Knowledge

Knowledge, is, on one common philosophical account, justified, and true belief. However, "knowledge" is very often used in a looser way to refer to any form of truth or belief, a whole body of truth or a whole system of belief. For "knowledge" in this latter sense, see world view, ideology, and religion.

In a more restricted and philosophical sense, knowledge is the central topic of the philosophical subdiscipline of epistemology. A good place to begin with this topic is by explaining why most philosophers do distinguish between knowledge on one hand and both truth and belief on the other hand.

Firstly, knowledge is said to differ from truth for the simple reason that not all truths are known; in other words, there are undiscovered truths. Some people (including some philosophers) are apt to respond to this by asking, "What sort of thing is an undiscovered truth?" This is an ontological issue, however, and most of us will probably be satisfied if we simply give examples. For instance, the second law of thermodynamics was already true prior to its being formulated in the 19th century.

Secondly, knowledge is said to differ from belief because we believe many things when we do not really know them.

To know

The word 'knowledge' abstracts, nominalizes, reifies what the verb 'to know' means. One approach to talking about knowledge, then, first talk about 'to know'. That may lead to some insight into the meaning of 'knowledge'.

Dictionaries do not help in describing the meaning of 'to know', or 'to know something', as they define 'know' in terms of words such as 'recognize', 'acknowledge', 'perceive', words that, when defined, ultimately require knowing what 'know' means. I recognize someone because I know that someone. I acknowledge that you can run faster than I can because I know you can. I perceive something because I know that I see, hear, feel, or smell it.

Where can we go then to learn what 'know' means. Perhaps nowhere, and no need. We know the meaning of 'know' independently of linguistic definitional expressions because as we learned our natural language during development, the speakers in our environment used the word in real-world situations that indicated its meaning: "I know, you're hungry"; "Let me hear if you know your ABCs"; "Do you know where your brother went?"; "I know it hurts, but this will help make the pain go away".

Of course, we learn the meanings of many hundreds of words by the way our elders use them as we learn our native language, without the need of formal definitions. But according to some semanticists, the word 'know' has special properties that distinguish from most other words, indeed from all other words save for about 60 words that share the special properties of 'know'. One of those properties is they are the only set of words characterized by being present in all the natural languages that have been studied, including languages from a wide spectrum of language families. Otherwise other words may find their equivalents in some other languages but not all other languages, or if they are so present in all other languages they are readily definable in terms of the basic set that contains 'know'. Another property, already alluded to, is that words in the set with 'know' cannot be defined in terms of simpler words, only words that are conceptually more complex. Moreover, given that their meanings are learned through usage, all words not in the set with 'know' can be defined in terms of the words in the set with 'know'...

To be named

Generally, knowledge refers to one's ability to generalize the experience in a compact form, to remember it and transfer it to others, while it also refers to the tools for such generalizing and transferring. In this sense, even the customs and semantics of human language can be considered as knowledge, while the same applies to all forms of art including literature. The more structured (restricted) knowledge forms are religions, that follow the certain canons; this kind of knowledge (in the case of world religion) happens to be efficient in the organization of moral behavior of the members of religious societies and countries.

Even more structured are sciences, which follow the certain rules (elaborated empirically during centuries, with numerous of probes and errors), that make them efficient especially in the prediction of phenomena.

Customs

The category of customs should include not only commonly accepted human behavior, but also habitual semantics of commonly used human languages. For example, the usual meaning of the Bible is custom, widely accepted in the Christian community. The sentence You shall love your neighbor as yourself allows various interpretations, including the homosexual orientation of Jesus Christ, dependently on the meaning of the word love and its Hebrew and Aramaic equivalents. Similarly, the interpretations by Tim Rice and Michael Bulgakov should be qualified not as a custom but as an art.

Folklore also falls in the category of customs, while it is sometimes difficult for the investigation by the systematic methods. However, if one collects the folklore texts or the records of country–music and publish, the folklore becomes literature, art.

The semantics of the human languages and their understanding - i.e. the meaning of words - is the most important part of human knowledge, because it is this kind of knowledge which gives sense to other kinds of knowledge.

Arts

Art is knowledge that is free from internal rules and is realized in a reproducible form that allow its systematic investigation, viewing, listening, performing, etc. Such a definition corresponds to a goal formulated in the introduction, although it slightly reduces the set of things which could be called art. Usually a product of art has the following properties:

1. Internationality. The music, images, movies, sculptures can be recognized as art regardless of the nationality of the spectators; even the text files often allow the translation into other languages.
2. Beauty. The extensive ability of any unexpected use.
3. Structureless. Intents to bring into the arts rules are not efficient. The arts use all other knowledges; the same product may have both artistic and scientific value.
4. Wisdom. Artists with their works say more, than they planned to say, and more, than they understand by themselves. In this sense, the product of art may be wiser than the author.
5. Entirety. Intents to correct, to improve a product of art destroy it.
6. Amoralism. Creatures that have the goal to bring some moral to society, have low artistic value if they have it at all; the creature may violate any taboo.

The specific application of the classification being aimed, the topics of customs and arts are presented here only declaratively.

Religions

Religion is a kind of human knowledge based on some set of irrefutable concepts, beliefs, texts, symbols and performances specific for each religion.

Usually, a religion is characterized by most of following:

• Difficulty of translation. Some religions are strongly entangled with ethnicity and language. Some believe that neither the Koran nor the Torah can be translated in a fully correct way.
• The existence of at least one God is presumed.
• There exist canonical sacred texts, that allow mankind to guess the will of God(s) and follow it.
• God likes some human actions and those actions are called "Good".
• God dislikes some human actions and those actions are called "Evil".
• The set of concepts presumes to play an organizing role in the society:

Religions use the word God as a generic term to denote an intelligent being that, in some way not available to humans, has abilities that greatly exceed those of a human. Each religion, in their own way, offers a unique set of moral values and rules to guide humans. Often, such rules are presumed to be truth without limits and alternatives.

