Cognitive engineering practice: melting theory into reality

Abstract

Given the growing scope of cognitive engineering, our intent in this paper is to help uncover some of the regularities of the discipline. Adopting a pragmatic view, we attempt to interpret what cognitive engineers really do in practice, and to partly systematize this reality. The paper stresses the need for: (i) an explicit consideration of the demand for intervention and the analyst's preconceptions during the framing of the world-to-study, (ii) the adoption of multiple views for a sufficient understanding of the analysed world, (iii) a continuous reframing of the system under consideration (i.e., topological boundaries as well as timeframes) as the understanding of reality unfolds, (iv) acceptance and exploitation of the dialectic process between analysis/understanding and design/prediction.

Keywords:

• Cognitive engineering
• Systemic approach
• Positivism
• Hermeneutics
• Pragmatism
• Analysis
• Design
• Causality
• Intentionality

Notes

In the context of Activity Theory, activity is defined as a systemic whole including the subjects, the community and the objects, and the relations between those components in the transformation process of the object into outcome.

Alternatively ‘you cannot step into the same river twice’ in the well known Plato's interpretation.

Although we use industrial domain terminology, it should be clear that worlds-to-study do not coincide with domains of industry but with problem types more liable to be found in some domains of industry than others.

‘An abduction is a method of forming a general prediction without any positive assurance that it will succeed either in the special case or usually, its justification being that it is the only possible hope of regulating our future conduct rationally, and that induction from past experience gives us strong encouragement to hope that it will be successful in the future.’ Peirce (1958).