ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that the Artificial intelligence cannot comprehend the anomalies of the social world. It only works effectively in company with reflection and professional judgement. Reflection and interpretation are central to human learning, judgement and decision making in the social world in which nurses practice. A mental health nursing narrative illustrates a lived experience devoid of competent reflection. Boud points out the extent to which reflection and journals of reflection have been misused in education within rigid and suppressive rules and guidelines which fail to acknowledge the highly fragile and individual shape of the process. Personal knowledge such as records of lived experience, intuitive judgement and reflection while not infallible have some advantages over artificial intelligence units such as pathways and protocols based on disembodied scientific evidence. Contemporary personal knowledge in nursing can no more be devalued than the many forms it takes in the hands of eye witnesses, lawyers, jurors, judges and historians.
