4. Knowledge, Knowledge Society and Human Knowledge
See how to get to the same question (the real structure of human
mind) from a different dierection.
Why study knowledge?
several reasons....
a recent one: Knowledge Society
definition:
large part of society professionally deals with ...
also a separate activity independent from its content (domain)
role of computers
a general technology is developing
This is an amplification of earlier tendencies,
It is important to understand that it's not just the last 5 years...
4.1. Knowledge Society in the Past:
(1) Society is always based on social information (input this
box from anthropology, human ethology etc)
Human society is originally group society
where knowledge and information are essential for control and co-operation
Societies institutionalized this, ever
since paleolithic man
Social group: leasder, religious function, wizard/shaman etc.
The function of social rites and cults, aided with objects.
"Know how" is mediated by cultic objects (as
a main or a double function of artifacts).
Summary statement: no fundamental difference between basic organization
of ancient and modern
society, including the present "information age society" (any athropologist
would agree...)
J. Diamond (1997): Guns, Germs, and Steel, Norton, New York.
http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring99/gunsgerms.htm
Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeld (1989): Human Ethology, de Gruyter.
William A. Foley (1997): Anthropological Linguistics: An Introduction,
Blackwell.
(2) Social theory and theoretical sociology about knowledge
as fundamental:
Human societies constitute themselves via informational mechanisms.
Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) http://www.bgcenter.com/vygotskyProject.htm
http://www.massey.ac.nz/~i75202/2001/assign2/PM/vygsup.html
L. S. Vygotsky et al (1980): Mind
in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, Harvard UP.
Tomasello, M. (1996). Piagetian
and Vygotskian approaches to language acquisition. Human Development, 39.
269-276.
Jürgen Habermas (1984) The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason
and the Rationalization of Society, Beacon Press, Boston, MA.
Niklas Luhmann (1995): Social Systems. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Niklas Luhmann (1982): Differentiation of Society. New York:
Columbia University Press.
4.2. Knowledge Society Now
Why are the above remarks important?
The Knowledge Society concept and programme started out as impersonal
and no human being was involved, only codes, technological concepts, and
rigid
Cartesian definitions of knowledge inherited from artificial intelligence.
knowledge technology
knowledge management
knowledge extraction
acquisition etc.
exchange of information
networking
the "opening up" of the knowledge
paradigm towards persons and social dimensions
arriving at the conclusion that knowledge is
essentially social
interactive
personal
The Internet as a General Model for Human
Knowledge
This is recently much studied, e.g.
Manuel Castells, The Information Age
- Economy, Society and Culture, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Vol.I: The Rise of the Network Society (1996), xvii + 556 pp.
Vol.II: The Power of Identity (1997), xv + 461 pp.
Vol.III: End of Millennium (1998), xiv + 418 pp.
see http://www.uniworld.hu/nyiri/castells.htm
In the KS paradigm
Internet is recognized as largerst
technical challenge
But, as we will now discuss, also a challenge to basic theory
Documents on the internet are
distributed
(not complete copies, not one copy each etc)
changing, flexible
(unlike printed text)
non-permanent
(begins ans ends)
multimeda-based
not one author
(consider this document, for example)
structure of live speech
Notions of "secondary orality"... and "post-literacy"
M. Mc Luhan (1962): The Gutenberg
Galaxy "meaning of print
culture is becoming alien to us"
W. Ong (1982): Orality and Literacy:
The Technologizing of the Word. (New York: Methuen, 1988).
http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/ong_rvw.html
Orality: occurs in a network consisting of people,
a human group phenomenon
(not individual, not impersonal)
As elaborated in Lecture 2:
the traditional concept of knowledge reflects
properties of the written text
(at this point we may understand
this very intuitively)
today the applicablity of this
changes, in the most significant domain, the Internet
we already entered a different
period
One example: authentication
crisis
text is easy
to autenticate
internet is
currently impossible
Knowledge management in the age of internet must understand
what is the nature of knowledge and
human thinking
because at each node of the net a
human being sits.
Detached and Immersed Knowledge
Here we summarize differences between the two views
The Cartesian concept of the mind and knowledge suggests a detached view
of knowledge.
Mostly the passive aspects of cognition (mental content,
representation - note the word content)
The network view suggests an immersed concept of knowledge.
Typical for human societies in the past, more dynamic
and interactive, person-based.
detached
immersed
extractred
situational
decontextualized
contextual
distant
"being there"
absolute
relative
essential
relational
Summary in a diagram. S and R are "Sender" and "Receiver" as in information
theory.
Note two meanings of detachment.
Detached knowledge as a mental property. Detached knowledge as extracted
from mind.
Both depend on the same notion of the mind.
Both the relation between mind and knowledge concepts, and the challenges
of immersed knowledge
necessitate more dynamic and more interactive conceptions.
These exist in the theories of human cognition.
Relationship Between Human Knowledge and Scientific and Technological Concept
of Knowledge.
Knowledge is not a Thing but a Relation
A little bit about what are we going to do.
The Carteisan view suggests that knowledge is an entity.
The Anti-Cartesian view suggests that knowledge is NOT an entity.
Two concepts:
methodological individualism
methodological
anti-individualism
the indivudal is ~isolated
the individual does not end at the surface of skin
complete
incomplete
Anti-individualism often also called "externalism". Physical or social reality
is PART of human mind.
E.g. linguistic meaning is in the interaction of use; no meaning or represented
knowledge possible in single individual.
Seemingly difficult concepts, but easy to understand in relational terms.
How to Handle Relations, if We Have To
Relations are not easy to deal with, in any theory.
It is easy (or only possible?) to deal with objects.
There is a famous claim that objects always end up in Aristotelian essentialism.
Ontology research by B. Smith and others.
So if we are going to talk in an Anti-Cartesian and Non-Essentialist
way, what is our chance?
Here is a hint. In biology this talk is gaining ground in the gene concept,
immunology and elsewhere.
Example: human genome project found 30,000 genes that "code" for maybe 1,000,000
proteins.
Applying biology's way of thinking about objects and interactions together,
a strategy tested in
evolution, molecular biology etc, we will be able to handle relational definitions,
in a limited sense.
But: there is no "good trick" to reduce relations to objects in the end,
and to get rid of context, immersion,
situation etc. Study Nature, not our expectations about it.
Summary of Lecture 1
The Closer Content of the "Methodology of Human Knowledge" revealed:
(1) There is a changing concept of mind, we will map several aspects of this
concept.
100 years ago, started in philosophy
(amplified
in past 50 years)
20 years ago,cognitive science
(linguistics
- Lakoff, consciousness - Varela, development - Thelen, qualia - Dennett etc).
in recent years very strongly
(cf. M. Wheeler (2002): Cognition is Coming Home, MIT Press, to appear)
(see strange competition of who came in first...)
slow process
difficult to see where it goes
now at one stage, looking around.
(2) The problem of the inner structure of the human mind is "philosophical",
but it is the starting point to any
meaningful discussion of problems knowledge