S. D. Noam Cook

San Jose State University | SJSU · Department of Philosophy

Since the middle of the 20th century there has been a significant debate about the attribution of capacities of living systems, particularly humans, to technological artefacts, especially computers —from Turing’s opening gambit, to subsequent considerations of artificial intelligence, to recent claims about artificial life. Some now argue that the...

The topic of the article is practice theory. Using a detailed example from public administration, we first discus the shortcomings of the model of practice as applied knowledge that we have dubbed the Received View. The first half of the article is a chronology of successive adaptations of the Received View. These adaptations have gradually brought...

Traditionally, theories of organizational learning have taken one of two approaches that share a common characterization of learning but differ in focus. One approach focuses on learning by individuals in organizational contexts; the other, on individual learning as a model for organizational action. Both base their understanding of organizational...

This essay explores design as the imposition of human purpose onto nature. It argues that understanding design requires that we be able to distinguish among three different kinds of systems: natural, artifactual and human. Each kind has its own distinct requirements for stability and sustenance, yet each is also dependent upon the stability and sus...

Much current work on organizational knowledge, intellectual capital, knowledge-creating organizations, knowledge work, and the like rests on a single, traditional understanding of the nature of knowledge. We call this understanding the "epistemology of possession," since it treats knowledge as something people possess. Yet, this epistemology cannot...

A refreshed and expanded understanding of experience can contribute to a relevant reassessment of the nature of practice and its relationship with knowledge and context. We characterise experience as essentially transactional, as entailing constitutive interaction with the elements of the social, institutional and physical world. It is within this...

Joseph C. Pitt, based on his understanding of trust and of technology, makes the provocative argument that trusting technology is actually a matter of trusting people. I agree with Pitt’s conclusion but differ with him on the nature of trust. I contend, nonetheless, that my understanding of trust actually reinforces Pitt’s characterization of techn...

Drawing on key themes in the work of Sir Geoffrey Vickers, this article outlines the need for a moral perspective that can address the pluralistic social realities of the dawning 21st century. The trends of globalism and localism are traced out against the material advances that our technologies make possible and the often conflicting moral claims...