Great posts. Thanks.
I'd like to suggest there is a different and better way of understanding this that is more use to designs and design researchers and [provides the basis for better theory on this in most areas of design theory and research. I would like to preface what follows that I am under time pressure. I appreciaite that Ken like posts to be well polished but my time is limited this morning and I'm hoping only that the gist of the analysis is included in a way that is unambiguous.
Ken wrote in this thread that,
'Knowledge is a property of consciousness'
This can be considered incorrect on many fronts. For a start it has problems epistemologically as a derivative of a false noun-verb development. Consciousness doesn't exist as an object - in the same way that 'a swim' doesn’t exist as an object . Hence there are problems even having the proposition that knowledge is a property of consciousness.
That is, however, a bit of a distraction.
There is a completely different way of understanding 'knowing' from the ways that we know a lot more physiologically now. That shapes how we can view 'knowing' very differently - pretty well to the point that you can say that knowledge doesn't exist - ever.
I'll precis Damasio and give the simplest version of the analysis and reasoning,
The 'activity of knowing' is the physiological sensing of (usually unconsciously represented) dynamic physiological stat triggered by the conscious or subconscious awareness of a neural map representing a chunk of information, and then comparing that triggered dynamic physiological state with reference physiological states.
If the triggered dynamic physiological state compares favourably with the dynamic reference physiological states, then this leads to an additional dynamic physiological state (and its associated neural maps) that is the sensation that one 'knows'. In the case of some information also may result in an addition longer term neural mapping (a memory) that one 'knows' - often referred to as one 'understands' that information.
It’s a process, and in this there is no 'knowledge' as an object.
More importantly for design theory and design research, the above explanation provides the basis for understanding how illusion and delusion happen to the point that many design theories actually don't make any sense. For designers and users, I've pointed many times to one aspect of this that such delusions can happen in situations with 2 or more feedback loops (see below).
Damasio gives the details of the above analyses in his classic texts from the 1990s. I wrote a brief precis of Damasio's findings for designers in 2003 (see below).
References
Love, T. (2003). Design and Sense: Implications of Damasio's Neurological Findings for Design Theory. Proceedings of Science and Technology of Design, Senses and Sensibility in Technology - Linking Tradition to Innovation through Design 25-26 September 2003, Lisbon, Portugal. Available http://www.love.com.au/docs/2003/Damasio.htm )
Also
http://www.love.com.au/docs/2010/Des-guide-gap-2feedbackloop.pdf
http://www.love.com.au/docs/2010/CEPHAD-feeling-delusion.pdf
Love, T. (2009). Complicated and Complex Crime Prevention and the 2 Feedback Loop Law. In T. Cooper, P. Cozens, K. Dorst, P. Henry & T. Love (Eds.), Proceedings of iDOC'09 'What's Up Doc' International Design Out Crime Conference. Perth: Design Out Crime Research Centre. Available http://www.love.com.au/docs/2009/idoc09-tl.htm )
Best regards,
Terry
==
Dr Terence Love
MICA, PMACM, MAISA, FDRS, AMIMechE
Director
Design Out Crime & CPTED Centre
Perth, Western Australia
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www.designoutcrime.org
+61 (0)4 3497 5848
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ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Thursday, 26 October 2017 6:01 AM
To: PhD-Design <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Knowledge
Dear Francois and All,
This discussion began back in July. I have been lurking and reading since then. At one point, I was so annoyed that I quietly unsubscribed. I returned again to find myself equally annoyed.
My annoyance comes from two facts. The first is that people are not bothering to read carefully what others write. Consider your last post to David Sless, for example. David did not write that artifacts *are* metaphors. He wrote that we use metaphors in our accounts of things, including our accounts of artifacts.
The other problem is that folks are not using words carefully or clearly. With the exception of Luke Feast and Klaus Krippendorff, people have been using the same words in several different ways — especially the words information, know, knowing, and knowledge — without distinguishing between and among the different meanings that they employ when they use those words. I am sympathetic to some of the statements about the idea of knowledge, but only Luke and Klaus have written carefully using the word knowledge in a precise way, making their meaning clear. I also appreciated Eduardo Corte-Real’s careful clarification on differences between languages.
Francois’s recent call for help is the first post that seemed genuinely sensible to me. That is, he is asking what the word “knowledge” means in English. I am attaching a .pdf with definitions of the terms “information,” “know,” and “knowledge” from a number of dictionaries. I harvested these definitions back in 2002. Since the versions of the English language documented in the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary haven’t changed much over the past decade and a half, I have not gone back to harvest another set of definitions. Reformatting from web to MS Word to .pdf takes time, so I hope that you will forgive the long, dense blocks of text. Even without reformatting, this runs 38 pages of 12-point type.
The point is that it begins to answer your question.
It doesn’t really answer the question, though. Data and information may be stored and treated mechanically. They may thus be subject to a fairly crisp definition. Whether that definition is right or wrong, limited or extensive, a technology or a technical system may be strictly defined. In contrast, knowledge requires fluid definitions, and these definitions must always be framed in terms of the context and application.
Knowledge is a property of consciousness. Information may be stored. Knowledge must be embodied. A computer may store information. Only a human being may embody knowledge. Some higher mammals clearly embody knowledge, as do some other animals. Since they do not represent their knowledge or create information, I will not consider them.
When a knowing being seeks to transmit knowledge by representing it in external form, the knowledge leaves the state of knowledge to become information. It is in essence reconstituted as knowledge when another being takes the information into his or her person to embody it, giving it substance through agency.
