Philosophy of Social Science, Miscellaneous

A obra de Max Weber abarca um amplo arco de disciplinas, expedientes metodológicos e problemas, que sempre manifestaram força para se interpretar o Brasil. Contudo, para se entender o weberianismo que aqui se formou, não podemos cobrar, dos que o impulsionaram e o desdobraram em diversas direções, uma fidelidade ingênua ou puritana à matriz construída por Weber. Não queremos usar aqui a metáfora da antropofagia, já tão recoberta de significados emblemáticos. Mas a verdade é que o pensamento nacional, produzido fora (...) e dentro das universidades, sempre devorou o pensamento de Max Weber, sem – e esse é um extraordinário mérito – se preocupar como ele teria de ser digerido junto ao material ao qual ele tinha que ser imiscuído. Por isso, sempre será interminável e indecidível a discussão sobre se determinado pensamento expressa bem ou de modo inapropriado os propósitos de Max Weber. Por outro lado, do ponto de vista da compreensão da nossa singularidade, é irrecusável que, pelas necessidades de discutirmos assuntos e temas tipicamente nossos, o pensamento weberiano teve de ser reinventado no Brasil, tendo-lhe sido agregadas perspectivas e inovações originais que somente por nossas mãos e nossos olhos poderiam ter sido construídas. Os impactos e absorções da modernidade em território tão diversificado como o nosso, ou as aderências e recusas aos aspectos políticos, econômicos e culturais da globalização, também formam o quadro das preocupações recentes que retratam a apreensão do pensamento de Weber entre nós. Esse livro documenta, portanto, esse fato, a saber, de que a interpretação da obra de Weber já ganhou uma dimensão singular no Brasil, de tal forma que, por desregrados desdobramentos, já se tornou inseparável de muitos modos significativos de se interpretar a nossa realidade. (shrink)

Știința și pseudoștiința sunt doi termeni adesea folosiți pentru a descrie căutarea cunoașterii și înțelegerii în lume. Deși ambele pot părea similare la prima vedere, ele sunt fundamental diferite în abordarea lor, metodologia și fiabilitatea constatărilor lor. Acest eseu își propune să exploreze distincțiile dintre știință și pseudoștiință, impactul lor asupra societății și importanța gândirii critice în diferențierea dintre ele.

This interdisciplinary edited collection addresses issues at the intersection of indigenous psychology, market ideology, values, and technology. The aims of this book arise from the recognition that whereas the unfolding of the agricultural revolution over thousands of years allowed for the gradual co-evolution of values and technology to blossom, the post-industrial technological revolution is so accelerated that there has been little time for the co-evolution of values. To address this, the chapters collected here seek to initiate a conversation that will (...) provide the conceptual space for the evolution of values that can keep pace with contemporary developments in the machine and the market. In this conversation, they argue, indigenous psychologies will necessarily play a central role for two reasons: firstly, as alternative systems of thought they enable a productive interrogation of the rationality of machine and the market; and second, examples of the impact of technology and the market on traditional societies hold lessons for potential future impacts on the society as a whole. This timely work offers fresh insights that will appeal to students and scholars of psychology, cultural and religious studies, anthropology, business and economics, and science and technology studies. (shrink)

Polarization poses a critical threat to the stability of nations around the world, as it impacts climate change, populism, democracy, and global health. This perspective examines the conceptual understanding, measurement challenges, and potential interventions for polarization. Our analysis highlights the distinction and interactions between the individual and collective levels of polarization, conceptually, methodologically, and in terms of interventions. We conclude by pointing out future directions for understanding polarization and highlighting the interrelations between polarization and other social phenomena. -/- .

To better navigate social interactions, we routinely (consciously or unconsciously) categorize people based on their distinctive features. One important way we do this is by ascribing political orientations to them. For example, based on certain behavioral cues, we might perceive someone as politically liberal, progressive, conservative, libertarian, Marxist, anarchist, or fascist. Although such ascriptions may appear to be mere descriptions, I argue that they can have deeper, regulative effects on their targets, potentially politicizing and polarizing them in ways that remain (...) underexplored in research on political polarization. To capture this dynamic, I introduce the notion of ‘politicizing mindshaping,’ distinguish it from other types of politicization, and review evidence suggesting that politicizing mindshaping is likely common. Finally, I contend that the pernicious effects of politicizing mindshaping may currently be significantly underestimated. This is because, unlike in many other cases of social labeling, negativity in political labeling is, to some extent, widely tolerated – even encouraged – and largely unconstrained by social norms in democratic countries. (shrink)

Revista Intelligence Info este o publicație trimestrială din domeniile intelligence, geopolitică și securitate, și domenii conexe de studiu și practică. -/- Cuprins: -/- EDITORIAL / EDITORIAL -/- Nicolae SFETCU The Role of Polanyi’s Tacit Knowledge in Intelligence Analysis Rolul cunoașterii tacite a lui Polanyi în analiza informațiilor -/- INTELLIGENCE / INTELLIGENCE -/- Tănase TIBERIU Principles, methods and means of intelligence activity in the Russian Federation and Israel Principii, metode și mijloace ale activității informative în Federația Rusă și Israel -/- Tănase (...) TIBERIU Considerations on intelligence and anticipation Considerații privind intelligence și anticiparea -/- ISTORIA / HISTORY -/- Tănase TIBERIU The continuity of the KGB in the 20th century – Descendants of the KGB Continuitatea KGB-lui în secolul XX –Urmașele KGB ului -/- Lucian Ștefan COZMA, Daniela Georgiana GOLEA The Real History of the Romteleghid Project: 1 – Geophysical Aggression Istoria reală a proiectului Romteleghid: 1 – Agresiunea geofizică -/- GEOPOLITICA / GEOPOLITICS -/- Emilian M. DOBRESCU Rare Earths in Other Countries Except China Pământuri rare în alte țări, cu excepția Chinei -/- SECURITATE / SECURITY -/- Nicolae SFETCU Advanced Cognitive Electronic Warfare: Enhancing Strategic Superiority Through Intelligent Systems Războiul electronic cognitiv avansat: sporirea superiorității strategice prin sisteme inteligente -/- ȘTIINȚA INFORMAȚIEI / INFORMATION SCIENCE -/- Nicolae SFETCU The Influence of Artificial Intelligence on Human Activity and Human Intelligence Influența inteligenței artificiale asupra activității umane și a inteligenței umane -/- ISSN 2821-8159 ISSN-L 2821-8159, DOI: 10.58679/II12575. (shrink)

