Archives For knowledge

A Brief Comment on the Moodey – Collins Exchange on Knowledge, Ilya Kasavin

SERRC —  September 17, 2016 — 2 Comments

Author Information: Ilya Kasavin, Russian Academy of Sciences, itkasavin@gmail.com

Kasavin, Ilya. “A Brief Comment on the Moodey – Collins Exchange on Knowledge.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 5, no. 9 (2016): 18.

The PDF of the article gives specific page numbers. Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-3c6

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In der Bibliothek

Image credit: solar.empire, via flickr

Richard Moodey, in his reply to Harry Collins, wrote:

My disagreement with Collins turns on my denial that “knowledge” is something that can be “possessed,” the same sense that money or physical objects can be possessed. If “knowledge” is imagined to be something that can be possessed, then it follows that it can be possessed by either a collectivity or a person. I do not, however, imagine knowledge to be something that can be possessed. I imagine “knowledge” as inseparable from acts of knowing, as something performed, rather than possessed (42).  Continue Reading…

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Knowledge as It Says on the Tin: Reply to Moodey, Harry Collins

SERRC —  July 20, 2016 — 3 Comments

Author Information: Harry Collins, Cardiff University, CollinsHM@cardiff.ac.uk

Collins, Harry. “Knowledge as It Says on the Tin: Response to Moodey.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 5, no. 7 (2016): 50-51.

The PDF of the article gives specific page numbers. Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-33P

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paint_tins1

Image credit: Abhisek Sarda, via flickr

The problem I am having is that it all seems terribly simple. Think of it like paint—red paint in this tin, blue paint in that tin, green paint in that tin. Take a human and dip it in one tin and it will come out red, dip it in another tin and it will come out blue and so on. The tins are, of course, societies and, of course, societies are more complicated than tins of paint: for one thing society-tins are found at a hugely different scales—some tins being enormous and some being very small. Worse, in the weird multi-dimensional space in which society-type tins exist, tins are found inside other tins are found inside other tins and it is possible humans get dipped into lots of tins at all the different scales at once: this is the fractal model of societies. What you get is that each human winds up coloured by all the different paints it has been dipped into—English speaker, cricketer, Christian, gravitational wave physicist, and so on.  Continue Reading…

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Social Epistemology Transformed: Steve Fuller’s Account of Knowledge as a Divine Spark for Human Domination, William T. Lynch

SERRC —  May 26, 2016 — 2 Comments

Author Information: William T. Lynch, Wayne State University, William.Lynch@wayne.edu

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-2Ze

Editor’s Note: The SERRC thanks Symposion for permitting us to repost Bill Lynch’s essay. Steve Fuller offers a reply.

fuller_knowledge_cover

Image credit: Routledge

Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History
Steve Fuller
Routledge, 2015
304 pp.

Steve Fuller burst onto the academic scene with his provocative synthesis of opposites in Social Epistemology in 1988, which brought together constructivist sociology of science with normative philosophy of science, not to mention analytical and continental philosophy.[1] Defining social epistemology in the book under review as “the normative study of knowledge as a product of social organization,” Fuller can be credited with virtually bringing an entirely new field into existence, founding a journal also called Social Epistemology, which pushed views together that were unpopular in their home fields.[2] Normative philosophy of science was not to be focused on individual knowers and their relationship to an external reality, but should engage in a kind of social and political philosophy of science focused on knowledge’s social organization and its attendant tradeoffs of costs and benefits. Constructivist work in Science and Technology Studies (STS) was not to be focused on case studies emphasizing that science cannot be wrenched from its social context, but should contribute grounds for remaking the knowledge enterprise in ways responsive to our collective input.  Continue Reading…

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Knowing Knowledge Part VIII: Knowing Necessary Possibilities, Adam Riggio and Steve Fuller

SERRC —  May 4, 2015 — 1 Comment

Author Information: Adam Riggio, McMaster University, adamriggio@gmail.com; Steve Fuller, University of Warwick, S.W.Fuller@warwick.ac.uk

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-23w

Editor’s Note:

Adam Riggio

riggio Although I loved our explicitly political discussion of the last couple of dialogues, I want to dive into the final installment of our exchange with some headier philosophy. I particularly want to discuss the power of counter-factual reasoning. Even though you consider this a foundational method for a progressive philosophy of science, I think it eclipses even your own vision. Counter-factual knowledge, I’d go so far as to say, makes a lot of your own vision obsolete.

