Texts
- The Problem of Learning
- Problemistics Courseware
- Corso su Problemistica
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Problemistics - Problémistique - Problemistica
The Art & Craft of Problem Dealing
Knowledge
Definition (Reference books)
Definition (John Locke)
Definition (James Boswell)
Definition (Russell L. Ackoff and Fred E. Emery)
Definition (Vincent E. Barry and David J. Soccio)
Definition (Deobold B. Van Dalen)
Knowledge as power (Francis Bacon)
Knowledge and experience (Immanuel Kant)
Knowledge as perception plus conception (Immanuel Kant)
Information and communication (Robert M. Hayes)
Classification (Reference Books)
Knowledge: classification (Richard E. Mayer)
Classification (Ömer Akin)
Classification (Jean-Michel Hoc)
Sources (Vincent E. Barry and David J. Soccio)
Function (Joël De Rosnay)
Function (Paul Davidson Reynolds)
Function William Graham Sumner
Thinking and doing (John Dewey)
Pre-requisites (Plato)
Pre-requisites (Abraham Kaplan)
Pre-requisites (Jennifer Trusted)
Characteristics (Paul Davidson Reynolds)
Characteristics (Thomas S. Kuhn)
Characteristics (John Dewey)
Characteristics (Karl Popper)
[1974] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
1. The state or fact of knowing. 2. Familiarity, awareness, or understanding gained through experience or study. 3. That which is known; the sum or range of what has been perceived, discovered, or inferred. 4. Learning, erudition.
[1902] The Cassell Encyclopaedic Dictionary
1. Certain or clear perception of truth or fact; indubitable apprehension; cognizance.
[1983] The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
5. Intellectual acquaintance with, or perception of, fact or truth; the fact, state, or condition of understanding.
6. Theoretical or practical understanding of an art, science, language, etc.
[1690] John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
“Knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas. Knowledge then seems to me to be nothing but the perception of the connection of an agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our ideas” (Book 4, Chapter 1)
[1791] James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson
“All knowledge is of itself of some value. There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know it than not.” (April 14, 1775 by Samuel Johnson)
“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues, and the backs of books in libraries.” (April 18, 1775)
[1972] Russell L. Ackoff and Fred E. Emery, On Purposeful Systems
“Knowledge ... is used in at least two different senses:
(1) awareness or possession of a fact or state of affairs (such as in knowing that someone is at home or that water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen) [i.e., knowledge as true belief about or of something], and (2) possession of a practical skill [i.e., knowledge how to do something].” (Chapter I, p. 46)
[1988, Third Edition] Vincent E. Barry and David J. Soccio, Practical Logic
“... we may define knowledge as justified, true belief.”
(Chapter 6, p. 121)
“Knowledge implies three things: belief, truth, justification.”
(Chapter 6, p. 132)
[1979] Deobold B. Van Dalen, Understanding Educational Research. An Introduction, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, First edition 1962.
“Knowledge, broadly speaking, consists of facts and theories that enable one to understand phenomena and to solve problems.” (Chapter 1, p. 1)
[1620] Francis Bacon, Novum Organon
“Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect.”
(Book I, 3)
[1781] Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
“That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations, partly rouse our powers of understanding into activity, to compare, to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects which is called experience?” “But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience. For, on the contrary it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself.”
(Introduction, I. Of the difference between Pure and Empirical Knowledge)
[1781] Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
"Without the sensuous faculty no object would be given to us, and without the understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are void; intuitions without conceptions, blind. Hence it is as necessary for the mind to make its conceptions sensuous (that is, to join to them the object in intuition), as to make its intuitions intelligible (that is, to bring them under conceptions). Neither of these faculties can exchange its proper function. Understanding cannot intuit, and the sensuous faculty cannot think. In no other way than from the united operation of both, can knowledge arise."
(Second Part. Transcendental Logic. Of Logic in general)
[1993] Robert M. Hayes, Measurement of Information
“... knowledge results from the understanding of information that has been communicated and from integration of it with prior information.
