Hi Ham Ham Priday wrote: > Hi Horse -- > > >> You seem to have a problem with the idea that 'knowledge' >> can exist outside of the confines of the human being as it >> appears that you consider it a property of self-awareness. >> So try this on for size. >> >> Knowledge - i.e. the formation and flow of information - can >> and is quite independent of what you are seeing as intelligence >> and self-awareness. Within the levels of the MoQ there are >> at least 3 different forms of knowledge. There is biological >> knowledge, social knowledge and intellectual knowledge. >> For the moment inorganic knowledge is irrelevant. > > I am not concerned with "types" of knowledge.
Why not? If it happens to conflict with your world view then maybe you are the one who's got it wrong. There are variant types of all sorts of similar things which are classified according to their characteristics and contexts. In the MoQ these are called values. > You folks are obsessed with > parsing labels and concepts to the nth degree without a fundamental > understanding of what you're trying to explain. So because we don't have the same view as Ham Priday then we don't know what we're talking about? How patronizing Ham. That sort of talk does little for your credibility on a forum concerned with the MoQ. > Knowledge is defined as: > "the fact or condition of knowing something, with familiarity gained through > experience or association." Whether your knowledge is historical, social, > scientific, or mathematical, it is something you know. In other words, > until you know something you have no knowledge. And how do you get to know something, anything. You receive information, in some way, filter it, assimilate that information, compare to previous instances and act on it (or not) accordingly. Knowing is a process and that process is entirely dependent upon the flow of information. > >> Information is formed, stored and transmitted over time >> and space in all three of these levels but in qualitatively >> different ways. In addition, all these forms of knowledge >> are also dynamic - i.e. acted upon by DQ. >> It really is obvious when you look at it carefully and >> without prior assumptions. > > But information is not knowledge. What is formed, stored and transmitted is > raw data in the form of words, symbols, or their numerical equivalents. > These are objective representations of information which can (potentially) > become knowledge once they have been interpreted and acquired by the > subjective mind of the recipient. Until then, they are simply words or > numbers that the originator has typed on a sheet of paper or a PC screen. > Without "knowing" there is no knowledge; without "thinking" there is no > intelligence. You're quite correct here Ham, information and knowledge are not the same thing. However they are completely interdependent. Without information you have no means of attaining knowledge and without knowledge there can be no information. The raw data of information is transformed into knowledge and dependent upon the type of raw data the type of knowledge will differ qualitatively. There are many different types of information and they are stored, filtered and transmitted in different ways. How they are received and filtered and by what gives rise to the type of knowledge into which they are transformed. > > [Ham, previously]: >> I assume that by "biological means" you refer to whatever >> knowledge may be innate to the subject, such as "self-awareness" >> or value-sensibility. > > [Horse]: >> Nope. >> >> There are other sorts of knowledge than that which can be >> converted to the written word or even spoken language. > > Understood. (That's raw "information", as discussed above.) But what did > you mean by "forms of knowledge that persist from one generation to the next > but are not transmitted by biological means"? If you're referring to DNA > information a la Dawkins' 'memes' or gene theories, this is certainly > biological. If you're talking about behavioral norms through the > generations, that's inferred value rather than information. With behaviours, information is passed as a matter of survival. Inference, or derivation by reasoning, is irrelevant. But perhaps that's not what you meant. In any case, transmission of information in the form of behaviour is observable and reproducible from one generation to another and is not merely biological. This behavioural information is transformed into the knowledge required for survival patterns to persist. If you take the example that I was talking to Platt about (cities) then the transmission of information is neither biological nor inferred. A city has certain districts which persist over time. These are not planned nor are they dependent upon the biological entities that created them. They are self-organizing emergent patterns. Go to any old city (and some younger ones) and you will find areas that have been used for generations (hundreds of years in many cases) for the same purpose. How do these patterns persist over that time period? They aren't planned or designed - they emerge and persist. And the means of that persistence is attributable to persisting social patterns - i.e.social information. This social information is transformed into social knowledge as any other form of information is transformed into knowledge but, in MoQ terms, at the social level. Similar patterns can be seen in other similar structures. > >> Also, knowledge need have no connection with what I assume >> you mean by 'proprietary awareness'. Knowledge, as I said above >> is the formation and flow of information. > > No, knowledge is what we know, not what flows through wires or is published > in print. Technically, the formation of knowledge is a function of the > intellect. (I call it "intellection".) Intellectual judgment, value > sensibility, kinesthetic sensibility (proprioception), creativity, objective > experience, and memory recall are all part of the