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Human Knowledge (human + knowledge)
Selected AbstractsX,Berkeley, the Ends of Language, and thePrinciples of Human KnowledgePROCEEDINGS OF THE ARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY (HARDBACK), Issue 1pt3 2007P. J. E. Kail This paper discusses some key connections between Berkeley's reflections on language in the introduction to his Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge and the doctrines espoused in the body of that work, in particular his views on vulgar causal discourse and his response to the objection that his metaphysics imputes massive error to ordinary thought. I argue also that there is some mileage in the view that Berkeley's thought might be an early form of non-cognitivism. [source] Knowledge and Language: History, the Humanities, the SciencesHISTORY, Issue 285 2002Arthur Marwick Knowledge is not, as Marxisant post-modernists insist, mere ideology or expression of bourgeois power. The high standards enjoyed in the developed countries are fundamentally due to the expansion in human knowledge over the centuries. Decent living conditions, freedom and empowerment for the deprived millions everywhere depend upon the continuing expansion, and, above all, diffusion of knowledge. History is but one domain of knowledge among many, with its own autonomous methods and principles; though very different in detail, these are in spirit similar to those governing the natural sciences. There is a fundamental distinction between the domains of knowledge and the creative arts. ,Language' has a number of significations. In the most fundamental one, it is a human faculty which enables us to communicate, but which raises many problems for historians; none the less language does not control us: we can control language. Usages in foreign languages can often be revealing, while scientists have to master a special language, mathematics. Historians should be aware of other disciplines, and ready to borrow from them. There are many fascinating interdisciplinary problems to which historians can contribute, but these do not call for abstruse cultural theory; what they do call for is an extra-cool application of historical methodology. A case in point is that of the possible relationship between total war and the arts. Does total war affect artistic language or just content and philosophy? [source] The story of socio-technical design: reflections on its successes, failures and potentialINFORMATION SYSTEMS JOURNAL, Issue 4 2006Enid Mumford Abstract., This paper traces the history of socio-technical design, emphasizing the set of values it embraces, the people espousing its theory and the organizations that practise it. Its role in the implementation of computer systems and its impact in a number of different countries are stressed. It also shows its relationship with action research, as a humanistic set of principles aimed at increasing human knowledge while improving practice in work situations. Its evolution in the 1960s and 1970s evidencing improved working practices and joint agreements between workers and management are contrasted with the much harsher economic climate of the 1980s and 1990s when such principled practices, with one or two notable exceptions, gave way to lean production, downsizing and cost cutting in a global economy, partly reflecting the impact of information and communications technology. Different future scenarios are discussed where socio-technical principles might return in a different guise to humanize the potential impact of technology in a world of work where consistent organizational and economic change are the norm. [source] Generalization of belief and plausibility functions to fuzzy sets based on the sugeno integralINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS, Issue 11 2007Chao-Ming Hwang Uncertainty has been treated in science for several decades. It always exists in real systems. Probability has been traditionally used in modeling uncertainty. Belief and plausibility functions based on the Dempster,Shafer theory (DST) become another method of measuring uncertainty, as they have been widely studied and applied in diverse areas. Conversely, a fuzzy set has been successfully used as the idea of partial memberships of multiple classes for the presentation of unsharp boundaries. It is well used as the representation of human knowledge in complex systems. Nowadays, there exist several generalizations of belief and plausibility functions to fuzzy sets in the literature. In this article, we propose a new generalization of belief and plausibility functions to fuzzy sets based on the Sugeno integral. We then make comparisons of the proposed generalization with some existing methods. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed generalization, especially for being able to catch more information about the change of fuzzy focal elements. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 1215,1228, 2007. [source] Panel on Salvation: the Catholic PerspectiveINTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF MISSION, Issue 382-383 2007Teresa Francesca Rossi In the reflection about salvation, mission and healing, the aspect of revelation has not been so much emphasized in the last years. However, it seems to me that revelation, rather than just eschatology, might be the key concept in understanding healing and reconciliation. The signs and wonders that confirm the preaching of the gospel of salvation are necessary in order to give the preacher and the faithful a shape, a frame to human knowledge of God and salvation, though in the "fleshy" knowledge of the human being. Without the shape or frame of a divine sign there can be neither prophecy nor preaching, because prophecy and preaching concern the Word of God. Signs and wonders confirm preaching but only by deepening a cognitive dimension. When we day, "God will heal you," we are announcing the good news of healing, while at the same time we are budding some new conditions to know God. We are at the heart of revelation. At the same time, when we deal with healing, we are not only dealing with the dimension of knowing God and operating signs and wonder, we are also dealing with a dimension of prophecy inasmuch as no prophecy is allowed unless there is a capability of speaking "in the name of", and "on behalf of", which implies a real, though imperfect, knowledge of God, such as we receive not only in revelation but also in signs and