Online research in philosophy

Ontology's are no longer just a means of relating or unfolding semantic operations instead it is firmly contained within the virtual world and technologies have unravelled its full semantic potentials. The contribution of knowledge management combined with different software applications calls for increasing pedagogical support for extending both ontology and the knowledge management environment. Though there are multiple knowledge management (KM) concerns within health care, medicine is a domain, which has the potential to show how good ontology, can yield demonstrable benefits in human interests. This paper presents a framework incorporating the learning processes, knowledge base characteristics and ontology applications for a clinical environment. This type of integration leads to increasing the understanding of ontology applications, collaboration and competence.

This paper considers a new class of agent dynamic logics which provide a formal means of specifying and reasoning about the agents activities and informational, motivational and practical aspects of the behaviour of the agents. We present a Hilbert-style deductive system for a basic agent dynamic logic and consider a number of extensions of this logic with axiom schemata formalising interactions between knowledge and commitment (expressing an agent s awareness of her commitments), and interactions between knowledge and actions (expressing no learning and persistence of knowledge after actions). The deductive systems are proved sound and complete with respect to a Kripke-style semantics. Each of the considered logics is shown to have the small model property and therefore decidable.

This article describes the tension that exists between the views of learning as a means of knowledge transfer and the alternative idea that it is socially situated and not separable from the activities in which it is developed. It concludes that the 'authentic practices' of particular academic domains should be employed in schools to encourage learning rather the culture of schooling itself.

The capacity to engage in systems thinking is often viewed as being a product of being able to understand complex systems due to one's facility in mastering systems theories, methods, and being able to adeptly reason. Relatively little attention is paid in the systems literature to the processes of learning from experience and creating knowledge as a direct consequence of individuals engaging systems thinking itself over time. In fact, the potential efficacy of systems thinking to improve performance normally seen as only contingent on a priori knowledge, rather than knowledge created via learning from experience. Such newly create knowledge often results from engaging in modeling efforts and systemic forms of inquiry. This article proposes a model for creating new knowledge by coupling systems modeling with a pragmatic approach to knowledge-creation. This approach is based on a foundation of the pragmatic concepts first proposed by the American philosopher/scientist Charles Sanders Peirce over a century ago. This model offers systems practitioners a framework to engage in knowledge-intensive systems thinking (KIST) for addressing complex problematic issues.

Challenging Situatedness contends that the production of knowledge is just that—a production, and one fraught with intrinsic and often unconscious biases. In fact, to assume that scientific research is inherently objective, neutral, and therefore genderless can, quite literally, be harmful to one's health. The contributors to this volume instead argue for a situated knowledge, a research model that acknowledges different cultural realities and actively articulates context-rich ways of knowing. Drawing on international research studies—from Cameroon, Ghana, India, and Sweden, among others— Challenging Situatedness is a vital exploration of feminist theory in practice.

At the beginning of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle says that “all learning and all rational teaching arises from previously existing knowledge”. How, then, can we have any knowledge? If all our knowledge is acquired by learning that depends on previously existing knowledge, then we would have an infinite regress of still prior knowledge, with the result that we cannot learn anything without having learned something else first. If we reject this possibility, then the only one that remains is that we have some knowledge that we did not learn. This might happen in two ways: either we have some knowledge that we never acquired at all, or we have some knowledge that we acquired but without learning it. We would have knowledge that we never acquired if there was never a time at which we did not have it (which would entail, of course, that we were born with it). Plato held that we do have such knowledge, and indeed that all the genuine knowledge that we have is innate in this way. Aristotle, however, denies that we have innate knowledge (for instance at An. Post. II.19, 100a10). Since he nevertheless does think that we have knowledge, he must think that we have some knowledge which we did not acquire by learning. In fact, he does present such a view in Posterior Analytics II.19, where he claims that our knowledge of the principles ( ¢¡¤£¦¥¨§ ) of sciences comes to us through perception and induction and that the state of knowledge of them is “intelligence” or “thought” ( © ). Aristotle says explicitly that in this process the mind is passive; therefore, it is reasonable for us to regard it as not being a kind of learning (or at any rate as a kind of rational learning). Thus, Aristotle’s overall position is consistent.

Reflection is an ambiguous buzzword in contemporary educational and professional settings. Work has been done to clarify the concept theoretically, but a gap remains between such clarifications and actual reflective activities in educational and work-related practices. Reflective activities embody epistemological presuppositions about the nature of competence, knowledge, and learning, and about the relation between thinking, communicating, and acting. In this article, Nina Bonderup Dohn identifies the epistemological presuppositions of two paradigm cases of reflection (“solitaire reflection” and “communicative reflection”) and assesses these against a view of knowledge, competence, learning, and action inspired by the Scandinavian interpretation of Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy as well as by insights from phenomenology and situated learning. The outcome of Dohn's assessment is that the presuppositions of the paradigm cases are misguided and, therefore, so are the reflective activities. The problems and pitfalls that result from this situation are identified and illustrated with empirical examples. Dohn concludes by suggesting an alternative paradigm: “situated reflection.”.

The purpose of this chapter is to outline some of the thinking behind new e-learning technology, including e-portfolios and personal learning environments. Part of this thinking is centered around the theory of connectivism, which asserts that knowledge - and therefore the learning of knowledge - is distributive, that is, not located in any given place (and therefore not 'transferred' or 'transacted' per se) but rather consists of the network of connections formed from experience and interactions with a knowing community. And another part of this thinking is centered around the new, and the newly empowered, learner, the member of the net generation, who is thinking and interacting in new ways. These trends combine to form what is sometimes called 'e-learning 2.0' - an approach to learning that is based on conversation and interaction, on sharing, creation and participation, on learning not as a separate activity, but rather, as embedded in meaningful activities such as games or workflows.

Changing views of the nature of human knowledge change how we design organizations, facilities, and technology to promote learning: Learning is not transfer; using a plan is not executing a program; explanation is not reciting rules from memory. Such rationalist views of knowledge inhibit change and stifle innovate uses of technology. Representations of work (plans, policies, procedures) and their meaning develop in work itself. Representations guide, but do not strictly control human behavior. Every perception and action involves new, nonlinguistic conceptualizations that reground organizational goals and values. This essay explores how the epistemology of situated cognition guides business redesign.

The theory of situated learning claims that every idea and human action is a generalization, adapted to the ongoing environment, because what people see and what they do arise together. From this perspective, thinking is a physical skill. As we create names for things, shuffle around sentences in a paragraph, and interpret what our statements mean, every step is controlled not by reinstantiated grammars and previously constructed plans, but adaptively recoordinated from previous ways of seeing, talking, and moving. Situated learning is the study of how human knowledge develops in the course of activity, and especially how people create and interpret descriptions (representations) of what they are doing. This introduction provides a historical perspective of situated learning, including the work of Dewey, Bartlett, Vygotsky, and Ryle. I provide examples of how situated learning is being applied today in business process redesign.