Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science) Review

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Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science) ReviewMy impression of this book, which I read two or three months ago, was mediocre...- The first third offers a concise introduction in Bunge's materialist ontology, which definitely is worth reading. For a theoretical physicist like myself (despite my taste for mathematical beauty) formalisations should serve a purpose: namely solve empirical (incl. technological) problems! (Popper always emphasised this point: Definitions, conceptual issues, etc. are not interesting, therefore one ought to concentrate on real problems!) A reader may sometimes get the impression, that Bunge's system is "l'art pour l'art"; one wonders, whether the laborious construction of Bunge's conceptual apparatus is worth the trouble (particularly with the fact in mind, that no other author uses Bunge's terminology), i.e. whether it pays off in terms of scientific fecundity.
- The author sometimes treats other philosophers and thinkers very unfairly: What he critises often is but a caricature or at least a rather distorted, mutilated version of what his "opponents" really wrote. For example his harsh rejection of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology: Admittedly, many more popular books on these subjects indeed are highly speculative just-so-stories and scientifically doubtful (e.g. when the description of some drakes to lurk behind bushes and and leap out in order to sexually assault passing ducks is offered as an explanation of mens' equally sinister dispositions...), but that is certainly not representative (cf. for example, E. Voland: "Soziobiologie" or D. Buss's latest edition of his "Evolutionary Psychology")!
- His habit of insulting almost everybody that has a name in intellectual history I found rather childish and misplaced. His harsh judgements are hardly ever given any substantial arguments for. (E.g. defaming the currently dominant paradigm of biology, the gene-centred view of evolution, as a "pseudoscientific popular myth" in my eyes requires an adequately intensive or extensive argumentation.)
- Bunge's views on quantum theory (and more modern developments in physics) are outright for the most part dated or even wrong. (E.g. the Bell inequalities do not rule out theories with hidden parameters, only local ones.) Where foundational issues of physics (or biology) are concerned, look up the more recent (and deeper) literature: Roger Penrose, Jeffrey Bub, Lawrence Sklar, Hans-Dieter Zeh, Roland Omnès, etc.
- The book is pretty repetitive: Bunge's main thesis that we must not ontologically separate a function from its medium (e.g. the mind (="mental life") as a function of the brain from the brain itself) is repeated over and over and integrated into Bunge's own systemic approach, which is a middleground between a "nothing but..."-reductionism (like physicalism that does not take into account the complexity of the world and its structure, thus risking scientific sterility) and holism (which is either semantically obscure or empirically not true). That part is ok, but not too profound... The conceptual framework of Bunge's materialism is indeed exceedingly helpful to tackle some pressing problems of philosophy of science (which includes for me "philosophy of mind"). However, the main task is still to be done: elaborating a theory of consciousness. Here, the excellent analyses of contemporary thinkers like Daniel Dennett, Sean Searle, Thomas Metzinger or Susan Blackmore are rather to be considered more in detail.
-The analysis of the two mainstream approaches to the 'free will' debate, compatibilism and incompatibilism, is pretty weak. You'd better read the respective entries in the Stanford Encyclopedia (or, of course, the loci classici themselves like Hume's "Enquiry concerning Human Understand" or Schopenhauer's essay "On the Freedom of the Will" ) instead.Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science) OverviewThis book discusses two of the oldest and hardest problems in both science and philosophy: What is matter?, and What is mind? A reason for tackling both problems in a single book is that two of the most influential views in modern philosophy are that the universe is mental (idealism), and that the everything real is material (materialism). Most of the thinkers who espouse a materialist view of mind have obsolete ideas about matter, whereas those who claim that science supports idealism have not explained how the universe could have existed before humans emerged. Besides, both groups tend to ignore the other levels of existence-chemical, biological, social, and technological.If such levels and the concomitant emergence processes are ignored, the physicalism/spiritualism dilemma remains unsolved, whereas if they are included, the alleged mysteries are shown to be problems that science is treating successfully.

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The Idea of Latin America (Blackwell Manifestos) Review

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The Idea of Latin America (Blackwell Manifestos) ReviewThis is a self-consciously polemical critique of the idea of "Latin" America from an anti-neoliberal, pro-indigenous standpoint. Mignolo's "manifesto" is a welcome addition to the field of Latin American studies and a helpful condensation of his major scholarly work, including The Darker Side of the Renaissance (1995) and Local Histories/Global Designs (2000).
The book is divided into three chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 outline Mignolo's understanding of the world-system of modernity/coloniality, which, in the Americas since the sixteenth century, paved the way for colonial domination over indigenous and black communities. The third chapter surveys various forms of resistance to the continuing logic of modernity/coloniality, including indigenous social movements, the World Social Forum, and the Zapatistas in Mexico. In many ways this chapter is the heart of Mignolo's book, forcefully articulating as it does the need to decolonize not simply territories and resources but knowledge itself -- the core beliefs and ways of seeing the world that inform our ethical relation to other human beings.
Missing from Mignolo's account is any consideration of how indigenous intellectuals (whom he supports, over and against Eurocentric, modern/colonial intellectuals) might not exactly "represent" the will of the communities they come from. He too readily accepts that these intellectuals speak the voice of "the people." I appreciate Mignolo's desire to critique Western epistemology and colonial regimes of knowledge, but I don't think he questions the category of "intellectual work" enough, even in indigenous contexts. A more ethnographic approach to indigenous intellectual work might have helped his account here.
Still, this is an accessible and engaging summary of major problems in the professional study of "Latin" America. Recommended reading for Latin American scholars and transnational activists alike.The Idea of Latin America (Blackwell Manifestos) Overview

