Cole, C.: ¬The consciousness' drive : information need and the search for meaning (2018)
0.00
0.0021859813 = product of:
0.013115887 = sum of:
0.013115887 = weight(_text_:in in 480) [ClassicSimilarity], result of:
0.013115887 = score(doc=480,freq=48.0), product of:
0.059380736 = queryWeight, product of:
1.3602545 = idf(docFreq=30841, maxDocs=44218)
0.043654136 = queryNorm
0.22087781 = fieldWeight in 480, product of:
6.928203 = tf(freq=48.0), with freq of:
48.0 = termFreq=48.0
1.3602545 = idf(docFreq=30841, maxDocs=44218)
0.0234375 = fieldNorm(doc=480)
0.16666667 = coord(1/6)
- Abstract
- What is the uniquely human factor in finding and using information to produce new knowledge? Is there an underlying aspect of our thinking that cannot be imitated by the AI-equipped machines that will increasingly dominate our lives? This book answers these questions, and tells us about our consciousness - its drive or intention in seeking information in the world around us, and how we are able to construct new knowledge from this information. The book is divided into three parts, each with an introduction and a conclusion that relate the theories and models presented to the real-world experience of someone using a search engine. First, Part I defines the exceptionality of human consciousness and its need for new information and how, uniquely among all other species, we frame our interactions with the world. Part II then investigates the problem of finding our real information need during information searches, and how our exceptional ability to frame our interactions with the world blocks us from finding the information we really need. Lastly, Part III details the solution to this framing problem and its operational implications for search engine design for everyone whose objective is the production of new knowledge. In this book, Charles Cole deliberately writes in a conversational style for a broader readership, keeping references to research material to the bare minimum. Replicating the structure of a detective novel, he builds his arguments towards a climax at the end of the book. For our video-game, video-on-demand times, he has visualized the ideas that form the book's thesis in over 90 original diagrams. And above all, he establishes a link between information need and knowledge production in evolutionary psychology, and thus bases his arguments in our origins as a species: how we humans naturally think, and how we naturally search for new information because our consciousness drives us to need it.
- Footnote
- Rez. in: JASIST 71(2020) no.1, S.118-120 (Heidi Julien). - Vgl. auch den Beitrag: Cole, C.: A rebuttal of the book review of the book titled "The Consciousness' Drive: Information Need and the Search for Meaning": mapping cognitive and document spaces. In: Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 71(2020) no.2, S.242.
Weitere Rez. unter: https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/17830/19659: "Author Charles Cole's understanding of human consciousness is built foundationally upon the work of evolutionary psychologist Merlin Donald, who visualized the development of human cognition in four phases, with three transitions. According to Donald's Theory of Mind, preceding types of cognition do not cease to exist after human cognition transitions to a new phase, but exist as four layers within the modern consciousness. Cole's narrative in the first part of the book recounts Donald's model of human cognition, categorizing episodic, mimetic, mythic, and theoretic phases of cognition. The second half of the book sets up a particular situation of consciousness using the frame theory of Marvin Minsky, uses Meno's paradox (how can we come to know that which we don't already know?) in a critique of framing as Minsky conceived it, and presents group and national level framing and shows their inherent danger in allowing information avoidance and sanctioning immoral actions. Cole concludes with a solution of information need being sparked or triggered that takes the human consciousness out of a closed information loop, driving the consciousness to seek new information.
Cole's reliance upon Donald's Theory of Mind is limiting; it represents a major weakness of the book. Donald's Theory of Mind has been an influential model in evolutionary psychology, appearing in his 1991 book Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition (Harvard University Press). Donald's approach is a top-down, conceptual model that explicates what makes the human mind different and exceptional from other animal intelligences. However, there are other alternative, useful, science-based models of animal and human cognition that begin with a bottom-up approach to understanding the building blocks of cognition shared in common by humans and other "intelligent" animals. For example, in "A Bottom-Up Approach to the Primate Mind," Frans B.M. de Waal and Pier Francesco Ferrari note that neurophysiological studies show that specific neuron assemblies in the rat hippocampus are active during memory retrieval and that those same assemblies predict future choices. This would suggest that episodic memory and future orientation aren't as advanced a process as Donald posits in his Theory of Mind. Also, neuroimaging studies in humans show that the cortical areas active during observations of another's actions are related in position and structure to those areas identified as containing mirror neurons in macaques. Could this point to a physiological basis for imitation? ... (Scott Curtis)"