The art of aiming at a moving target: A critique of Lechner and Frost’s Practice Theory and International Relations

How can we account for the normative dimension of international practices? Silviya Lechner and Mervyn Frost’s Practice Theory and International Relations answers this question by proposing, with a considerable degree of epistemological sophistication, what the authors call ‘normative descriptivism’, which they combine with a focus on ‘macro practices’. In this contribution, I start by examining the authors’ engagement with IR’s practice turn, and the insights this engagement may offer on the underlying objective of their approach. I then turn to Lechner and Frost’s decision to eclipse history. The contribution concludes by using the evolution of international law as a cursory illustration of the types of analyses Lechner and Frost’s approach would lead to. It thereby emphasises potential challenges inherent in the authors’ combination of internalism as rooted in individual self-consciousness and a focus on ‘macro practices’, including the possibility that it might limit the potential to critically question the standard that becomes identified as universal.

The Normative Significance of Cognitive Science Reconsidered

Josh Greene famously argued that his cognitive-scientific results undermine deontological moral theorizing. Greene is wrong about this: at best, his research has revealed that at least some characteristically deontological moral judgments are sensitive to factors that we deem morally irrelevant. This alone is not enough to undermine those judgments. However, cognitive science could someday tell us more: it could tell us that in forming those judgments, we treat certain factors as reasons to believe as we do. If we independently deem such factors to be morally irrelevant, such a result would undermine those judgments and any moral theorizing built upon them. This paper attempts to bring charity, clarity, and epistemological sophistication to Greene's argument and those like it.

Epistemological beliefs and intellectual development in the physical sciences

Much research has been documented on the stage of students‟ intellectual and epistemological development during their studies and upon course completion. To a large extent, the literature suggests that promoting students through the intellectual framework is a desirable feat. Indeed, students graduating from university at the more developed stages of intellectual and epistemological sophistication are better equipped to synthesise, evaluate, organise and cross reference knowledge into different domains.In this review, modes of epistemological beliefs will be discussed as sources of valuable information to departments about the quality and nature of students‟ perceptions of learning and teaching. The results of recent research in epistemological and intellectual development will also be discussed; this perhaps being a mechanism to inform learning and teaching practices within the physical sciences.