This paper explores the nature of the critical agenda and endeavours to advance the critical debate by considering a particular case in point: gender and IS research. It does so by drawing upon Chua’s classic framework outlining philosophical assumptions underpinning research and also by building upon prior work of the authors on the interconnections among research topic, epistemology and metho...

The examination of a practical issue with a web site has lead directly to the consideration of the need for, and impact of, an approach based on fundamental theories of “what is” to examine what information systems research is and the relations of the component areas of endeavour. This paper presents an examination of the use of the philosophical field of ontologies, and specifically the use of...

Kant discovered a philosophical problem with mathematical proof. Despite being a priori, its methodology involves more than analytic truth. But what else is involved? This problem is widely taken to have been solved by Frege’s extension of logic beyond its restricted (and largely Aristotelian) form. Nevertheless, a successor problem remains: both traditional and contemporary (classical) mathema...

This article discusses the mathematical and philosophical premises of Gauss’ and Pearson’s methods for advancing science through empirical observation. At the core is the notion that an observation can be decomposed into an ideal part and a random part, and that the relation between the observation and its two parts is known. The premise, named the Gauss-Pearson decomposition, is formalized in ...

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is an axiomatic, mathematical programming approach to productive efficiency analysis and performance measurement. This paper shows that DEA can be interpreted as a nonparametric least squares regression subject to shape constraints on production frontier and sign constraints on residuals. Thus, DEA can be seen as a nonparametric counter-part of the corrected ordi...

I argue that current flaws in the methodology of contemporary cognitive science, especially neuroscience, have adversely affected philosophical theorizing about the nature of representation. To highlight these flaws, I introduce a distinction between adopting the animal’s perspective and the observer’s perspective when characterizing representation. I provide a discussion of each and show how t...

The concept of causality is reviewed with special emphasis on occupational diseases. Separate approaches from the philosophical, scientific, and legal points of view are identified. There is controversy over the methodology of logical causality; inductive and deductive methods are described and reference is made to the verification or refutation approach. Application of the methods to epidemiol...

Phenomenology has proved to be a popular methodology for nursing research. I argue, however, that phenomenological nursing research could be strengthened by greater attention to its philosophical underpinnings. Many research reports devote more page space to procedure than to the philosophy that purportedly guided it. The philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty is an excellent fit for nursing, alth...

Granular computing becomes known as an innovative multidisciplinary study and has established much attention in recent years. The framework shared multiple views and multiple levels of understanding in each view from many fields. The three components of the theory are labeled as the philosophy, methodology and the computation, the integration of the above view of granular computing as a way of ...

This article investigates the historical method of Karl Sudhoff (1853- 1938), Germany's first professor of medical history. It argues that in order to understand his ideas more fully, we need to step outside the historiography of medical history and assess his methodology in relation to the norms and ideals of German academic history writing in general. The article demonstrates that the philolo...