Esta pesquisa se baseia em dados obtidos a partir do registro das interações comunicativas entre monitor e alunos, dos ensinos fundamental e médio, envolvidos em atividades realizadas em duas saídas de campo, uma para Cananeia-SP e outra para Paraty-RJ. Entre as várias atividades realizadas, investigamos aquelas mais similares às aulas formais na escola, que compreendem os momentos em que os monitores interagem com os alunos para desenvolver determinados conteúdos, nesse caso, conteúdos relacionados ao ambiente visitado. Esses momentos são denominados de aula de campo. Nosso objetivo foi analisar e caracterizar as diferentes formas em que o conteúdo científico foi trabalhado pelos monitores em trechos de três aulas de campo, considerando os enunciados produzidos (operações epistêmicas) e os objetos introduzidos no discurso. Para isso, investigamos aulas de dois monitores diferentes. Para a análise, foram utilizados três conjuntos de categorias que compreendem a dimensão epistêmica de um sistema analítico proposto por Mortimer, Massicame, Tiberghien e Buty, e adaptado por Silva, sendo feitas algumas alterações para este trabalho. A formulação das categorias foi baseada em concepções como Gênero do Discurso e Linguagem Social de Bakhtin, sendo considerado também o conceito de Práticas Epistêmicas proposto por Kelly. Essas categorias epistêmicas caracterizam alguns aspectos do discurso e da linguagem empregados durante o desenvolvimento do conteúdo; o conjunto operações epistêmicas diz respeito aos enunciados produzidos, designa ações como descrever, generalizar e exemplificar. O conjunto modelagem indica se o discurso está tratando de um objeto ou evento capaz de ser reconhecido no meio material, ou se faz uso de elementos criados por meio do discurso científico. E o nível de referencialidade caracteriza o uso de um referencial específico ou uma classe de referentes. Os dados foram coletados por meio de gravadores de áudio, sendo transcritos para a análise e codificação das categorias. As análises foram organizadas em Mapas de Categorias Epistêmicas e em Mapas de Percentuais de Tempo, por episódio. Os resultados obtidos mostraram que, independentemente do conteúdo trabalhado e da operação epistêmica empregada, o mundo dos objetos e eventos predominou em praticamente todo o tempo de discurso; assim, mesmo conteúdos como a adaptação dos organismos foram trabalhados quase que exclusivamente a partir de objetos e eventos, que podem ser, de alguma forma, observados, percebidos ou mensurados. Na maior parte do tempo, o discurso também permaneceu fazendo referência a sistemas específicos, principalmente aos sistemas visitados, mesmo quando os monitores fizeram uso de generalizações conhecidas para descrever elementos daqueles sistemas. De todos os episódios analisados, apenas um teve o objetivo de alcançar uma generalização sobre um evento, e outro tratou de dois eventos a partir de situações hipotéticas que poderiam ser consideradas para qualquer ecossistema similar ao visitado. No entanto, mesmo nessas duas situações, a caracterização geral do ecossistema ou do fenômeno específico foi necessária para o desenvolvimento do conteúdo. A descrição foi a operação epistêmica mais empregada, formando a base da caracterização dos ambientes visitados. / This research is based on data obtained from the recording of communicative interactions between field trip educators and middle to high school students involved in activities on two field trips, one in Cananeia- SP and another in Paraty- RJ. Among the various field trip activities, we investigated those most resembling formal lessons at school, which are the moments in which the educators interact with students in developing a given subject, in this case, related to the visited environment. These moments are called field classes. Our aim was to analyze and characterize the different ways in which the scientific content was developed in three field classes, considering the utterances produced (epistemic operations) and the objects introduced in the discourse. To do this, we investigated classes from two different educators. For the analysis, three sets of categories were used, comprising the epistemic dimension of an analytical system proposed by Mortimer, Massicame, Tiberghien and Buty, and adapted by Silva, with some changes having been made for this work. The formulation of the categories was based on concepts such as Gender Discourse and Social Language, proposed by Bakhtin. We also considered Kelly\'s concept of Epistemic Practices. These \"epistemic categories\" characterize some aspects of the discourse and language employed during the development of content; epistemic operations refer to the enunciations produced, designating actions such as to describe, to generalize and to exemplify. Modeling indicates whether the discourse deals with an object or event that can be recognized in the material medium or uses elements created by the scientific discourse. The level of referentiality pertains to the use of a specific reference or a class of references. Data were collected by means of audio-recordings, which were transcribed for analysis and the coding of categories. Analyses were organized into Maps of Epistemic Categories and Maps of Percentage of Time, per episode. The results showed that regardless of the content and epistemic operation employed, the world of objects and events was prevalent in almost all discourse time, even content such as the adaptation of organisms were dealt with almost exclusively based on objects and events, that could be, somehow, observed, perceived or measured in the material world. Most of the time, the discourse also kept to specific systems, especially the visited ones, even when the educators used known generalizations to describe elements of those systems. From all the analyzed episodes, only one had the goal of achieving a generalization about an event, and another addressed two events from hypothetical situations that could be considered similar to that of any ecosystem. However, even in these two situations, the general characterization of the ecosystem or the specific phenomenon was necessary for the development of content. Description was the predominant epistemic operation, forming the basis of the characterization of the visited environments.

