Principles of Information SystemsSession 02Naming and Knowing

Naming and Knowing

Chapter 1

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OverviewLearning objectives

1. Introduction

2. Names and identities

3. Naming and authority

4. Other ways of knowing

5. Meaning making - semiosis

6. How we know – epistemology and ontology

7. Summary

Learning objectives

• Explain why naming is a fundamental human activity• Explain the difference between the name of something

and its identity• Define essential and accidental attributes• Explain what categories are, and describe how they

may be formed• Explain how a framework of understanding is necessary

to knowing

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Learning objectives

• Discuss the role of context, community and authority in knowing.

• Give examples of communities that have their own “ways of knowing”

• Outline the concept of semiosis

• Explain what epistemology and ontology are

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Introduction

• What is this?• How do I know?• How can I describe it?• Are there other things like it?• What do you call it?• Do we agree? If not, who decides? Why?

1. Introduction2. Names and identities3. Naming and authority4. Other ways of knowing5. Meaning making - semiosis 6. How we know –

epistemology and ontology7. Summary

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Introduction

• The words for things,• the sets of things they belong to (or contrast with), • the precision with which they are defined, • and the people for whom they have meaning … are all relevant in our daily life

Classification and naming are the basis of language, and our ability to communicate

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Why is this important in informatics?

• Because in informatics we often have to express ideas in forms that will be processed by others we do not know, or by computers

• So it is crucial that we can name things and ideas in a way that lets us work purposively with them

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Categories and distinctions

• Information is about categories and distinctions – difference is the basis of information

• Making a distinction implies naming a new thing, or category of thing

• Classification implies difference, and this difference provides the basis for a decision

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Categories and distinctions

• He is under 18 or he isn’t. • “Now I know you are under 18 I can’t serve you”

• The ball is over the line or it is not. • “Now the ball is out of play, we’ll start a new sequence

of play”

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Naming is a fundamental human activity that is required to describe information and distinguish it from

other information.

Recap

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Names and identities

• Is this the same one I saw yesterday?• How do I know?• It’s cute though - I think I’ll call it Brian

1. Introduction2. Names and identities3. Naming and authority4. Other ways of knowing5. Meaning making - semiosis 6. How we know –

epistemology and ontology7. Summary

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Names and identities

• Who are you? How are you known? Are the answers the same?

• Your identity is who you are- Your identity is real

• Your name is how you are known- Your name is a symbol

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Names and identities

• On your passport, student card, police record, social security system and many other places your name helps identify you as you and not someone else.

• But you can change your name, or be known by a nickname, or have the same name as someone else. You might have a stage name, a middle name, or a shortened form.

• You would still be you though: the different symbolic forms refer to the same identity.

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Name and identity in informatics

• You will have your own ideas about “who you really are”

• Information systems however, fundamentally deal with the symbolic names and identifiers

-What is known about you is the information the system has about you, and how that information is used.

• So the information that is recorded makes a difference to your identity in the system

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Name and identity in informatics

• In informatics the association between name and distinct identity is essential.

- Your name is not enough to identify you for the purposes of social security, banking, immigration or student records.

- Other identifiers, usually numbers, associate you with your record in some information system.

- Physical information, such as your gender, age, photo, signature, fingerprints, scars or DNA also help to uniquely identify you for the information purposes of immigration, police, access to buildings and the like.

• Whatever remains true and unchanging despite time is the basis of identity: labels and attributions are not.

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Identity and change• The notion of persistence through time, and the transformations

that occur to things is central to informatics and how things are described and modelled

- For example, the mission or function of an organisation normally remains fairly constant, although how it achieves that may change.

• Functional roles are likely to outlast the incumbents of those roles:- The “head of marketing” or the “Manchester United goalkeeper” refers to a role, or title

- The person actually in that role is replaced over time.

• So the dynamic nature of things must also be taken into account when trying to describe something that is intended to remain useful for some period of time.

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The name of something allows it to be labelled and located.

Its identity is what makes it different from something else

and is what persists through time.

Recap

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Entities and attributes• In informatics the technical word for a thing is an entity

-A person

-A business

-A receipt

• Each entity will have properties or attributes that are of interest in a given situation.

-Person entity might have Age, height, and nationality of birth attributes

-Receipt entity might have Amount, description of items and date attributes

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All entities (things) have properties or attributes that

describe them.