The conclusion of Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History returns to the vision on which your early chapters focused, the unity of science in humanity’s conception of ourselves in the image of God. Your advocacy of this idea remains a point on which you and I will, I think, always disagree. But once I reached the end of your book, I had many more reasons for my disagreement. Continue Reading…

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Knowing Knowledge Part V: Refuse Simplicity and the Status Quo, Adam Riggio and Steve Fuller

SERRC —  April 17, 2015 — 2 Comments

Author Information: Adam Riggio, McMaster University, adamriggio@gmail.com; Steve Fuller, University of Warwick, S.W.Fuller@warwick.ac.uk

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-22f

Editor’s Note:

Adam Riggio

I‘d like to talk with you about two things. One is to ask you a practical political question, and the second is to have a wider discussion about how philosophy of science and scientific practice influence each other. I’ll start with the practical political question first, because one of the first lessons in writing for the web is to headline your most sensationalistic point.  Continue Reading…

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Cases of Interdisciplinarity: Between Habitus and Reflexion, Ilya Kasavin

SERRC —  February 9, 2015 — 2 Comments

Author Information: Ilya Kasavin, Russian Academy of Sciences, itkasavin@gmail.com

Kasavin, Ilya. “Cases of Interdisciplinarity: Between Habitus and Reflexion.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 4, no. 3 (2015): 15-30.

The PDF of the article gives specific page numbers. Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-1VE

reflexion_trees

Image credit: Mélanie Plante, via flickr

Abstract [1] [2] [3]

Several cases of broadly viewed interdisciplinary research are considered. Discussed are the disciplinary status of natural philosophy in the middle ages; the dispute about witchcraft in the Renaissance; the disciplinary formation of chemistry in the interaction between peripatetics, jatrochemists, spagirists and atomists; and the conceptual shifts in Maxwell’s electrodynamics. These debates are analyzed using two major notions—habitus and reflexion—that differ from those of Bourdieu. Habitus is taken as a methodological attitude based on natural and historically rooted adherence to a theory, or world picture, based on the shared research practice. Reflexion represents a critical and proactionary stance towards a revision of an established theoretical framework, which is irreducible to the logic of rational criticism. Various cases of habitus-reflexion controversy provide a valuable source for a typological picture of interdisciplinary research. And this, in turn, helps clarify the nature of interdisciplinarity in general, given the topicality of this cognitive pattern in the contemporary science.

Interdisciplinary interaction in modern science has become a usual phenomenon deserving more serious philosophical and scientific understanding. Why is an epistemological analysis of interdisciplinary research significant? The rationale for this attention stems from the nonclassical approaches in epistemology and philosophy of science that emphasize the communicative nature of the cognitive process and, moreover, the essential determination of the content of knowledge by various types and forms of communication.  Continue Reading…

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A Further Reply to Rockmore, Ilya Kasavin

SERRC —  April 6, 2013 — 1 Comment

Author Information: Ilya Kasavin, Russian Academy of Sciences itkasavin@gmail.com

Kasavin, Ilya. 2013. “A Further Reply to Rockmore.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 2 (5) 12-14.

The PDF of the article gives specific page numbers. Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-JZ

Please refer to:

It is my pleasure to turn once more to the exchange with Tom Rockmore. I appreciate his critical remarks as they have forced me to express my position more radically.

We agree on a number of points. We both wish to avoid an overly simplistic appeal to a contextual understanding of meaning. But when Rockmore wants to make a stronger claim that context functions not only to understand meaning, but also to justify truth claims, is this really offering a stronger position? Is it reasonable to separate definitively meaning from truth clams? Don’t truth claims have meaning? Continue Reading…

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