wonders. So, healing, this starting point, this unexplored way, this unprecedented path to the understanding of the economy of sulfation, continues revelation because it leads to new knowledge. Inasmuch ad heading does not belong to the economy of final salvation but to the economy of a "restored flesh", it is closer to revelation than to resurrection. It is the seal of redemption. [source] Urquhart's and Garfield's Laws: The British controversy over their validityJOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Issue 9 2001Stephen J. Bensman The British controversy over the validity of Urquhart's and Garfield's Laws during the 1970s constitutes an important episode in the formulation of the probability structure of human knowledge. This controversy took place within the historical context of the convergence of two scientific revolutions,the bibliometric and the biometric,that had been launched in Britain. The preceding decades had witnessed major breakthroughs in understanding the probability distributions underlying the use of human knowledge. Two of the most important of these breakthroughs were the laws posited by Donald J. Urquhart and Eugene Garfield, who played major roles in establishing the institutional bases of the bibliometric revolution. For his part, Urquhart began his realization of S. C. Bradford's concept of a national science library by analyzing the borrowing of journals on interlibrary loan from the Science Museum Library in 1956. He found that 10% of the journals accounted for 80% of the loans and formulated Urquhart's Law, by which the interlibrary use of a journal is a measure of its total use. This law underlay the operations of the National Lending Library for Science and Technology (NLLST), which Urquhart founded. The NLLST became the British Library Lending Division (BLLD) and ultimately the British Library Document Supply Centre (BLDSC). In contrast, Garfield did a study of 1969 journal citations as part of the process of creating the Science Citation Index (SCI), formulating his Law of Concentration, by which the bulk of the information needs in science can be satisfied by a relatively small, multidisciplinary core of journals. This law became the operational principle of the Institute for Scientific Information created by Garfield. A study at the BLLD under Urquhart's successor, Maurice B. Line, found low correlations of NLLST use with SCI citations, and publication of this study started a major controversy, during which both laws were called into question. The study was based on the faulty use of the Spearman rank-correlation coefficient, and the controversy over it was instrumental in causing B. C. Brookes to investigate bibliometric laws as probabilistic phenomena and begin to link the bibliometric with the biometric revolution. This paper concludes with a resolution of the controversy by means of a statistical technique that incorporates Brookes' criticism of the Spearman rank-correlation method and demonstrates the mutual supportiveness of the two laws. [source] Making knowledge: explorations of the indissoluble relation between minds, bodies, and environmentTHE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 2010Trevor H.J. Marchand There is growing recognition among social and natural scientists that nature or nurture should not be studied in isolation, for their interdependence is not trivial, but vital. The aim of this volume is to progress anthropology's thinking about human knowledge by exploring the interdependence of nurture with nature; and more specifically the interdependence of minds, bodies, and environments. This introductory essay begins with an overview of the (often conflicting) positions that dominated the ,anthropology of knowledge' in the closing decades of the last century before proceeding to a discussion of recent convergences between cognitivists, phenomenologists, and practice theorists in their ,thinking about knowing'. In the following section I use my own studies with craftspeople to reflect on apprenticeship as both a mode of learning and a field method, since the majority of authors included in this volume also took up apprenticeships of one form or another. Next, the idea that ,cognition is individual' is firmly established, but it is equally conceded that ,making knowledge' is a process entailing interaction between interlocutors and practitioners with their total environment. Before concluding with a summary of the scope and contents of the volume, I briefly present a theory of ,shared production' in knowledge-making that draws upon recent literature in cognitive linguistics and neuroscience. Making knowledge, after all, is an ongoing process shared between people and with the world. Résumé Les chercheurs en sciences sociales et naturelles sont de plus en plus nombreux à reconnaître qu'il ne faut pas étudier séparément l'inné et l'acquis car leur interdépendance, loin d'être négligeable, est vitale. Le présent volume a pour but de faire progresser la réflexion anthropologique sur les connaissances humaines en explorant les interdépendances entre inné et acquis, et plus précisément l'interdépendance des esprits, des corps et des environnements. À titre d'introduction, le présent essai commence par une vue d'ensemble des prises de position (souvent conflictuelles) qui ont dominé« l'anthropologie de la connaissance » pendant les dernières décennies du XXe siècle, avant d'aborder les récentes convergences entre cognitivistes, phénoménologues et théoriciens de la pratique, dans leur « réflexion sur la connaissance ». Dans la section suivante, l'auteur s'appuie sur ses propres études des artisans pour réfléchir sur l'apprentissage, à la fois comme mode d'apprentissage et comme méthode de terrain, puisque la plupart des auteurs intervenant dans ce volume ont aussi entrepris l'une ou l'autre forme d'apprentissage. L'idée que « la cognition est individuelle » est ensuite solidement établie, mais il est également concédé que la « fabrication de connaissances » est un processus impliquant une interaction entre les interlocuteurs et praticiens et leur environnement global. Avant de conclure par un résumé de la portée et la teneur de ce volume, je présenterai rapidement une théorie de la « production partagée » de connaissances qui s'inspire de récentes publications en linguistique cognitive et en neurosciences. En définitive, la fabrication de connaissances est un processus continu, partagéentre les gens et avec le monde. [source] | |||||||||||||