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Is epistemology necessary?

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Abstract

The necessity of epistemological theorisation for management science is questionable. However, epistemology can be useful if the following distinction between three kinds of epistemology, usually overlooked, is taken into account: epistemology as a structured academic discipline, epistemology as an intellectual exercise produced outside academic epistemology, and finally the epistemology specific to each researcher. When this distinction is not made, epistemology can become counterproductive and impede scientific work.

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Notes

  1. The notion of spontaneous epistemology appears in the field of educational science (Cariou 2011; Desautels et al. 1993) when referring to the spontaneous epistemology of teachers, but is hardly ever theorised here.

  2. Epicycles were originally geometric complications that astronomers had to add to the geocentric model to explain certain celestial observations. One of the great advantages of the heliocentric model was to make these complications unnecessary. Today, an epicycle refers to a theoretical complication that is unnecessary.

  3. We may ask how do epistemologists could know about the researcher’ spontaneous epistemology given that it is, in principle, unique to each researcher and much of it is tacit. But even tacit and personal it remains knowledgeable, since it manifests itself through concrete scientific practices.

  4. Epistemologists make the distinction between “trait virtues” and “faculty virtues”. Faculty virtues are truth-conducive cognitive faculties. Here, however, I consider only trait virtues.

  5. Rigorously speaking, a knowledge is necessarily true: knowledge is factive. However, for the sake of convenience, I will use expressions such as ‘false’ or ‘true’ knowledge.

  6. “Allogenic” in the sense of “coming from another field” (TLFi, 1994c), in this case from a field other than that of academic epistemology.

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    Erwan Lamy

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Lamy, E. Is epistemology necessary?. Philosophy of Management 22, 373–394 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-022-00209-0

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