Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with epistemology

How do people form questions?

aramaic — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:53:56 -0800

How do people form questions? What fields of study cover the concepts of question formation? Why do people question differently, within the same cultural milieu? I have suddenly become curious about why/how people form questions (both internally, and how they vocalize/write those questions for others). For example, some people seem to "ask" questions by merely stating assumptions. Others use querying tones for things they regard as unquestionable.

These behaviors puzzle me to no end, and I want to learn more about such things. Links, anecdotes & attempts at reasoning are all welcome.

What "golden ages" are we in, right now?

electric_counterpoint — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:26:19 -0800

Fifty years from now, people will look back at 2007 and say "That was the golden age of ________." I hope this isn't chat-filter, but I don't think it's a completely subjective question. Two parts:

What should I be out enjoying right now, confident in the prediction that this is as good as it gets?
More concretely, what kind of evidence would you use to justify or argue that that society's in such a period now, without knowing the future? Is there evidence of a decline looming on the horizon, or is there a different kind of evidence available?

My first thought is that we're in the golden age of the Web. Not of the internet as a whole, because who knows what's coming down the pipe, but of the Web as a network of fairly discrete sites with fairly discrete pages. My thought is that losing the net neutrality debate won't destroy the Web as we know it, but that it will probably impede the pace of progress.

I'd also predict the same about the Mac, as such. I think Apple's doing better than it ever has as far as market-share and the development community is strong, but Apple seems to have decided that the iPhone is the future. (Of course, that's open to debate.)

So, what golden ages do you believe we're in, and why?

Is there a word for such an anti-simulacra?

0bvious — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 21:40:13 -0800

What is the label for an entity or idea which began as nothing and came to have identity through its own fictionalisation? That is, notions diametrically opposed to 'simulacra' - in that the entity has no referent to begin with... Prime examples of this can be found battered amongst many internet communities. For instance:

Suicide Squid is the name of a fictional comic book superhero. He is in fact so fictional that not only does he not exist, but neither does any comic book about him. He was accidentally created in April 1991 when Mitsuhiro Sakai, upon being asked in the internet newsgroup rec.arts.comics (r.a.c.) for his opinion on developments in the series Suicide Squad, asked what those developments were but typed "i" instead of "a" in "Squad".

(there are many more examples here)

These 'anti-simulacra' are therefore self refering ideas or events which have no source referents. Like a simulacrum these entities are so dissipated in relation to their originisation that they take on individual identity - in a sense realising themselves outside the group/community which gave birth to them.

These entities can not be labelled fiction as such because the creative process which spawned them was in many instances an unconscious, group consciousness lead event. In this way these anti-simulacra memes show many features inherent in the viral-like social memes which evolve towards religious doctrine (over many generations of accumulative change)

Is there a word for such an anti-simulacra?

What is the important literature regarding knowledge creation via formalization/structuring?

badstone — Wed, 18 Aug 2004 14:30:01 -0800

EpistemologyFilter What is the important literature regarding knowledge creation via formalization/structuring? [mi] We have this design system which basically consists of some templates and metadata that users fill out. Using the system, they take a rough internal sketch of an idea and translate it into our formal structure. (The design system is for the creation of educational assessments, but I don't think that is necessarily relevant to my question.) I need to make an argument to non-techies that expressing their ideas within our ystem is not just a matter of jumping through a lot of arbitrary hoops to translate their idea to a technological format, but is in fact an act of knowledge creation that not only communicates their idea, but actually enriches it.

I've poked around the educational design literature on this point and am unsatisfied. I need to branch out to philosophy and design science in general but am having trouble articulating my search as this is not really my field. I have an intuitive grasp of the importance of this idea, but I need to back it with serious references. Where should I start? What are the seminal papers?

Scientific Advancement

the fire you left me — Sat, 17 Jul 2004 20:41:44 -0800

Is there a limit to scientific advancement? If there is only a certain number of elements to the universe, will there reach a technology plateau? will technology plateau? would be better.