Chisholm's Epistemic Principles

Abstract: An exposition and discussion of Chisholm's “epistemic principles.” These are compared with relevant views of Wilfrid Sellars and Richard Foley. A further comparison, with the approach favored by Descartes, is argued to throw light on the status of such principles.     

On the empirical indistinguishability of knowledge structures

In recent years a number of articles have focused on the identifiability of the basic local independence model. The identifiability issue usually concerns two model parameter sets predicting an identical probability distribution on the response patterns. Both parameter sets are applied to the same knowledge structure. However, nothing is known about cases where different knowledge structures predict the same probability distribution. This situation is referred to as ʻempirical indistinguishabilityʼ between two structures and is the main subject of the present paper. Empirical indistinguishability is a stronger form of unidentifiability, which involves not only the parameters, but also the structural and combinatorial properties of the model. In particular, as far as knowledge structures are concerned, a consequence of empirical indistinguishability is that the existence of certain knowledge states cannot be empirically established. Most importantly, it is shown that model identifiability cannot guarantee that a certain knowledge structure is empirically distinguishable from others. The theoretical findings are exemplified in a number of different empirical scenarios.     

Do details bug you? Effects of perceptual richness in learning about biological change

People often have difficulty in understanding processes of biological change, and they typically reject drastic life cycle changes such as metamorphosis, except for animals with which they are familiar. Even after a lesson about metamorphosis, people often do not generalize to animals not seen during the lesson. This might be partially due to the perceptual richness of the diagrams typically used during lessons on metamorphosis, which serves to emphasize the individual animal rather than a class of animals. In two studies, we examined whether the perceptual richness of a diagram influences adults' learning and transfer of knowledge about metamorphosis. One study was conducted in a laboratory setting, and the other was online. In both studies, adults who saw the bland diagram during the lesson accurately transferred more than adults who saw the rich diagram during the lesson.     

Fluctuations of answer and confidence rating in a general-knowledge problem task: Is confidence rating a result of direct memory-relevant output monitoring?

In order to examine whether confidence rating is a result of direct memory-relevant output monitoring, a general-knowledge test was used. A question set was answered in experimental session 1, and the same question set was employed in session 2. Subjects chose one answer from two alternatives. No significant difference in answer accuracy was found between sessions, which suggests that identical information processing was carried out, and that any difference between sessions was based on probabilistic fluctuation. The major results were as follows: (a) In both sessions, answer accuracy was an increasing function of confidence. (b) Answer-change rate (rate of different answers to the same question between sessions) decreased monotonically with confidence. (c) The distributions of confidence rating in session 2, conditional on the rating in session 1, were nearly identical in no-answer-change and answer-change cases. These results suggest that confidence rating is not a result of monitoring memory-relevant output itself but an estimation of possibility of answer fluctuation.     

Narrative Representation and Phenomenological Knowledge

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that narrative representations can provide knowledge in virtue of their narrativity, regardless of their truth value. I set out the question in section 1, distinguishing narrative cognitivism from aesthetic cognitivism and narrative representations from non-narrative representations. Sections 2 and 3 argue that exemplary narratives can provide lucid phenomenological knowledge, which appears to meet both the epistemic and narrativity criteria for the narrative cognitivist thesis. In section 4, I turn to non-narrative representation, focusing on lyric poetry as presenting a disjunctive objection: either lucid phenomenological knowledge can be reduced to identification and fails to meet the epistemic criterion, or lucid phenomenological knowledge is provided in virtue of aesthetic properties and fails to meet the narrativity criterion. I address both of these problems in sections 5 and 6, and I close with a tentative suggestion as to how my argument for narrative cognitivism could be employed as an argument for aesthetic cognitivism.     

From My Place: Teaching the Holocaust and Judaism at the University of Mississippi Fifty‐Three Years after James Meredith

This essay explores classroom dynamics when students identify and connect their own painful experiences to structural racism or ethnocentrism exhibited in the Holocaust or parts of Jewish history. The intrusion of this proximal knowledge can be an obstacle to student learning. If engaged by professors, however, I argue that proximal knowledge can be a catalyst that promotes learning. Social scientific theory provides a useful lens for helping students to better grasp and contextualize both their old experiences and the new materials that are being taught in the course within the larger structural frames of race, religion, and ethnicity that they have selected, but may not fully appreciate. Reflective guided journaling is an essential part of the learning experience.     

Expertise in soccer teams: A thematic inquiry into the role of Shared Mental Models within team chemistry

AimsThe purpose of the current study was to establish a conceptual framework of team chemistry components in sport with an emphasis on Shared Mental Models (SMM).MethodElite soccer coaches (n = 6) and players (n = 3) were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. An inductive thematic analysis was employed to analyze the data.ResultsFour themes related to team chemistry components were identified: (1) members' characteristics (i.e., demographic data, on-field characteristics, and member's ego), (2) coach–players interactions (i.e., professional interaction and emotional intelligence of coaches), (3) interactions among the players (i.e., professional understanding, efficacy beliefs, team cohesion, players' emotional intelligence, team roles, and goals), and (4) interactions with environmental factors (i.e., owners, management, fans, and media).ConclusionsThe cognitive components of the team chemistry model were clustered to establish a conceptual framework of SMM. Furthermore, the cognitive-affective-social-behavioral linkage of team chemistry and athletic performance is examined in light of the emerged model and conceptual framework. Implications and future directions are also discussed.