Talk:Knowledge
|
|
| This article is part of WikiProject Philosophy, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to philosophy on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. |
Belief is defined as a "confidence in the truth of something, without subjecting it to rigorous proof." In other words, it is a subjective supposition. For example, "I think you are an idiot" is a statement of belief. Given the assertion here that "knowledge = belief," it would also be defined as a statement of knowledge. Hmmm. Danny
- I was taking my lead from the "what this article is not" section of propositional knowledge... but yeah, hmm... :-/ Martin
- The problem seems to be a faulty assumption that knowledge = truth. If we eliminate that and begin with a reverse definition of knowledge as "confidence in the truth of something, after subjecting it to rigorous proof," the question is then "what constitutes proof?" Standards of proof have changed historically, as have, as a result, our standards for what constitutes knowledge. For example, most people no longer accept as proof that Aristotle wrote it in a book or that it appears in the Bible. At another time, historically, that may have been considered sufficient proof for the validity of an assertion. (Of course, a problem remains--who determines standards of proof--but that is a question of POV.) Danny
- Rotem Dan's criticism of philosophy removed at his request
Why should it be a disambiguation page? There is no ambiguity for Knowledge like for Mercury. I think it should be introductory to the various form of knowledge or redirected to Knowledge (philosophy). --Ann O'nyme 03:58, 30 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- That is what I used to think, but this caused a huge flame war. A very small number of people began turning the "Knowledge" article into a treatise about sexuality, sexism, politics, environmental ethics, etc. Our discussions about "knowledge" were attacked as censorship, because the article wasn't discussing what they wanted it to discuss. The Wikipedia community gave in to this pressure, and allowed them to redefine what the word "Knowledge" means. The same thing is also currently happening in the ethics article. It is shameful that people with no background in philosophy are letting themselves be tarred as bigots and censors, when in fact they are not. RK 23:24, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- This article wasn't meant to be a pure disambiguation page. However, neither should it be a duplicate of knowledge (philosophy), as the current "overview" section appears to, to some extent. Rather it needs to discuss knowledge from the most general perspective possible.
- This is difficult, so I expect this page to remain a stub for some time. Also, Procedural knowledge is currently empty. Martin 15:28, 30 Aug 2003 (UTC)
All the material we have here on to acquire knowledge already is discussed in the propositional knowledge article. I have thus moved the text on this subject from here to there; actually, very little needed to be moved, since what was here was a near carbon-copy of what was there anyways. RK 01:42, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I have reverted Fred Bauder's universal rewrite of this entire article to push his POV. I find it ridiculous that Fred claims to have "restored" material, when that same material was never removed from Wikipedia in the first place. It simply is another (related) article; an article that is appropriate for that specific content. RK 23:00, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)
People need to read the comments on the Talk page and in the Summary edit lines. All the recent changes made here were described and justified. As stated above, one problem with the previous version of this page was that it was a repeat of what already existed in the other Knowledge articles. (We made a number of new knowledge articles to avoid this problem. Let us not recreate the problem we originally had months ago!) If you have a specific problem, mention it here and we will work it out together. RK 22:58, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)
re: People need to read the... Summary edit lines. - I disagree. Angela 23:03, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I miss the point that when defining knowledge no distinction is made between knowledge as it is in the head and as it is coded in writing, for instance.
The content of whatever is written down to be shared as knowledge will largely depend on the knowledge of the next person to read/gather such knowledge, a very important consideration in detailing our knowledge of knowledge further.
Of knowledge of languages for instance, more specifially, of knowledge of words, just a single word, one can list a number of deliverables that prove that knowledge exists, is displayed by someone For example, if you know a word, then you can off-hand say/write its definition pronounciation/spelling grammatical classification synonyms/antonyms collocations connotations, the word one level up/down in a hierarchy of words/terms/concepts and many other things that unnoticedly change the object of reference from the word itself to the thing denoted by that word.... Hence knowledge is synonymous with data, except that whereas you have established procedures for processing numbers, you have less sophisticated and fewer means for processing words/texts, representing knowledge.... But you do have language technology, a branch developing along those lines, just as economic intelligence, and spying/poking on the net by people/organisations that can afford it. Incidentally, they are professionaly dedicated to paranoia and look for knowledge that may threaten them. After all this you may want to define what meaning and context is in these pages and will not be suprised to learn that Microsoft has commissioned Mr C. Simonyi to run a software R&D company in Hungary to study how to identify/extract meaning (intent) from communications on the net. Apogr 11:06, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)
| Contents |
Huge see also list!
Does anyone else thing to see also list is getting a little out of hand? --Ryguasu 03:02, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- Cleaned up. I don't know how it got that way, looks like a crazed bot. Several entries were repeated many times. --Kzollman 06:42, May 16, 2005 (UTC)
knowledge(philosophy)merge
I have moved all the material that was at Knowledge (philosophy) to here. I then edited it to remove much that is reproduced elsewhere. Please reinstate anything you think is needed.
A priori and a posteriori merge/section removal
I removed the section on inferential vs factual knowledge. I believe that this section is refering to the a priori vs. a posteriori distinction. I have replaced this entry with the old entry entitled A priori and a posteriori knowledge. I have copied the old section here if anyone wants to put it back
- Knowledge may be factual or inferential. Factual knowledge is based on direct observation. It is still not free of uncertainty, as errors of observation or interpretation may occur, and any sense can be deceived by illusions.
- Inferential knowledge is based on reasoning from facts or from other inferential knowledge such as a theory. Such knowledge may or may not be verifiable by observation or testing. For example, all knowledge of the atom is inferential knowledge. The distinction between factual knowledge and inferential knowledge has been explored by the discipline of general semantics.
--Kzollman 20:15, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
announcing policy proposal of general interest
This is just to inform people that I want Wikipedia to accept a general policy that BC and AD represent a Christian Point of View and should be used only when they are appropriate, that is, in the context of expressing or providing an account of a Christian point of view. In other contexts, I argue that they violate our NPOV policy and we should use BCE and CE instead. See Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate for the detailed proposal. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:55, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
Category:Belief?
"A common definition of knowledge is that it consists of justified true belief." The statement after this seems to imply that all knowledge is belief so why not put Category:Knowledge under Category:Belief? Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 14:08, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)