Defining knowledge

Defining knowledge is a difficult, important and never ending task. There are many definitions, each pointing to yet another quality, characteristic, context, property, behavior that may or may not apply to you or to your environment now.

Here are some issues to ponder:

1) Knowledge implies & requires social negotiation, otherwise it is personal 'knowing', a skill or competence.

2) An important quality of task knowledge is making fine distinctions & awareness this separates the experts from regular practicioners.

3) Experience becomes socialized into the rules, norms, mental models of the individuals & organization, this is a form of group tacit knowledge or collective culture

4) Only a small fraction of useful knowledge is explicit, 'cultural' knowledge can be found in war stories, folktales, implicit ontologies, company jokes, policies and routines. Look at the inferface between mind, organization, society and culture.

5) Knowledge emerges through interaction & dialog, we 'bring forth' knowledge when we validate claims, surface assumptions, negotiate joint meaning.

Defining knowledge as information in action or information in context and KM as the right content at the right time to make the right decision does not tell the entire story. Where is the learning, formation of distinctions, awareness, social mediation, engagement in practice?

Seems to come to 'know' and define knowledge, you will have to wrestle with what it means to you and your cohorts, in your context, at this particular time. Adoption of definitions seems to be missing the point! Rather regard defining knowledge as a journey without end, but make it a life's goal to stay in the conversation and learn from others distinctions.

Comments

[Yotham Ilunga]

I am not much of a philosopher but the way I look at knowdlege is from the point of view of the structure of the word Konwledge itself. Split the word into two and you have know/ledge. Now "ledge" has got a number of meanings and one of them is "stratum". When now we look at "know", to know is to have facts about something. So what is known is a fact. When I now reconstruct the word "knowledge", it gives me the a simple definition as "a stratum of facts". And this stratum is there whether you are aware of it or not. This makes me view the entire creation as a stratum of facts. Therefore to me knowledge is contained in the entire creation and we simply stumble on these knowledge through various means as we journey in this life.