S’inscrivant en épistémologie sociale, ce projet souhaite comprendre l’ignorance comme un phénomène actif dans la production de connaissance et non comme sa simple absence. Se détachant des théories traditionnelles d’épistémologie comprenant l’ignorance comme un état passif, comme antinomie de la connaissance, ce mémoire à l’ambition de comprendre l’ignorance comme un phénomène multifactoriel soit comme une pratique se situant à l’intersection entre le social, le structurel et l’épistémique. Précisément, l’objectif de ce mémoire est de démontrer que, présentes sous plusieurs formes, les pratiques d’ignorances ont des ramifications concrètes sur plusieurs aspects de nos vies telles que nos interactions sociales, notre univers intellectuel et notre partage de connaissances. Se basant sur un cadre critique, sollicitant des écrits issus des études féministes, décoloniales et intersectionnelles, la visée majeure de ce projet est de démontrer la possibilité de considérer l’ignorance comme un élément clef de la production et du maintien d’injustices sociales. Par exemple, le rôle de l’ignorance quant à certaines formes de racisme et de sexisme tels l’incapacité à être considéré comme un individu pouvant produire des connaissances légitimes ou le refus, non fondé, de comprendre certains individus issus des groupes marginalisés comme égaux sur le plan social et épistémique. Accorder un rôle déterminant à l’ignorance permettra d’amener une meilleure compréhension de la persistance de certaines formes d’injustices sociales en rendant compte de leur nature abstraite et parfois difficile à saisir. Nous analyserons l’ignorance en termes sociaux et en relation aux vices épistémiques ce qui rendra compte de la systématicité de certaines actions sexistes ou racistes et permettra de comprendre plus clairement les mécanismes soutenant le maintien de ces inégalités. Avec ceci, nous tenterons de rendre compte du type de vice épistémique que constitue l’ignorance, c’est-à-dire le type de traits de caractère, d’attitudes, ou de manières de penser qui nuit à l’accessibilité de la connaissance. Cette approche permet de souligner le fait que l’ignorance n’est pas la même chose que l’erreur et qu’elle peut être durable et activement maintenue. / Framed within social epistemology, this project aims to understand ignorance as an active phenomenon in the production of knowledge rather than simply its absence. Departing from traditional theories of epistemology that view ignorance as a passive state and as the antinomy of knowledge, this paper aspires to comprehend ignorance as a multifactorial phenomenon, situated at the intersection of the social, structural, and epistemic. Specifically, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate that, present in various forms, practices of ignorance have concrete ramifications on various aspects of our lives, such as our social interactions, intellectual universe, and sharing of knowledge. Drawing on a critical framework, and utilizing writings from feminist, decolonial, and intersectional studies, the main goal of this project is to demonstrate the possibility of considering ignorance as a key element in the production and maintenance of social injustices. For example, the role of ignorance in certain forms of racism and sexism, such as the inability to be considered as an individual capable of producing legitimate knowledge or the unfounded refusal to understand certain individuals from marginalized groups as equals on the social and epistemic level. Assigning a determining role to ignorance will lead to a better understanding of the persistence of certain forms of social injustices by accounting for their abstract and sometimes difficult-to-grasp nature. We will analyze ignorance in social terms and in relation to epistemic vices, which will account for the systematicity of certain sexist or racist actions and enable a clearer understanding of the mechanisms that support the maintenance of these inequalities. In doing so, we will attempt to account for the type of epistemic vice that ignorance constitutes, that is, the type of character traits, attitudes, or ways of thinking that hinder the accessibility of knowledge. This approach highlights the fact that ignorance is not the same as error and that it can be durable and actively maintained.

[pt] Esta tese é o resultado de uma pesquisa de inspiração etnográfica sobre o refúgio como prática de injustiça epistêmica, analisado por meio do universo brasileiro da elegibilidade e dos processos de produção de significados sociais. A concepção de injustiça epistêmica está relacionada a duas importantes práticas epistêmicas: produzir e compartilhar o conhecimento com outros por meio do testemunho e fazer sentido das próprias experiências sociais. A tese busca, assim, examinar a produção e a transmissão do conhecimento nos processos burocráticos da elegibilidade, isto é, na determinação do status de refugiado, e as formas de representação midiática em torno da figura do refúgio e seus sujeitos. Para tanto, a análise contou com uma pluralidade metodológica composta por trabalho de campo por meio da realização de entrevistas e abordagem com corpus através do uso de softwares específicos. A partir disso, a tese analisa o espaço das práticas epistêmicas que atravessam a categoria do refugiado e podem contribuir para a produção de injustiças, afetando a vida de solicitantes de refúgio e refugiados no Brasil. / [en] This thesis is the result of a research on asylum as epistemic injustice, analyzed through the Brazilian eligibility process and the practices of media representation in the country. The concept of epistemic injustice is intimately related to two crucial epistemic practices: conveying knowledge to others and making sense of our own social experiences. Hence, the two main aims of the research are the analysis of knowledge production in the bureaucratic process of eligibility (or refugee status determination process, RSD) and the investigation on how the Brazilian mainstream media represents refugees. To this end, the pluralistic research methods used consist of interview-based fieldwork and corpus linguistics with the help of specific software. The thesis therefore analyzes the space of epistemic practices that have an impact on the refugee category and may contribute to the production of injustices, affecting the lives of asylum seekers and refugees in Brazil.