Nesse trabalho estudamos o sistema evidencial da língua Karitiana, subfamília Arikém, família Tupi. Essa língua é falada em Rondônia pela etnia de mesmo nome. O sistema evidencial do karitiana contava, segundo a literatura com dois evidenciais e uma construção evidencial. Nesse trabalho, analisamos esses dados, testamos novas possibilidades de coocorrência entre os evidenciais e morfemas de modo e negação. Verificamos também a possibilidade de encaixamento de evidenciais em orações subordinadas. Como resultados desse estudo, mostramos ser possível utilizar o evidencial reportado em conjunto com todos os modos da língua e com a negação, podendo assim, utilizar a dupla negação em uma sentença. Ainda como resultado, observamos o fenômeno de imperative by proxy, fenômeno nunca encontrado em outras línguas da família tupi. As conclusões a que chegamos ao observar os dados são as de que, no momento, a língua parece ter somente um evidencial gramatical de acordo com o pano de fundo teórico adotado. O outro morfema tratado como evidencial na literatura, para nós, tem como principal sentido a marcação de tempo. Por isso, não deve ser considerado um evidencial, tampouco a construção evidencial, pois um evidencial em nosso panorama, é somente o morfema que possui a evidencialidade como seu sentido principal. / In this work we study the evidential system of Karitiana language, Arikém subfamily, Tupi family. In this language the literature says that we have two evidentials and one evidential construction. We argue that this language has only one evidential according to the theoretical background adopted and we show data to corroborate that. We tested evidentials of Karitiana with all morphemes of mood, with negation, with the two tenses of the language (future and non-future), aspect and in subordinates. Our results show the possibility of cooccurrence of evidentials and morphemes of mood and negation and show that reported evidential can be used in negative concord and can be used with the imperative mood morpheme to express imperative by proxy, something never attested in Tupi family yet.

In this thesis, I investigate different Contextualist strategies for responding to the sceptical Argument from Ignorance (AI). Such responses are notable for not challenging the Principle of Epistemic Closure (widely held to be primarily responsible for the argument's conclusion). I am concerned to explore Contextualism's ability to respond to AI in a way which does not result in an uncomfortable concession to scepticism. In Part 1, I discuss Semantic Contextualism; in Part 2, I investigate how AI fares with regards to transmission of warrant when AI utilises either invariantist or Contextualist presuppositions; and in Part 3, I discuss whether Epistemic Contextualism succeeds where Semantic Contextualism fails, arguing that it does. I conclude with an endorsement of Epistemic Contextualism. Part 1: I demonstrate that Semantic Contextualism, of which I will consider three different varieties (externalist, internalist, presuppositionalist), is overly concessive to scepticism because it results in the following four difficulties: (1) knowledge attributions of the form 'I know/S knows that ~B' (where B stands for the sceptical brain-in-a-vat hypothesis) are invariably false; (2) the sceptical context is extremely easy to install; (3) scepticism is said to result from entirely ordinary epistemic practices and; (4) the sceptical context is taken to be an entirely legitimate context of ascription. I conclude Part 1 with the claim that Semantic Contextualism is overly concessive to scepticism. Part 2: Previously, Moore's Proof of an External World has been diagnosed with failing to transmit the warrant on offer for its premises to its conclusion. I argue that it is possible likewise to charge AI with transmission failure but that this cannot be done when some of the conceptual resources of Contextualism are brought to bear on AI. I show that AI can be charged with transmission failure when it is interpreted in support of invariantist (context-unrestricted) scepticism and that only when it is viewed as an argument for a context-restricted form of scepticism does it succeed in transmitting warrant. In this way, the sceptical consequences of AI are considerably reduced. Part 3: The conceptual resources newly deployed in Part 2, which show that a context-restricted, as opposed to invariantist, interpretation of AI can succeed in transmitting warrant, are borrowed from Michael Williams' Epistemic form of Contextualism. But is this form of Contextualism as concessive to scepticism as I showed Semantic Contextualism to be? I argue that it does not represent an overly concessive position vis-a-vis scepticism and therefore represents a superior Contextualist position and response to scepticism. To establish this conclusion, I interrogate the strategy and main elements of Williams' theoretical diagnosis of scepticism and his resultant version of Contextualism so as to determine the extent to which scepticism can be allayed by it. Particular attention is paid to specifying issues that Williams does not discuss, most prominently how the sceptical context has to be understood in order for it to resist his theoretical diagnosis of scepticism and what makes toleration of such resistance by context-bound scepticism reasonable. I conclude my thesis with an endorsement of Williams' Epistemic Contextualism.

