Tim Smithers wrote:
> 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.
>
> 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.
Tim
Thanks for this. I was aware of the AI view of knowledge and it has its
attractions. I'm interested in my sense of knowing. I'm driving along
quite happily directing my car around a stationary car toward the gap
between the car and the opposite curb. I believe I am in a state of
knowing (this would fit with exercising a rational competence). I see
another car approaching and assess that it may pass the stationary car
at the same time. I feel uncertain. I slow down and soon know that I can
get through gap okay. This is a common experience. I move from knowing
to uncertainty to knowing all while exercising a rational competence,
but I feel different at different points.
Bit off the point I think but its late in the day.
Steve
--
Professor Stephen AR Scrivener
VIDE Research Centre
Design Institute
School of Art and Design
Coventry University
Coventry, CV1 5FB, UK
Tel: +44 (0)24 7688 7477
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