Understanding and (dis)trusting food assurance schemes: Consumer confidence and the ‘knowledge fix’

This paper uses evidence from focus groups with consumers in England to consider how consumers understand and evaluate a range of proxies or intermediary organisations that offer assurance about food and consumer products, particularly voluntary certification schemes. This addresses the current concern in developed economies about providing information in order to reconnect consumers with food producers and to support moves towards more local, fairly traded and sustainable production. However, we show that such a ‘knowledge fix’ approach of providing information may not reconnect consumers so easily. Participants found it particularly difficult to work out what certification involved and what kinds of organisations were providing assurance. They built vernacular typologies and comparative judgements that did not necessarily identify or prioritise ‘independent’ third-party certification as the gold standard, not least because of the practical difficulties of monitoring complex supply chains, and expressed confusion and scepticism about how well food assurance schemes could work in practice. Our results therefore problematise the knowledge fix urged in the literature and emphasise instead the need to better understand how consumers make sense of assurance information in different contexts.     

论怀疑论基本方法对美学的影响

怀疑主义认为人的理性永远无法把握这个世界。它以其存疑、否定、对立、提问、对话等基本方法对传统美学理论中美的起源、美的形式、天才论等命题做了批判和质疑,从一个全新的角度对美学进行阐释,以交互主体和对话的形式建构美学,使艺术能够进行更加平等和宽容的对话。这可以使美学摆脱罗各斯中心主义、独断论和意识形态的束缚,获得精神的独立性和学术的尊严,从而真正产生创造性的力量。     

论近代理性派认识论哲学的终结——康德与近代认识论哲学的最后终结

休谟的经验批判终结了近代经验派认识论哲学,从而开始了近代认识论哲学的终结,但是近代认识论哲学的最后终结则是由康德来完成的.沿着休谟开辟的怀疑论道路,近代认识论哲学的任务就必然是理性的批判,康德的知识论决定了其理性批判的基本内容,正是通过对人类知性与感性直观的批判,康德彻底否定了一切人类理智的形而上学,把知识完全限制在一切出现中,这也就否定了近代认识论哲学的前提,从而在终结近代理性派认识论哲学的同时,也堵死了近代认识论哲学一切可能的存在路线.