The subject matter of this diploma thesis is linguistic modality in German with focus on certain problems in translating modal verbs structures from German to Czech. In the theoretical part, the concept of modality as well as the differentiation of modal field is elucidated. Besides the usually used classification of subjective and objective modality, a more precise structure is applied, which is that of epistemic and non-epistemic modality. In addition, in the field of non-epistemic modality, two other sub-types are distinguished according to whether a speaker s evaluation is present or not. The practical part methodologically relies on concrete data such as modal verbs used with perfect infinitive or modal verbs in past perfect tense (Plusquamperfekt) and their translations from German to Czech. Based on selected examples, the aim of this thesis is to emphasize the main differences between Czech and German modality and to underline their essential significance to the translation accuracy.

Nesse trabalho estudamos o sistema evidencial da língua Karitiana, subfamília Arikém, família Tupi. Essa língua é falada em Rondônia pela etnia de mesmo nome. O sistema evidencial do karitiana contava, segundo a literatura com dois evidenciais e uma construção evidencial. Nesse trabalho, analisamos esses dados, testamos novas possibilidades de coocorrência entre os evidenciais e morfemas de modo e negação. Verificamos também a possibilidade de encaixamento de evidenciais em orações subordinadas. Como resultados desse estudo, mostramos ser possível utilizar o evidencial reportado em conjunto com todos os modos da língua e com a negação, podendo assim, utilizar a dupla negação em uma sentença. Ainda como resultado, observamos o fenômeno de imperative by proxy, fenômeno nunca encontrado em outras línguas da família tupi. As conclusões a que chegamos ao observar os dados são as de que, no momento, a língua parece ter somente um evidencial gramatical de acordo com o pano de fundo teórico adotado. O outro morfema tratado como evidencial na literatura, para nós, tem como principal sentido a marcação de tempo. Por isso, não deve ser considerado um evidencial, tampouco a construção evidencial, pois um evidencial em nosso panorama, é somente o morfema que possui a evidencialidade como seu sentido principal. / In this work we study the evidential system of Karitiana language, Arikém subfamily, Tupi family. In this language the literature says that we have two evidentials and one evidential construction. We argue that this language has only one evidential according to the theoretical background adopted and we show data to corroborate that. We tested evidentials of Karitiana with all morphemes of mood, with negation, with the two tenses of the language (future and non-future), aspect and in subordinates. Our results show the possibility of cooccurrence of evidentials and morphemes of mood and negation and show that reported evidential can be used in negative concord and can be used with the imperative mood morpheme to express imperative by proxy, something never attested in Tupi family yet.

Language acts as either a bridge or a barrier to social groups dependent upon the individual’s effective use of a social group’s language. The individual uses the language of the group in order to join the group and to be understood by the group. This suggests that language is behavioral in part and can be treated as a form of social norms which delegate who is a part of the group and who is not. By utilizing the language of the group effectively, an individual is able to join the group. This group language may be temporary, and the dynamics of the group’s language can be held only within specific situations, such as with inside jokes, or can be more lasting, such as the language of a discourse. Examples of group language include the use of academic jargon in the academy, key terms specific to an academic field, and the standardization of the English language. To formulate an interdisciplinary study of social epistemic rhetoric, this thesis looks at the crossovers between two fields of study through a comparative analysis of social epistemic rhetorical theory and psychological research concerning language production and perception, the effect language has on understanding, and social mirroring processes that may be generalized to language production. This rhetorical theory now grounded in psychological science calls for experimental testing to find the limitations of group dynamics involving language.

