Category Archives: Hermeneutics

philosophy

Data – Information – Knowledge

Who doesn’t know the classic distinction between data, information, and knowledge? And who hasn’t seen at least one version of the famous pyramid with data on the bottom, information making up the next level and knowledge making up the layer above that with the peak consisting of wisdom? There are several assumptions and implication of this model of data, information, and knowledge: First, it is assumed that they are qualitatively and quantitively different. Data, for example, is different from information and there is more data than information just as there is more information than knowledge with wisdom being the rarest sort of knowledge. Second, it is assumed that they are hierarchically interdependent, that is, you cannot have information without data or knowledge without information, but you could have data without information and information without knowledge. Third, the hierarchy implies a value judgement, that is, data is not as valuable as information and information is not as valuable as knowledge, and of course, wisdom is the most valuable of all. Finally, the hierarchy also implies a kind of temporal or ontological priority. Since information depends on data, data must come first, and since knowledge depends on information, information comes before knowledge, at least temporally. This means that first we have data, then we somehow construct information out of data, and then we can go on to construct knowledge out of information. Data is something like the raw material out of which is constructed information and information is the raw material out of which knowledge is constructed. There is nothing in the model that implies how this construction process works. The model itself does not tell us where data comes from or how exactly information is constructed out of data or knowledge out of information. In order to answer these questions, we are left to speculation.

There is of course a kind of consensus among interpreters that there are also different kinds of construction. In short, these may be termed “transcription,” “cognition,” and “praxis.” Data are said to be constructed by means of some kind of transcription, that is, something is preserved, fixed in some material form, in some medium, whether it be sound, text, or pictures. Today, data is above all transcribed into bits and bytes, that is, into digital media, which, as the dominant media in today’s world, also determine what is usually meant by the term “data.” Data are just bits and bytes, 1s and 0s, electronically fixed upon some memory medium. Information is usually thought to be constructed out of data. When the otherwise meaningless bits and bytes are combined into signs in a language and are given meaning, then data becomes information. This is above all a cognitive process. Somebody makes “sense” of the images or marks on paper or the bits and bytes on the chip via a cognitive process of “reading.” This is information. But it is not yet knowledge. Knowledge is what information becomes when it used practically to solve some specific problem. The practical use of information in problem-solving activities is called “praxis.” It is in praxis that mere information, for example, mere theory or mere textbook knowledge, becomes situated in a particular context in the real world. It is through praxis that we know what information is good for, what it can do, how it can be used in complex situations. Knowledge is knowing by doing. This separates the apprentice from the master, the inexperienced from the experienced. It is the experienced master who alone can be said to possess knowledge.

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Being Meaning

Let’s face it, being is meaning. That is, of course, unless you know about something that has no meaning. If you do, please tell us. Remember, however, as Frank Ramsey once told Wittgenstein, you can’t whistle it either. So as long as we are talking we are in the realm of meaning and that’s it. There is nothing else. And if there were, it would be inside the realm of meaning. The outside is paradoxically inside. We draw the borders, we make the exclusions, it is we who put things outside. The problem here is the “we“. Who are we who make meaning? Are we those Homo sapiens with the big brains, the heroes of radical constructivism? If so, then why would our otherwise selfish, inconsiderate, and destructive species be so generous as to make everything else in the world? Not to mention the sheer unimaginable diversity and creativity of things. Do we really think we make meaning? If not, then who? God has been the best answer to this question for ages. But here again there are so many Gods that it is difficult to understand how they manage to cooperate, especially since they seem not to want to have anything to do with each other. So the God answer is not very satisfying if you look at the big picture and not merely your own garden. The next best answer would appear to be that meaning makes itself. After all, nothing comes from nothing. Selforganization, autocatalysis, spontaneous emergence; take your pick. These seem to be the best answers we have. But then we should admit that “we” is no longer our humble species, but “everything.” Everything has a “voice” of its own and contributes to the “collective.” Everything is involved in making meaning. This is what it “means” to exist. We human beings may play an important role in this process, but maybe not as important as we think. Anyway, we have a certain “responsibility.” We are obliged to “respond” to the many voices, claims, interventions, and disturbances that things are doing in their efforts to come to be.  This could be thought of as the “moral responsibility” of being human, to respond not only to other people, but to all things as well.  If language were indeed a gift, then responsibility in this sense would amount to acknowledging the gift and showing some kind of thankfulness. Heidegger pointed out the close associations between “thinking,” “thing,” and “thanking.” He referred to this interdependency as “gathering.” Gathering things together into one world, that is, allowing (and helping) everything to have its voice, its “say” in what the world means. Latour has formulated this moral responsibility in terms of the institution of a “parliament of things” and proposed a new constitution for the anthropocene in which humans and nonhumans together share responsibility for gathering the “collective.” In an age when the anthropos is seen as the dominating factor, it is perhaps appropriate that humans accept responsibility and no longer push it off onto God.  This seems to make ecology into the most atheistic of all sciences. But no one said the Gods have to be excluded, after all, they also have something to say, each in their own way. So let’s face it, being is meaning, but meaning is not yours or mine or anybody’s; meaning belongs to everything, indeed it is the expression of belonging, the belonging together of one world.