Recap

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Entities & Attributes in information systems

• Informatics involves defining entities, their specific properties, or attributes, and the things they relate to

• When describing something for use in an information system it becomes important to identify what is essential and what is optional

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Essential and accidental attributes• Some attributes are essential to identity, others are

accidental. • Essential attributes are those that are indispensable for

something to have its particular nature. -Solidity is an essential property of a brick

• Accidental attributes are those that may or may not apply, and are thus not essential to a thing’s nature.

-A brick may be red or yellow, indented or plain but these properties are only accidentally true of a particular brick.

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Attributes in information systems

• What would be essential attributes to include in an information system about:

- Students and the courses they take?- People and their banking transactions?

• What attributes might be optional (accidental) in each case? Why might you include these?

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Essential attributes are those that are indispensable for something to

have its particular nature.Accidental attributes are those that may or may not apply, and

are thus not essential to a thing’s nature

Recap

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Categories• Most of what we describe, represent and think we know

is defined using categories• Categories are used to identify distinctions of interest• The idea of categories is that we can define classes or

sets of similar things, which can be named by the same word

-Duck-Australian-Red There are two types of people in the

world. Those that think the world can be divided into two types of people

and those that don’t.

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Defining categories – necessary and sufficient features

• The classical theory of necessary and sufficient defining features might be one basis

- Birds fly and nest in trees - except that emus, kiwis and ostriches don’t.

• The problem is that the actual things referred to rarely fit any definition exactly, and there can be many exceptions

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Defining categories - Prototypes

• Prototypes are those members of a category that are most representative of that concept

- A mid sized, four legged, devoted, hairy dog is prototypical of the class of dogs

• Individuals can be compared with the prototype to see how well they fit the category

- This is their degree of membership of the category

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Defining categories - Level of categories

• What level of abstraction should be chosen?- Too specific, too general are both not useful

• Trade off amount of detail to be sufficiently informative, without having unnecessary distinctions in the context

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Defining categories - Theories

wasps shrimps

moths grasshoppers

spiderscrabs

scorpionsPOISONOUS

SAFE

view

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Defining categories - Theories

wasps shrimps

moths grasshoppers

spiderscrabs

scorpionsAIR

SEALAND

view

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Defining categories - Framing

skyscraper cathedral temple prayer

prayer temple cathedral skyscraper

BUILDING

RELIGION

view

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Defining categories – Framing

SocratesPlato PeleLeonardo

Pele Leonardo Socrates Plato

Philosophers or Brazilian soccer players?

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Categories are a way of distinguishing between different things that enable

the things in the world to be classified and named.

Categories group items together according to some theory or context

for defining their similarity.

Recap

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Naming and hierarchy

• Choosing the level to describe things at is an important decision to make:

- When giving a romantic gift, knowing that a given flower is “a rose” may be enough – its scientific name and relationship to other flowers isn’t relevant

- For other purposes, such as professional rose cultivation, these details do matter, and relate to knowledge of other things such as soils, breeding and markets

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Granularity

• Granularity is the term used to describe the level of detail at which something is defined or described, and is an important concept in informatics

- Your purpose determines how much detail you go into and where you draw the boundary between what is included and what is excluded.

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Naming and hierarchy

• Entities are not only characterised by their properties, but also in their relationships to other entities

-Every mother is also a daughter. A woman in one context may behave as a daughter, and in another behave as a mother.

-A rose is a type of flower, which is a type of plant, and different roses can be specified by variety

• These relationships suggest an order of things, a hierarchy, or a taxonomy

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Taxonomy

• A taxonomy is a hierarchical structure of names and ideas

- More abstract or general concepts are found at the top, and more specific ones lower down

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Systematisation and informatics

• These general principles of object identification, abstraction and specification apply in all areas of informatics, and have been explored formally for some time

• Systematic organisation of ideas is essential in any discipline, and categorisation can provide the means of organisation

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Branding – a particular type of naming

• In branding, names have powerful connotations – the name of an organisation or brand is important in the public’s perception of it, and its value.

Table 1.1 Brand name types

Surname: DellDescriptive: Pizza HutInvented: XeroxConnotative: DuracellBridge: DaimlerChryslerArbitrary: Yahoo!

Adapted from: Lippincott-Mercer. Name Types and Functions. 2006. Available from [www.lippincottmercer.com/services/name-types.shtml].

