might be interesting to compare the aspects of diplomatics with reference to documents and information-seekin gbehavior → since the unit of analysis and the context have changed, what does that mean for how we think about information? can we learn from the diplomatics of Duranti to apply in the ISB context?
Theory: general diplomatics
Criticism: special diplomatics
ISB theory: based on the concept of the needy seeker in a systems environment→then a focus on user attributes/skills and systems→next a focus on user experience and sense making→now a focus on context and emotion (dynamic aspects during a non-linear/constant information-seeking existence (gets back to the evolutionary roots of curiosity, survival, etc.)
Provenance→could trace through diplomatics and through ISB in different eras: personal relationships, primary sources, authoritative sources mediated via technology, now it’s much more difficult to discern trustworthy from untrustworthy information; plus, there are individual tendencies that make some more or less concerned with veracity, accuracy, reliability (define these three things, compare to diplomatics?, compare across modes of information access?
Darwinian approach situates a communicative action within its socio-cultural environment, just as ISB theorists are characterizing the acquisition of information
(RGS?) evolutive nature of genres is both outcome and means of social action
how does this compare to ISB models?
social context as an integral part of human activity
MacNeill on contemporary archival diplomatics
strong conceptual model of an authentic record
jurisprudence
ideal types→not true or false, but useful or not
developing ideal types of electronic records←→makes me think about developing the ideal search query—and we know that isn’t so helpful
the shift of diplomatics away from explanation and prediction toward description and exploration is similar to the trajectory of ISB paradigms→interpretivist philosophy
situate both models within a more interpretative and contextualist framework
“The postpositive approach that has characterized diplomatics since its inception does not appear to satisfy current queries about the motives and expectations involved in the production of documents or the deep structure of decision making in organizations.”
Other theory dualisms
Giddens vs. Habermas
Hofstede’s cultural dimensions
wonder if I could match them up with Maslow’s
Ciaran Trace and information cultures (she looked at law enforcement; I could look at Internet security? or better yet, online information trustworthiness?)
she compared the constructivist/postmodern interpretation of the record to the positivist interpretation
is there another interpretation that is natural? something dealing with the context and provenance? hmmm
Fallis on epistemic values and information management
can connect to skepticism
Objectivity versus subjectivity
can there be both? there is a reality and one perceives/construes it
Baudrillard’s constructivist extreme is a playful form of relativism→everything is simulation; technical ability to create apart from reality
ontology: the nature of the knowledge itself
epistemology: how we know/process
Kant as the bridge between Descartes and hume
we have the nomen, we only perceive the phenomen
knowledge is justified true belief
is knowledge made or discovered?
when talking about knowledge cultures, consider Mary Douglas’s emphasis on the importance of circular representations for abstract ideas.
Capurro→we want our field to be a science
MT: the physiological explanations of affect/emotion make IS a science, but this doesn’t mean we can predict because the variance is huge ?
epistemology is the area of philosophy most central to IS
Jesse Shera→importance of epistemology to IS=information services help people acquire knowledge; they have to understand what knowledge is, and how it is acquired to help people acquire it; thus, epistemology is of central concern
most knowledge is acquired by communication with other members of society, not direct observation
MT: this implies greater subjectivity? or different subjectivity? definitely means provenance is more distant→like in social networks
much socially acquired information is transmitted via recorded information, so information issues are some of the most pressing concerns in epistemology
Egan & Shera talked about how facilitating the acquisition of knowledge requires knowing more about how knowledge is acquired and used (MT: also explains how we’re tied closely to education)→a gap in our knowledge of knowledge
social epistemology→new framework for effective investigation of the intellectual processes of society; comprises bibliometrics, economics of information, information retrieval, and sociology of knowledge
independently developed by philosophers→it’s simply the branch of epistemology that focueses on the role that social factors & institutions play in knowledge acquisition
Fallis: social epistemology and IS→IS turns to philosophy for insight
traditionally 3 main areas: metaphysics (existence), ethics (behavior), epistemology (knowledge)
information ethics→intellectual freedom, censorship, access, privacy, intellectual property
I really like this area
main thesis: epistemology (particularly social) is the area of philosophy most central to IS
Shera
1. social epistemology provides a theoretical foundation for information science
Floridi says many aspects of IS aren’t epistemological in nature (metaphysical & ethics); suggests a broader philosophy of information
2. must have practical implications (planning and implementation)
3. focused on classification ← remember that Leah says this is what distinguishes IS from any other field
4. social epistemology as a normative project, while sociology of knowledge
Fuller: reasons why social epistemology is not favored in sociology
1. problems justifying its own epistemic practices
2. divide between the world and its knowledgeable representations (practice versus content)
3. too easily confused with Comte’s definition of sociology & associations with socialism
4. belief that most philosophical claims about the nature of knowledge have been empirically discredited
5. belief that social epistemology is too exclusively focused on science/”rational” aspects of social agents and institutions
Psychology & contexts for social epistemology
1. in both of the following, social epistemology may designate either a positive or critical project of inquiry into the forms of social organization that (1) SE toward science policy→enhance epistemic character or the forms of knowledge production and (2) toward sociology of knowledge→ occlude social character
a. external validity (lab versus real world)
b. experimenter/subject relationship and its role in generation of psychological knowledge
social epistemology→in philosophy, launched by anglo-american philosophers trained in analytic tradition; perhaps analytic epistemology was the last field to presuppose a social dimension in its accounts of knowledge
philosophy of science→(as opposed to epistemology) logical positivists & Popperians believe the fate of civilization hinges on the coordination and regulation of scientific inquiry
American pragmatism→against what Dewey called “spectator theory of knowledge” though pragmatists tend to view social regulation of inquiry in terms of a self-organizing community
MT: social regulation of inquiry→the medium is the message?-->Sterne and format→the social shaping of how we access knowledge is self-organizing---→>>>>how do I connect this to complexity theory from Johanna’s class? this is interesting
could contrast to the fractal nature of complexity and tie it with the bow of how communication theory deals with noise and redundancy and the fractional frequencies are fractal, too.
