Author:
Ângela Lacerda Nobre
Affiliation:
Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Heidegger’s ontology; American School of Pragmatism; Social Semiotics; Semiotic Learning; information systems design; organisational learning; knowledge management; communities of practice; collaborative work; collaborative learning; innovation management; change management; organisational development; sustained competitiveness; knowledge processes; knowledge-intensive organisations; knowledge-worker.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Artificial Intelligence
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Data Engineering
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Health Information Systems
;
Information Systems Analysis and Specification
;
Knowledge Management
;
Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Ontologies and the Semantic Web
;
Semiotics
;
Society, e-Business and e-Government
;
Symbolic Systems
;
Web Information Systems and Technologies
Abstract:
Martin Heidegger’s ontology represents a landmark in terms of how human knowledge is theorised. Heidegger’s breakthrough achievement is to consider scientific knowledge as a particular case of the broader being-in-the-world instance. Science develops without needing to acknowledge this dependence though in times of crisis, when previous approaches are no longer effective, it is the link with daily experience that enables the rethinking of earlier assumptions. This valorisation of quotidian practices and the centrality of experience and of informal knowledge – the prereflexive work – in terms of being the antecedents of formal and explicit knowledge, has profound consequences regarding the creation of organisational information systems. The American School of Pragmatism, developed by Charles Sanders Peirce, had previously argued in similar lines in terms of the non-severing of the dual relations such as theory/practice or individual/social. In later times, Social Semiotics, also deve
loped under the same implicit assumptions, where the individual and the social dimensions of human reality are mutually determined. These arguments have been established for long as being relevant for information systems design by several authors. However, there is an obvious lack of understanding of the kernel role of such theories in current mainstream research. Concrete approaches to organisational learning - such as Semiotic Learning - are an example of the huge potential that lies largely unexplored under the umbrella of socio-philosophy.
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