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Referencing

• Naming is our basic categorising act, since in informatics we have to symbolise ideas about things in the world

• Names signify or refer to something in the outside world

-The same name can refer to two different things, and different names can refer to the same thing

• Referencing makes the link between a word and its object

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Names and things

rectangle

circle

yellow

carrot

vegetable

geometricshape

animaledible

living

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Referencing

rectangle

yellow

carrot

vegetablegeometricshape

animal

edible

living

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Intensional and extensional definitions of categories• An intensional definition describes the essential

definitional requirement for the category:

-e.g. students are those enrolled at a place of learning (by definition).

• An extensional definition involves “pointing to” every member that the definition refers to

-e.g. we may define the category “the World’s strongest man” Logically, only one person can be the “world’s strongest man” but who that person physically is varies over time

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Logical requirements and physical instances

• In informatics, we see the idea of intensional and extensional definition in the concept of logical requirements vs physical instantiation

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Community naming and knowing

• Real knowledge is not private but is understood communally

• Naming and definition must pass social acceptance – the terms consistently used by that community to refer to the objects and concepts recognised by it

• This itself has levels of granularity, from universal concepts, to culturally-specific terms, to idiolects understood by only couples or individuals

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I love you, punkin!

Uncle Ted and the brown ale

Ogdoads have eight elements

The sun lights up the sky

What we wear at funerals

UNIVERSALS

CULTURAL IDEAS

SUB-CULTURAL JARGON

FAMILY TALES

PRIVATE

Localisation of concepts within different sizes of communities

view

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Frameworks of understanding• Cultures establish ways of understanding things that are

meaningful to them- In some cultures black implies mourning, in others white does

• Cultures and communities have their own languages and names for things, as well as conventions for speaking and behaving

-A meaning or truth for one person or culture may not be true for another

• Culture provides a framework of understanding that makes something meaningful or otherwise to its adherents

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Frameworks of understanding

• An aerial view of buildings? (to a househunter)• Trees and rocks reflected in water? (to a photographer)• Abstract art? (to a graphic designer)• …? (to you)

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Seeing

B?

13?

and Seeing-As

view

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Rabbit

Quack!

DuckSeeing

and Seeing-As

view

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Frameworks of understanding and the interpretation of data

Image from http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/JastrowDuck.htm

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• The framework of understanding we bring to the interpretation of data determines what we see it as

• What we see it as depends on the context in which we see it. Some of this context is given by surrounding information, and some is provided by our own expectations.

- We always have a background of experience and understanding which is brought to new data, whether a picture or a symbol

• A common difficulty in informatics is that “seeing as” is taken to be the same as seeing, and the world or data gets described in one way only, when there might be other interpretations possible

Paradigms• In science and elsewhere the concept of framework of

understanding is called a paradigm• A paradigm is the prevailing view in the field that gives

meaning to data and appearances

-Early astronomers operated within the paradigm that the Earth was the centre of the universe, and their calculations and explanations were based on that. The later view, that the Sun is at the centre of the Solar system, was a paradigm shift.

• Theories, observations and what people thought they knew get discarded or revised in the new framework of understanding

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Informatics and paradigm shifts• Informatics is involved in paradigm shifts happening in

business, government, research, art and health, e.g.

-Skilled typists and word processing

-The music industry and digital recordings and filesharing

• Introducing information systems into any workplace or industry is disruptive

-The paradigm of work and knowledge often changes, with what was valued and known becoming irrelevant

-Frameworks of understanding can become radically changed through informatics

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We bring a framework of understanding made up of our background,

assumptions, biases and preferences

to our interpretation of anything.

Recap

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Naming and authority• To be useful, information must be reliable• The recipient’s beliefs will determine how much they

trust the information to be reliable • Trust is influenced by:

-Provenance- Is the source qualified to provide the information?

-Mediation- Is the information first hand or passed through other recipients?

• Trust, and the qualifications required to be trusted, become more important as information becomes mediated remotely, such as in online commerce.

1. Introduction2. Names and identities3. Naming and authority4. Other ways of knowing5. Meaning making - semiosis 6. How we know –

epistemology and ontology7. Summary

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Choosing names

• Politics and policy often affect choice of names

-e.g. Cape Canaveral and Cape Kennedy

• Nomenclature boards or conventions are required in many fields, to ensure consistent, agreed and appropriate naming

-e.g. the International Astronomical Union Recommendations for Nomenclature provides “Specifications concerning designations for astronomical radiation sources outside the solar system”

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Community, authority & knowledge• Who is allowed to define concepts in a community?• Encyclopaedias are considered as authoritative guides to

socially accepted knowledge-Authored by qualified experts, backed by research and quality control processes

• Community-based encyclopaedias such as Wikipedia are written and maintained by users

-Community consensus should prevail

-Primary sources should be verifiable

-Revisions are possible as information changes

-Spin and bias also possible

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Community tagging at flickr.com

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While the principles of naming and knowing are general,

they apply differently across different communities, are authorised in various ways and are related in different systems of meaning.

