The book is divided into three parts: I. ‘Cynical Myths’, II. ‘False Theories’ and III. ‘Why Truth matters’. Part I offers a diagnosis and criticism of views that naturally lead to cynicism with respect to truth: (a) the view that truth is unattainable, (b) the view that truth is relative, and (c) the view that falsehood is often more useful than truth. Part II offers a critique of prominent th...

Medicine has become interested in unconventional healing practices, ostensibly because of recent demographic research that reveals a thriving medical market of multiple options. This essay presents a historical overview of medical pluralism in the United States. Consistent evidence is examined suggesting that unconventional medicine has been a persistent presence in U.S. health care. Despite pa...

The methodological pluralism in IS research is topic of an ongoing discussion. Several claims have been made both in favor of methodological pluralism and against it. The debate focuses mainly the relationship between IS research methods (i.e. empirical/behavioural or constructional orientation) and the underlying IS research paradigms, especially positivism and interpretivism. As an integrativ...

"Multiculturalism", "pluralism" and "tolerance" have become buzz words in applied ethics. While serious and well thought out work is going on in these areas, a misunderstanding of the importance of tolerance, and the difficulties raised by multicultural moral conflict seems common. In this paper I argue that intolerance of some cultural traditions is morally required, and suggest that the forgi...

Introduction Decisions increasingly become dilemmas without obvious solutions as worldviews clash, science conflicts, politics polarize, and institutions entrench. Yet decision must be made: Should we sacrifice a species in order to build a road that increases access to health care for people in need? Should we confine pigs and chickens in feeding operations whose efficiencies preserve habitat ...

This article critiques major trends in the psychotherapy integration movement from the postmodern perspectives of contextualism and pluralism. A contextualist position asserts that psychotherapeutic concepts and interventions can be understood only within the linguistic, theoretical, and ideological frameworks in which they are embedded. Therefore, they take on new meanings when extracted from ...

The purpose of this article is to describe pluralistic perspectives in knowledge management. The knowledge management literature provides frameworks from various discrete perspectives. It is argued that the simultaneous application of multiple perspectives, or pluralism, is required to manage the richness of knowledge phenomena. Pluralism is defined as support for all three of the systems persp...

Mallon, Machery, Nichols and Stich (2009) argue that the use of intuitions in the philosophy of reference is problematic as recent studies show intuitions about reference vary both within and between cultures. I use some ideas from the recent literature on disagreement and truth relativism to shed light on the debate concerning the appropriate reaction to these studies. Mallon et al. argue that...

The guiding principle of this reform is what we term critical pluralism. There are two key ideas in this. The first is that truth, or progress towards it, arises only if empirical reality is tested against a multiplicity of theoretical explanations of that reality. Pluralism is thus not a normative or ethically desirable adjunct to science but a necessary prerequisite to producing valid knowled...