To an extent, it is a result of internalizing the information, but it is more than that, since it requires as active process, a restructuring of the cognitive structure."
"It is important to note that we should distinguish between two elements of a cognitive structure: the basic store of internalized information (with its structure), and ‘intelligence’ [inter-lego] as the means for internal processing of it.” (in "Information Processing & Management", vol. 29, n. 1, 1993, p. 5)
from Encyclopaedia Britannica
Difference A
- knowing that: propositional knowledge (knowing that something is the case)
- knowing how: points to a skill or capacity (knowing how to speak German)
Difference B
- factual knowing (factual statement: lead is heavy)
- logical knowing (logical statement: if something has a given quality, then it either has that quality or it does not have it)
Difference C
- immediate knowing (direct: knowledge by acquaintance)
- mediate knowing (indirect: knowledge by description)
[1992, Second Edition] Richard E. Mayer, Thinking, Problem Solving, Cognition
- Declarative knowledge: facts stated in propositions [e.g., statements of facts]
- Procedural knowledge: algorithms and heuristics stated as procedures or about how to do something [e.g., statements of procedures] (Chapter 6, p. 178 and p. 196)
[1986] Ömer Akin, Psychology of Architectural Design
“Declarative knowledge is all that we know which describes how things are. This is accomplished through objects, their attributes and the relations between them. Procedural knowledge, on the other hand, is all that describes and predicts actions or plan of action. All knowledge of ‘how to’ (e.g., how to ride a bicycle) are examples of procedural knowledge.” (p. 32)
“The primary information embodied in procedural knowledge is the specification of action.” (p. 35)
“A second important distinction to be made is between specific and general-purpose knowledge. Borrowing from psycholinguistics we shall call the general form of knowledge schemata and the specific form instances. Schemata represent knowledge that is equally applicable to many different circumstances or individual instances.” (p. 33)
[1988] Jean-Michel Hoc, Cognitive Psychology of Planning
“Declarative knowledge bears on facts, is static, and concerns the properties of objects and their interrelationships. Procedural knowledge refers to know-how and thus is dynamic. This opposition corresponds to the common distinction between knowledge and skill.” (p. 29)
Note:
- representation = declarative knowledge = static
- processing = procedural knowledge = dynamic
(Chapter 1, pp. 29 -32)
[1988, Third Edition] Vincent E. Barry and David J. Soccio, Practical Logic,
In modern discussions, philosophers generally recognize four sources of knowledge: senses, reason, authority and intuition.
1 - Senses : sensation and perception (interpretation) of reality
outer senses (seeing, smelling, feeling, tasting, hearing) and
inner senses (capacity to experience pain, joy, sadness, fear, anxiety, etc.).
Warning : check for reliability of the senses.
Possible solution: public verification of a certain empirical claim based on outer senses.
2 - Reason : the capacity to draw conclusions from evidence.
(reasoning by induction, reasoning by deduction).
3 - Authority : refers to an expert outside ourselves.
Warning : reliability of the expert; for this reason we should ensure
a) that the authority is just that - an expert in the field;
b) that there is a consensus of authorative opinion;
c) that we can, at least in theory, verify the claims for ourselves.
4 - Intuition : the direct apprehension of knowledge that is not the result of conscious reasoning or of immediate sense perception.
Warning : we must be careful to ground our intuitions in percepts of sense and concepts of reason otherwise they can lead to unfounded claims.
