What is the Nature of Knowledge

[modest]

Does "Intuitive awareness," fit in there anywhere? trusting your instincts.

 

I would submit that instinct is nothing more than the tendency to process experience in a manner consistent with the physical layout of our brain. Are you thinking differently?

 

-modest

[Thunderbird]

I would submit that instinct is nothing more than the tendency to process experience in a manner consistent with the physical layout of our brain. Are you thinking differently?

 

-modest

Yea I think this type of awareness was been dulled a bit by the weight of memories. Trusting your gut is not thinking about or referencing the past experience its about sensing in other organs that this is the right dision or this is the wrong one. People that work in certain professions' such as soldiers, law enforcement and even successful business people say your gut responses should never be ignored.

 

Intuition is not referencing past experiences, which can be a knowledge or it can be a phycological block. Unreasonable fears can well up automatically triggered by memories that do not apply. I think the ability to trust you intuition is stronger in women, I have on many occasions listened to may gut when it came to make a decision and would ask my women friend how they felt about this or that. If i could see the antenna working I would take that info in, on the other hand if I knew they where referencing something else like judgment based on past experiance that do not apply i would be more likely to go with my own, but take it in all the same for what it is.

[modest]

Clever as always Tbird,

 

I don’t think I disagree on any particular point you make. I am also a strong believer in trusting your instinct. As you say, this often goes against the grain of memories and experience. For instance:

 

A woman is about to get on an elevator. A man steps in before her and she gets a bad feeling. They are the only two around. There is no particular reason she should fear this man. All her experience says there is nothing wrong with getting on an elevator with an individual of the opposite sex. Yet, her gut says something’s amiss.

 

I’m a strong believer in trusting your gut in such a situation. She should wait until the next lift is available - hurting the poor bloke’s feelings? Perhaps, but her instinctual action is probably the best action.

 

But, this thread is about knowledge, not action. In the confines of “thought”, I believe my definition above is applicable. I believe fear comes from the structure and biochemistry of our brain and body. It can influence action and it can be called intuition. As it relates to knowledge, I believe it flavors our understanding of the world. It puts human perspective on truth. I’m not sure how this would integrate into my list above.

[Zythryn]

What are the differences between facts, information, and knowledge? How does information become Knowledge? What is the difference between believing something, and knowing something?

 

In my opinion:

Facts are generally accepted beliefs defined by the group or society agreeing on said 'facts'. The society may define that facts meet some level of objective rigor or that they fit some teachings.

 

Information is sensory input. It is entirely dependant upon the person that receives the sensory input.

 

Knowledge is the memory of one or more peices of information.

 

In the first person, there is no difference between saying 'I believe' and 'I know'. If you are speaking in the third person 'They know' vs. 'They believe' it depends on if you believe the other person's 'facts' are true or not. Belief and Knowledge is very much a matter of semantics.

[Thunderbird]

Clever as always Tbird,

 

I don’t think I disagree on any particular point you make. I am also a strong believer in trusting your instinct. As you say, this often goes against the grain of memories and experience. For instance:

 

A woman is about to get on an elevator. A man steps in before her and she gets a bad feeling. They are the only two around. There is no particular reason she should fear this man. All her experience says there is nothing wrong with getting on an elevator with an individual of the opposite sex. Yet, her gut says something’s amiss.

 

I’m a strong believer in trusting your gut in such a situation. She should wait until the next lift is available - hurting the poor bloke’s feelings? Perhaps, but her instinctual action is probably the best action.

 

But, this thread is about knowledge, not action. In the confines of “thought”, I believe my definition above is applicable. I believe fear comes from the structure and biochemistry of our brain and body. It can influence action and it can be called intuition. As it relates to knowledge, I believe it flavors our understanding of the world. It puts human perspective on truth. I’m not sure how this would integrate into my list above.

 

I see your point, but consider the source I’m an artist when I am reading and trying to understand a particular field of science I process the information in a certain order. Have you ever taken one of those test. It has to do with finding how you assimilate information? After the test they assign you a set of letters representing the order in the way you process information. like.. nfps

Once I have saturated my mind with data, I will let my subconscious left brain take over to create some order, something that I can perceive in my minds eye, then review the information again. Its like the right left side of the mind bouncing the information back and forth until it is reduced to something I can integrate into knowledge to be stored away.

