. They conclude with a discussion of responsible behavior in the context of SBG research. (...) SBG research that compares individuals within a group according to a “sensitive” phenotype requires extra attention to responsible conduct and to responsible communication about the research and its findings. SBG research (1) on sensitive phenotypes that (2) compares two or more groups defined by (a) race, (b) ethnicity, or (c) genetic ancestry (where genetic ancestry could easily be misunderstood as race or ethnicity) requires a compelling justification to be conducted, funded, or published. All authors agree that this justification at least requires a convincing argument that a study's design could yield scientifically valid results; some authors would additionally require the study to have a socially favorable risk‐benefit profile. (shrink)

In this paper, we use online search engines and archive collections to examine the popularity of socially responsible investing (SRI) in newspapers and academic journals. A simple content analysis suggests that most of the papers on SRI focus on financial performance. This profusion of research is somewhat puzzling as most of the studies used roughly the same methodology and obtained very similar results. So, why are there so many studies on SRI financial performance? We argue that the academic (...) literature on SRI is mostly data driven: the famous ‘looking for the keys under the lamppost’ syndrome. The question of the financial performance of the SRI funds is certainly relevant but maybe too much attention has been paid to this issue, whereas more research is needed on a conceptual and theoretical ground, in particular the aspirations of SRI investors, the relationship between regulation and SRI as well as the assessment of extra-financial performances. (shrink)

The nature of the university is autonomous research and teaching within the framework of Bildung . Without Bildung, our open society, which expects and lauds innovation and mobility, will become paralysed by its own expectations, since it will be choked by reign of technological specialists unable to offer society any universal orientation.In this worst case scenario, the market becomes the measure of all things, and education is only valued insofar as it plays to market demands and knowledge is fragmented. But (...) our knowledge society needs strong education, especially strong universities, able to offer orientational Bildung.In turn, universities need the autonomy to plan their own organisation, as well as to systematise science. Reflecting the globalised economic and research practices, the university too must step beyond its own disciplinary boundaries, and see the future of research and learning in problem-driven transdisciplinarity.Failing this, the university will be replaced by the paradigm of the school, and the particularism that entails. But achieving this transdisciplinarity, universities will be able to foster the notion of science as a form of life, which in turn reveals itself to be the moral form of science and academic education. The credibility of the university depends on this achievement. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of how production of scientific knowledge transforms nowadays. It is shown that current situation puts forward problem of integration different types of knowledge (not only scientific) – both for producing general meanings, and scientific knowledge. This problem is reflected in several conceptions in the philosophy of science: postacademic science, technoscience, transdisciplinarity. The author pays attention to an idea to be found in these conceptions and some current basic and applied studies; she calls it (...) “the principle of participation”. A few embodiments of this principle are brought out, its conceptual core is revealed, epistemological questions this principle generates in respect to scientific knowledge are defined and some of them are considered in the article: what is a mechanism for aggregating dispersed knowledge? what is the difference between dispersed knowledge and dispersed information? who is the agent of such forms of production of knowledge as Delphi, scientific crowdsourcing, civic science and foresight? Several strategies of knowledge production in modern science (both academic and postacademic) are revealed, two versions of the principle of participation are proposed. (shrink)

In this paper, we use online search engines and archive collections to examine the popularity of socially responsible investing (SRI) in newspapers and academic journals. A simple content analysis suggests that most of the papers on SRI focus on financial performance. This profusion of research is somewhat puzzling as most of the studies used roughly the same methodology and obtained very similar results. So, why are there so many studies on SRI financial performance? We argue that the academic (...) literature on SRI is mostly data driven: the famous ‘looking for the keys under the lamppost’ syndrome. The question of the financial performance of the SRI funds is certainly relevant but maybe too much attention has been paid to this issue, whereas more research is needed on a conceptual and theoretical ground, in particular the aspirations of SRI investors, the relationship between regulation and SRI as well as the assessment of extra‐financial performances. (shrink)

