Alkis Gounaris

Interdisciplinarity and interdisciplinary collaborations have, in recent decades, been central to research programmes and funding policies. However, empirical evidence suggests that many interdisciplinary collaborations struggle to achieve genuine knowledge integration and to include the humanities and social sciences in addressing complex problems, where their contribution is essential.
This paper argues that many of these challenges do not mainly arise from language or communication barriers, but rather from the epistemological and metaphysical assumptions that shape the different worldviews of the collaborating disciplines, which lead to divergences between them and diminish the effectiveness of collaboration.
To address this challenge, the paper proposes the hypothesis that diagnosing, mapping, and analysing the initial epistemological and metaphysical assumptions of the fields involved in an interdisciplinary project can help improve interdisciplinary practice.
Mutual understanding of different conceptual terms, perspectives on scientific methods, the role of language, the significance of logic, and, more broadly, the principles characterising each scientific discipline can be achieved by identifying the key areas where researchers from various disciplines converge and diverge in their initial approaches to interdisciplinary collaboration.
Against this background, the paper introduces a new philosophical tool for diagnosing epistemological stances, which standardises and visualises the initial assumptions of interdisciplinary team members. It also presents the “Epistemic Virtue Index” as the key innovation of this tool. The tool functions digitally, does not require a facilitator, and promotes epistemological self-awareness as well as the self-regulating adjustment of collaborators towards cognitive alignment aimed at the goals of interdisciplinary collaboration.

Keywords:
Interdisciplinarity; Philosophy of Interdisciplinarity; Philosophy of Science; Epistemology; Epistemological Stances; Epistemological Profile; Knowledge Integration; Epistemic Virtue Index; Cognitive Alignment

DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/plogos.43231

Published: Jan, 2026 in https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/plogos/article/view/43231

How to cite:
Gounaris, A. (2026). Diagnosis of Epistemological Stances and the Epistemic Virtue Index in Interdisciplinary Research. In Greek. plogos, 30(1), 31–50. https://doi.org/10.12681/plogos.43231