The chaotic situation of today’s VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) and TUNA (Turbulent, Uncertain, Novel, Ambiguous) world is bringing more and more active and passive reforms, including positive and negative aspects, that reform business models. Educational institutions are not exceptional. Regarding the nature of educational institutions’ operation in today’s rapidly changing context, school leaders also need to raise concerns similar to those of business managers from other industries: “How do their institutions continuously renovate to adapt to tomorrow’s world?” Thus, (...) based on organisational learning theories, this project aims to establish a framework to evaluate educational leadership’s influence on the organisational knowledge circulation effectiveness within the K-12 education context. The study combines a structured literature review, bibliometrics analysis, and high-order structural equation model analysis on the survey for teachers among Vietnamese public and private K-12 schools. First, this project proposed and validated a toolset to measure educational leadership as a combination of principalship and teacher leadership. Second, it revealed new insights about the impacts of educational leadership, knowledge circulation, and school culture on teachers’ job satisfaction. The project also offers insights into teachers’ professional development activities across various school types and grade levels in Vietnam, which contribute to further continuous renovation of Vietnamese K-12 schools, and diversify the corpus of educational leadership studies. This project’s results extended the applications of organisational learning theories in K-12 education, as well as can be adopted to establish further knowledge management frameworks in other settings such as higher education or vocational education. (shrink)

The commentaries provided by Haig; Derksen and Morawski; and Trafimow vary considerably in how they address critical realism and its implications for replication. Haig’s preference for Kaidesoja’s “naturalised” version of critical realism and Lipton’s inference to the best explanation is deeply problematic. While Derksen and Morawski concede that they deal only indirectly with critical realism, their endorsement of “performativity” negates it. In Trafimow’s case, ontology’s regulative role is untenably diminished and ultimately supplanted by classic methodologism. I conclude that replication should (...) be replaced by exploratory stratified contextualism. (shrink)

The pace of technological change continues to outstrip the evolution of democratic institutions, creating an urgent need for innovative approaches to democratic reform. However, the experimentation bottleneck - characterized by slow speed, high costs, limited scalability, and ethical risks - has long hindered progress in democracy research. This paper proposes a novel solution: employing generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to create synthetic data through the simulation of digital homunculi, GenAI-powered entities designed to mimic human behavior in social contexts. By enabling rapid, (...) low-risk experimentation with alternative institutional designs, this approach could significantly accelerate democratic innovation. I examine the potential of GenAI-assisted research to mitigate current limitations in democratic experimentation, including the ability to simulate large-scale societal interactions and test complex institutional mechanisms. While acknowledging potential risks such as algorithmic bias, reproducibility challenges, and AI alignment issues, I argue that the benefits of synthetic data are likely to outweigh their drawbacks if implemented with proper caution. To address existing challenges, I propose a range of technical, methodological, and institutional adaptations. The paper concludes with a call for interdisciplinary collaboration in the development and implementation of GenAI-assisted methods in democracy research, highlighting their potential to bridge the gap between democratic theory and practice in an era of rapid technological change. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Wes Sharrock has, following in the footsteps of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Peter Winch and Harold Garfinkel, sought to argue against accounts of the identity of an action which are the products of a social theory, a specific methodology or what Garfinkel termed formal analysis. In contrast, much of contemporary social science and social theory is grounded in a belief that ordinary or competent members of societies are unreliable authorities on the identity of their own and others’ actions because (...) they are subject to systems of sociological refraction. The idea being that ordinary members of society are systematically misled as to the identity of their actions and those of their peers because they—or their perceptions of actions—are subject to the refractive properties of (for example) ideology, or folk theories of action, and so on. In this paper, I subject to analysis this core commitment of much social science and social theory. (shrink)

El artículo realiza una aproximación a la controversia sobre la teleología (teoría de los fines) en la obra científica y filosófica de Karl Marx y Friedrich Engels. Equidistante de las interpretaciones marxistas y marxólogas que niegan la teleología como los que afirman la teleología bajo los postulados de la filosofía liberal, se defiende la noción de una teoría abierta de los fines de la historia y el fin de la historia en los autores. Primero, se introduce el problema sobre la (...) controversia de la teleología, sus contornos y entornos de la modernidad y su finitud. Segundo, se exponen los argumentos de los intérpretes del final cerrado y su lectura de las obras clásicas. Tercero, se contraargumenta defendiendo el final abierto y su sentido hermenéutico. Cuarto y último, se realiza una reflexión del sentido ontológico, epistemológico, metodológico y político del teleologismo en Marx y Engels e implicaciones de esta controversia en la filosofía de las ciencias sociales y la filosofía de la historia. (shrink)

本研究將先介紹筆者的語言學碩士論文（連，2023），如何分析《東吳哲學學報》2017年至2021年西方哲學論文摘要語體的修辭語步特徵與提供寫作建議，並試圖從哲學圈內人的角度，對連（2023）的哲學寫作 建議進行批判性的反思，探討哲學教師或新手哲學家可以如何看待華文哲學論文摘要的寫作建議。接著，筆者將問題聚焦在跨領域學科（應用語言學統計結果與哲學論文寫作）之間的哲學問題，即——哲學家應如何看待語言學家 針對哲學論文的研究結果。筆者將考慮領域間研究（IDR）的語言與詞語概念關係。而藉由討論上述跨領域研究中語義直覺分歧的問題，筆者提出了三種可能的哲學態度：(1)服從科學權威、(2)尊重特定領域用詞、(3 )質疑邊緣科學理論。筆者認為，上述三種態度對於哲學家如何看待「方法(M)」和「結論(C)」這兩項跨領域語義概念分歧和可能理論分歧有著重要的影響。筆者希冀藉由提出相關解決方案來尋求「理論統一」或「領域整 合」的可行性，最終得以促進跨領域合作與跨學門間良好學術交流的互動成長。 -/- 關鍵詞：領域間研究（IDR）、應用語言學、哲學寫作、語體分析、修辭語步 .