Gerontology together with its subfields, such as social gerontology, geragogy, educational gerontology, political gerontology, environmental gerontology, and financial gerontology, is still a relatively new academic discipline that is currently intensively developing, expanding research fields and combining various theoretical and practical perspectives. The interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and multidisciplinarity of research on ageing and old age, despite its vast thematic, methodological and theoretical diversity, have a common denominator, which is the focus of research work on improving the quality of life of (...) older people. It is the concern for the components of quality of life such as welfare and well-being as well as focus on learning about phenomena conditioning successful ageing that has become motivators and premises hidden or visible in many texts included in the Research Topic “Perspectives and Theories of Social Innovation for Ageing Population.” The Research Topic that we are presenting to our readers is unique not only because of its size but above all because of its novelty and social involvement, visible in the content of individual chapters. The presented collection includes 17 articles prepared in total by 76 authors from the following countries: China, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Two journals were combined with this Research Topic: “Frontiers in Public Health” and “Frontiers in Sociology.” The presented Research Topic contains seven types of articles covering: two community case studies, eight original research articles, two perspective articles, one hypothesis and theory paper, one policy and practice review, one methods article, and two book reviews. The rationale to start work on this set of texts was the desire to continue and deepen the research analyses of the editors of this set, which concern the development of social innovations for the ageing population as well as changes of public policy on ageing. This Research Topic deals with topics covering issues such as social learning, intergenerational transmission, senior entrepreneurship, creative content creation by older adults, care services, raising the independence of older people in their living environments, dementia challenges, the image of the older generation in local social policies, new trends in qualitative research on old age, strategies for dealing with chronic diseases, the use of digital tools in health education, the silver economy/longevity economy, age-friendly environments, the diversity of structures and social services, preparation for old age, and food safety. The wide variety of submitted texts shows several selected and, according to the authors, current challenges that contemporary seniors have to face. The articles comprising this Research Topic are organized according to five themes. (shrink)

This article analyzes the results of a teaching innovation project developed during the academic year 2021-2022, whose main objective was to assess the need to in- clude a compulsory subject of mediation and collaborative conflict resolution in the degree in Social Work at UCM. To this end, an international working group has been formed in the form of an Ideas Lab that has developed a research combining quan- titative (questionnaire) and qualitative (Design Thinking) tools, whose results have allowed to (...) develop a proposal that has been submitted to the dean's office for consideration in the future modification of the degree. But undoubtedly, the most remarkable thing is that through the laboratory it has been possible to guaran-tee essential elements for the quality of the training of our university community: transversality, transdisciplinarity, internationalization and transfer of knowledge. (shrink)

Se presentan los resultados de una investigación cualitativa hermenéutica sobre la lingüística cognitiva y la lingüística aplicada, relacionadas con otras ciencias en un contexto específico de la comunidad científica especializada. Desde una visión integral y holística de las ciencias biomédicas y humanas, asimismo, se estudian los lenguajes técnico-científicos de la ciencia y de la tecnología para facilitar la interrelación cognitiva entre las diferentes disciplinas. Este estudio permite crear capacidades para evaluar el acervo léxico en contexto, útil para la transmisión y (...) la transformación del conocimiento en un lenguaje propio acorde a la exigencia del método científico. El objetivo consistió en indagar sobre la relación de la unidad léxica con su nexo cognitivo a una unidad terminológica de uso cotidiano en la información y en la comunicación académica de la práctica médico-legal forense. Los resultados establecen diferencia y precisan cierta comprensión de la significación de unidades léxicas ambiguas de mayor relevancia y frecuencia, utilizadas en este ámbito del conocimiento, en cuatro categorías de análisis; según las características propias de la disciplina en dialogo con otras ciencias en contexto. Se evidencia la importancia de educar durante el proceso enseñanza-aprendizaje significativo de la disciplina en contexto, desde la metalingüística del objeto de estudio dimensionado y relacionado con otros objetos de estudio, que permita el proceso cognitivo del lenguaje técnico-científico transdisciplinar, la apropiación social y la circulación del conocimiento aplicado a las prácticas médico legales integrales en relación entre la Psicofarmacología, la Psiquiatría, la Antropología y la Psicología, con las ciencias biomédicas y humanas. In this work results of a qualitive hermeneutic research about a cognitive and applied linguistic related to other sciences in an specific context of a given scientific community were presented, a technical and scientific language regarding science and technology was pointed out from an integral vision in order to facilitate cognitive relationship among different disciplines. This study also allows to create capacities in order to assess vocabulary in context, useful for the transmission and transformation of knowledge according to a scientific method. The objective was directed to know about the relationship between the lexical unit and its meaning in a given communicative context and in the academic communication of a medical - legal forensic practice. The importance of educate during the teaching learning process is also mentioned in this research and the main objective is to develop an assertive medical practice among Psychopharmacology, psychiatric, anthropology and psychology with biomedical and human sciences. (shrink)

This paper responds to Are the Semi-Living semi-good or semi-evil? (Technoetic Arts, 2003) in which artists/authors Zurr and Catts state that there is not, as yet, an existing discourse that deals with the Semi-Living a new life form created for the purpose of artistic engagement using the tools of tissue engineering and stem cell technology. As a means to reflect on what a discourse on the Semi-Living might include and exclude and to create the potential to say something different beyond (...) the artists own discourse, this paper initiates two approaches. First, it considers that which the Semi-Living defers by working from Zurr and Catts contribution, which I argue evokes a both/and logic that echoes the Derridean deconstructive event. Secondly, it proposes a genealogy of the Semi-Living using a figure of Roman archaic law, homo sacer (sacred man) who shares with the Semi-Living a life exposed to death (Agamben 1998). The symbiosis of these two approaches identifies, problematises and contaminates the limits of acceptable discourse concerning the Semi-Living, concluding with the proposal of a semi-discourse. As the transdisciplinarity of bioart increasingly becomes the focus of academic and artistic inquiry, this paper signals towards the importance of critically acknowledging a community of artists writing and working within the academy, stipulating the acceptable discourses of their practice. (shrink)