Recap

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Other ways of knowing• The world of informatics is one of symbols and symbolised ideas• Inherent in naming is a separation between subject and

object, characteristic of Western science, and which is assumed in mainstream informatics

• Other ways of knowing exist that do not assume this worldview

-many Indigenous traditions

-“women’s ways of knowing”

1. Introduction2. Names and identities3. Naming and authority4. Other ways of knowing5. Meaning making - semiosis 6. How we know –

epistemology and ontology7. Summary

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Other ways of knowing

• One way of understanding reality is through being a part of it, rather than being separate from it.

• Rather than observing nature from a detached viewpoint, identification with it occurs, a participatory consciousness of being involved.

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Participatory consciousness in informatics• Being involved rather than observing is like the

difference between studying a foreign tribe (a) using the standards of your own society to interpret what people do, and (b) living as one of them, “going native” so you can understand them from the inside.

• To design an information system for people in an organisation to work with and live with, you have to understand how that work and life really is for that “tribe”.

-Much of the current work in information systems uses methods from anthropology, particularly ethnography, to try to get this inside view.

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Women’s ways of knowing• “Women’s ways of knowing” refers to the position that

women know in ways characteristically different from men, and in ways that differ from the masculine values entrenched in much modern science.

• In “Knowing woman” by de Castilljo this is characterised as…

a diffused awareness of relationship and the “unity of all life” characteristic in feminine consciousness, versus a more focussed, “divide-and-conquer”, or analytic consciousness in masculine psychology. -(note that these are qualities available to both sexes, with one or other type prominent and the other in shadow)

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Women’s ways of knowing

“In the middle of the block, next to the red house.

East Union St. 1409 1411 1413 1415

“Number 1411 East Union Street”

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Women’s ways of knowing - Belenky1.Silence

• following authority blindly2.Received knowledge

• received from other, outside voices3.Subjective knowledge

•where their own ideas are listened for and accepted, and external authorities lose some of their power. Each person’s experience and knowledge is unique

4.Procedural knowledge•comprises both connected knowing and separate knowing. Connected knowing is grounded in direct, specific experience and involves personal feelings, listening and empathy, as opposed to the separate knowing which is rational and ignores feelings.

5.Constructed knowledge•an integration of personal understandings with rationality and the outside world. Theories are not “true” but are instead a model that approximates experience, which can be revised as things change.

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Informatics & other ways of knowing

• Some of the ideas of ‘women’s ways of knowing’ are now common in information systems thinking

• Informatics involves designing systems for people to use and reason with, and these do embody a view of the world and a commitment to ways of seeing things

• However, many information systems are potentially open to different viewpoints and values

• There are practical approaches to integrating these into informatics processes

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Many cultures have their own characteristic ‘ways of knowing’ that

differ from those assumed by mainstream western science.

Some of these ideas are becoming incorporated into informatics.

Recap

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Meaning-making – semiosis

• Names work because they are based in signification

-Signs or representations that can symbolically stand for something held to exist in a reality outside the system

-Experience is what gives the “ground truth” of something, which can be named in many different ways

-Semiotics is the study of signification

• Naming is thus part of a more general process of meaning-making or semiosis

1. Introduction2. Names and identities3. Naming and authority4. Other ways of knowing5. Meaning making - semiosis 6. How we know – epistemology

and ontology7. Summary

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Semiotics in information systems• A medical record of a patient will contain details such as

name, address, birthdate, blood group type and information more specific to their unique medical history.

• The words, descriptions, codes and symbols used in this record are assumed to map directly to an actual person.

• The meaning of the things signified will operate within the use of the system

- for example, it implies that a blood transfusion using the blood group indicated on the record will not prove medically adverse.

• The information selected and represented about the person reduces them to specific and restricted, but useful categories

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Naming is part of a general process of meaning-making or semiosis.

Names are types of signs or symbols that are used to refer to things that

have meaning in the world. This field of study is called semiotics

Recap

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How do we know?

• We have seen that some of the most basic questions in informatics include:

-What do we call things?

-How do we categorise things?

-If you and I have different classifications, how do we know anything? Does it make a difference?