Philosophers and scientists have been wrestling with the problem of knowledge for many years. This wrestling has become increasingly sophisticated and fruitful during the past century. Some of the most distinguished – including the chemist Michael Polanyi have written extensively on knowledge. While I appreciated Luke’s post mentioning Polanyi, I don’t see Polanyi’s views as representing an anti-intellectualist position. (To be clear, Luke did not say that Polanyi represents an anti-intellectualist position — he simply quoted one proposition from one of Polanyi’s books that is often repeated in isolation by those who represent an anti-intellectualist position.) Those who do not think carefully limit themselves to this proposition and a few others.
Polanyi stated his full view of knowledge in the 1958 masterpiece, Personal Knowledge.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Personal-Knowledge-Towards-Post-critical-Philosophy/dp/041515149X
https://www.amazon.com/Personal-Knowledge-Towards-Post-Critical-Philosophy/dp/0226672883
What Polanyi says about tacit knowledge is true, but this truncated claim is often stated outside Polanyi’s own philosophical system. People in the arts tend to know and use only one of Polanyi's books, The Tacit Dimension, rather than drawing on his major philosophical work, Personal Knowledge. Michael Polanyi’s philosophical approach can be deployed effectively, but not if we reduce his work to one concept, tacit knowledge, and treat that one concept out of the context of his larger reflections on knowledge.
Polanyi was a deep thinker, and an important scientist — far more important than most people realize. Polanyi was a physical chemist who made fundamental contributions to science. Many felt that he would have won the Nobel Prize if he had remained in science. Two of his students did win the Nobel Prize in chemistry, and so did his son. Polanyi himself moved into the social sciences, making deep contributions to economics, as well as to philosophy.
It is problematic to take Polanyi's work on tacit knowledge out of the context of Polanyi’s overall work by using the single phrase “tacit knowledge” as though “tacit knowledge” is how any group of human beings knows things. We all use tacit knowledge. This does not mean that we rely only on tacit knowledge. (That’s what I think that Luke was getting at.) All human beings possess and use tacit knowledge. Even though we know more than we can say, we cannot unambiguously communicate more than we can say.
It is difficult to understand what knowledge “is” without careful study, deep reflection, and great care in defining the meanings of the words we use. I place the word “is” in quotation marks to state that this verb is merely a placeholder for a lengthy discussion I will not attempt to make here.
The point of this post is first, to answer Francois’s request for help with definitions. Second, it is to argue that no definition of knowledge is sufficient or adequate outside a larger contextual consideration. Luke and Klaus hinted at that context, and so did David. Johann van der Merwe only barely hinted at it — while I thought his post was interesting and intelligent, dictionary definitions of knowledge pointedly do not equal “understanding, comprehension, mastery.” Johann was making a short restatement of his reading of the dictionary. It takes several dozen pages in the OED and Merriam-Webster’s to define knowledge. That is far more than three words.
You can’t stop with the dictionary definitions. Dictionaries describe usage and meaning in different times. To frame the meanings of the words “know” and “knowledge” requires deeper consideration. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy offer serious articles. The discussion of knowledge appears in several articles. Both encyclopedias have excellent search engines, so searching for the word “knowledge” will lead the careful reader to half a dozen useful articles in each case.
https://plato.stanford.edu
http://www.iep.utm.edu
Despite my occasional irritation, the thread has served a useful purpose. It prompted me to read Polanyi again. I have most of his books — but I haven’t read Personal Knowledge since 1976, and it is time to read it again. Those who are interested in Polanyi’s work will also find Mary Jo Nye’s _Michael Polanyi and His Generation: Origins of the Social Construction of Science_ useful, along with the excellent biographies on Polanyi by Mark Mitchell titled _Michael Polanyi: The Art of Knowing_, and by William Taussig Scott and Martin Moleski titled _Michael Polanyi: Scientist and Philosopher_. The theologian and philosopher Drusilla Scott has also written two excellent books, _Everyman Revived. The Common Sense of Michael Polanyi._ and _Michael Polanyi_.
Those who are interested in reading more about Polanyi’s work might also look into the online journal of The Polanyi Society
http://polanyisociety.org
One reason that I find Michael Polanyi especially relevant is that he did not primarily write for an audience of professional philosophers. Instead, he attempted to think deeply on the question of knowledge in a way that sheds light on the world of everyday experience — the world we deal with when we engage in design to serve human beings.
But if you don’t want to think about Polanyi’s ideas, no need. What is necessary is to get up to speed for a serious conversation on knowledge by at least reading the articles available free in two major peer reviewed web encyclopedias, the SEP and the IEP. And that leads meet the second point I got out of this thread.
If we are to draw real value from a list such as this, it is vital that we take the time to read the material we are talking about — both what we post to each other, and the literature of the ideas we discuss and describe. Is there any point in discussing knowledge on a design research list? Perhaps — or perhaps not. Speaking for myself, I think this is a worthy topic for any research list, and a necessary topic for anyone involved in university-level education. If we are going to discuss knowledge, the topic requires us to take ourselves and each other seriously enough to give it our best effort.
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
—
Francois Nsenga wrote:
—snip—
Dear Johann and colleagues
I have some difficulties with the proposal that certain books, or any other artifact, do not contain some kind of knowledge. Unless, like Eduardo, I don't fully get the meaning in English of the term "knowledge"?!
Could someone help, please?
Best regards,
François
in Rwanda
—snip—
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