Le présent travail s'inscrit à l'intersection de deux problèmes épistémologiques majeurs. D'une part, le problème de la démarcation scientifique, qui consiste à identifier ce qui distingue intrinsèquement un système (un énoncé, une théorie, ...) scientifique d'un système non scientifique ou pseudo-scientifique. D'autre part, le problème de l'unité épistémologique des sciences, qui consiste à se demander si toutes les disciplines à vocation scientifique peuvent être vues comme des instanciations d'une notion unique de la scientificité. Ces deux problèmes ont soulevé de nombreux (...) débats ayant mis en évidence un ensemble important de difficultés. Le terme « scientifique » désigne en effet des méthodes empiriques, des constructions théoriques et des pratiques de recherche si hétérogènes qu’il semble voué à l’échec d’en chercher une définition aisée à circonscrire. De plus, les objets des disciplines scientifiques sont eux-mêmes de natures très diverses, ce qui semble rendre pareillement caduque toute recherche d’un concept unique de science qui pourrait s’appliquer indépendamment de la discipline en question. Dans cette thèse, je me propose de prendre à contre-pied cet état de fait en soutenant la possibilité et la pertinence d'un modèle unitaire de la scientificité, tout en me restreignant à une approche épistémologique comparée entre les sciences physiques et les sciences sociales. Pour défendre mon propos, j’ai mobilisé deux types de réponses pouvant être opposées au constat présenté plus haut. D’une part, des réponses de principe, où j’examine et m’oppose à des arguments théoriques soutenant l’impossibilité ou en tout cas la difficulté de définir la scientificité en général, et la nécessité pour les sciences sociales de jouir d’une définition à part. D’autre part, je mobilise également des réponses par l’exemple. J’étudie alors plus en détail l’approche dite « analytique » en sociologie. Ce courant a cela d’intéressant pour mon propos qu’il ne semble pas nécessiter d’épistémologie alternative à celle ayant cours, par exemple, en physique ou en biologie, tout en prétendant bien produire des connaissances sur le monde social. Il s’agit donc d’un contre-exemple concret et manifeste de la thèse soutenant que la sociologie ne peut pas jouir du même type d’épistémologie que les autres disciplines. Plus concrètement, j’élabore un (méta-)modèle unitaire de la scientificité en me concentrant sur une unité d’analyse bien circonscrite : les modèles. Je distingue chez ses derniers, classiquement, deux composantes principales : une composante empirique, qui a pour vocation à identifier des régularités dans le réel auquel on a accès à travers des données, et une composante théorique, à visée explicative et classificatoire. Je propose alors de construire formellement un degré de scientificité global dans lequel se combinent la maximisation d’une certaine quantité d’information définie sur la composante empirique et un critère d’invariance structurelle défini sur la composante théorique. Ces diverses constructions, bien que formelles, permettent d’éclairer efficacement les questions épistémologiques que je me suis données au départ de mon travail, ce dernier ayant vocation à constituer une étape supplémentaire vers un modèle unitaire de la scientificité. (shrink)

Searle claims that his theory of institutional reality is particularly suitable as a theoretical scheme of individuation for work in the social sciences. We argue that this is not the case. The first problem with regulatory individuation is due to the familiar fact that institutional judgments have constrained revisability criteria. The second problem with regulatory individuation is due to the fact that institutions amend their declarative judgments based on the inferential (syntactic) properties of the judgments and in response to regulatory (...) pressure, and not based on descriptive (semantic) properties and in response to matters of descriptive adequacy. These two problems imply that ‘regulatory kinds' (countries, borders, kings) will almost inevitably be disjunctive kinds that are ill-suited for scientific theorizing. This also explains why the law often makes odd pronouncements, e.g. calling ketchup a vegetable, considering an arm bent fifteen degrees to be straight, and not admitting that Somaliland is a country. (shrink)

East Asia’s economy is leading the world into the new Asian century. While meritocratic practices in the educational and private sectors are often considered pivotal conditions for East Asia’s economic success, experts have pointed out that the path ahead requires new approaches to ensure social cohesion and stability, which depend on the quality of relations across social divides. These considerations raise multiple questions for philosophers: What forms of social meritocracy are necessary to sustain social cohesion? Moreover, how can the detrimental (...) effects of meritocratic practices be contained? Is it possible to utilise some of the intellectual resources indigenous to East Asia to generate innovative solutions? This paper argues that the answers to these questions lie in the indigenous Confucian conceptual resources. Confucian ideas can inspire a more desirable societal ideal for the future of East Asia. In particular, the Confucian emphasis on cultivating reciprocal harmonious human relationships and others’ morality can guide new approaches to fostering social cohesion. As Confucian personal cultivation through harmonious relations is a process of social cohesion, these ideas inspire a) a multiple approach to policymaking that is not only grounded in economic redistribution, b) a richer understanding of societal progress, and c) a democratic approach to fostering social cohesion. Unlike Confucian meritocrats and scholars who defend the Confucian roots of East Asian forms of political and social meritocracy, this paper proves that Confucian conceptual resources can help formulate a societal vision that strengthens cohesion and mitigates the adverse effects of meritocratic practices. (shrink)

Dunia telah menyaksikan terjadinya bencana lingkungan hidup, seperti yang tampak pada kejadian krisis iklim dan hilangnya keanekaragaman hayati. Permasalahan ini telah melewati tahap yang sudah tidak dapat dikembalikan lagi sebagai akibat dari aktivitas antropogenik. Dalam Nature’s World View (Volume 577, 295, 2020), Shah menegaskan bahwa permasalahan lingkungan global tidak hanya membutuhkan ilmu alam tetapi juga ilmu sosial dan humaniora untuk menanganinya. Ditulis pada Hari Ilmu Pengetahuan dan Teknologi Vietnam, dan berdasarkan pengalaman kami dalam melakukan penelitian, penyuntingan, dan peninjauan, dan untuk (...) membantu para ilmuwan pemula, kami ingin mengusulkan lima prinsip yang dapat membantu kita dalam memanfaatkan kekuatan ilmu sosial dan humaniora untuk membangun budaya surplus lingkungan. Budaya sangat penting untuk mempromosikan kegiatan pelestarian keanekaragaman hayati dan mitigasi perubahan iklim [2]. (shrink)

Friedrich Stadler und sein Team schließen über 40 Jahre nach Präsentation der ersten beiden Bände das von Rudolf Haller initiierte Projekt einer umfassenden Werkschau Otto Neuraths (1882–1945) ab. In acht Bänden wird auf fast 5.000 Seiten das Schaffen eines Polyhistors dokumentiert und zugänglich gemacht, dessen intellektueller Spannweite man nicht einmal gerecht wird, wenn man ihn als Philosophen, Nationalökonomen, Gesellschaftstechniker und Aufklärer bezeichnet.

