Knowing and the Mystique of Logic and Rules: including True Statements in Knowing and Action Computer Modelling of Human...

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 380 pages
• Published by: Springer
• Edition: 1st Edition January 1, 1995
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0792336801
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0792336808
• Book Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Weighs: 1.4 pounds

Product Description
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.

Reader Reviews
If you want to know what science and scientific method is, read this book. So, what is science? Science is an activity, which produces coherent descriptions of the world. All scientific articles and books are descriptions of some aspects or phenomena's in the world, and they quote each other, build on each other and suplement each other. The descriptions may not all agree, but they are in their own way coherent. Compared to Kuhn (the man who invented the paradigm) and other science philosophers, Naur's view of science is common sense and easy to use when discussing how scientific work should and should not be done. The consequence ranges from physics to new age philosophers, and to the question of organizing scientific work in new and different ways. In addition, Naur describes how the quest for knowing the world is misled by fallacies in philosophical tradition and daily thinking. On his way he tears apart significant parts of Bertrand Russell's and Noam Chomsky's thoughts together with a number of academic ideas about language, music and mathematics. You may not agree with everything, but you may become much wiser by reading it.