Religions form a significant part of human knowledge and play an important role in human history. Religions which are tolerant with respect to other kinds of knowledge (in particular to other religions), may assist the proper development of the society.

Sciences

After works by Karl Popper, the term science can be defined in the restrictive way:

Science is a form of knowledge, activity and notations, based on concepts that have all the six properties below:

1. Applicability: Each concept has the limited range of validity, distinguishable from the empty set.
2. Verifiability: In the terms of the already accepted concepts, some specific experiment with some specific result, that confirms the concept, can be described.
3. Refutability: In the terms of the concept, some specific experiment with some specific result, that negates the concept, can be described.
4. Self-consistency: No internal contradictions of the concept are known.
5. Principle of correspondence: It the range of validity of a new concept intersects the range of validity of another already accepted concept, then, the new concept either reproduced the results of the old concept, or indicated the way to refute it. (For example, the estimate of the range of validity of the old concept may be wrong.)
6. Pluralism: Mutually-contradictive concepts may coexist. If two of these six concepts have some common range of validity, then, in this range, the simplest of them has priority.

Mathematics is an important part of all other sciences. Computational mathematics and cybernetics serve as a bridge between mathematics and other forms of knowledge. If some science concepts contradict the basic paradigms of mathematics or those of physics, then according to item 5 above, a way should be indicated to prove that they are wrong.

Scientific concepts are built on the base of observations, experiments, axioms, hypothesis, theorems and theories:

• Observation means identification of some phenomena which are in some sense similar.
• Axioms are statements that are considered as initial at the building-up of some concept. A concept with commonly accepted axioms is called a "paradigm.
• Theorems are statements that are proven on the base of axioms and definitions. Sometimes this term is used even in those cases then the proof of the statement is not yet constructed but is expected to be constructed in future. In such cases, the term "hypothesis or "Conjecture is more suitable.

If a hypothesis is deduced from postulates and other already proven theorems, it becomes a theorem. If a hypothesis predicted some non-trivial results of observations or experiments, it becomes a theory.

Activity, related with development of new concepts is called research. The most important classification of sciences is based on the subject of the research, the goal and the methods, that dominate in the research:

• Humanitarian --- natural
• Fundamental --- applied
• Theoretical --- experimental

Sciences and society

Usually the sciences, and especially the fundamental ones do not give a fast benefit, as other types of knowledge. The spending of the budget funding to support the satisfaction of the personal curiosity of researchers requires justification. There were intents to submit the development of science to other goals (creation of facilities of the modernization of the industry, or increasing of the military power of a country, etc.). Some researches, especially those which have been applied, can be motivated in such a way; and the results may be scientific.

During human history, a motivation for science which was more efficient than the curiosity of researchers who did it was not developed. Yet, there is no other way to make the deep science. However, the needs of industry can be mentioned as motivation for the financial support of the curiosity of researchers.

The distribution of funds assigned for the development of science is a serious problem. Administrators of funds cannot drill deeply into the research they finance. The funds are distributed on the base of the formal criteria: publications, citation, participation in the conferences. The ability to write the grant applications and good relations with colleagues and the distributors of funds become important, if not dominant, factor in the success in the getting of the financial support. For the same reason, the spectacularity of the new effects is important for their promotion.

Especially non-efficiently the funds are sent in the countries with corrupted bureaucracy; and not only because the significant part of foundation is spent for bribes and the private security. The government being unable to keep the growth of the technology of the country at the international level begins to secret the scientific achievements in order to enable the monopolistic use in the military industry. Often, the results are fake: the secrecy protects them from critics and opens wide field for both wanted and unwanted errors.

In a totalitaristic country, some sciences may be not only left without foundation but crashed by the physical repression of researchers, as happened in the USSR to the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, cybernetics and genetics. Previously, in Europe, similar phenomena took place with respect to astronomy and physiology in the epoch of the Holy Inquisition.

The properties S0-S5 allow to distinguish scientific concepts from other concepts without fighting pseudoscience. It is in particular research such as inertial propulsion which can be identified as a form of fraud, not as science, because the criterion 4 (the principle of correspondence) is violated.

Objectivity

In the 20th century, Karl Popper had described some especially efficient kind of knowledge. He called it science. However, not only science itself, but perhaps even the term "science"was in use even before Popper. But Popper seems to be first, who formulated the criterion of refutability as the essential property of ANY scientific concept. The results by Popper can be expressed in the following sentences:

1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory -- if we look for confirmations.

2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory — an event which would have refuted the theory

3. Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.

4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.

5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.

6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory."

7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status.

In Popper's terminology, falsifiability and refutability are synonyms. In this century, the term "falsification" is ambiguous. Firstly, it may mean rejection, the refuting of a concept on the base of its internal contradictions revealed, or for the reason of contradiction with some experimental results, observations. Second, the same term may mean the misinformation, fabrication, fraud, non–honest fabrication of something that pretends to be information or knowledge. For this reason, it is better not use term "falsification", using the terms "refutation" or "fraud", dependently on the meaning required.

The request of refutability does not allow any objectivity; science appears as a special tool to make the efficient predictions, rather than as any kind of objective knowledge.Then, the principles of science appear as a pretty general (but still empirical) set of criteria that allow to qualify some knowledge as scientific and expect its efficiency.

The requirement of refutability opposes the belief in the ability to get some objective knowledge. The idea by Popper were not accepted by colleagues, as the growth of knowledge is believed to dominate over the refutation.