The state of the debate surrounding issues on science and religion in Latin America is mostly unknown, both to regional and extra-regional scholars. This article presents and reviews in some detail the developments since 2000, when the first symposium on science and religion was held in Mexico, up to the present. I briefly introduce some features of Latin American academia and higher education institutions, as well as some trends in the public reception of these debates and atheist engagement with (...) it in Mexico and Argentina. The primary conclusion of this article is that, even though the discussion is new to Latin American academic circles, it is gaining traction and will certainly grow in the coming years. (shrink)

The aim of my dissertation is to investigate how universal concepts are formed according to the later medieval Franciscan theologian Peter Auriol (d. 1322). Specifically, in the dissertation I inquiry into the relation between Auriol's ontology - according to which only individuals, and not universals, have real, extra-mental existence - and his philosophical psychology, a study of how extra-mental particulars can give rise to universal concepts, according to Auriol's view. In the past academic year I refined the (...) topic of my PhD thesis in two ways : first, I have delineated the definitive table of content ; second, I have wrote down the results of my research. The thesis comprises two volumes. The second one contains a collation of Peter Auriol's,Reportatio II, d. 9, qq. 2 - 3. The text has been obtained by confronting two manuscripts, considered as the exemplars of the two main families that convey his Second Book of the Sentences: ms. Firenze, Biblioteca nazionale centrale, ms. conv. soppr. A.3.120 (Fb); (iii) il ms. Padova, Biblioteca Antoniana, ms. 161 scaff. IX (Pg). The first volume, instead, has been divided into five chapters: the first two offer a historical introduction, while the remaining three are dedicated to the study of Auriol's doctrine, starting from the analysis of the text proposed in the collation, then extending the investigation to all the documentary heritage available relating to the Franciscan master. The first chapter provides a survey of the main theories of the universals of the early fourteenth century, taking into account in particular the opinions of those thinkers who, like Duns Scotus, in addition to marking a philosophical era, have been significant for Auriol's developing of his theory of universals. These are: John Duns Scotus, Henry of Harclay, Walter Bulery and Hervaeus Natalis. In order to properly understand the philosophical proposal of the Doctor facundus, it is necessary to know how it fits into a debate that in the academic debate of the fourteenth century. The second chapter is mainly aimed at the identification of the sources of Rep. II, d. 9, qq. 2 - 3. In the quaestio secunda, Auriol deals with the foundation of the universals. In a.1, he discusses the opinion of multiwho he labels as 'platonic'. We tried, therefore, to detect the targets of his criticism. Burley, Wylton, Bacon, Duns Scotus have been identified as possible addresses. In a. 2 of the same question, Auriol analyzes the position of Duns Scotus on the common nature. It has been then hypothesized that the two articles - aa. 1-2 - has to be considered as a general presentation and specific case of it; as a thesis common to several forms of realism and the realism of one of its most important interpreters. The third chapter focuses Auriol's criticism of the different forms of realism reported in a. 1 and of Duns Scotus's theory, as it is found in a. 2. In both cases, Auriol reproaches the realists for breaking the unity of substance, into a multiplicity of formalitatesreally occurring in reand corresponding to the concepts of genus and difference. On the contrary, Auriol maintains that universal concepts have no unity in the extra-mental reality. Only individuals really exist and numerical unity the only fully existing unity. As a consequence, the unity of the universal concept is just similitudinaria,that is only given a concept. Successively, the criticisms that Auriol makes to the principle of individuation are considered. Generally speaking, everything that exists, insofar as it exists, is singular, according to him. It is a primitive fact and it is not, therefore, necessary to search for the causes of its individuation. Thus, mirroring the structure of the quaestio secunda, in q. 3, Auriol discusses, in the first place, Duns Scotus's position and secondly a group of theories, arisen during the scholastic debate between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. Interestingly, to reconstruct this set of doctrines, Auriol follows almost literally the reconstruction that Scotus himself makes of the same theories in his Ordinatio. Now, relying on the assumption that everything that exists is individual, Auriol gives shape to the notions of individuality and singularity and their mutual difference. This is one of the hubs of the dissertation. According to Auriol, a singularity is an entity that does not admit the existence of other realities that can be considered as similar with it. In this sense, God is the only authentic singularity. Ordinary reality, on the other hand, is made up of individualities. An individuality is an entity that, being finite, does not exhaust in itself the totality of the species to which it belongs (as far as the species as such exists only in virtue of an act of the intellect), admits the existence of other realities conceivable as similar with it. Thus, inasmuch as reality is