social epistemologists hold that an adequate theory of knowledge must be normative, not simply descriptive; it is not completed a priori, but contains some empirical elements; most reflect the communal character of all forms of inquiry; they feel the need to amend Plato’s definition of knowledge as justified true belief
a reconceptualization of the normative character of knowledge would involve breaking down traditional distinctions between epistemology/philosophy of science and ethics/politics
social character of knowledge
1. demonstrated by the failure of traditional epistemology to explain fully how science has extended our grasp of a complex reality
2. demonstrated by the failure of traditional sociologies to explain fully how order is maintained in our complex social world
like the philosopher’s quest for social knowledge, the sociologist’s quest for the knowledge society or knowledgeability
goal: provide novel answers to classical questions about the foundations of knowledge and society
Phlogiston? whatever is left after all other known factors have been accounted for
how socio-epistemic units are held together:
1. terms that pick out phlogistemic factors (see characteristics p. 152)
a. trust
b. tacit knowledge
c. expertise
d. practice
e. tradition
f. custom
g. habit
h. culture
2. establish a presumption in favor of treating a society under investigation as operating in a normatively acceptable fashion
3. BUT: social realists and social verificationists may cast doubt on this presumption
a. social realists hold that a seemingly stable socio-epistemic phenomenon may be hiding unexpressed/unrealized conditions OR the society lacks ways to express deviance, conflict, and change
b. social verificationists hold that “qualified” people pass appropriate socio-epistemic judgments, but no articulation of standard by which they do so
i. the few to whom the knowledge is directly accessible
ii. the many to whom it is meant to apply
4. these are not contrary claims (NSUR?)
a. both hold that evidence adduced for inferring the phlogistemic factors could just as easily be adduced for inferring features that would challenge the behavior’s normative acceptability
b. the normative underdetermination of social regularities
c. even when there is enough evidence of social constraint to enable reliable prediction of actions taken by epistemic agents, the question remains whether the constraints are “normatively appropriate” in the sense of increasing the overall welfare of the society
5. What patterns of social phenomena would lead to an inference?
a. Can those patterns be described and explained without presupposition of normative appropriateness?
Shera descriptive project
Connections between social epistemology and IS
1. IS techniques can sometimes be used for SE research
2. There are epistemological questions about IS itself (knowledge acquired by information scientists, not users)
a. therefore, researchers can investigate whether information scientists really know that particular practices will facilitate knowledge acquisition on the part of information users
Epistemology asks what knowledge is by identifying necessary and sufficient conditions
Knowledge is some form of (1) justified (2) true (3) belief
focus on what it means to know something is the case versus to know how to do something
Information services typically facilitate the acquisition of propositional knowledge
Major epistemic projects/Nature of justification
1. conditions under which a belief is justified
a. externalist (reliabilism→reliable process, may or may not believe)
b. internalist (evidentialism→good grounds, believes source is reliable) ****tie this to trust in online information/provenance
2. How much justification is necessary for belief to count as knowledge?
a. Descartes’s “certain and indubitable”
b. Gettier’s fourth necessary condition: justified true belief is not always counted—this is under debate
3. Establishing that knowledge is possible at all (the matrix); all of our beliefs could be false
a. Skeptics
4. Shera: Focus has been on how the individual working alone acquires knowledge
a. Collaborative acquisition
i. Knowledge acquisition within social context
ii. IS needs to look at social epistemology
iii. Ways epistemology is social
1. social processes
2. how members of social group can acquire knowledge
3. how social groups themselves can affect knowledge acquisition (sociologists of knowledge) ** this is useful for social network cases
4. arationality hypothesis versus symmetry principle
a. true and false beliefs
5. Identify social practices and institutions that facilitate knowledge acquisition
a. Epistemology of testimony→trust conditions
i. trusting information source ****provenance?
ii. social processes (science, law, education, politics) affect knowledge acquisition
Floridi
Classical versus revolutionary approaches
objectivist non-objectivist
socializes traditional epistemology starts from scratch
Bloor, Fuller, Harding:
Knowledge as a form of institutional belief→socially constructed
negotiation; collective endorsement
**wht does this mean for information acquired via online social networks?
Shera: a filtering process = knowledge
ethical system
intellectual
of the individual who receives it
Fallis says
revolutionary approaches are most common in IS
classical approach provides more useful theoretical framework for IS
objections ?
1. wrong goal (social epistemology)
2. truth and belief conditions (classical)
3. want one set of conditions (classical)
a. significant
b. quickly
c. wisdom
d. understanding
4. esoteric (classical)
Information services
knowledge acquisition is the immediate and definitive means by which information services achieve ultimate goals
main objective→acquire knowledge
ultimate goal of information services is not always knowledge acquisition → promoting public good
facilitating knowledge acquisition as the means by which information services achieve various goals
social utility is outside information services’s control and difficult to measure
however, not at all costs
1. ethics
2. ultimate goals (i.e., profit)
3. can conflict with objective of knowledge acquisition but still facilitate knowledge acquisition
Provenance in Self-Regulating, Socio-Epistemic, Information-Seeking Behavior