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Knowledge Emergence: Social, Technical, and Evolutionary Dimensions of Knowledge Creation Review

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Knowledge Emergence: Social, Technical, and Evolutionary Dimensions of Knowledge Creation ReviewThis book provides a collection of diverse perspectives on knowledge activities ranging from creativity and technology infrastructure to cross-border knowledge creation and sectoral strategies in Asia.
The material is academic and well-researched; it covers 15 chapters from 19 contributors, most of them professors from US and Japanese universities. The book is the outcome of a KM conference sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation.
Ikujiro Nonaka is the author of "The Knowledge-Creating Company" and "Enabling Knowledge Creation." Toshihiro Nishiguchi is the author of "Strategic Industrial Sourcing" and "Managing Product Development."
A fundamental thread uniting these essays is the idea that knowledge must be "nurtured" rather than "managed," according to the editors.
The Japanese term ba refers to a space-time nexus, the physical and/or mental space shared by co-workers, whose nature defines the scale and scope of knowledge creation through its various phases like socialization (originating ba), externalization (dialoguing ba), combination (systematizing ba) and internalization (exercising ba).
Care is an important requisite for building trust for knowledge-sharing in an organization. There are four modes of knowledge creation, depending on whether there is low care (individuals are left to their own; employees therefore exchange explicit knowledge) or high care (individuals are supported by a strong social network; tacit knowledge is shared) and whether there is creation of individual or organizational knowledge.
Such humanistic models of knowledge emergence encompass "wandering inside and outside" the organization, and accommodate emotional facets like freedom, interest, commitment, charisma and safety. Notable examples include the Seven-Eleven chain in Japan (through practices like the use of field counselors to encourage dialogue and idea sharing) and Maekawa Seisakusho (through knowledge vision for building and energizing ba).

"Certain types of knowledge can be created and communicated only through sharing time and space together," according to the authors.
New IT platforms and tools along with human-oriented approaches can help greatly in knowledge sharing processes: CAD/CAM/CAE (which improve the efficiency of product developers' inductive, deductive and abductive reasoning processes), simulation (to encourage experimentation), and prototyping (to refine solution models).
The authors call for a blend of human-oriented as well as systematic-rationality-oriented approaches to KM. For instance, companies like Boeing resort to advanced computer networks as well as co-location of project members.
In industries like software ("the quintessential knowledge industry"), the knowledge component in the end-products is nearly total. Companies like Microsoft use a "synch-and-stabilise" strategy (in contrast to a sequential "waterfall" model) where teams work in parallel, synchronise their activities, and periodically stabilize the multiple releases.
Cross-border knowledge creation within multinational companies involves IT platforms, identification of centers of excellence, customer/partner alliances, links with expert organization/universities/thinktanks, and a mix of short-, medium- and long-term movements of people across borders.
Dispersed innovation centers in countries around the globe are leading to joint knowledge creation at local and global levels in MNCs, which thus function as knowledge-creating networks. Nonaka identifies this cross-border synergistic process as "global knowledge creation" and sees it as the key process of globalisation.
Challenges can arise here in enabling knowledge transfers between cultures with differing levels of egalitarian work cultures, and in appointment of managers in foreign branches depending on variations in management style. According to research by Ronnie Lessem and Franz-Friedrich Neubauer, the Anglo-Saxon orientation to knowledge creation can be categorized as pragmatic, the French-Nordic as rational, Japanese as holistic, and Latin as humanistic.
Symbiotic co-evolution of organizations can also create knowledge, as evinced in the Japanese aircraft and electronics industries and the South Korean chip company Samsung.
Cooperation across entire industrial sectors occurs with varying levels of intensity and collective benefits in different countries of the world. For instance, it may be the case that US companies are better at learning from and with competitors than Japanese companies.
Samsung leveraged a variety of techniques like "knowledge catch-up" mode (prevalent in many emerging economies), knowledge pioneering, knowledge exposure, co-opetition, absorptive capacity, migratory knowledge (from the Korean diaspora), M&As, and pro-actively creating internal crises to intensify the work pace and accelerate the process of knowledge conversion, according to Linsu Kim, author of "Imitation to Innovation: The Dynamics of Korea's Technological Learning."
Other cultural factors - such as the extremely hard-working habits of the people of South Korea, its cramped and cold environment, memories of Japanese occupation, and a determination to out-compete Japan - cannot be duplicated in other countries, according to Kim.
In sum, this is an informative and wide-ranging book, and opens the door to many more research questions, working hypotheses, and KM methodologies. It forms an effective bridge between other books that focus either on the organizational or sectoral/national aspects of innovation, knowledge and competitiveness.Knowledge Emergence: Social, Technical, and Evolutionary Dimensions of Knowledge Creation OverviewThis book brings together the research of a number of scholars in the field of knowledge creation and imparts a sense of order to the field.The chapters share three characteristics: they are all grounded in extensive qualitative and/or quantitative research; they all go beyond the mere description of the knowledge-creation process and offer both theoretical and strategic implications; they share a view of knowledge creation and knowledge transfer as delicate processes, necessitating particular forms of support from managers.

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