Thoughts about what I’ve learned the past week

The past week I’ve been reading the book The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell and also conducted an analytic review on an interesting article about mobile payment from a Journal found in the database “Web of science”.

And that was one of the first useful things I’ve learnt in this curse; how to access these great databases and access high quality journals.

Another thing I’ve learnt, since I’m referring to “high quality” is the concept of Impact factor which I hadn’t heard before.

I’ve also grasped how to perform research article critique.

However, reading the book by Bertrand Russell is what has got me thinking and wondering this week.

The second seminar gave me a lot of different approaches on Russell’s text and it helped me clarify some arguments and it was interesting discussing Russell’s reasoning.

Anyhow, I think it’s hard to “get the message” with Russell’s book, it sure got me thinking a lot but he’s arguments can often be taken another step and this often creates a circular argumentation, much like the kind Leif explained when talking about that there is no true answer to what knowledge is. But I think I can kind of conclude one thing from it which would be that one should always think critical about the sources that “supplies” us with information and weed out what can be categorized as facts and turned into useful knowledge according to your own criteria. And I think those criteria’s has been updated a bit this week..

Theme 1: Research publications/Theory of science

(561 words if you don’t count the leading questions)

Research journal

Journal: IEEE COMPUTER SOC, ISSN: 0018-9162, SEP 2012, Impact factor: 1.47

Article: “Are Mobile Payments Ready to Cash in Yet?”

Source: Web of knowledge; web of science.

What is the article about?(short summary) : The article is discussing the development of mobile payment methods and how it is becoming more popular but hasn’t yet become commonplace. They say that on one hand there are developer issues concerning security and the lack of standards. On the other hand there isn’t enough stores providing mobile payment solutions and that the customers don’t take the change easily. The article also takes up the benefits with mobile payment; that it can be more convenient for the customers and that the management often is cheaper than for credit cards.

What is the purpose of the article?:

The article aims to describe the market conditions for mobile payment and it explains to the reader what technologies makes mobile payment possible, like NFC(Near-field-communication), mobile banking, barcode payment etc.

What has been studied?:

It is emphasized in the article that mobile payment faces noteworthy challenges and it points to research done by McGregor, Tirias Research which states that we won’t see widespread adoption any time soon due to non-consistent standards, that there already are other good working payment methods and so on.

What are the findings?

However, it is concluded that mobile payments will continuously grow in popularity but that the big players like financial institutions, tele-communications and other technology providers has to lead the development and enable mobile payments for the customers and points to research done by Pew Research Center that reports that 65% of people worldwide will use their phones to pay for a product or service by 2020.

Bertand Russel “The Problems of Philosophy” 1912.

1. What does Russell mean by "sense data" and why does he introduce this notion?

“Sense-data” is a term that Russel introduces to categories the data that can be taken in from our senses. He gives examples of what the data can contain; color, sound, smell, hardness, roughness and other things taken in from our senses. He describes that the subject; for instance “color” is what we are immediately aware of, thus the data. The awareness itself is the sensation. Hence; “sense-data”. This “sense-data” is used to describe physical objects.

2. What is the meaning of the terms "proposition" and "statement of fact"? How does propositions and statement of facts differ from other kinds of verbal expressions?

The term “proposition” is used to describe certain known properties of someone or something. But a proposition doesn’t have to be something that we ourselves know for a fact or have seen with our own eyes but rather something that is commonly known. “Statement of fact” is when someone makes a statement about something that he or she has experienced through our senses and that a physical object corresponding to the sense-data really exists.

3. In chapter 5 ("Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description") Russell introduces the notion "definite description". What does this notion mean?

A “Definite description” is a description of a definite object or a specific person and not just “a person or “an object” but rather that the objet has certain properties or the person is so-and-so. A “definite description” has to describe an object known by description.

4. In chapter 8 ("Knowledge, Error and Probable Opinion") and in chapter 9 ("The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge") Russell attacks traditional problems in theory of knowledge (epistemology). What are the main points in Russell's presentation?

One of the main points ought to be that one cannot claim to have knowledge about something by just believing something is true unless one has experienced the real truth, since the information could otherwise be deduced from a false belief. For example; if one believe what is written in the newspaper it doesn’t actually mean that this person have knowledge about the things that are written because the person hasn’t obtained any sense-data other than that from reading the text and therefore the person only has true knowledge about what letters and numbers are written in the newspaper but doesn’t have true knowledge about the meaning of them although the meaning of the text is understood.

H3110 W0R1D !

First blog post.