Bibliography: #BIB23409

web link	bahai-library.com/bibliography/BIB23409
reference type	Journal Article
title	Rationality in Academic Disciplines
journal	Singapore Bahá'í Studies Review
author	Mohanan, K. P.
Authority control 1	K. P. Mohanan
authority control	K. P. Mohanan
year	2001
date	2001
volume	6
abstract	Following Fleck and Kuhn, the academia in the twenty first century have come to recognize the value of acknowledging and understanding the diversity of "epistemic Cultures”, that is, the thought styles of communities engaged in the production of knowledge. For an academic community to construct public knowledge through teamwork, there are two important pre-requisites. First, the members of the community must have a shared language that presupposes approximately the same pairings of concepts and words. Second, they must have a shared epistemic value system on the basis of which they make collective decisions on what is credible and what is not, and choose between competing candidates for excellence in knowledge. A subset of such criteria for critical thinking also allows us to engage in rational argumentation within the community.If we define ''dialogue" as a two-way conversation between two parties, it follows that contemporaneity is a necessary condition for all dialogue: we cannot have any dialogue with ancient cultures or civilizations of the past. If dialogue involves rational argumentation across epistemic cultures, it is equally important that their epistemic value systems have a set of shared commitments as well. In my paper, I will make an attempt to outline such a shared set of commitments that provide the basis for dialogue across academic cultures, ranging from history and philosophy to biology and physics, and various sub-communities within a discipline.
language	English
keywords	ACADEMIA; DIALOGUE; VALUES
pages	87–107

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