Neste livro reunimos alguns dos trabalhos apresentados no GT Filosofia, História e Sociologia da Ciência e da Tecnologia, durante o XIX Encontro Nacional da ANPOF, realizado em Goiânia, de 10 a 14 de outubro de 2022. Agradecemos aos autores e às autoras que contribuíram com seus textos para a realização deste projeto. Esperamos que os leitores e as leitoras aproveitem o rico material filosófico presente neste livro.

It has a long history for the exploration of the origin and essence of human consciousness with different definitions and explanations in various fields such as philosophy, medicine, sociology, biology, and psychology. However, all of them had not been recognized so far. The main reason is that the complexity of consciousness leads to the inability of various fields to understand its essence fully, reasonably, and comprehensively, and there are still significant differences for it, and which have become an eternal mystery. (...) So, it is necessary to delve deeper into it. Here we show that this article concludes that the origin of consciousness comes from natural matter, the essence of consciousness is material information, the ability of consciousness is the degree to which the complexity and orderliness of material information are utilized, and consciousness has the attributes of congenital, materiality, systematicness, complexity, dynamics, difference, and selfness according to the analysis, summary and induction of knowledge from various disciplines. (shrink)

In an era of dramatic technological progress, the consequent economic transformations, and an increasing need for an adaptable workforce, the importance of education has risen to the forefront of the social discourse. The concurrent increase in the awareness of issues pertaining to social justice and the debate over what this justice entails and how it ought to be effected, feed into the education policy more than ever before. From the nexus of the aforementioned considerations, a concern over the so-called education (...) gap has emerged, with worldwide efforts to close it. I analyse the premises behind such efforts and demonstrate that they are founded upon fundamentally flawed ideas. I show that in a society in which education is delivered equitably, education gaps emerge naturally as a consequence of differentiation due to talents, the tendency for matched mate selection, and the heritability of intellectual traits. Hence, I issue a call for a refocusing of efforts from the ill-founded idea of closing the education gap, to the understanding of the magnitude of its unfair contributions, as well as to those social aspects which can modulate it in accordance to what a society deems fair according to its values. (shrink)

This chapter begins by sketching an account of morally responsible agency and the general conditions under which it may fail. We discuss how far individuals with psychiatric diagnoses may be exempt from morally responsible agency in the way that infants are, with examples drawn from a sample of diagnoses intended to make dierent issues salient. We further discuss a recent proposal that clinicians may hold patients responsible without blaming them for their acts. We also consider cognitively impaired subjects in the (...) light of related issues in moral and political theory, asking whether they have been unjustly excluded from liberal conceptions of political community due to their presumed lack of agency. (shrink)

In de afgelopen tijd is compensatoir toetsen in het Nederlandse onderwijs een populaire toetsvorm geworden. Hierbij slaagt een student voor een reeks toetsen indien het gemiddelde op deze reeks voldoende is. In deze analyse betogen wij dat het compensatoire systeem echter zowel onverdedigbaar als moreel gezien onverantwoordelijk is. Het grote gevaar van compensatoire toetsregimes is namelijk dat het hiaten in kennis en vaardigheden tolereert, wat de validiteit van een diploma ondermijnt en bovendien medeburgers in gevaar brengt.

All theory makes assumptions about the nature of reality (either implicitly or explicitly) and such ontological assumptions necessarily regulate how one studies the things and events under investigation. Successful study is inex- tricably dependent upon an adequate ontology. As Bryant neatly puts it, "Effective application, in turn, is connected with adequate working assumptions about the constitution of society. Argument about the constitution of society is thus not a recondite activity which most sociologists [and organi- sation theorists] can safely ignore" (1995: (...) 58, interpolation added). The central concern in this paper is with the ontological underpinnings of much of the current literature in organisation studies in respect of struc- ture and culture. It will be argued that conflation of irreducible and causally-efficacious strata of social reality in the shape of social structure and culture permeates much of the current literature, thus rendering analysis of the interplay between them and their relationship with human agency diffi- cult to elucidate. The ontological underpinnings of organisational analysis have arguably turned full circle from the depth of social reality acknowl- edged by functionalism, structural Marxism and systems theory to the generic endorsement of Giddens’ structuration theory. As will be argued, Giddens’ theory entails a depthless ontology, which necessarily precludes methodological prescription. (shrink)

