The aftermath: Theme 1

So, 400 words of the things I’ve learned for the past week. Where to begin? We had our seminar today, Tuesday, and it was quite interesting. I found that we touched on several pretty important topics that probably we all should have been introduced to earlier in our studies: what is knowledge, what is truth and how should we behave towards our own understanding of reality.

My wife always quotes from Einstein, “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods” when I get over my head with something that she feels I do not have any knowledge of (and of course I do understand that I need to be humbled by it nowadays she only have to say,  “I say what Einstein says” and discussion ends). But it’s hard. Indeed it’s hard.

I’ve studied some philosophy so a lot of this introduction or Theme 1 was already known (haha) to me, but I felt it was a good review and a good crash-course on the subject of epistemology – which is a pretty heavy subject to talk and think about. I do like the study of morals better than epistemology but I would like to think that they actually intertwine or are connected when they ask the big questions i.e.: what is truth?

I should probably try to connect this to this course and what it’s about (or really what I want to make of it) and I think that I start to like it – the course – a bit more than from when I started it out. At first I wasn’t quite sure what to do with this course but now I see that it has it’s share of points – I will admit I was blind. But I do like this reflective approach, and this discussion with myself in this blog, and hopefully I will gain something resembling knowledge through it. It’s a good concept so kudos to the teachers.

I also believe the book by Russell was a good introduction to how we should interpret research of the scientific approach on a more philosophical ground. That not saying that I completely agree with the thoughts of Russell or that I really see the scientific approach as the best solution to everything – some things you cannot measure – but it’s a great introduction to human thinking and the concept of the free thought.

 Word count:  411

CallimachusDL: Digital Libraries in the the web 3.0 era.

The web is currently, once again, changing. More and more research are concentrated to explore what Berners-Lee (creator of the HTML-format and the hyper-link) once introduced as the semantic web: The web that understands ontology.

My short analysis is based on a research report from García-Crespo et al (2011) called Digital Libraries and Web 3.0: The CallimachusDL Approach.

The authors focus their approach of meta data analysis through a program they've created called CallimachusDL. The purpose of CDL is to structure the mess of digital data found in most digital libraries by Metadata representation, Multi-ontology approaches for definitions, Semantic navigation, Usability and Faceted searches.

The evaluation process is given to a group of students performing their last year on the University of Carlos program “Software Engeneering III” (N=52, male=35, female=17) and is based on a quantitative questionnaire of the students qualitative experience with the system. SPSS was used to analyze the data from the questionnaire.

The findings was quite positive and indeed further research should be carried out around the subject and investigate how to actually create a slick and smooth interface for the CDL-program.

My concerns with the paper is that it's maybe a rather small evaluation group to carry out something as large as this, and that the understanding of Software Engineers could be biased on functionality because of their understanding of software and programs . Therefore further investigation and research needs to be done concerning HCI and findings of functionality in groups with different backgrounds. 

The Problems of Philosophy (1912) by Bertrand Russell

Russell need to introduce this concept of sense-data otherwise the reader can not understand how subjects interpret reality through their own senses (this is actually one of the first thing I was taught while I was studying Philosophy at the University of Örebro). Our senses are the filter or lens that makes us able to interpret our surroundings and gain knowledge of it but this is not to be considered, as Russell shows, the truth about reality.

The term proposition refers to a statement we can actually know. Like: person A existed. That's a proposition we can know even if we didn't knew the person himself, or if we knew him but only through a para-social relationship or acquaintance. The statement of fact thus is, in Russels own terms, "the propositions we understand composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted". This concept of propositions and statements of fact differs from other verbal expression because they are not imaginative in the same way (they are not made in our minds, they aren't empty of content).

With definite description Russell separates the two statements "a man" and "the man with the iron mask". Russell want us to understand that by using the word description he refers to a definite description, "the man with the iron mask" or "the so-and-so" (singular): an object (or subject) with a certain characteristic.

It seems to me that Russell uses the concept of "I do not fancy I know what I do not know" as spoken through the mouth of Socrates through the pen of Plato, to attack epistemology. But too me he fails himself not answering why people always seems to know a straight line from a crooked.

Word count: 547

Test - Cogito, ergo sum.