Knowing and the Mystique of Logic and Rules: including True Statements in Knowing and Action * Computer Modelling of Human Knowing Activity * Coherent Description as the Core of Scholarship and Science (1995) (Studies in Cognitive Systems #18)

By: P. Naur

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into UK education collection to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis: Human knowing is examined as it emerges from classical empirical psychology, with its ramifications into language, computing, science, and scholarship. While the discussion takes empirical support from a wide range, claims for the significance of logic and rules are challenged throughout. Highlights of the discussion: knowing is a matter of habits or dispositions that guide the person's stream of consciousness; rules of language have no significance in language production and understanding, being descriptions of linguistic styles; statements that may be true or false enter into ordinary linguistic activity, not as elements of messages, but merely as summaries of situations, with a view to action; in computer programming the significance of logic, proof, and formalized description, is incidental and subject to the programmer's personality; analysis of computer modelling of the mental activity shows that in describing human knowing the computer is irrelevant; in accounting for the scholarly/scientific activity, logic and rules are impotent; a novel theory: scholarship and science have coherent descriptions as their core. The discussion addresses questions that are basic to advanced applications of computers and to students of language and science.