تقديم منذ القدم اعتنت الحضارات بالتربية، وأنشأت لذلك مؤسسات تفي بغرض تعليم المهارات والكفايات، وإعادة إنتاج المجتمع. وقد كان ذلك تحت ضغط حاجة الاجتماع، وإقامة المدن والدول، وتجويد الصناعات والمهن. لقد كانت المجتمعات البسيطة، المبنية على العيش وفق ما تهبه الطبيعة مباشرة، بغير حاجة إلى مؤسسات تعلم كيفية اصطياد حيوان أو جني فاكهة أو حفر جذور نبات، حيث كان القدماء والراشدون يمررون المهارات بالقدوة والتقليد، والصغار يتعلمون بالمحاولة والخطأ. وما أن بنيت القرى الأولى وبدأ الإنسان يدجن النبات والحيوان، حتى بدأ (...) التفكير في تجمعات كبرى تسهل حفظ المؤون والدفاع عن النفس والتجارة. مع المدينة والتجارة كان لابد من اختراع الكتابة للتوثيق وحفظ الحقوق. ومع كل ذلك لابد من دولة ترعى هذه الحقوق وتضمن تنفيذها بالقضاء والشرطة، وتنظيمها بالإدارة. فكان لابد أن تظهر المدارس لتخريج الموظفين الإداريين والكتبة كما هو الأمر في الصين القديمة. المدرسة الأولى إذا ارتبطت بالإدارة والسلطة، وبذلك يروي المؤرخون صرامتها الأصلية واقترابها من الجندية، خاصة في مباريات الموظفين الكبار والمتوسطي Le mandarins في الصين القديمة. مع الحضارة اليونانية لا يمكن إلا أن نقف عند تجربتين فريدتين وهما مؤسستا الأكاديميا لأفلاطون، والتي كانت مؤسسة فيها قاعات للدراسة وملعبا رياضيا ومواقع دينية ومكتبة، وتقام فيها دروس وألعاب ومحاضرات. وكما اشترط أفلاطون الهندسة على من أراد أن يتابع الدروس، فقد كانت الرياضيات مادة أساسية في الجامعة. ومن الكتب التي وصلتنا من أفلاطون نفهم الطابع التجريدي القوي للتعلمات، وكذلك الاتجاه السياسي المحافظ. أما ليسي أرسطو، والذي كان يسمى أيضا بالمدرسة المشائية، فقد كان مؤسسة تكاد تكون مثل الجامعات العصرية، بقاعات وممرات للمشي والحوار. وفي المؤسسة متحف ومكتبة. وقد توزعت الدروس بين الفلسفة والبلاغة والشعر والرياضيات والطب والجدل وعلم الفلك والحياة والنبات والأخلاق والسياسة. ولم يكن الليسي يشمل التدريس فحسب، بل وكذلك البحث والتصنيف خاصة. وحتى نفهم المدرسة الأرسطية لابد من ربطها بعلاقتها بالأمبراطورية الأسكندرية إرادة وتمويلا، ومن ثمة كونها كانت رغبة استمرار السلطة لدولة فيليب وللأرستقراطية الأثينية. أما في القرون الوسطى سيتكفل الدين بالتربية وتلقين المعارف: سواء على مستوى الاعتقاد والقيم والأخلاق، أم على مستوى التشريع، أو العلوم. فيتخرج من الجامعات الإسلامية، أو من الكنائس، أو البيع، مفسرون للكتب المقدسة، ومؤرخو حياة الأنبياء والصحابة والأحبار والكهنة. ونبغ علماء لغة ونحو وبيان وأدب، وكان ذلك غالبا لفهم النصوص المرجعية، وبعض المتعة للطلبة والمتأدبين. وانفجر من ذلك كله الفقه لربط الأعمال اليومية بالسنن الدينية، ولتنظيم الحياة الاجتماعية والاقتصادية وشؤون الملك والسلطان. فانتشرت المدنية واتسعت الحضارة واطلع الخريجون على علوم الأمم الأخرى بالترجمة، فظهرت الإلهيات والفلسفة والمنطق. وتطور حسن معاش الناس فظهر الطب والرياضيات والصيدلة والكيمياء والفيزياء. وكان كل ذلك تحت رقابة الفقهاء والقساوسة والكهنة حتى لا تزيغ المعرفة عن الدين في جانبه الأيديولوجي خاصة. د. بن محمد قسطاني أستاذ باحث في علم الاجتماع والأنثروبولوجيا . (shrink)

This book is a methodological guide for the emerging, interdisciplinary science of virtue traits and their value. The authors situate this emerging empirical field in the history of psychology, critically survey existing work, defend the scientific validity of virtue science, and develop a general model that can guide, unify, and catalyze future research. In addition, chapters discuss how philosophy and philosophers can contribute to empirical inquiry and how a mature science of virtue could inform moral philosophy. The book is co-authored (...) by two psychologists and a philosopher who pursued joint empirical work on fairness and then began to discuss larger methodological issues raised by that collaboration. -/- o Expected publication date: January 31, 2024 o Paperback ISBN: 1108747981. (shrink)

In this paper, I expand my upon earlier linguistic research (Lian, 2023), which delved into the genre of abstracts from Western philosophical papers. I engage with the philosophical ramifications emanating from the guidelines established for crafting philosophy paper abstracts (Lian, 2023) and underscore their significance in the domain of academic philosophical writing. A pivotal focus of this research is to navigate the intricate philosophical challenges posed by cross-disciplinary investigations bridging applied linguistic statistics with philosophical paper composition, specifically, the nuanced interpretation (...) of linguistic findings in a manner palatable to philosophers. My exploration probes into the dynamics of various concepts within Inter-Disciplinary Research (IDR), highlighting the complexities in reconciling semantic intuitions related to the notions of "Method (M)" and "Conclusion (C)". I delineate three philosophical stances: (1) deferring to scientific authority, (2) recognizing domain-specific terminologies, and (3) interrogating peripheral scientific theories. I posit that these stances significantly influence the ways philosophers engage with and resolve the cross-disciplinary semantic and theoretical contentions stemming from the rhetorical structures of "Method (M)" and "Conclusion (C)". This work proposes avenues to attain either "theoretical coherence" or "disciplinary synthesis", thereby fostering enhanced cross-disciplinary collaboration and fortifying academic discourse across diverse fields. -/- Keywords: Inter-Disciplinary Research (IDR), Applied linguistics, Philosophical writing, Genre Analysis, Rhetorical Moves . (shrink)

Events regarding individuals’ preferences that do not always follow from standard measures such as “value of statistical life” or “quality-adjusted life years” as well as events that occur in some market-related settings which distort the information conveyed by price mechanisms, suggest that a notable chunk of what Hayek called “local knowledge” remains inaccessible by scientific tools and that only the individuals who interact in these local frameworks can have access to it. This casts serious doubt on the epistemic possibility of (...) economic calculation for if events in the local world do not observe the economic models, it is hard to see how central planners can have knowledge on them. Refined modeling strategies and cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence systems do not manage to overcome this hurdle. They may provide huge datasets in a data model, but since not all events represented in the data model are embeddable in known economic models, the knowledge problem is not evaded. Even if a theory ever manages to capture all possible events as they appear in the data model then we are left with a relationship between models (the theoretical model and the data model) with no direct access to the local world and thus the problem of accessibility of local knowledge remains unresolved. (shrink)

En cada página de este volumen sobre las concepciones filosóficas,psicológicas, políticas y sociológicas, se puede encontrar una serie de plan-teamientos, perspectivas y dudas que permitirán emprender nuevos abor-dajes investigativos que coadyuvarán para la comprensión de la esencia, delsentido y del significado del rol de la familia en el actual escenario signadopor la tendencia creciente en ciencia y en tecnología, mismas que, paulatinamente han ido transformando las diferentes formas de vivir, de ser, deenseñar y de aprender del ser humano. Nos encontramos (...) viviendo en unasociedad que exige el desarrollo de competencias diversas para responder alos nuevos requerimientos de la época, un contexto que evidencia el advenimiento de una verdadera revolución cognitiva, praxológica y metodológica que en conjunto va configurando un sujeto diferente. (shrink)

Dai 1-kan. Genshōgaku kenkyū -- dai 2-kan. Hēgeru kenkyū -- dai 3-kan. Hyōgenteki sekai no ronri -- dai 4-kan. Shakai sonzairon -- dai 5-kan. Nishida tetsugakuron -- dai 6-kan. Shakai to jitsuzon -- dai 7-kan. Rinri to kyōiku -- dai 8-kan. Zentaiteki ningen no tetsugaku -- dai 9-kan. Ningen to shizen.

