ABSTRACT
A critique and rejection of the taken-for-granted Cartesian and Kantian representational views of the mind are recommended to improve teaching and learning of clinical reasoning in nursing practice. Improving clinical reasoning is presented as a key to graduating practice-ready nurses. A socially constituted, embodied and socially embedded and engaged view of mind, agency and thinking is presented as an alternative to the unsubstantiated Cartesian view of the mind separate from embodiment and world. A representational view of the mind contributes to the teaching of clinical reasoning, as a scientific reasoning process, or “Nursing Process.” Clinical reasoning is presented as a science-using form of practical reasoning. An argument is made that expert nurses, following the strengths of expert human thinking and action, are most effective providing early warnings of subtle changes in patients’ clinical conditions and in seeing “the big picture,” and therefore, the strengths of decision supports, based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), can augment, but not replicate the powers of human experts for recognizing family resemblances and seeing the “big picture” in practical clinical situations. Decision supports from AI should be used as a supplement and in conjunction with expert nursing clinical reasoning, not as a replacement.
