Why Ideal Epistemology? Carr, Jennifer Rose
Mind,
12/2022, Letnik:
131, Številka:
524
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Abstract Ideal epistemologists investigate the nature of pure epistemic rationality, abstracting away from human cognitive limitations. Non-ideal epistemologists investigate epistemic norms that are ...satisfiable by most humans, most of the time. Ideal epistemology faces a number of challenges, aimed at both its substantive commitments and its philosophical worth. This paper explains the relation between ideal and non-ideal epistemology, with the aim of justifying ideal epistemology. Its approach is meta-epistemological, focusing on the meaning and purpose of epistemic evaluations. I provide an account on which the fundamental difference between ideal and non-ideal epistemic evaluations is that only the non-ideal epistemic ‘ought’ implies any substantive ‘can’. I argue that only ideal epistemic evaluations are ‘normatively robust’: they are neither conventional nor seriously context-sensitive. Non-ideal epistemic evaluations are normatively non-robust, exhibiting both conventionality and serious context-sensitivity from an interesting variety of distinct sources. For this reason, non-ideal epistemic evaluations won’t characterize the fundamental nature of epistemic rationality. Non-ideal epistemic rationality depends, not merely on what’s epistemically valuable, but also on modally contingent epistemic conventions and contextually contingent constraints on epistemic options. If we want a normatively robust theory of epistemic rationality, ideal epistemology is the only game in town.
In versified texts congruence is one facet of the concordance between the edges of metrical constituents and those of grammatical constituents. Congruence may be characterized roughly as the ...requirement that no element within a syntactic constituent be in a stronger metrical position than the final element in that constituent. If break strength is defined in terms applicable to any constituent structure tree, syntactic as well as metrical, incongruences are discrepancies between the relative strengths of two breaks in metrical structure and the relative strengths of their counterparts in syntactic structure. Although our primary source of data is classical French verse, the characterization of congruence we present is a rather abstract one that does not make reference to features that are specific to French poetic forms or to the grammatical structure of the French language. This should make this characterization applicable in other poetic traditions.
On the island of Réunion, a French overseas department located in the western Indian Ocean, a prefectorial decree taken by the authorities on July 26, 2013 has been reconducted for the past 10 years ...to forbid swimming and water-based activities, apart from the conditions set out in the injunction. This decision was the outcome of increased shark sightings and incidents causing, in particular, the deaths of 5 ocean users between 2011 and 2013. As a preliminary attempt to address the lack of empirical research on ocean users' social representations and their relationship to non-humans, this paper aims to primarily analyze thoroughly the issues of the acceptance of shark risk mitigation options. Data has been gathered through a qualitative study that mobilized several ethnographic tools such as face-to-face semi-structured interviews, participant and non-participant observation as well as social media data survey. Results indicate that the many tensions generated by shark-human interactions (SHIs) on the island of Réunion are related to a lack of public consultation, thus calling the acceptance of the shark management strategy and the scientific recommendations into question. The findings may improve shark-human interactions management as we consider the management of risk as a process to develop a well-balanced way of living with the sharks where residual risk remains. This study contributes to the advancement of knowledge on the management of human-wildlife conflicts (HWCs) while the results tend to confirm the findings of many other studies showing that they are often rooted in human-human conflicts
Abstract
Even as a growing body of literature has in recent years revealed the ubiquity of racialized violence within Western colonies in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, another historical ...narrative remains insistent that the British Empire constituted a notable exception to the rule. This nostalgic narrative of a uniquely British ‘soft approach’ rests in part on the belief that colonial officers possessed a deep cultural understanding of the people and societies they dealt with, which allowed them to manoeuvre skilfully throughout the Empire without having to resort to the sort of atrocities that characterized German and Belgian colonies in Africa. The result is an implicitly sanitized account of the British Empire and of British military practice as exemplary and even humane. This article critically examines those assumptions, focusing in particular on the cultural knowledge that was weaponized during colonial conflicts in the decades preceding the First World War. The forms and functions of what became known as ‘savage warfare’ were not simply shaped by the tactical necessities of asymmetric fighting in the peripheries of Empire. Colonial military violence and the development of new technologies, such as the expanding Dum-Dum bullet, were based on deeply encoded assumptions concerning the inherent difference of local opponents and as such were underwritten by both imperial ideologies and a specific body of colonial expertise. The rule of colonial difference dictated and justified techniques of violence that were by the same token considered unacceptable in conflicts between so-called ‘civilized’ nations and, in many instances, slaughter was in fact the ‘British Way’ – in theory and in practice.