El capítulo aborda el fenómeno de la festividad desde tres referentes: el tiempo, la religiosidad y el sentido de la fiesta. Respeto a los tiempos de las festividades se resalta que, son estas las que generan y recrean esos espacios necesarios alejados de la normalidad, respondiendo al criterio cíclico y repetitivo de la tradición cultural. Desde el carácter de la religiosidad el tiempo de la fiesta crea una ruptura entre el tiempo profano y el tiempo litúrgico, y con la celebración (...) de este segundo se induce a los pueblos a alcanzar, de alguna forma, la misma eternidad de aquello que conciben como sagrado. Por último, el sentido profundo de la fiesta involucra también un proceso de renovación comunitaria, que depende en gran medida de las disipaciones que trae consigo el tiempo festivo y de las connotaciones particulares de cada cultura para hacer de ello un espacio de purificación del ser social. (shrink)

Social phenomena—quite like mental states in the philosophy of mind—are often regarded as potential troublemakers from the start, particularly if they are approached with certain explanatory commitments, such as naturalism or social individualism, already in place. In this paper, we argue that such explanatory constraints should be at least initially bracketed if we are to arrive at an adequate non-biased description of social phenomena. Legitimate explanatory projects, or so we maintain, such as those of making the social world fit within (...) the natural world with the help of, e.g., collective intentionality, social individualism, and the like, should neither exclude nor influence the prior description of social phenomena. Just as we need a description of the mental that is not biased, for example, by (anti)physicalist constraints, we need a description of the social that is not biased, for example, by (anti)individualist or (anti)naturalist commitments. Descriptive social ontology, as we shall conceive of it, is not incompatible with the adoption of explanatory frameworks in social ontology; rather, the descriptive task, according to our conception, ought to be recognized as prior to the explanatory project in the order of inquiry. If social phenomena are, for example, to be reduced to nonsocial (e.g., psychological or physical) phenomena, we need first to understand clearly what the social candidates for the reduction in question are. While such descriptive or naive approaches have been influential in general metaphysics (see Fine 2017), they have so far not been prominent in analytic social ontology (though things are different outside of analytic philosophy, see esp. Reinach (1913). In what follows, we shall outline the contours of a descriptive approach by arguing, first, that description and explanation need to be distinguished as two distinct ways of engaging with social phenomena. Secondly, we defend the claim that the descriptive project ought to be regarded as prior to the explanatory project in the order of inquiry. We begin, in Section 2, by considering two different ways of engaging with mental phenomena: a descriptive approach taken by descriptive psychology and an explanatory approach utilized in analytic philosophy of mind. We take these two ways of approaching the study of the mind to be analogous to the distinction we want to draw in social ontology between a descriptive and an explanatory approach to the study of social phenomena. We consider next, in Section 3, how our approach compares to neighboring perspectives that are familiar to us from general metaphysics and philosophy more broadly, such as Aristotle’s emphasis on “saving the appearances”, Strawson’s distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics, as well as Fine’s contrast between na¨ive and foundational metaphysics. In Section 4, we apply the proposed descriptive/explanatory distinction to the domain of social ontology and argue that descriptive social ontology ought to take precedence in the order of inquiry over explanatory social ontology. Finally, in Section 5, we consider and respond to several objections to which our account might seem to be susceptible. (shrink)

Humans are social beings. However, we are not alone in the realm of social reality; we share this space with diverse entities, including more than just animals. The term "social" has recently been applied to describe the collective behaviors of microorganisms and plants, as well as interactions among parts and groups of organisms. Therefore, there is a need to develop a framework that enables the study of social phenomena in a clearer and less restrictive manner. In this thesis, I lay (...) the groundwork for such a framework by describing the basic building blocks of social systems and their implications in the study of social behavior. This project necessitates breaking down disciplinary boundaries between the biological, cognitive, and social sciences to provide a more comprehensive perspective on the social phenomenon. In Part I, I review recent proposals that describe social systems based on interactions. I argue that these models can be extended to other interactive systems beyond animals, questioning the limits of the standard view of social systems. Also, by challenging an argument that supports a gap between humans and nature, I advocate for a broader understanding of social reality that includes both human and nonhuman beings. In Part II, I present a new framework for studying social systems consisting of three fundamental building blocks: interactions, relationships, and social units. I argue that interactions are vital components of social systems, highlighting their dynamic and entwined nature. Relationships, arising from distinctive patterns of interactions sensitive to the identity of the individuals, play a crucial role in these systems and encompass both objective and subjective components. Lastly, I develop an account of social units as cognitively autonomous individuals, drawing on biogenic approaches to cognition. Thus, I propose that a social system emerges when cognitively autonomous individuals (social units) engage in repeated interactions and form relationships. In Part III, I apply this framework to two entities that are subjects of contemporary debate: groups and plants. I argue that both groups and plants are potential social units. Specifically, plants interact repeatedly and demonstrate the ability to differentiate between individuals, providing evidence of their capacity to form social relationships. This framework serves as a guide for studying the social behavior of these entities and offers valuable insights into their interactive systems. Overall, this expanded framework establishes connections between social phenomena across different taxa and levels of organization, facilitating comparative investigations. It introduces new perspectives on social behavior, encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, and broadens our understanding of multi-species interactions. (shrink)

Public policymakers and institutional decision-makers routinely face questions about whether interventions “work”: does universal basic income improve people’s welfare and stimulate entrepreneurial activity? Do gated alleyways reduce burglaries or merely shift the crime burden to neighbouring communities? What is the most cost-effective way to improve students’ reading abilities? These are empirical questions that seem best answered by looking at the world, rather than trusting speculations about what will be effective. Evidence-based policy (EBP) is a movement that concretizes this intuition. It (...) maintains that policy should be based on evidence of “what works.” Not any evidence will do, however. Following on the heels of its intellectual progenitor, evidence-based medicine (EBM), EBP insists on the use of high-quality evidence produced in accordance with rigorous methodological standards. Though intuitively compelling, EBP has attracted significant criticism from methodologists, political scientists, and philosophers. This chapter provides a critical overview of EBP through a philosophical lens, reviewing and discussing some of the most pressing challenges that EBP faces and outlining some proposals for improving it. I first provide a brief overview of EBP and distinguish a broader and narrower understanding of it. I then review existing lines of criticism of EBP, two of which are considered in detail. The first elaborates how EBP struggles with extrapolation, that is, the use of evidence from study populations to make inferences about the effects of policies on novel target populations. The second maintains that EBP’s methodological tenets are deeply entwined with moral and political values, which can threaten EBP’s promise to promote objectivity in policymaking. Finally, I make some proposals for how EBP could be improved going forward. (shrink)