process of becoming aware > as a subjective self. That's what I mean by proprietary awareness. Knowledge may be what is known but it is not limited to humans. That humans have proprietary awareness is neither here nor there. It is but one type of awareness amongst many. Even self-awareness is not limited to humans - although I'm sure you'll disagree. I would have thought that all forms of awareness are proprietary as they are the product of differing contexts. Unless you want to try and shoe-horn the meaning into a narrow context for self-serving reasons. > > [Ham, previously]: >> Cognizant knowledge resides solely in the memory >> and intellectual awareness of the individual subject. >> Absent the subject and there is no intelligence. > > [Horse]: >> See, you're confusing intelligence and the flow of information again. >> You need to get past your pre-conceptions. Neither intelligence nor >> self-awareness are necessary for the existence of knowledge. > > On the contrary, it is you who are confusing knowledge with information. > Granted, "intelligence" has been construed to mean objective information. > But you pose an unnecessary semantic problem. You have twice used the > phrase "flow of information" rather than "flow of knowledge" in this post. > Why? Because information that is not known cannot be "knowledge" by any > common understanding of the term. In order to substantiate the notion of > "collective knowledge" you stretch the common definition of knowledge [i.e., > knowing] to something that it is not -- an extra-human level. That may be a > Pirsigian "preconception", but it isn't supported by neuro-physiology or any > pyschological theory since Karl Jung's "Collective Unconscious" at the > beginning of the last century. I may have used the terms interchangeably but I'm not confusing information and knowledge - not deliberately at least. They are co-dependant and one cannot exist without the other. Information that is not known is noise - it becomes information upon reception and filtering. Once received and filtered it can become knowledge. Information is structured in some way or it is not information - just noise. The way in which it is structured gives rise to the type of knowledge. Humans structure information in a number of ways. Amoeba, Plants, Cats, towns, corporations and cities structure information in different but still entirely valid ways. That your philosophy doesn't recognise this reflects it's paucity. This goes for other philosophies as well. > > [Ham, previously]: >> 'Insensible knowledge' is a meaningless absurdity. > > [Horse]: >> No, it's an objective fact, if by insensible you mean not >> produced by what are commonly referred to as 'the senses'- >> i.e. sight, sound etc. as in humans or other similarly equipped creatures. > > All experience comes from the senses and is integrated by the brain. Human > knowledge is derived from experience and includes information received > through the auditory and visual sense receptors of the knower. That's an > objective fact. Some human experience comes, in part, from human senses and is often integrated by the brain. Thinking about thoughts is an emergent property of this process. The eyes filter and pre-process visual information as do the ears and other senses. That these processes have their roots in the physical is neither here nor there. Emergence is the key idea here. Look it up, study it and expand your horizons. The MoQ is about evolution and process and emergence is a key factor. Your proprietary awareness is little more than a contextualised, emergent process specific to humans. > Whatever is not processed by the brain and nervous system > remains unknown, hence can not be knowledge. So how does the immune system learn how to attack smallpox and other diseases. The body is injected with a small dose of the disease which it recognises (biologically) as foreign. It attacks the disease and stores information about it in a structured manner so that this information can be recalled at a later date. By doing so, certain diseases are wiped out. This is new biological knowledge arising from new biological information and the filtering system of the human immune system. There is no (or little) interaction with either the brain or the nervous system. The immune system has learned and thus has knowledge. The same can be done with non-humans so the process of learning and acquiring knowledge is not limited purely to humans. It's a different type of knowledge > > [Ham, previously]: >> I can and do accept Sensibility (esthesis) as an absolute, but not >> knowledge or intelligence which, like value-sensibility, are finitely >> differentiated (relational) attributes of being-aware. > > [Horse]: >> Well that's a problem for you to sort out Ham. As I said, >> knowledge and intelligence are separable. Knowledge is not >> attributable to either intellect or self-awareness although >> intellectual knowledge is perfectly acceptable along with >> biological knowledge and social knowledge. > > You seem to be arguing against Kant's theory of 'a priori' or > pre-intellectual knowledge which I haven't mentioned, so I don't know what > problem I have to sort out. Since knowledge is what we know from experience > and intelligence is the capacity to comprehend what we know, they are indeed > separable. I would hope "intellectual knowledge is acceptable", although I > fail to see why this doesn't encompass "biological", "social", or any other > kind of knowledge. I've known biologists and sociologists who are just as > intellectual as philosophers and logicians. I said it's a problem for you Ham as it's irrelevant to me. I'm not arguing against 'a priori' knowledge, I'm arguing in favour of other forms of knowledge other than the intellectual variety. Biological and social knowledge are not encompassed by intellect as they are qualitatively different from it. Cheers Horse moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