Objectives: The goal of this study was to evaluate the application of the short form of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire Survey (IPAQ-SF) in the rural Senegalese Fulani pastoralist ...population by combining quantitative and qualitative methods. Design and participants: For the quantitative method, 101 men completed the IPAQ-SF questionnaire measuring moderate, vigorous, and walking physical activity. Self-rated health, BMI, and sociodemographic variables were also collected. With regard to the qualitative methods, a total of 22 participants were recruited and interviewed. Four themes were addressed, including (i) physical activity (PA) and its definition, description, related experiences, and representations of social actors; (ii) PA and health; (iii) PA and sport; and (iv) the body and Fulani world of life (i.e., Pulaagu/Ndimaagu). Results: Sahelian herders have a high level of self-reported PA and a low amount of daily sitting time. The measure of PA as proposed by the IPAQ-SF is not adapted to the Senegalese Ferlo pastoralists, mainly because this scale gives too much importance to leisure-time PA, perceived as unproductive energy expenditure, which is factually and symbolically antinomic to the Fulani lifeworld. Thus, neither intense nor moderate PA is related to self-rated health. However, sedentary lifestyles are linked to self-rated health and, therefore, to mortality and morbidity in Fulani pastoralists. Finally, walking, which is the dominant PA during transhumance and herd surveillance, is related to BMI. It therefore represents a protective factor against the occurrence of overweight and associated chronic non-communicable diseases. Conclusion: The mixed method approach developed in this study has shown that the IPAQ-SF is not a valid measure of PA in the population of Fulani male herders from the Ferlo region, given that unproductive energy expenditure is incompatible with the Fulani way of life, which condemns excess and immoderation.
Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore consumer anticipation processes that occur after commitment to a purchase has been made, but before consumption occurs. The authors add to the ...knowledge and theory building about anticipation that occurs in this liminal phase by investigating the cognitive, emotional and behavioural processes that interact to influence post-consumption evaluations. Design/methodology/approach An abductive research approach used a phase-based research design using semi-structured interviews. The authors identify interactions between cognitive, emotional and behavioural processes that occur during anticipation and associate these with post-consumption outcomes. Findings Anticipation of a consumption experience, enacted through thoughts, emotions and actions, and undertaken with peers, is an experience per se, independent from and interdependent with the substantive experience, and contributes to performance of the substantive experience. The authors propose a framework in which anticipation – as a performative phenomenon – influences the overall evaluations of the substantive consumption experience in contexts of delayed consumption. The theoretical grounding of performativity makes a useful contribution through its linkage of thought processes to outcomes. The authors further locate their findings within the literature on attribution theory. By engaging in anticipation, informants perceived the locus of causality to be internal, and expressed pride in having anticipated if the subsequent experience was successful. By anticipating, informants perceived an ability to exert control over future events and felt ashamed of not having adequately anticipated if an experience was subsequently unsuccessful. Research limitations/implications The theoretical grounding of performativity makes a useful contribution through its linkage of thought processes to outcomes. The authors further locate their findings within the literature on attribution theory. By engaging in anticipation, informants perceived the locus of causality to be internal and expressed pride in having anticipated if the subsequent experience was successful. By anticipating, informants perceived an ability to exert control over future events and felt ashamed of not having adequately anticipated if an experience was subsequently unsuccessful. Practical implications The authors discuss the trade-off service providers face between encouraging anticipation, which raises expectations that might not be met, and facilitating anticipatory preparations, which may reduce the risk of service failure. Originality/value The authors provide a new lens by conceptualising anticipation as a performative process and identifying mechanisms by which anticipation is embedded in total consumption experience. This study has important generalisable implications for contexts where mechanisms of performative anticipation may be a means for ameliorating uncertainty about future consumption experiences.
Management of conflicts is an important, maybe central, question in people's management at work. The management of conflicts is obviously related to multiple techniques. But the latter do not always ...give enough attention on communication between people. We construct a conceptual frame of conflicts centered on interpersonal relations' dynamics. This frame articulates interpersonal incongruent positioning in the meaning of the Palo-Alto school , perception processes, individual trajectories (Bourdieu's habitus as developed by Lahire), psycho-sociological (Groups' dynamics) processes. Sociological and cultural factors are also considered. This model is applied to the case study of a conflict in a Community Center in France. The study shows how the interpersonal communication on one hand and the identity-related collective phenomena on the other hand, build interlink sequences which explain the conflict escalation. This case illustrates how relational interlink and psycho-sociological processes at the individual as well at the interpersonal and group levels become out of control. These dynamics construct a "complex of situation" and results in a social conflict where finally all protagonists are losers.
Looking at mediated, political and wider public discourses on immigration in Poland since 2015 and exploring these in the context of the country's right-wing populist politics, the paper develops a ...multi-step normalisation model which allows analysing how radical or often blatantly racist discourse can not only be strategically introduced into the public domain but also evolve into an acceptable and legitimate perspective in perceptions of immigrants and refugees. The paper highlights the strategic as well as opportunistic introduction of anti-immigration rhetoric in/by the political mainstream in Poland in recent years, often on the back of the so-called post-2014 European "Refugee Crisis". It explores normalisation as part and parcel of a wider multistep process of strategically orchestrated discursive shifts wherein discourses characterised by extreme positions have been enacted, gradated/perpetuated and eventually normalised as an integral part of pronounced right-wing populist agenda. The paperfurthers a view that normalisation entails the creation and sustainment of a peculiar borderline discourse wherein unmitigated radical statements are often married with seemingly civil and apparently politically correct language and argumentation. The latter are used to pre-/legitimise uncivil or even outright radical positions and ideologies by rationalising them and making them into acceptable elements of public discourse.
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