Ernest Sosa collects essays, written over the last 25 years, on the scope and nature of human knowledge.

In Cognitive Pragmatism, Nicholas Rescher tackles the major questions of philosophical inquiry, pondering the nature of truth and existence. In the authoritative voice and calculated manner that we've come to expect from this distinguished philosopher, Rescher argues that the development of knowledge is a practice, pursued by humans because we have a need for its products. This pragmatic approach satisfies our innate urge as humans to make sense of our surroundings.Taking his discussion down to the level of particular details, and addressing such topics as inductive validation, hypostatization fallacies, and counterfactual reasoning, Rescher abandons abstract generalities in favor of concrete specifics. For example, philosophers usually insist that to reason logically from a counterfactual, we must imagine a possible world in which the statement is fact. But Rescher argues that there's no need to attempt to accept the facts of a world outside our cognition in order to reason from them. He shows us how we can use our own natural system of prioritizing, our own understanding of the fundamental, to resolve the inconsistencies in such statements as, "If the Eiffel Tower were in Manhattan, then it would be in New York State." In using dozens of real-world examples such as these, and in arguing in his characteristically succinct style, Rescher casts light on a wide variety of concrete issues in the classical theory of knowledge, and reassures us along the way that the inherent limitations on our knowledge are no cause for distress. In pragmatic theory and inquiry, we must accept that the best we can do is good enough, because we only have a certain (albeit large) set of tools and conceptualizations available to us.A unique synthesis, this endeavor into pragmatic epistemology will be of interest to scholars and students of philosophy and cognitive science.

This open access book – as the title suggests – explores some of the historical roots and epistemological ramifications of perspectivism. Perspectivism has recently emerged in philosophy of science as an interesting new position in the debate between scientific realism and anti-realism. But there is a lot more to perspectivism than discussions in philosophy of science so far have suggested. Perspectivism is a much broader view that emphasizes how our knowledge (in particular our scientific knowledge of nature) is situated; it is always from a human vantage point (as opposed to some Nagelian "view from nowhere"). This edited collection brings together a diverse team of established and early career scholars across a variety of fields (from the history of philosophy to epistemology and philosophy of science). The resulting nine essays trace some of the seminal ideas of perspectivism back to Kant, Nietzsche, the American Pragmatists, and Putnam, while the second part of the book tackles issues concerning the relation between perspectivism, relativism, and standpoint theories, and the implications of perspectivism for epistemological debates about veritism, epistemic normativity and the foundations of human knowledge.

FREELY AVAILABLE ONLINE AS OPEN ACCESS BOOK! This book illustrates the acquisition of knowledge in a musician’s performative practice, and how this can contribute to the development of Artistic Research. Using a broad understanding of ‘knowledge,’ the first part of the book presents aspects of the practitioner knowledge a musician develops through daily exercises and performances. Technical and practical skills, creativity and music reading are central topics. Part II describes four different methodologies of knowledge accumulation. First is the hypothetico-deductive method (music as object). Then the author asks, “Where is the musical work?” After an introduction to semiotics, the question that must follow is “Is music a language?” Following up methodologies focusing on intersubjective and contextual topics, the presentation of hermeneutics generates the question “What happens to the music when you are listening?” Being the most subjective, phenomenology is the last methodology to be presented. The question it poses is “Are analysis and interpretation two sides of the same coin?” Artistic research is a new perspective in knowledge acquisition, and the performing artist is the pivot point. The obvious insight positioning music beyond the score is elaborated into a critique of the representational theory as a relevant ontological discourse in music. As an alternative, the potential in embodied meaning theories is discussed through cognitive, linguistic and artistic approaches. Artistic expressions convey the subjective practitioner knowledge based on the difference between the objective sign and the intersubjective expression. This makes music as communication the ultimate topic. In conclusion, understanding the meaning construction and the conditions of artistic content are both of importance in artistic research.

In this special edited volume, scholars with diverse backgrounds and conceptual frameworks explore how economic, political, social and ideological forces impact on school curricula over time and place. In providing regional and global perspectives on curricular policies, practices and reforms, the authors move beyond the conventional notion that school contents reflect principally national priorities and subject-based interests.

Advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers in international business, international management and cross-cultural management, and all concerned with the transfer of knowledge in the global economy. It will also be a valuable source of concepts and ideas to cross-cultural trainers and to various categories of practitioners within knowledge management and international human resource management. This book forges a break with the concept of culture that has dominated management thinking, education, and research for several decades. Culture, rather than being presented as a source of difference and antagonism, is presented as a form of organisational knowledge that can be converted into a resource for underpinning core competence. This perspective based on extensive research into the operations of four major international corporations, challenges traditional thinking by contending that cross-cultural management is a form of knowledge management. Key to this text are the four global case companies contrasting experiences, presented as insightful case studies about rarely observed aspects of firms cross-cultural communication behaviour.