There is a recent trend of extending epistemic logic (EL) with dynamic operators that allow to express the evolution of knowledge and belief induced by knowledge-changing actions. The most basic such extension is public announcement logic (PAL), which is obtained from EL by adding an operator for truthful publix announcements. In this paper, we consider the computational complexity of PAL and show that it coincides with that of EL. This holds in the single- and multi-agent case, and also in the presence of common knowledge operators. We also prove that there are properties that can be expressed exponentially more succint in PAL than in EL. This shows that, despite the known fact that PAL and EL have the same expressive power, ther eis a benefit in adding the public announcement operator to EL: it exponentially increases the succinctness of formulas without having negative effects on computational complexity.

This study investigates and discusses how two spiritual teachers from different parts of the world interact with their devotees, what the probable impacts of their interaction are, and whether they speak similarly or differently based on the use of modal auxiliary verbs and pronouns. Linguistically speaking, the mystics mostly have to address their audience/readers in a particular manner with expressions which represent certainty, possibility, obligation and so on; thus, a study of such is necessary and modal auxiliary verbs represent such expressions. The two primary texts were chosen based on contemporary work and popularity. One of the texts was authored by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, a spiritual teacher, an international spokesperson and a popular author. The other text was by Eckhart Tolle, a spiritual teacher and best-selling author. A corpus-assisted discourse approach was taken while looking into modal auxiliary verbs and their pronoun bigrams using Ant-Conc and Log-likelihood Calculator. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were taken for the analysis.  Findings suggest three things. First, both authors use similar types of modal verbs (epistemic) in most cases. Second, after comparing the type of modal verbs (epistemic/deontic) significant differences are observed. When the authors use epistemic modals, the choice of bigrams addresses different audience types and the way they approach a concept is different. Sadhguru (2020) addresses the general audience/readers whereas Tolle (2004) addresses the readers who need spiritual guidance. Finally, the choice of modal verbs represents mostly certainty that keeps the mood of the book calm and content for the readers. To sum up, spiritual teachers mostly speak from their experience and represent the expression of certainty and possibility though they address their readers differently.

The general theme of this thesis is the audience's understanding and ideals ofscience and how these, through digital social media, are shaped in relation to moregeneral understandings about the role of science in society. The rationale of thethesis was to study constructions of ideals of science at Flashback Forum during theperiod of April 1, 2021 through April 1, 2022. The theoretical framework wasconstructed using theories taken from the field Science of science communication,Knorr-Cetina's theories of the knowledge society and epistemic cultures, theories ofthe post-truth society and understandings of digital media landscapes as publicnetworks. The material retrieved from Flashback was collected using a structuredselection method and analyzed through a thematic content analysis. The materialwas structured based on the various ideals of science that emerged. A total of ninedifferent ideals of science could be defined. The performative strategies used tosubstantiate the discursive content were then examined. Strategies are mentionedas markers and a total of ten different markers appeared. The analysis of thematerial has shown that science is generally seen as a legitimate source ofknowledge and that science is used as a way of legitimizing, for example, opinionsand positions. The analysis also shows that ideas of science may differ and that theconcept of science, as a producer of knowledge and as practice, varies from thosewith a stronger connection to scientific establishment. All in all, the study points to thetension that can arise when science, with its complexity, on the one hand positionsas an interpreter of truth and democracy and on the other hand as part of ademocratization process increasingly becomes a concern for society as a whole.

When assessing the readability of a text it is helpful to consider all its interacting elements. This includes its syntactic complexity, but other aspects, such as that of cohesion, are no less important. The thesis explores how these are reflected in each other and in the readability of books in a dataset provided by the publisher Nypon och Vilja, which consists of easy-to-read books divided into six levels of readability. To provide additional nuance, the interrelated concepts of epistemic stance and narrativity are introduced for the purpose of deepening the analysis of the statistical findings. They also prove useful in further discussion surrounding complexity and cohesion as they relate to reading skill and knowledge asymmetries. Principal component analysis (PCA) is employed to uncover these statistical relationships on a broader scale, though more specific in-depth analysis are performed relating to certain metrics. While the findings have some support in literature, re-affirming the importance of narrativity for contextualizing cohesion, the clear link between higher complexity and less narrative text was not expected. Furthermore, the PCA indicates a more nuanced picture of referential cohesion and the use of its constituent metrics, depending both on narrativity and complexity.

