Talk at the meeting INFORMATION SOCIETY,INTERDISCIPLINARITY, AND THE FUTURE OF THE HUMANITIES Budapest, Nov.4, 2000 Institute for Philosophical Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences



TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE STATUS OF THE HUMANITIES:

CREATING AND MAINTAINING KNOWLEDGE

Csaba PLÉH

University of Szeged Department of Psychology

pleh@edpsy.u-szeged.hu


Types of knowledge in philosophy, CogSci, education, and culture
 
 

codes and contents maintanence, organization, and transmission in the humanistic tradition

explicit knowledge as the traditional requirement: who is a cultivated person?

Skills of the doer become skills of the knower

Society based on knowledge or based on action and communication?
 
 

Two visions about knowledge
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
CLASSICAL HUMANIST PRAGMATIC ENGINEERING 
pure knowledge  knowledge is use
re-presenting  doing
school based  street based 
vertical transfer hori/vertical transfer 
 

Types of knowledge in philosophy, CogSci, education, and culture
 
 
 
 
school based street based
Knowing what Knowing how
Explicit Implicit
Teaching  Modeling
Cultivation of personality Achieving goals: instrumentality 

  Traditional view

explicit knowledge is categorical

propositional

implicit knowledge: mother tongue

behavior

Generic explicit: set based

Procedural: always set based ?



traditional view of the humanities



Codes: languages, manners etc.

Contents: organize (taxonomy)

how did they come: history
 
 

Culture and the mind are storage rooms

Scholar is organizer and historian
 
 

humanities as a discipline

discovery: origins

Explication make the implicit

explicit

create canons: identities

through education

Functions of classical humanities
 
 

Creating a certain community and distinction
 
 

Creating identity: Egos.
 
 

 Maintaining knowledge has the main
function of trasmitting it as identity marker

cognitive view of the humanities



look for the mind to explain organization of knowledge
 
 

typologies

Donald:

architectures depend on information technologies

(seeMaynard-Smith – Szathmáry)

experience-episodic

narrative-mythological anthropol

exo-store based theoretical humanities
 
 

 explicit knowledge (vs. implicit)

languages (codes)

secondary knowledge

metacognition
 
 

The aim of the cognitive approach to cultural knowlege
 
 

model

explain: biology

psychology

sociology
 
 

Contrast to understanding


Knowledge of procedures in the old and new view


In the old world procedures are:
 
 

Mainly life based.

You will learn it anyway.

At the same time ARTS: poetry

medicine
 
 

Declarative knowledge is assumed to be superior to skills in SCHOOLING

What is the function of explicitness in procedural knowedge?
 
 

Grammar: Items and Rules

lexicon plus grammar as a contemporary view (Clahsen) FOUR STAGES IN KNOWLEDGE TRANSMISSION
 
 

A. ORAL CULTURE

Immediate transmisson: vertical

intimate coherence

Knowing what also appers in

interpersonal vertical context
 
 

B. WRITTEN MEDIA OF KNOWLEDGE

 Knowing whats and hows

cultural indicators

Vertical transmission. masters
 
 
 
 

C. PRAGMATIC AND ENGINEERING REVOLT knowing how celebrations in New Pedagogies. Do they really work?
 
  THE RELEVANCE OF NETWORKS: What if Knowing what is accessible with no constraints?
 
 
 
  Issues of transmisson
 
 
Culture Frames of transmission  Direction of transfer  Governing 
Oral  Personal Words Þ things  in interaction 
Written (school) Person and text Texts Þ things  Processing thorugh interaction 
Network  Texts Search Þ things  this is the great issue