The nature of nursing has been the subject of discussion for the last 10–15 years. One reason is that in many countries the education of nurses has moved from teaching hospitals to the academies. This move has given rise to the question of the scientific basis for nursing knowledge.Lately, the content of nursing knowledge has become a principal focus in the work on developing expert systems for nursing. Thus theories of knowledge and the nature of new technology are of great (...) concern to the future of the nursing profession. The basic assumptions underlying a chosen theory of knowledge will determine the development and use of advanced technology in the future. (shrink)

A quotation from Shakespeare's play King Lear, ‘I will teach you differences’, encapsulates the spirit of this paper. The distinction is introduced between three different categories of knowledge: i) propositional knowledge, ii) skill or practical knowledge and iii) knowledge of familiarity. In the present debate on ‘Information Society’, there is a clear tendency to overemphasise the theoretical knowledge at the expense of practical knowledge thereby completely ignoring the knowledge of familiarity. It is argued that different forms of theoretical knowledge are (...) required for the design of current computer technology and the study of the practice of computer usage. The concept of dialogue and the concept of ‘To Follow a Rule’ therefore fundamental to the understanding of the practice of computer usage. (shrink)

Human intuition and perception are basic and essential phenomena of consciousness. As such, they will never be replicated by computers. This is the challenging notion of Hubert Dreyfus, Ph. D., archcritic of the artificial intelligence establishment. It's important to emphasize that he doesn't believe that AI is fundamentally impossible, only that the current research program is fatally flawed. Instead, he argues that to get a device (or devices) with human-like intelligence would require them to have a human-like being in the (...) world, which would require them to have bodies more or less like ours, and social acculturation (i.e. a society) more or less like ours. This helps to explain the practical problems in implementing artificial intelligence algorithms. (shrink)