In this thesis, a particular class of agent is singled out for examination. In order to provide a guiding metaphor, we speak of control room agents. Our focus is on rational decision- making by such agents, where the circumstances obtaining are such that rationality is bounded. Control room agents, whether human or non-human, need to reason and act in a changing environment with only limited information available to them. Determining the current state of the environment is a central concern for control room agents if they are to reason and act sensibly. A control room agent cannot plan its actions without having an internal representation (epistemic state) of its environment, and cannot make rational decisions unless this representation, to some level of accuracy, reflects the state of its environment. The focus of this thesis is on three aspects regarding the epistemic functioning of a control room agent: 1. How should the epistemic state of a control room agent be represented in order to facilitate logical analysis? 2. How should a control room agent change its epistemic state upon receiving new information? 3. How should a control room agent combine available information from different sources? In describing the class of control room agents as first-order intentional systems hav- ing both informational and motivational attitudes, an agent-oriented view is adopted. The central construct used in the information-theoretic approach, which is qualitative in nature, is the concept of a templated ordering. Representing the epistemic state of a control room agent by a (special form of) tem- plated ordering signals a departure from the many approaches in which only the beliefs of an agent are represented. Templated orderings allow for the representation of both knowledge and belief. A control room agent changes its epistemic state according to a proposed epistemic change algorithm, which allows the agent to select between two well-established forms of belief change operations, namely, belief revision and belief update. The combination of (possibly conflicting) information from different sources has re- ceived a lot of attention in recent years. Using templated orderings for the semantic representation of information, a new family of purely qualitative merging operations is developed. / School of Computing / Ph. D. (Computer Science)

This diploma thesis deals with modality in German and highlights possible problems which can arise when modal formulations are translated from German into Czech. It focuses on modal verbs, which are presented as a special verb group. Knowledge of modal verbs is the basic prerequisite for accurate translation as far as semantics, grammar and stylistics are concerned. Since the correct identification of modality in a sentence essentially influences the accuracy of a translation, modality is considered exhaustively. Data was gathered from the parallel corpus Intercorp (project of parallel corpuses of The Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague), the Coocurrency Database (CCDB) IDS Mannheim which competes with the parallel corpus InterCorp, and original German fiction texts and their Czech translations and was the subject of comparative critical analysis. These analyses demonstrate the problematic phenomena encountered when German modal formulations are translated into Czech.

In this thesis, a particular class of agent is singled out for examination. In order to provide a guiding metaphor, we speak of control room agents. Our focus is on rational decision- making by such agents, where the circumstances obtaining are such that rationality is bounded. Control room agents, whether human or non-human, need to reason and act in a changing environment with only limited information available to them. Determining the current state of the environment is a central concern for control room agents if they are to reason and act sensibly. A control room agent cannot plan its actions without having an internal representation (epistemic state) of its environment, and cannot make rational decisions unless this representation, to some level of accuracy, reflects the state of its environment. The focus of this thesis is on three aspects regarding the epistemic functioning of a control room agent: 1. How should the epistemic state of a control room agent be represented in order to facilitate logical analysis? 2. How should a control room agent change its epistemic state upon receiving new information? 3. How should a control room agent combine available information from different sources? In describing the class of control room agents as first-order intentional systems hav- ing both informational and motivational attitudes, an agent-oriented view is adopted. The central construct used in the information-theoretic approach, which is qualitative in nature, is the concept of a templated ordering. Representing the epistemic state of a control room agent by a (special form of) tem- plated ordering signals a departure from the many approaches in which only the beliefs of an agent are represented. Templated orderings allow for the representation of both knowledge and belief. A control room agent changes its epistemic state according to a proposed epistemic change algorithm, which allows the agent to select between two well-established forms of belief change operations, namely, belief revision and belief update. The combination of (possibly conflicting) information from different sources has re- ceived a lot of attention in recent years. Using templated orderings for the semantic representation of information, a new family of purely qualitative merging operations is developed. / School of Computing / Ph. D. (Computer Science)

Organisational learning is conceptualised within healthcare policy as an acontextual entity to be implemented across services through a prescribed governance framework. Studies of organisational learning often exclude context in this way. The central questions of this thesis concern how and why context is relevant and important in relation to organisational learning. In order to address these issues, context and organisational learning were conceptualised as mutually constitutive activity and knowing-in-practice respectively. Taking a cultural-historical activity theoretical approach, learning is understood to be an intrinsic part of activity. These issues were explored empirically through qualitative case study in three purposively sampled Scottish primary care teams. Initial findings suggested collective learning occurred through participation in everyday activity. Team accounts of apparently the same routine object of work revealed distinctive patterns of activity. Each team seemed to be doing the same thing differently. Exploration of mediating means present in each teamâ s activity accounted for these differences: although similar on the surface, the attribution of meaning to each was contested and shaped through the cultural, historical and inherently contextual activity which they mediated within each activity system. Further analysis demonstrated members of each primary care team co-configured these objects with members of other interlinked activity systems. Different things were actually being done in similarly different ways. This showed how inherently contextual activities shaped the content of collective learning and offered an explanation of why context is relevant and important in collective learning. These findings suggest efforts to transfer knowledge as a discrete, manageable entity between situations are unlikely to succeed due to the filtering and translating effect of inherently contextual activity. From this perspective, organisational learning and related concepts such as â implementationâ and â best practiceâ become problematic. Healthcare policy concerning collective learning, within which such approaches are central, may benefit from reconsideration.