The goal of this dissertation is to give a logical representation of the knowledge dynamics that takes place during communication. I present a number of di erent logical frameworks for a number of di erent scenarios, ranging from an email conversation where all information that is sent is considered to be true, to a game of Liar's Dice where lying is expected of the players. In Chapter 3, I present a framework for modeling the knowledge of agents who exchange messages, using Dynamic Epistemic Logic. This framework uses Kripke models to represent the agents' knowledge in a static situation, and action models to update these Kripke models when the situation changes. Because the models are supposed to be nite, and all messages are represented explicitly in the model, the messages that are considered possible by the agents are limited to a nite set. This framework is useful in a situation in which there is a number of rounds in each of which a nite set of new messages becomes available to the agents. These messages can gradually be added to the model. The framework presented in Chapter 4 is of a more general nature. It models a setting where agents communicate with messages over a speci fic network in accordance to a certain protocol. This framework is very exible because the nature of communicative events and the observational power of the agents can be adapted to the situation at hand. It combines properties of the Dynamic Epistemic Logic approach with the perspective of Interpreted Systems. In Chapter 5 and 6 I focus on email communication speci cally. I rst study the existence of common knowledge in a group of agents who communicate via emails. Unlike the approach presented in Chapter 3, all possible emails are rep- resented in the model, which is therefore of in nite size. I prove a number of properties of nite states in this in nite model, and show that common knowledge of an email with BCC recipients is rare. Apart from common knowledge, I consider two new kinds of knowledge: potential and de nitive knowledge. These two types of knowledge make a distinction between the assumption that every agent immediately reads every email he receives, or that every agent has only read the emails he replied to or forwarded. I also present a method to do model checking, even though the model is of in nite size. Chapter 7 is a study of the properties of action models, which are used to model communicative events. I de ne a notion of action emulation that signi es when two canonical action models are equivalent. Because every action model has an equivalent canonical action model which can be computed, this gives a general method to determine action model equivalence. In Chapter 8 I move from knowledge to belief. I use the same Kripke models as for knowledge, only without the assumption that all relations are equivalence relations. I propose a di erent assumption, namely that the relations are linked. I also give a number of updates of these models that preserve this property, representing communicative events. Finally, Chapter 9 gives di erent perspectives on the issue of lying. It includes a complete logic of manipulative updating, which can be used to represent the e ects of lying in a group of agents. I also analyze a game of Liar's Dice and implement this scenario in the model checker DEMO. Furthermore, I show that in a game where lying is considered normal, a lie is no longer a lie: because the agents who hear the lie do not believe it, no false belief is created.

This thesis articulates a critique of scientific naturalism from the perspective of John Dewey. Scientific naturalism can be defined by two explicit, metaphysical commitments, one ontological and one epistemological. Implicit to these commitments is a further commitment concerning the nature of human experience. This understanding of human experience can be described as epistemic reductionism because it reduces the whole of experience and all empiricism to epistemology. Scientific naturalism is the orthodox position for most contemporary, Anglo-American philosophy. Many philosophers within this tradition are dissatisfied with scientific naturalism and attempt to critique scientific naturalism from the perspective of "liberal" naturalism. One major objection from the liberal perspective concerns the ontology and placement of moral qualities: where are moral qualities to be placed in a scientifically naturalistic ontology? However, due to the fact that liberal naturalists share with scientific naturalists a commitment to an epistemically reductionistic understanding of the nature of human experience, liberal naturalism fails to adequately address the placement problem.

The premise for this study is the question how we should relate to people with different religious beliefs. The aim is to examine if an existence characterized by a religious diversity should affect the certainty and confidence in our faith. To answer my question I have turned to the philosophers David Basinger, Mikael Stenmark, William Lane Craig and Robert McKims different views on this issue. Using an approach based on a comparative method and argument analysis I have then assessed their different opinions in the matter. Based on my own discussion of these arguments I conclude that a religious diversity should imply a reduction in our own religious confidence and that it should be reduced in relation to the amount of disagreement that exist between conflicting religious perspectives in an specific case and matter. This may also foster a reduction of religious intolerance through a nuanced of our own belief while highlighting the conceptions and values in our own religion that stresses tolerance.

This thesis examines the effects of linguistic input on the development of children’s epistemic concepts. It draws upon two fundamental questions in the field of cognitive development: (a) whether distinctions between automatic and controlled forms of cognitive processing are indicative of underlying conceptual differences, and (b) whether language is critical to the process of concept development. To establish the background of the current research, a summary of how these theoretical questions have been addressed in other fields of cognitive psychology is first provided (Chapter 1). These questions are then re- examined within the specific domain of epistemic concept development (Chapter 2). Changes in false-belief processing that occur between infancy and the early preschool years are discussed in relation to two competing theories of false-belief development. A framework to explain how language promotes children’s transition between automatic and controlled forms of processing is then provided. It is suggested that language facilitates change by both reducing the cognitive demands associated with controlled response tasks as well as assisting with the formation of robust epistemic representations. An empirical study that was designed to examine the effects of epistemic language (i.e., verbs and syntax) on children’s automatic and controlled processing of belief is then described (Chapters 3 to 5). Eighty-four children (Mage = 3;5 years), who initially failed elicited measures of false-belief, were trained with visual contexts of true- and false-belief. The critical manipulation across three conditions was the linguistic input presented in conjunction with these contexts. Children heard narrations that contained either (a) the description of an agent’s actions without an epistemic verb, (b) a familiar epistemic verb (thinks) across both contexts, or (c) the familiar epistemic verb in contexts of true-belief and a novel epistemic verb (gorps) in contexts of false-belief. Results demonstrated a significant advantage for children who were trained with epistemic verbs on spontaneous measures of false-belief (i.e., anticipatory gaze). Significant effects of epistemic verb exposure were also demonstrated in novel contexts of belief induction. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to theories that make distinct predictions about the role of language in epistemic concept development (Chapter 6).