There have recently been novel applications of medical systematic review guidelines to economic policy interventions which contain controversial methodological assumptions that require further scrutiny. A landmark 2017 Cochrane review of unconditional cash transfer (UCT) studies, based on the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE), exemplifies both the possibilities and limitations of applying medical systematic review guidelines to UCT and universal basic income (UBI) studies. Recognizing the need to upgrade GRADE to incorporate the differences between medical and policy interventions, (...) the GRADE Public Health Project Group (PHPG) was convened to enumerate and address these methodological challenges. However, in light of our analysis of additional methodological challenges that arise for UCT and UBI studies, we argue that the adaptation of medical systematic review guidelines to economic methodology is far from straightforward and is in fact more challenging than claimed by the PHPG. (shrink)

This study developed an instrument that measures the attitude of Filipino high school students towards mathematics, with reliable predictors and factors. Using the responses of 300 high school students from Zamboanga Sibugay, the validity and reliability of the Mathematics Attitude Scale (MAS) was tested using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and reliability analyses. The EFA showed that four-factor structures of the instrument, regarding the mathematics attitude for high school students, explained 27.48% of the variance in the pattern of relationships among the (...) items. The Average Variance Extracted (AVE), Composite Reliability, and Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients were reported. They proved that the extracted constructs have obtained and satisfied convergent validity. Thirty-three items remained in the final questionnaire after deleting the twenty-seven items with factor loadings of less than 0.4 (Students’ Perceived Motivation and Support in Learning Mathematics: twelve items; Students’ Perceived Anxiety in Learning Mathematics: ten items; Students’ Perceived Self-Efficacy in Learning Mathematics: six items; and Teachers and Parents’ Influences to Students in Learning Mathematics: five items). This study has confirmed the four-factor structure of the MAS. Educators and researchers can use the MAS to better understand the attitudes of Filipino high school students towards mathematics. (shrink)

In everyday life, as members of larger or smaller groups, we hold each other accountable with respect to social norms. For this practice to be intelligible, we must arguably by and large be justified in demanding that other group members comply with these norms. Other things being equal, it seems that we have a group membership-based pro tanto reason to comply with the social norms of our group. In this chapter, I examine how such demands and reasons for compliance can (...) be explained and made intelligible. I do this by first presenting and discussing Raimo Tuomela’s individualistic account of social norms from The Importance of Us (1995). I argue that this and similar individualistic accounts fail to make sense of how our practice of holding each other accountable with respect to social norms can be justified. This provides a reason to try some holistic medicine. I therefore discuss Tuomela’s later irreducibly collectivistic “we-mode” account of social norms from The Philosophy of Sociality (2007). This account promises to make sense of social-norm accountability, but it also carries with it some philosophical baggage. (shrink)

Darwin diceva che le specie si trasformavano per poter sopravvivere: arriva un terremoto, un’inondazione e solo chi sa correre rapidamente o chi sa nuotare vive. Ok, ma cosa ci dice questa teoria sui cambiamenti che non portano a migliori possibilità di sopravvivere o di riprodursi? Ben poco. Perché nel corso dei secoli i denti molari dell’uomo si sono ridotti di dimensioni, così come le dita dei piedi? Certo non per sopravvivere e riprodursi meglio. Gli autori riportano nel corso di questa (...) rassegna vari esempi che la teoria di Darwin non riesce a spiegare e delle possibili spiegazioni alternative, asseverate da esperimenti scientifici validati e consacrati dalla comunità scientifica. Darwin aveva torto? Certamente no! Ma come tutte le opere della scienza richiede revisioni e miglioramenti. (shrink)

Les modèles basés sur des agents en interactions, constituent des systèmes sociaux complexes, qui peuvent être simulés par informatiques. Ils se répandent dans les sciences économiques et sociales - comme dans la plupart des sciences des systèmes complexes. Des énigmes épistémologiques (ré)apparaissent. On a souvent opposé modèles et investigations empiriques : d’un côté, on considère les sciences empiriques fondées sur une observation méthodique (enquêtes, expériences) tandis que de l’autre, on conçoit les approches théoriques et la modélisation comme s’appuyant sur une (...) approche conceptuelle ou hypothético-déductive. la simulation a de son coté souvent été comparée à une forme d’expérience ou à une méthode intermédiaire entre la théorie et l’expérience. Tesfatsion a parlé de « laboratoire computationnel » comme d’une manière d’étudier « les comportements des systèmes complexes au moyen d’expériences sous contrôle qu’on peut répéter (réplicable)» et Axelrod a proclamé que la simulation serait « une troisième manière de pratiquer la science dans les sciences sociales », entre l’induction et la déduction. Nous introduisons de nouveaux concepts épistémologiques afin de montrer dans quelle mesure les auteurs ont raison lorsqu'ils se concentrent sur une signification empirique, instrumentale ou conceptuelle de leur modèle ou simulation. La première partie du chapitre discute plus particulièrement de l'épistémologie des modèles économiques à partir des travaux d’Hausman, Guala, Mäki, Sugden, Schelling etc. pour expliquer les divergences entre modèles et simulations. En distinguant entre modèles et simulations, comme entre entre types de modèles, types de simulations informatiques et types d'empiricité obtenue par une simulation, la seconde partie donne la possibilité de comprendre plus précisément - et ensuite de justifier - la diversité des positions épistémologiques présentées dans la première partie. En utilisant les notion de sous-symbolisation (due à Smolensky) et, de hiérarchie dénotationnelle (due à Goodman), une attention particulière est accordée à la multiplicité des pouvoirs dénotationnels des symboles en jeu dans les modèles complexes et les simulations informatiques. Selon cette grille d'analyse, on peut déterminer, dans chaque cas particulier son statut épistémique et la crédibilité qui peut y être associée. -/- Ce chapitre est une traduction (par Gilles Campagnolo) réviséee et augmentée par les auteurs de : Agent-Based Models and Simulations in Economics and Social Sciences: From Conceptual Exploration to Distinct Ways of Experimenting, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 13 (1) 5 DOI: 10.18564/jasss.1532. (shrink)

