Dear Steven, Kari-Hans, and Terry,
I hope you wont mind me butting in on your
interesting discussions, but I thought it might
be worth saying here that there is an alternative
concept (definition) of knowledge, which I think
could work well in all this.
As Steven pointed out, philosophers of knowledge
define knowledge to be justified true belief.
This is (philosophically) an interesting idea, but
one which remains surrounded by deep unresolved
philosophical problems. To cut a very (very) long
story short, these problems concern questions
about what is it to be justified?, what is it
to be true? and what is a belief. (As an aside,
some in Knowledge Management claim this to be
their definition of knowledge too, but often
seem unaware of its continuing difficulties.
Yet others in Knowledge Management simply
confuse knowledge, information, and data--saying
these are all the same--thus successfully hiding
these difficulties.)
An alternative, and very different, concept of
knowledge comes from Alan Newell's Knowledge Level
in AI, first presented in 1982, but representing
ideas that had been around in AI since it's
earliest days.
Newell characterised knowledge as a competence
notion: as a capacity to act rationally. From
this point of view, knowledge is thus something
seen in the behaviour of an acting agent. It is
not some kind of stuff. There is no knowledge
without agents (human or otherwise) that can
act rationally.
The field of Knowledge Engineering has developed
this concept of knowledge into a very practical
and widely used idea, embodied in various methods.
The closely related subjected called ontologies
continues this. (Ontology is more a new term
for something we have been doing for years, and
even then, one stolen from the philosophers.)
Designers, when designing, (can be seen to) both
use knowledge (capacities for certain kinds of
rational action), and to generate knowledge (develop
further capacities for rational action).
I like this concept of knowledge, and use it my
own research. I think it supports a useful way
of trying to understand and theories about
designing. However, I would also want to add,
that all this does not and cannot tell us all
about what there is to designing. But, as we
know, that is what makes designing such an
interesting and challenging thing to be trying
to better understand.
Best regards,
Tim
P.S. I've been away from this list for a while,
and then only reading it intermittently. In the
mean time I changed jobs, so I attach new
coordinates here.
--
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Tim Smithers [log in to unmask]
Principal Investigator
VICOMTech Visual Interaction and
Communication Technologies
<www.vicomtech.es>
Mikeletegi Pasealekua, 57
Parque Tecnológico
E-20009 Donostia / San Sebastián
Gipuzkoa, Spain Tel: [+34] 943 30 92 30
Fax: [+34] 943 30 93 93
VICOMTech is a member of INI-GraphicsNet
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