The Epistemic Value of Speculative Fiction

Smedt, Johan De; Cruz, Helen De

doi:10.1111/misp.12035

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…In our envisaged IoT service innovations, it is the fictional aspects represented through the research process that provide the detail to the scenarios that fact related to the emergent technology cannot. The process of creation involves what some have described as “counterfactual reasoning” and “mental prospection” that enables development of hypothetical possibilities using “what if” questioning (de Smeldt and de Cruz, 2015). The ethical dimension the research framework explores therefore highlights the characteristics, features, atmosphere, processes, influences, context, interactions and networks of all things (objects and humans).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design fiction diegetic prototyping: a research framework for visualizing service innovations

Harwood

Garry

Belk

2019

JSM

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a design fiction diegetic prototyping methodology and research framework for investigating service innovations that reflect future uses of new and emerging technologies. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on speculative fiction, the authors propose a methodology that positions service innovations within a six-stage research development framework. The authors begin by reviewing and critiquing designerly approaches that have traditionally been associated with service innovations and futures literature. In presenting their framework, authors provide an example of its application to the Internet of Things (IoT), illustrating the central tenets proposed and key issues identified. Findings The research framework advances a methodology for visualizing future experiential service innovations, considering how realism may be integrated into a designerly approach. Research limitations/implications Design fiction diegetic prototyping enables researchers to express a range of “what if” or “what can it be” research questions within service innovation contexts. However, the process encompasses degrees of subjectivity and relies on knowledge, judgment and projection. Practical implications The paper presents an approach to devising future service scenarios incorporating new and emergent technologies in service contexts. The proposed framework may be used as part of a range of research designs, including qualitative, quantitative and mixed method investigations. Originality/value Operationalizing an approach that generates and visualizes service futures from an experiential perspective contributes to the advancement of techniques that enables the exploration of new possibilities for service innovation research.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design fiction diegetic prototyping: a research framework for visualizing service innovations

Harwood

Garry

Belk

2019

JSM

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“…Speculative fabulation in teaching has been previously discussed, especially as a method to test abstract philosophical ideas. Its usefulness has been approached by considering the epistemic value derived from both the ground-breaking nature of a self-consistent fictional universe and from the emancipative potential of imagination to deconstruct the taken-for-grantedness of the world (Cameron, 2015; Lally, 2022; Smedt and Cruz, 2015). Speculative fabulation was especially used to expand students’ understanding of gendered systems (Truman, 2019) and to teach issues of race, class, and poverty in an intersectional manner (Ellis and Martinek, 2018).…”

Section: Using Speculative Fabulation In Teachingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching time as a social imaginary. Using speculative fabulation to deconstruct the hegemonic temporalities of modernity

Preda

Matei

2023

Time & Society

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In this paper, we discuss our experience in teaching time to university students. Our analysis suggests that students’ sociological imagination and fictional creativity might be used as means to deconstruct the hegemonic temporalities of modernity. Specifically, we exemplify our claims by considering a set of classroom activities that use speculative fabulation in order to make students question key assumptions about the objective nature of time. The activities we discuss are based on an original combination of exposure to cultural products, reflective writing exercises, and moderated group discussion, thus opening up new horizons of temporal experimentation, exploration, and interpretation. Our activities invite students to imagine alternative temporalities that are decoupled from prevalent mindsets and challenge the taken-for-granted assumptions about the temporal worlds. The assignments are designed as imaginative scenarios, in which students are asked to question the universal, commodified, and absolute notion of time while becoming familiar with the work of relevant thinkers in sociology and anthropology. Based on our results, we conclude that speculative fabulation holds a strong emancipatory potential and is able to bring about significant changes in how students think about time, because it promotes more empowering and meaningful ways of engagement with the world.

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“…By contrast, it is easy to see why it can be useful to assess whether someone else knows without calibrating to their task: e.g., we are interested in whether testimony meets the evidential standard relevant to our task, not theirs. In this respect, assessing whether 22 De Smedt & De Cruz (2015) argue that philosophical thought experiments typically don't transport philosophers to the degree that reading science fiction does: thought experiment rarely cause strong emotions (though see FeldmanHall et al 2012). I've claimed that philosophersunlike survey participants-are transported enough by certain thought experiments to have stakes-sensitive intuitions about them.…”

Section: How Participants In Fixed-evidence X-phi Surveys Ascribe Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

Are knowledge ascriptions sensitive to social context?

Jackson

2021

Synthese

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Plausibly, how much is at stake in some salient practical task can affect how generously people ascribe knowledge of task-relevant facts. There is a metaphysical puzzle about this phenomenon, and an empirical puzzle. Metaphysically: there are competing theories about when and how practical stakes affect whether it is correct to ascribe knowledge. Which of these theories is the right one? Empirically: experimental philosophy has struggled to find a stakes-effect on people's knowledge ascriptions. Is the alleged phenomenon just a philosopher's fantasy?I propose a new psychological account of when and why people's knowledge ascriptions are sensitive to stakes. My hypothesis is motivated by empirical research on how people's judgements are sensitive to their social context. Specifically, people's evaluations are sensitive to their 'psychological distance' from the scenarios they are considering. When using 'fixed-evidence probes', experimental philosophy has found that what's at stake for a fictional character in a made-up scenario has little or no effect on how participants ascribe knowledge to them.My hypothesis predicts this finding: the scenarios are too 'psychologically distant' to participants. Our empirical puzzle is resolved: the stakes-effect often present in the wild won't be present in vignette studies. (This illustrates a widespread problem with X-phi vignette studies: if people might judge differently in other social contexts, we can't generalize from the results of these experiments. That is, vignette studies are of doubtful 'external validity'.) The hypothesis also resolves our metaphysical puzzle. It predicts that people do not ascribe knowledge in a way deemed correct by any of the standard philosophical views, namely classical invariantism, interest-relative invariantism, and contextualism. Our knowledge ascriptions shift around in the way that's most useful for social beings like us, and this pattern in our judgements can only be endorsed by a genuinely relativist metaphysics for knowledge.

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The Epistemic Value of Speculative Fiction

Cited by 8 publications

References 46 publications

Design fiction diegetic prototyping: a research framework for visualizing service innovations

Design fiction diegetic prototyping: a research framework for visualizing service innovations

Teaching time as a social imaginary. Using speculative fabulation to deconstruct the hegemonic temporalities of modernity

Are knowledge ascriptions sensitive to social context?

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