Neuromyths for educational research and the educational field

status: publishe

Personal Cyber-Data Literacy Plurality in Routinized-Prescriptive and Relational-Holistic Cyber-Regimes

Ursula Franklin encouraged all who would listen to act in ways that are socially useful and personally satisfying. Over two decades ago, in her Massey Lectures on The Real World of Technology, she warned about the unsustainability of prescriptive bitsphere technology regimes determined by precisely routinized compliance. She advocated for alternative holistic regimes determined by care-full relational consideration. Cyber-data literacies are defined as allowing individuals to use and benefit from data associated with their digital practices. Routinized literacies are being mis-afforded by behaviour manipulation through learning systems built on cyber-surveillance and broken personal data markets. This critical essay calls for a re-imagining of cyber-data literacies as socially useful and personally satisfying relational digital practices rather than merely routinized digital media utilization skills. A meta-synthesis of neuro-cognitive and hermeneutic theory is used to frame a comparison of cyber-data literacies afforded by cyber-regimes of exclusive compliance and inclusive consideration. Inspired by Hanah Arendt’s concept of human plurality, the essay analyses how personal cyber-data literacies are constrained and afforded by human diversity. Personal cyber-data are conceptualized as lifeworld givens, entangled with personal knowledge and experience, oriented and determined by data cognitive artifact constraints and affordances, and filtered through individuated foresight and insight. Despite foresight plurality, a capacity for distributed cognition and intelligence arises from shared mind/brain architectures and bio-psycho-social-relational determinants of a shared human biology. The essay examines opportunities and benefits of promoting cyber-data literacy plurality, grounded in personal data made meaningful to both people and machines through meta-narratives constructed using personal cyber-data by people the data are about

Causal discovery and the problem of ignorance. An adaptive logic approach

AbstractIn this paper, I want to substantiate three related claims regarding causal discovery from non-experimental data. Firstly, in scientific practice, the problem of ignorance is ubiquitous, persistent, and far-reaching. Intuitively, the problem of ignorance bears upon the following situation. A set of random variables V is studied but only partly tested for (conditional) independencies; i.e. for some variables A and B it is not known whether they are (conditionally) independent. Secondly, Judea Pearl's most meritorious and influential algorithm for causal discovery (the IC algorithm) cannot be applied in cases of ignorance. It presupposes that a full list of (conditional) independence relations is on hand and it would lead to unsatisfactory results when applied to partial lists. Finally, the problem of ignorance is successfully treated by means of ALIC, the adaptive logic for causal discovery presented in this paper

Science's First Mistake

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The purpose of the book is to deconstruct the process of knowledge discovery and theory construction. Grounded in the tradition of second-order cybernetics, the concept of self-reference is used in the context of systems theory in order to examine the mode in which observation, paradox and delusion become 'structurally coupled' with cognition. To put this simply, physical scientists take it as a given that all the universe is explainable once we've discovered the underlying rules. Whereas social scientists and philosophers are more sensitive to the issues around how the observer actually impacts that which is being observed. The authors work in the fields of Information Studies, which is within the technical or physical realm, and Management Studies, which is about human behaviour. Their argument is that all scientists (physical and social) rely too much on the absolutism and certainty of the methods of traditional physical science and that we should acknowledge the limitations of how we know what we know. Rooted in information systems analysis this fresh and audacious examination of knowledge discovery and theory construction makes an important contribution to the understanding of how we employ scientific method

Beyond the Circle of Life

It seems certain to me that I will die and stay dead. By “I”, I mean me, Greg Nixon, this person, this self-identity. I am so intertwined with the chiasmus of lives, bodies, ecosystems, symbolic intersubjectivity, and life on this particular planet that I cannot imagine this identity continuing alone without them. However, one may survive one’s life by believing in universal awareness, perfection, and the peace that passes all understanding. Perhaps, we bring this back with us to the Source from which we began, changing it, enriching it. Once we have lived – if we don’t choose the eternal silence of oblivion by life denial, vanity, indifference, or simple weariness – the Source learns and we awaken within it. Awareness, consciousness, is universal – it comes with the territory – so maybe you will be one of the few prepared to become unexpectedly enlightened after the loss of body and self. You may discover your own apotheosis – something you always were, but after a lifetime of primate experience, now much more. Since you are of the Source and since you have changed from life experience and yet retained the dream of ultimate awakening, plus you have brought those chaotic emotions and memories back to the Source with you (though no longer yours), your life & memories will have mattered. Those who awaken beyond the death of self will have changed Reality

Theses towards a new natural philosophy

In this paper I address some philosophical questions regarding the impact quantum mechanics has in the classical conceptions about reality and knowledge. I stress that onto-gnosiological realism still is an option to the issues regarding the relationship between knowledge and reality. Rejecting some radical aspects of Copenhagen interpretation of quantum formalism, I emphasize the advantages of de Broglie’s realistic and causal model. To finish with, I discuss the limits of the Cartesian concept of matter and the split between matter and mind

Science's First Mistake

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The purpose of the book is to deconstruct the process of knowledge discovery and theory construction. Grounded in the tradition of second-order cybernetics, the concept of self-reference is used in the context of systems theory in order to examine the mode in which observation, paradox and delusion become 'structurally coupled' with cognition. To put this simply, physical scientists take it as a given that all the universe is explainable once we've discovered the underlying rules. Whereas social scientists and philosophers are more sensitive to the issues around how the observer actually impacts that which is being observed. The authors work in the fields of Information Studies, which is within the technical or physical realm, and Management Studies, which is about human behaviour. Their argument is that all scientists (physical and social) rely too much on the absolutism and certainty of the methods of traditional physical science and that we should acknowledge the limitations of how we know what we know. Rooted in information systems analysis this fresh and audacious examination of knowledge discovery and theory construction makes an important contribution to the understanding of how we employ scientific method