made up of individuals or individualities, the mind is able to form the corresponding universal concepts. Being finite, for Auriol, is the condition of the validity of universals. In this respect, the relation between the concept of individuality and that of singularity is taken into account. Subsequently, we analyze the function of the category of Quantity, as it is related to individuality. According to Auriol, Quantity has no individuating capacity. At most, in bodily substances, it functions as principle of distinction. Being, in fact, discrete realities, a material substance spatially ends where another one begins. The fourth chapter is a kind of juncture between the third one, in which the structure of the concrete individual is analyzed, and the fifth one, in which the cognitive side of the process of concept formation is discussed. What is discussed here are the rationes. According to Auriol, the rationesare the basic units that constitute the quiddity of each individual and serve to direct our thought to form certain concepts. Each concept is the concept of a ratio,indeed. In this respect, Auriol claims that, say, Socrates has the rationes substance, corporeality, sensitivity, rationality. Additionally, rationes of the same type occurring in different objects are "maximally similar" (simillimae). For example, the rationesof Socrates are utterly similar with those of Plato (Cf. Scriptum, d. 2, q. 1, a. 4). Therefore, although these rationes are non-universal characteristics - inasmuch as a ratio belongs to one and only one individual - due to their maximal similarity they do count as the extramental ground for our general concepts (Cf.II Sent., d. 9, q. 3, a. 1). According to these premises, Auriol can hold that different singulars can be mutually highly similar, without participating in the same common nature (Cf. II Sent., d. 9, q. 3, a. 3).At the same time, it is relevant to note these rationesdo not compromise the unity of an existing particular. Rather each ratiocoagulates into each other giving birth to the individual's ultimate ratio. This final ratiois an indivisible ratio (ratio atoma), which cannot be further specified or divided (II Sent., d. 9, q. 3). According to Auriol, then, the rationesqua rationesdo not exist in extra-mental reality. Rather, the exist as such only in virtue of an act of the intellect. This means that they have an ambiguous being. On the one hand, they indicate a nature that cannot be altered by the intellect. On the other, the need the mind's activity to exist as rationes. According to Auriol, therefore, the rationesare independent of any cognitive act, with regard to the content they express, while they depend on mind's activity with regard to their unity and their existence. Now, the opaqueness concerning the ontological consistency of rationesdirectly depends on Auriol's understanding of cognition. Chapter five mainly deals with the different stages of the process of formation of the universal concept. In this respect, the notion of impressiois what is firstly analyzed. The impressionescan be considered, for Auriol, as the rationesthat are 'deposited' in the intellect and constitute, in cooperation with the cognitive faculty, what the Franciscan theologian calls the actus intellectus. The intellectual act, according to Auriol, is an entity composed of the impressed similarity of the object and the intellectual power, in fact. Moreover, in his view, it is really identical to the intelligible species. Now, the identity that the Franciscan theologian establishes between these two noetic tools, which were traditionally considered as distinct, imposes a reinterpretation of the notion of species. Coinciding with the act, the species can no longer be considered as an entity juxtaposed to it, deputed to the activation of the cognitive process performed by the intellect. Indeed, all those theories of universal concepts that add other noetic tools to the act, be they a species, a quality, or something else, would necessarily compromise intellection, preventing it from having acquaintance with extra-mental reality. According to Auriol, considering intellectual cognition as a connotation allows us to avoid such inconveniences. According to this view, the intellectual cognition must be regarded as an activity that poses nothing but to allow something to appear to the cognizer. In this respect, the concept, for Auriol, is nothing but the real object qua appearingto the intellect, fully identical with the intellectual act in recto,while denominatively distinct in obliquo. In this perspective, the definition of intellection that the Franciscan theologian proposes is analyzed, trying, in particular, to determine the ontological status of the concept and its epistemological function. In conclusion, with this study we have tried to give an account of Auriol's philosophical attitude, of the scope of his theory of universals, focusing on the relationship between ontology and philosophical psychology. Using Auriol's texts and specifically the collation of Rep. II, d. 9, qq. 2 - 3, the answers to these questions were searched for in the words of the Franciscan theologian himself. The picture emerged is that of an autonomous, critical thinker, but perfectly inserted in the historical context in which he lives. A thinker who places himself, so to speak, halfway between Duns Scotus's realism and Ockham's nominalism, nevertheless succeeding, albeit with some opacity, in balancing an ontology in which the metaphysical priority is granted only to the individual and the universal concepts have a solid foundation and validity. (shrink)