# What is 'knowledge' according toyou?



## Think (Mar 3, 2010)

This is what I have always been informed:

_Knowledge is a beautiful transparent glass bottle.


_ 
This is what I think about knowledge (this is the definition that I can come close to):

_Knowledge are pieces of glass scattered everywhere. File them, glue them to make another absurd piece of glass._


----------



## HannibalLecter (Apr 18, 2010)

Knowledge is an invalid concept.
There is no absolute certainty, only varying levels of positivity.


----------



## Think (Mar 3, 2010)

HannibalLecter said:


> Knowledge is an invalid concept.
> There is no absolute certainty, only varying levels of positivity.


positivity or possibility?


----------



## boredToDeath (Jan 3, 2010)

Anything new you discover, however little, new experiences, new events.
Knowledge can come in a "ready" form, ready for your absorption, and sometimes it comes in its raw form, with you having to investigate it and obtain its essence. Sometimes you may not even know that you have gained knowledge.


----------



## dude10000 (Jan 24, 2010)

Knowledge excludes ignorance, error, and opinion. That means that knowledge is a subset of our beliefs, namely, those beliefs that are both true and justified. A true belief without justification is just a lucky guess. A justified belief without truth is an honest mistake.

Now, perhaps HannibalLecter above thinks the set of such beliefs classified as knowledge as I defined it above is the empty set; that doesn't imply knowledge is an "invalid concept," whatever that term means. (fyi, validity and invalidity apply to arguments, not concepts.)


----------



## InvisibleJim (Jun 30, 2009)

Knowledge is a tree that grows as quickly you interact with the world, sometimes you forcefully cut the branches back when you discover something you thought was wrong and new branches grow out. Other branches you don't use so often sometimes wither and die.


----------



## Lucretius (Sep 10, 2009)

Knowledge (to me) is a malleable Bayesian inference.


----------



## OmarFW (Apr 8, 2010)

anything that prevents you from being ignorant without abandoning logic


----------



## Belka (May 15, 2010)

Knowledge is basically everything that exists. There is potential to learn and gain knowledge everywhere, from anything around us. Every second I am guaranteed to get new information, and it will always be stored in my mind. It is infinite.


----------



## Dooraven (Dec 9, 2009)

I think Plato best summed up what I think about Knowledge.

"Knowledge is the food of the soul."


----------



## Ungweliante (Feb 26, 2009)

Knowledge is the convergence of the mind and the world :happy:
_

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something._
- Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988)


----------



## Think (Mar 3, 2010)

Ungweliante said:


> _
> You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something._
> - Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988)


Nice one. Its the concepts that are important not the taxonomy exactly. 

No offence.


----------



## Think (Mar 3, 2010)

JHBowden said:


> Knowledge excludes ignorance, error, and opinion. That means that knowledge is a subset of our beliefs, namely, those beliefs that are both true and justified. A true belief without justification is just a lucky guess. A justified belief without truth is an honest mistake.
> 
> Now, perhaps HannibalLecter above thinks the set of such beliefs classified as knowledge as I defined it above is the empty set; that doesn't imply knowledge is an "invalid concept," whatever that term means. (fyi, validity and invalidity apply to arguments, not concepts.)



epistemological. Nice one.


----------



## NiDBiLD (Apr 1, 2010)

JHBowden said:


> Knowledge excludes ignorance, error, and opinion. That means that knowledge is a subset of our beliefs, namely, those beliefs that are both true and justified. A true belief without justification is just a lucky guess. A justified belief without truth is an honest mistake.


Completely agreed, though I personally wouldn't use the "belief" word, since it implies some sort of faith.


----------



## dude10000 (Jan 24, 2010)

NiDBiLD, those who don't like the word "belief" usually do so because they don't like any kind of experience or mental stuff in their ontology; some materialists hate on beliefs for being "folk psychology," while pragmatists/idealists sometimes take an eliminationist stand because they don't like a division between subjects and objects.

The notion of a belief is pretty pedestrian; it is just one of many kinds of propositional attitude. A propositional attitude is a relation between a person and a proposition; perhaps an agent wishes, fears, hopes, desires, et cetera-- usually there is a _that_ involved in a propositional attitude, e.g. 'Sally considers that ___' or 'Johnny imagines that ____', and so on.

If a proposition obtains for an agent, it is said that the agent has a belief. "I believe that Obama is the POTUS." "I believe that Chicago is the capital of Illinois." "I believe that the Celtics can defeat the Lakers." "I believe that it will probably rain today." We can believe truths, falsehoods, possibilities, probabilities, etc. When morons talk about "relative truth" and "absolute truth," they usually mean plain ol' _belief_ by "relative truth," and plain 'ol _truth_ by "absolute truth," since truth does not come in different flavors. 

We can define faith, expressed propositionally, as belief held indifferently to evidence, whether the evidence be positive or negative. So faith is not knowledge or ignorance; there is no contradiction in knowing something to be true and also having faith that something is true, or having faith that something is true when evidence indicates that it is not true. 

Knowledge, on the other hand, _always_ requires some sort of justification. Knowledge requires belief too, since it excludes ignorance. If a proposition is both true and justified, but someone doesn't believe it, then we ought not to say they know it.


----------



## NiDBiLD (Apr 1, 2010)

JHBowden said:


> NiDBiLD, those who don't like the word "belief" usually do so because they don't like any kind of experience or mental stuff in their ontology.


Yes, that would be me, but using that definition of belief, I can accept this. In my native language the same word is used for both "faith" and "belief", so I just reflexively assumed that the english word also carried some sort of religious tint.


----------



## SlowPoke68 (Apr 26, 2010)

Being able to imitate, replicate or resemble something.

Describing a thing shows knowledge. If you weren't able to imitate it in some way (even in an image in your own mind) you wouldn't be able to describe it.

"I know something"
"What is it"
"I can't describe it"
"Oh."

vs. 

"I know something"
"What is it"
"The nearest Taco Bell is on Golden Road in the parking lot in front of the Goodwill. I can picture it now."
"Let's go. I'm hungry"


----------



## Turquoise (Jun 7, 2010)

_"Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best._"
- Frank Zappa


----------



## ENTPreneur (Dec 13, 2009)

Being an ENTP I think knowledge in its most basic term reflects the pieces of data. So you can see an authority in an area of interest and they will be very knowledgeable about it. But nonbetheless you may be WISER then them, even in their field. Why? Because you see several aspects of the data- AND other seemingly unconnected data in other areas - and put these together in a mosaic that gives you an overall picture of the whole. So knowledge is but the pieces/gravel that meke the foundation for wisdom. Wisdom is what I am after. 

I have employed mensa-members and been appaled by their ....uselessness. They had sharp minds bot could not make use of them other in theoretical tests. Of course I was probably unlucky as they say that general intelligence normally dilutes into all areas of intelligence... or so they say. The abilty to connect the dots is what I call wisdom. Dots are knowledge.

When growing up we played Trivial Pursuit a lot. Me and my ISTJ friend was about as good at this during school (me having some nerdy interersts). But nowadays, if we play (RARE), I fare worse. Why? Because I am not paerticularly interested in the dots (answers to TP questions). I am interested in understanding the whole; whys, whats, whos and in which order, and what to expect from this and learn in the future. ISTJs love details and data, and he has kept on amassing it. But he doesnt SEE as I do....


----------



## AirMarionette (Mar 13, 2010)

The holistic result of profound human-environment transduction, i.e., gathering of stimuli and the subsequent filtering thereof - encompassing all available senses. 

The cyclic mental process of receiving, recording, revising, and relaying. 

​


----------

