Knowledge management aims to increase an organization’s competitive advantage through the collective management of its employees’ knowledge. In the past, knowledge management was very technologically oriented, with a focus on data mining, software, and artificial intelligence, but in recent years there has been a move toward incorporating social aspects. As knowledge management evolved into its second era, the focus shifted to defining knowledge, developing frameworks, and implementing content management systems. The current knowledge management era (third) appears to be more integrated with an organization’s philosophy, goals, and day-to-day activities, and is also the “softest” with regards to a people-oriented approach (Metaxiotis, Ergazakis, & Psarras, 2005; Wiig, 2002) As knowledge management moves further into the third era, no theoretical foundation exists. As will be seen, knowledge is an unmanageable, nontransferable entity that cannot exist outside a person’s brain (Abou-Zeid, 2007) As such it is not possible to define the concept of knowledge, nor even desirable, and this is in direct contrast to first generation knowledge management, which aimed to accurately define the concept of knowledge (Metaxiotis et al., 2005) The focus on frameworks (Holsapple & Joshi, 1997), systems (Hasan & Gould, 2003), and technology (Liao, 2003) that dominated second-generation knowledge management is also not compatible with the current understanding of knowledge (Abou-Zeid, 2007), suggesting that systems cannot directly manage knowledge.

Some students thirst for learning. They seek challenges and overcome obstacles sometimes with persistence and sometimes with inventive problem solving. They set realistic goals and utilize a battery of resources. They approach academic tasks with confidence and purpose. This combination of positive expectations, motivation, and diverse strategies for problem solving are virtues of self-regulated learners. We seek to understand and nurture the development of these attitudes in order to prevent students from rejecting the values of education, devising shortcuts to complete assignments, and setting minimal performance goals.

Key words: constructivist approach, social comparison, poor reader, achievement motivation, academic ability.

Complementarity is an epistemological principle derived from the subject – object or observer – system dichotomy, where each side requires a separate mode of description that is formally incompatible with and irreducible to the other, and where one mode of description alone does not provide comprehensive explanatory power. The classical physics paradigm, on which biological, social and psychological sciences are modelled, completely suppresses the observer or subject side of this dichotomy in order to claim unity and consistency in theory and objectivity in experimental observations. Quantum mechanical measurements have shown this paradigm to be untenable. Explanation of events requires both an objective, causal representation and a subjective, prescriptive representation that are complementary. The concepts of description and function in biological systems, and goals and policies in social systems, are found to have the same epistemological basis as the concept of measurement in physics. The concepts of rate-dependent and rate-independent processes are proposed as a necessary distinction for applying the principle of complementarity to explanations of physical, biological and social systems.

Excerpt: The basic goals of education are deceptively simple. To mention three, education strives for the retention, understanding, and active use of knowledge and skills. Surely we want what is taught retained, else why teach it? Unless knowledge is understood, to what purposes can it be put? Finally, having and understanding knowledge and skills come to naught unless the learner actually makes active use of them later in lifein studying other subjects, shopping in the supermarket, getting a better job, casting a vote, or whatever other context. Although other desiderata can be added to retention, understanding, and active use, it is difficult to discard any one of these.

Key words: constructivism, educational environment, information processing, wigs, machine learning, environmental technology, physics, mathematics education, banks, learning.

Humans and other animals are able not only to coordinate their actions with their current sensorimotor state, but also to imagine, plan and act in view of the future, and to realize distal goals. In this paper we discuss whether or not their future-oriented conducts imply (future-oriented) representations. We illustrate the role played by anticipatory mechanisms in natural and artificial agents, and we propose a notion of representation that is grounded in the agent’s predictive capabilities. Therefore, we argue that the ability that characterizes and defines a true cognitive mind, as opposed to a merely adaptive system, is that of building representations of the non-existent, of what is not currently (yet) true or perceivable, of what is desired. A real mental activity begins when the organism is able to endogenously (i.e. not as the consequence of current perceptual stimuli) produce an internal representation of the world in order to select and guide its conduct goaldirected: the mind serves to coordinate with the future.

Key words: anticipation, expectation, internal model, prediction, representation, simulation, goal.

