Waiting

This chapter explores the dialectics of walking and resting, and of mobility and waiting, with regards to creativity in language. It thereby focuses on the interruption and unintended break as an opportunity for interactions and encounters across linguistic epistemes, boundaries and norms. Walking as a methodology and epistemic approach has been discussed in anthropology, the social sciences and literary critique, but met very little interest in linguistics. This chapter on the one hand consequently attempts to address walking as a substantial approach to the study of multilingualism and improvisation, but on the other aims at highlighting disruption and stillness as creating the very liminal space and practice through which language creativity can emerge and be realized. It touches upon various practices that are crucial: being stuck, passing time, getting lost. Points of special interests interest include the role of language in the love songs and other genres, especially in the context of the Mediterranean, disruptions associated with migrations and peoples’ movements, the context of tourism, and the linguistic effects of spirit possession.

Autochthonous synergy of Russian literary discourse

The paper is aimed at describing the convergent effect of the interaction of several linguistic consciousness sense-forming channels, when their joint nonlinear impact significantly exceeds the total potential of individual elements of discursive activity. The texts of Russian Chernozem region writers are studied. The novelty of the research is that the role of the conjugate work of creative and receptive minds forming the two levels of autochthonous text-generating discourse (immanent and representative) is revealed and evaluated. It is proved that the efficient mechanism of autochthonous text generation is the synergy of the discursive-modus concept - the phenomenon of nonlinear discursive activity. The idea is substantiated that immersion in the synergistic architectonics of the discursive-modus concept opens the way to understanding the playful origin of the author's linguistic consciousness: his abilities through the system of content (aesthetic, modal, expressive, etc.) and formal linguistic means to embody the strategic vision in a unique, non-trivial and creative way. The paper proposes a compromise solution to distinguish between the synergy of averbal (naive, trivial, folk concepts that have not yet undergone the processes of linguocreative semiosis) and verbal (linguistic) concepts. This served as the platform for applying a linguo-epistemic approach to regional literary concept which allows to implement the convergent synergy of two types of concepts, thereby contributing to understanding the literary discourse as the cognitive basis of text generation process.

Engineering practices as a framework for STEM education: a proposal based on epistemic nuances

The role of engineering education has gained prominence within the context of STEM education. New educational perspectives such as the National Research Council’s Framework for K-12 Science Education consider engineering practices one of the central pillars of a sound STEM education. While this idea of developing a set of practices analogous to those of professional engineering resonates with recent views of STEM education research, current approaches such as the NRC’s Framework seem too dependent on and interlinked with the list for scientific practices and adheres to this list too strictly. This paper draws on the NRC’s Framework proposing a new set of engineering practices that seek to incorporate the epistemic nuances that differentiate engineering from science. The nine engineering practices proposed contain epistemological nuances that are missing in other proposals, including essential aspects such as problem scoping, identifying multiple solutions, selecting, testing and improving solutions and materializing solutions. This epistemic approach may facilitate students’ content learning and thinking development, offering a more comprehensive and realistic view of the STEM fields.

An epistemic approach to explaining cooperation in the finitely repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma

We use epistemic game theory to explore rationales behind cooperative behaviors in the finitely repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma. For a class of type structures that are sufficiently rich, the set of outcomes that can arise when each player i is rational and satisfies $$(m_i-1)$$ ( m i - 1 ) th order strong belief of rationality is the set of paths on which each player i defects in the last $$m_i$$ m i rounds. We construct one sufficiently rich type structure to elaborate on how different patterns of cooperative behaviors arise under sufficiently weak epistemic conditions. In this type structure, the optimality of forgiving the opponent’s past defection and the belief that one’s defection will be forgiven account for the richness of the set of behavior outcomes.

Spinoza: A Baconian in the TTP, but Not in the Ethics?

This paper resolves some puzzles regarding Spinoza’s appropriations and rejections of various aspects of Bacon’s methodology, and uses these solutions to resolve some long-standing puzzles concerning Spinoza’s modus operandi in the TTP. We argue first that, appearances to contrary, Spinoza takes a consistent line in his assessment of Bacon’s epistemic approach. We argue that Spinoza follows Bacon in grounding his overall epistemic method in a “historiola mentis” (a brief account or history of the mind), and that differences between Spinoza’s and Bacon’s respective historiola mentis can explain Spinoza’s embrace of this inductive method for his interpretation of Scripture in the TTP, as well as his general abandonment of Bacon’s inductive method in the metaphysical investigation of the Ethics. In short, we argue that the “historiola mentis” constructed by Bacon depicts the intellect as an error-prone faculty that needs be continuously restrained by observation and experimentation—a depiction which motivates Bacon’s reformed inductive empiricism. Spinoza accepts this depiction in regard to a subset of the mind’s ideas—the ideas of the imagination, and hence sees the inductive method as suitable for interpreting Scripture. But contra Bacon, Spinoza’s “historiola mentis” also shows that the human mind includes a subset of ideas that yield true, certain knowledge of things “infinite” and sub specie aeternitatis. Spinoza finds these “intellectual” ideas to be quite useful for systematic metaphysics, but of limited use for interpreting historical texts like Scripture.

Always already post: subaltern epistemologies in cinema curation

The notion of “post-cinema” derives from a modern understanding of media that frames cinema as a homogenous, exclusive totality. This paper proposes an epistemic approach more sensible to cinema’s performative condition based on curatorial practices. It argues for curation as a form of enacted research distributed across the matrix of reproductive practices responsible for keeping the objective coherence of the medium. As such, curation would be able to access subaltern modes of knowledge and challenge the abyssal thinking prevailing within film and media studies.

Deficit of conceivability: response to Bogdan Faul’s article «Minimal dualism and epistemic approach»

The argument in defense of minimal dualism presented in Bogdan Faul’s article presents the idea that we can conceive consciousness existing only in the introspection without a physical body. From that kind of conceivability follows the possibility of consciousness. And this leads to the falsity of physicalism. I argue that Faul’s argument is not fundamentally different from the ghost argument. Then I consider a step from conceivability to possibility and conclude that no argument of conceivability guarantees the possibility that consciousness is non-physical since we lack the epistemic capacity for such a conclusion. In the last part of this article, I discuss three kinds of conceivability. The classification of these kinds of conceivability demonstrates what kind of conceivability we lack for an argument to be sound, and we cannot have such conceivability

Minimal dualism and epistemic approach

In this paper the author presents an argument in favor of minimal dualism — thesis, according to which conscious agents are able to exist without bodies. Author demonstrates the advantages of this argument. Firstly, he shows that this argument is invulnerable to the epistemic strategy of criticizing the conceivability argument. Secondly, the epistemic approach restricts the conceivability of creatures, the possibility of which is incompatible with the minimal dualism

Belief and pluralistic ignorance

Pluralistic ignorance is usually analyzed in terms of social norms. Recently, Bjerring, Hansen and Pedersen (2014) describe and define this phenomenon in terms of beliefs, actions and evidence. Here I apply a basic epistemic approach to belief – believers consider their beliefs to be true –, a basic pragmatic approach to belief – beliefs are useful for believers – and a mixed epistemic-pragmatic approach – believers consider their believes to be true and such considerations are useful – to pluralistic ignorance phenomena. For that, I take the definition given by Bjerring et al. (2014).Keywords: Truth, pragmatism, epistemic belief, pragmatic belief.