[Overdog]

In my opinion:

Facts are generally accepted beliefs defined by the group or society agreeing on said 'facts'. The society may define that facts meet some level of objective rigor or that they fit some teachings.

 

Information is sensory input. It is entirely dependant upon the person that receives the sensory input.

 

Knowledge is the memory of one or more peices of information.

I think I agree with this, except I would propose that facts without context have no meaning, and only when facts have some meaning do they become information.

 

In the first person, there is no difference between saying 'I believe' and 'I know'. If you are speaking in the third person 'They know' vs. 'They believe' it depends on if you believe the other person's 'facts' are true or not. Belief and Knowledge is very much a matter of semantics.

 

I think this is a very important point, and goes directly to issue of the distinction between Knowledge and Belief.

 

Consider the model below:

 

Cognition would be:

 

Mental processes involved in gaining knowledge and comprehension, including thinking, knowing, remembering, judging, and problem solving. These are higher-level functions of the brain and encompass language, imagination, perception, and planning.

 

And in this model, there is no distinction between knowledge and belief, Knowledge and Belief are products of the cognitive process, and how they are distinguished is a matter of personal judgement.

[Overdog]

To explain the model a little more, the idea of the "Conceptual Framework into which Information must fit to become knowledge", would all be happening in real time as part of the cognitive process. The "Hardwired" inputs would include emotion, instinct, that kind of stuff....

[Overdog]

I'm sure I have a monkey wrench here somewhere... No. I guess not. I could submit some things for further review:

 

• Our link to the natural world is the 5 senses.
  
• Those five senses lead to experience.
  
• Experience leads to all thought of any form (emotion, reason, knowledge, ect.)
  
• Ignorance can be a lack of experience (placing it outside the realm of thought all together) or a failure to understand an experience (an experience that failed to connect to knowledge or wisdom)
  
• Knowledge is the structured organization of experience into something useful - Not a useful action, just a useful understanding.
  
• Reason is the process of doing the above (organizing experience into knowledge) or a method of doing the the same.
  
• Belief is maybe nothing more than the confidence that the previous step worked and will lead to the next step. I'm not too sure of this.
  
• Wisdom is applying Knowledge to “life” which by all our definitions so far requires reason, knowledge, and experience.
  

 

Of course, this is not at all comprehensive. I seem to have left out "facts" and some other things. Submitted for further review in any case.

 

Now where did that monkey wrench go...

 

-modest

 

Now that I've had time to think about this, I think the model is incorrect to include a seperate store for belief, because I agree with you, the knowledge AND belief are produced from what is in the other stores...

 

You think I should get rid of the Belief store?

[Overdog]

Does this picture better model what we are thinking? Is it missing anything?

[modest]

Tbird,

 

I’m rather sure we’re saying similar things (we should embrace this moment as infrequently as it comes :hihi:) Intuition colors perception, knowledge, and experience.

 

Freezy,

 

I think I may have been less correct about knowledge being replaced by belief than I originally believed. I'm a bit unsure as to the conceptual differences between the two now.

 

Overdog,

 

Now where did that monkey wrench go...

Sorry, I think I found it.

 

How is your diagram different than follows:

 

 

I would agree all these things are related to cognition. This is probably therefore a very good starting point, but I think some of these things need to be interrelated. Something like knowledge should lead to wisdom while information comes from perseption and leads to knowledge. I haven’t figured how to show this, but I think we’re getting there.

 

Not too big of a monkey wrench :shade:

 

-modest

[Overdog]

[quote name='modest;224139How is your diagram different than follows:

 

It is exactly the same as my original. Just a different modeling tool. My model says nothing about relationships' date=' the arrows represent data flow from the data stores to the cognitive process. Inputs and outputs.

 

But because of your and Zethryns points, I have remove belief from my model because I thought we were in agreement that the cognitive rocess "Creates" Knowledge, and Zethryn's point

In the first person, there is no difference between saying 'I believe' and 'I know'

seems valid.

 

...but I think some of these things need to be interrelated. Something like knowledge should lead to wisdom while information comes from perseption and leads to knowledge.

-modest

 

I agree there are some relations that still need to be thought out, but we haven't gotten that far yet.

 

If we can agree on the model, we can start drawing some conclusions...

[modest]

Perhaps a slight misunderstanding,

 

My only purpose in drawing that was to show all we've done is relate different things to cognition. I believe any word related to "thought" or "knowledge" is related to cognition, so I fail to see the value in our plot thus far.