• Fundamentally, these raise the question of how we know anything at all

1. Introduction2. Names and identities3. Naming and authority4. Other ways of knowing5. Meaning making - semiosis 6. How we know –

epistemology and ontology7. Summary

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What is a bed?• The following definition is

from the UK National Health Service official definition of a bed*

• It illustrates how things can be classified or categorised according to context, and how subjective any definition may be

* source: http://web.archive.org/web/20050320002024/http://www.nhsia.nhs.uk/datastandards/pages/helpdesk/hd1211.asp

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A bed includes any device that may be used to permit a PATIENT to lie down when the need to do so is as a consequence of the PATIENT's condition rather than the need for active intervention such as examination, diagnostic investigation, manipulation/treatment, or transport. Cots should be included in statistics about beds where appropriate. It should be noted that:

a. A couch or trolley should be considered as a bed provided it is used regularly to permit a PATIENT to lie down rather than for merely examination or transport. An example of such an arrangement is a day surgery ward furnished with trolleys

b. A PATIENT may need to use a bed, couch or trolley whilst attending for a specific short procedure taking an hour or less, such as an endoscopy. If such devices are being used only because of the active intervention and not because of the PATIENT'S condition, they should NOT be counted as beds for statistical purposes

c. A PATIENT needing a lengthy procedure such as renal dialysis may use a bed or other means of support such as a couch or special chair. Whatever the device used it should be counted as a bed if used regularly for this purpose

d. Some procedures require narcosis. If this necessitates the PATIENT to lie down, the bed, couch or trolley can be counted as a hospital bed if used regularly for this purpose

e. A device specifically and solely for the purpose of delivery should not be counted as a bed if another device is normally reserved for antenatal and postnatal care. Details of the facilities available for delivery in a maternity ward should be included in a ward inventory”

What is a bed?

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Epistemology• From the beginning there are basic questions including:

- What is the world?- What types of things does it contain?- What are the things called? - How do they relate to each other?- What are they for?- How do I know they exist?- Are they real for other people too?

• These questions have to be answered at least practically, because our social systems depend on some common understandings about what is normal.

• Debate over centuries has identified some common positions that can be taken as to how you know, and which provide a basis for deciding what is “really” true.

• A position on the basis for knowledge is known as an epistemology.

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Some epistemological positionsThe world I see out there is made of solid stuff and there is one correct and true description of it that science can find out objectively.

The world I think I see out there is made purely of ideas and is nothing but a projection from my mind.

We all see the world from a different point of view so no single description can be true.

There is a world out there, but all I can know is what my brain tells me it saw, I cannot know it directly.

Both the physical and social world are made up of pre-existing

structures that we are thrown into at birth.

The physical world exists sure enough, and can’t be destroyed but the social world is only made up of the most popular ideas at the time.

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Ontology

• Once you have an epistemology, an ontology can follow

• Ontology simply means the things that can exist in that world

- In the world of health informatics, doctors and patients are typical ontological categories.

- In the world of Harry Potter, unicorns and hippogriffs exist. Unicorns are an ontological category in an imaginary world

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Norms

• Informatics deals not with things, but with the names of the things. The name symbolises the idea of the thing.

• When we use different names, there is a potential for misunderstanding.

• Norms are commonly understood concepts, rules, and ways of doing things.

-e.g. the health system, the legal system and the business world each have their own norms

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Norms

• Informatics professionals need to find agreed names for the distinct things in their world, and to construct some design that organises them.

• Information systems can then be constructed around those ideas and their perceived relationships to one another:

-The business world consists of goods and services, supplies, bills, accounts, markets, payments…

-Health informatics is concerned with patients, doctors, beds, diseases….

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Relationships among some ideas in health systems

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An epistemology is a theory of knowledge that takes a position on what can be known and how it can be known. An ontology is a shared set of terms and relationships among them that are used

to describe a world.

Recap

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Summary• The activities of distinguishing, categorising and naming things are

fundamental to all different forms of information, and the field of informatics deals with the information that gets described

• Names are labels or symbols given to a thing to distinguish it from other things.

• Identity is what is true of a thing that persists through time

• Categories allow us to classify things into sets that are similar to one another

• We bring a framework of understanding to our interpretation of anything, determined by our background, community and culture

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Summary• Different approaches to naming and knowing exist in

different cultures and these have implications for informatics practice

• Naming is part of a general process of meaning-making or semiosis

• Informatics deals with symbols rather than reality so it is crucial that the symbols provide the information needed for the particular application

• Epistemology and ontology provide the underlying philosophical tools for how we can know and describe anything at all

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