(from Chapter 7, pp. 138-151)
[1975] Joël De Rosnay, Le Macroscope
“La connaissance n’est pas une ‘copie figurative de la réalité’. Elle constitue une ‘processus opératif’ aboutissant à transformer le réel en action ou en pensée, à agir sur les objets pour les transformer.” (Chapter VI, p. 255)
[1986, First Edition 1971] Paul Davidson Reynolds, A Primer in Theory Construction
“Most people would probably want scientific knowledge to provide:
- A method of organizing and categorizing ‘things’, a typology;
- Predictions of future events;
- Explanations of past events;
- A sense of understanding about what causes events." (p. 4)
“... a sense of understanding is provided only when the causal mechanism that link changes in one or more concepts - the independent variables - with changes in other concepts - the dependent variables - have been fully described.” (p. 7)
- (and occasionally) "the potential for control of events.” (p. 4)
But astronomy is a science even if there is no way to control events in the solar system so “control will not be treated as a necessary criterion for accepting knowledge as scientific.” (p. 10)
(Chapter 1, pp. 4-10)
[1906] William Graham Sumner, Folkways
“The correct apprehension of facts and events by the mind, and the correct inferences as to the relations between them, constitute knowledge, and it is chiefly by knowledge that men have become better able to live well on earth. Therefore, the alternation between experience or observation and the intellectual processes by which the sense, sequence, interdependence, and rational consequences of facts are ascertained, is undoubtedly the most important process of winning increased power to live well.” (Chapter 1, § 37, p. 44)
[1916] John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic
“... thinking, or, knowledge-getting, is far from being the armchair thing it is often supposed to be.” (p. 13)
“It involves the explorations by which relevant data are procured and the physical analyses by which they are refined and made precise; it comprises the readings by which information is got hold of the words which are experimented with, and the calculations by which the significance or entertained conceptions or hypotheses is elaborated. Hands and feet, apparatus and appliances of all kinds are as much a part of it as changes in the brain.” (p. 14)
“Action is not a more or less accidental appendage or afterthought but is undergoing development and giving direction in the entire knowledge function.” (p. 249)
Plato, Dialogues
Theaetetus
[187] Theaetetus. “I cannot say, Socrates, that all opinion is knowledge, because there may be a false opinion; but I will venture to assert, that knowledge is true opinion.”
Cratylus
[437] Socrates. "Nor we can reasonably say, Cratylus, that there is knowledge at all, if everything is in a state of transition and there is nothing abiding; for knowledge too cannot continue to be knowledge unless continuing always to abide and exist. But if the very nature of knowledge changes, at the time when the change occurs there will be no knowledge; and if the transition is always going on, there will always be no knowledge, and, according to this view, there will be no one to know and nothing to be known."
[1964] Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry. Methodology for Behavioural Science, Chandler Publishing Company, Scranton, Pennsylvania.
“What we need for knowledge is not permanence but persistence, not the absolutely unchanging but rather changes sufficiently slow or limited for patterns to be recognizable.” (Chapter IV, p. 167)
[1987] Jennifer Trusted, Inquiry and Understanding
“Any search for empirical knowledge must rest on the assumption that there is order and that it is possible to learn about that order by using past experience.” (Chapter 6, p. 55)
[1986, First Edition 1971] Paul Davidson Reynolds, A Primer in Theory Construction
The desirable characteristics of scientific knowledge are:
1) Abstractness (independence of time and space) (but historical facts are unique in time-space nevertheless part of scientific knowledge-investigation);
2) Intersubjectivity
(a) meaning: agreement about conceptual meaning among relevant scientists;
(b) logical rigor: agreement about logical rules to be employed in combining statements;
3) Empirical relevance (can be compared to empirical findings by different scientists).
(from Introduction, pp. 13-19)
[1970] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Second Ed. Enlarged
“It [i.e., knowledge] has been transmitted through education; it has, by trial, been found more effective than its historical competitors in a group’s current environment; and finally, it is subject to change both through further education and through the discovery of misfits with the environment. Those are characteristics of knowledge.” (Postscript, p. 196)
[1916] John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic
“... this surrender of a rigid and final character for the content of knowledge on the sides both of fact and of meaning, in favour of experimental and functioning estimations, is precisely the change which has marked the development of modern from mediaeval and Greek science ...” (Chapter VIII, p. 243)
[1959] Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery
“The old scientific ideal of episteme - of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge - has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement remains tentative for ever. It may indeed be corroborated, but every corroboration is relative to other statements which, again, are tentative.” (Chapter X, p. 280)