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Fake News or the Gamification of Politics

Let’s begin by admitting that news has always been fake. There is no media product that is not filtered, framed, and formatted. Filtered means that always some information is selected and other information overlooked. Framed means that the information selected out of all possible information is put into some kind of interpretive frame that describes what is going on. The frame decides whether we are dealing with an accident, an act of terrorism, a prank, or an advertising campaign. Formatted means that selected and framed information is always presented in a certain way, as image, text, video, audio, etc., all of which have their own rules of production, distribution, and consumption. These three “F”s create a gap between what “really” happened and what the media tell us happened. This is a fact. It remains a fact even when professional journalists are replaced by citizen journalists who upload their spontaneous and accidental photos, videos, and comments onto platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. So what do we do about it? Up until the advent of “post-truth” politics and “fake news” – formerly known as propaganda – there was apparently no pressing need to do anything about it. The experts, authorities, gatekeepers, and institutions of knowledge and truth were solidly in place and functioned quite well. We could tell the difference between the New York Times and Gawker and there really was a difference to tell. Although we knew that the media didn’t give us the truth, at least what we got was good enough to make reasonable decisions and get along with our neighbors. This is no longer the case.

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American Bodies – A Soma-Semiotics of the USA

A preliminary report of ethnological research on “soma-semiotics,” that is body semiotics in the USA is both interesting and provocative. “Body semiotics” refers to the way in which a society inscribes its values on the bodies of its members, quite apart from the usual group identifiers such as age, gender, education, income, profession, or subcultural affinity. In a society as diverse and heterogeneous as the USA, community and collective identity across ethnic, political, gender, subcultural, etc. boundaries is a major issue.  In addition to this, the postmodern celebration of diversity has created an enormous deficit of unity that society must in some way compensate. Although the fieldwork is not completed, and the theoretical assumptions untested, some of the findings are highly suggestive. The author identifies four types of bodies, that is, four typical ways in which society becomes inscribed in bodies. These are termed “grotes,” “scribbs,” “caps,” and “styles” and there is a separate category for the uninscribed body that is termed “normalo.“

The first type is called, somewhat provocatively, “grotes.” “Grote” is short for “grotesque.” The term should be understood in the sense in which Bakhtin uses the word when describing the grotesque body in his work on Rabelais. The grotesque should not be understood as pejorative. Instead, the term describes how the abstract and symbolic dimension expresses itself in the material and the bodily. Human anatomy becomes a mirror of abstract values and conflicts. What is suppressed on the symbolic level appears in a distorted way on the physical and anatomical level. In this way, the body illustrates those cultural and social meanings that do not appear within the officially sanctioned and supported symbolic realm. Against the background of postmodern rejection of universal values, the body comes to be the place, where unifying cultural identity can be publically displayed.

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Searching for Google or What is a Filter?

Ever since Clay Shirky (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LabqeJEOQyI) proclaimed that there is no such thing as information overload, there’s only filter failure, the role of filters in the network knowledge economy has taken center stage. With over 3 billion searches per day, Google’s search engine is probably the most used filter in the world. Google’s PageRank algorithm – and 250 other criteria that are much less publicized – seem to work so well for filtering that knowledge out of the ocean of information in the web that is relevant and reliable for our questions and concerns that we have come to believe that Google is presenting us a complete and unbiased view of the world. We tend to forget that there is indeed a problem of filter failure and that perhaps no filter, not even the algorithm searching for Google, can be a mirror of the world.

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