Según la concepción «clásica», el fin de la medicina era el de ayudar a conservar y recuperar la salud, entendida como un bienestar físico, emocional y vital, al cual contribuían acciones materiales, influjos sobrenaturales y cosmológicos. Con el Renacimiento, la ciencia moderna ofrece sus conocimientos a la medicina, en la cual desaparece la consideración de influjos sobrenaturales y cósmicos. Además, la concepción dualista cartesiana reducía la medicina a ocuparse exclusivamente del cuerpo del hombre, interpretado como una máquina según modelos propuestos (...) con base en diferentes ciencias. Esta perspectiva fisicalista y analítica ha permitido logros importantes. Sin embargo, la enfermedad implica, en cuanto experiencia vivida por el paciente, aspectos de malestar existencial, fragilidad, dependencia, pérdida de identidad que, a menudo, la medicina piensa no deber considerar en cuanto subjetivos. Hay que eliminar este error, complementando la competencia médica con las varias fuentes ofrecidas por la filosofía, artes, religión, de modo que permitan al enfermo encontrar en su interioridad los sustentos para darle un sentido y valor a su existencia en sus reales condiciones. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers often seem to ignore or downplay the significance of demographic variation in philosophically relevant judgments. This article confirms this impression, discusses why demographic research is overlooked in experimental philosophy, and argues that variation is philosophically significant.

The debate concerning the scientific or unscientific status of the social sciences and the question of the (in) applicability of the methods of research in the natural sciences to social investigations are still unsettled in Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Some of the questions which are often asked concerning these issues include: are the social sciences really scientific? Do they merit the name science? Can we apply the same methods used in the natural research to social research? Are the objects (...) of inquiry in both areas the same? Attempts to answer these questions and numerous related others, have polarized Philosophers of the social sciences into two different ideological camps. Those who answer the questions affirmatively are regarded as the naturalists while those who answer negatively are regarded as the anti-naturalists or humanists. However, using the methods of critical argumentation and conceptual clarification, we intend to argue in this paper for a complementary ground between the two. Consequently, we contend that though the methods of the natural and the social sciences are different due to the fact that their respective objects of investigations are not the same, methods of the two fields are imperative to inquiries that would promote human knowledge and aid their intellectual development. This is necessary in order to foster interdisciplinary research and de-compartmentalisation of disciplines. We also intend to argue that the view that the social sciences are not scientific arose from a narrow conception of the term “science.” Our submission, therefore, is that the social sciences, legitimately, are sciences in their own right. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the conceptual model of an innovative methodology (SAT) to assess the social acceptance of technology, especially focusing on artificial intelligence (AI)-based technology. -/- Design/methodology/approach After a review of the literature, this paper presents the main lines by which SAT stands out from current methods, namely, a four-bubble approach and a mix of qualitative and quantitative techniques that offer assessments that look at technology as a socio-technical system. Each bubble determines the social (...) variability of a cluster of values: User-Experience Acceptance, Social Disruptiveness, Value Impact and Trust. -/- Findings The methodology is still in development, requiring further developments, specifications and validation. Accordingly, the findings of this paper refer to the realm of the research discussion, that is, highlighting the importance of preventively assessing and forecasting the acceptance of technology and building the best design strategies to boost sustainable and ethical technology adoption. -/- Social implications Once SAT method will be validated, it could constitute a useful tool, with societal implications, for helping users, markets and institutions to appraise and determine the co-implications of technology and socio-cultural contexts. -/- Originality/value New AI applications flood today’s users and markets, often without a clear understanding of risks and impacts. In the European context, regulations (EU AI Act) and rules (EU Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy) try to fill this normative gap. The SAT method seeks to integrate the risk-based assessment of AI with an assessment of the perceptive-psychological and socio-behavioural aspects of its social acceptability. (shrink)

In this chapter, we argue that in order to understand the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary dialectics in sustainability science, it is useful to see sustainability science as a kind of management science, and then to highlight the hard-soft distinction in systems thinking. First, we argue that the commonly made natural-social science dichotomy is relatively unimportant and unhelpful. We then outline the differences between soft and hard systems thinking as a more relevant and helpful distinction, mainly as a difference between perspectives in (...) systemic modeling toward models. We also illustrate that the distinction is methodologically useful to advance sustainability science by enabling us (i) to suggest novel ways of using existing theoretical, experimental, and computational resources of the sciences for renewable resource management, and (ii) to disentangle disciplinary disagreements in climate science. (shrink)

In a recent paper, María Pía Méndez (2022) offers an epistemic critique of epistocracy according to which the sort of politically well-informed but homogenous groups of citizens that would be empowered under epistocracy would lack reliable access to information about the preferences of less informed citizens. Specifically, they would lack access to such citizens’ preferences regarding the form that policies ought to take—that is, how these policies ought to be implemented. Arguing that this so-called Information Gap Problem militates against epistocracy, (...) Méndez instead recommends that we respond to problems created by widespread voter ignorance by improving the flow of information between political actors by adopting some participatory democratic institutions. In this paper I argue that the severity of the Information Gap Problem for epistocracy is overstated. After first sketching some background (Section 1), I argue that it is hard to see why information about citizens’ preferences for the form that policies ought to take is important enough that the expected costs of epistocracy outweigh its expected benefits if it selectively empowers people who lack access to such information (Section 2). Moreover, different forms of epistocracy are less threatened by the Information Gap Problem, assuming it is indeed a problem. For some forms of epistocracy, it may be no problem whatsoever. However, I conclude by suggesting that Méndez touches upon some more serious problems for epistocracy (Section 3). First, even setting aside the Information Gap Problem, there are open questions about the possible epistemic inferiority of epistocracy relative to democracy. Second, more comprehensive accounts of political competence that move beyond the possession of sufficient levels of political information are much harder to reliably test for, thus complicating the task of devising effective epistocratic selection mechanisms. Lastly, epistocracy arguably creates a serious risk of abuse that may outweigh any other benefits it brings. More research is needed to determine how (and whether) epistocrats can respond to such challenges. (shrink)