The work of Heinz von Foerster on ethics can be read from a double perspective: first as the attempt to create a transcendental ethics, secondly as the attempt to warn of the abysses of the merely well intentioned that does not see its self-constraining structure. This article addresses the fascinating question how an ethics (of the second order) can be constructed that makes for transparency and contains the proclamation of its own goals – emphasis on freedom of choice, recognition of responsibility, avoidance of force – in all its differentiations of argument, and yet refers back to the central figure of constructivist thought, the observer.

This essay deals with question how we can understand and model the relationship between (constructivist) theory and the practical usage of this theory in a wide ranging and steadily growing field (coaching, education, public relations, journalism etc.). How is it possible to use and apply a communication theory which wants to offer a complex and non-trivial understanding of communication? How can one meet the challenge of a (necessary) reduction of complexity in the act of practical usage – that nonetheless preserves complexity and a notion of fundamental contingency? The upshot is all in all: constructivist communication theory lacks immediate prescription-like relevance for any kind of practice – but it can help and inspire, if applied with sensitivity and with an openness to surprise, to create informing irritations: these are not only differences that make a difference, but differences and effects that at least correspond in a functional way with the goals one wants to achieve.

Notes that consistent behavior patterns are created by variable acts and generally repeat only because detailed acts change. It is proposed that the accepted explanation that “cues” cause the changes is unsupported by evidence and is incapable of dealing with novel situations. The apparent purposefulness of variations of behavioral acts can be accepted in the framework of a control-system model of behavior. A control system, properly organized for its environment, will produce whatever output is required in order to achieve a constant sensed result, even in the presence of unpredictable disturbances. A control-system model of the brain provides a physical explanation for the existence of goals or purposes, and shows that behavior is the control of input rather than output. When a systematic investigation has discovered the controlled quantities, the related stimulus-response laws become trivially predictable and variability of behavior all but disappears. Within this model, behavior itself is seen as self-determined in a specific and highly significant sense that casts doubt on the ultimate feasibility of operant conditioning of human beings by other human beings.

Ecological Psychology and Enactivism both challenge representationist cognitive science, but the two approaches have only begun to engage in dialogue. Further conceptual clarification is required in which differences are as important as common ground. This paper enters the dialogue by focusing on important differences. After a brief account of the parallel histories of Ecological Psychology and Enactivism, we cover incompatibility between them regarding their theories of sensation and perception. First, we show how and why in ecological theory perception is, crutially, not based on sensation. We elucidate this idea by examining the biological roots of work in the two fields, concentrating on Gibson and Varela and Maturana. We expound an ecological critique of any sensation based approach to perception by detailing two topics: classic retinal image theories and perception in single-celled organisms. The second main point emphasizes the importance of the idea of organism-environment mutuality and its difference from structural coupling of sensations and motor behavior. We point out how ecological – phenomenological methods of inquiry grow out of mutualism and compare Gibson’s idea of visual kinesthesis to Merleau-Ponty’s idea of the lived body. Third, we conclude that Ecological Psychology and varieties of Enactivism are laying down different paths to pursue related goals. Thus, convergence of Ecological Psychology and Enactivism is not possible given their conflicting assumptions, but cross-fertilization is possible and desirable.

Key words: direct perception, perception-action, sensorimotor theory, james gibson, organicism, varela

According to Thrun and others, personal service robots need increasingly more autonomy in order to function in the highly unpredictable company of humans. At the same time, the cognitive processes in artifacts will become increasingly alien to us. This has several reasons: 1. Maturana’s concept of structural determinism questions conventional forms of interaction. 2. Considerably different ways of embodiment result in incompatible referential frameworks (worldviews). 3. Engineers focus on the output of artifacts, whereas autonomous cognitive systems seek to control their input state. As a result, instructional interaction – the basic ingredient of conventional man-machine relationships – with genuine autonomous systems will become impossible. Therefore the increase of autonomy will eventually lead to a paradox. Today we are still in a position to anthropomorphically trivialize the behavioral pattern of current robots (von Foerster). Eventually, however, when self-organizing systems will have reached the high levels of autonomy we wished for interacting with them may become impossible since their goals will be completely independent of ours.