 

But, don't be discouraged, I honestly believe we're getting somewhere good. I'll take more of a back seat as my criticism is probably slightly unwarranted and more than slightly unwanted

 

-modest

[jedaisoul]

In my opinion:

Facts are generally accepted beliefs defined by the group or society agreeing on said 'facts'. The society may define that facts meet some level of objective rigor or that they fit some teachings.

To me "facts" should conform to somethiing higher than teachings. To me, that is a definition of beliefs. Therefore I would suggest that a statement or belief is a fact to the extent that it reflects reality, not teachings.

 

Information is sensory input. It is entirely dependant upon the person that receives the sensory input.

Agreed.

 

Knowledge is the memory of one or more peices of information.

I would disagree with this usage. To me, knowledge is a collection of facts, not a collection of any statements or beliefs that are claimed to be facts. Hence I would call a collection of untrue statements or beliefs misinformation, not knowledge.

 

In the first person, there is no difference between saying 'I believe' and 'I know'. If you are speaking in the third person 'They know' vs. 'They believe' it depends on if you believe the other person's 'facts' are true or not. Belief and Knowledge is very much a matter of semantics.

I think this is not a very useful definition of knowledge. Also it differs from the previous statement. My definition of knowledge is given above...

[Overdog]

Perhaps a slight misunderstanding,

 

My only purpose in drawing that was to show all we've done is relate different things to cognition. I believe any word related to "thought" or "knowledge" is related to cognition, so I fail to see the value in our plot thus far.

 

But, don't be discouraged, I honestly believe we're getting somewhere good. I'll take more of a back seat as my criticism is probably slightly unwarranted and more than slightly unwanted

 

-modest

 

Don't take a back seat Modest, discussion and criticism of a model, leading to a refinement of the model, is the measure of progress in the design process. The purpose of the model in this case is to help focus the discussion, reduce confusion, and ensure we have the same picture in mind.

 

The only real plot here is to engage some highly intelligent people in the process. I hope it leads somewhere good. But at the very least, it has already improved my understanding of the nature of knowledge.

 

I was incorrect when I said our models were the same. My model says something about the flow of data to and from memory as it is being accessed, used, and stored by the cognitive process, so it is a bit different in that respect. The rectangular boxes in my model represent storage of data (memory), and the cognitive process in my model is viewed as being analogous to a software process running on a computer.

[Overdog]

Perhaps if I explain what I am doing it will make more sense. I am thinking of the human brain as an information system, and so I am employing an analysis and design approach that is common in my profession as a software engineer.

 

It works like this.

 

First, you get a plain english description of what the system must do (or does if you are trying to understand it)

 

Next, you examine the textual description and parse out the nouns and the verbs.

 

The nouns then are a list of candidate entities which end up a tables in a database. The properties of the entity are the columns in the table.

 

The verbs translate into processes (code) that act on the data.

 

With the list of entities and processes, it it now possible to model the flow of data through the system. Data flows into a process, the process does something with or to the data, data flows out of the process.

 

We do not have to know how the processes work, we do not have to know anything about the physical infrastructure of the system. The focus at this stage is about what the system does, not how it does it.

 

The model then is refined in repeated design discussions, as knowledge and understanding of the system improves.

 

So far, with the input of others, we have refined our initial model from one which initially had two distinct entities representing Knowledge and Belief, to the elimination of those entities in favor of the view (at this point) that Knowledge and Belief appear to be the same kind of thing, that is, both are created dynamically in real time from data stored in memory.

[Overdog]

Ok, either everyone has bailed on me in this thread or they are waiting for me to say something that makes sense...

 

So I will say I have a problem with the hardwired part of the model...

 

 

The hardwired stuff is supposed to represent emotion, our native capacity for reason, instincts, the structure and built-in rules that gives us the capacity for language, etc.

 

I'm thinking that those attributes might be inherent characteristics of the cognitive process itself, how the code is written, rather than being something that is stored in memory somewhere.

[freeztar]

I appreciate the insights that have led to clarifying the relationship between knowledge and belief, though I feel that it is fallacious to equate the two. I agree with Zythryn that in the first person, they are the same thing, but they are definitely distinct when more than one mind is involved, as I believe Jedaisoul pointed out.