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Knowledge

Short Description​

Knowledge is the (intangible) sum of what is known, the familiarity, awareness or understanding of someone or something (WikiPedia). It includes facts (propositional knowledge), skills (procedural knowledge), or objects (acquaintance knowledge). Knowledge can be acquired in many different ways and from many different sources, including but not limited to experience, reason, memory, testimony, scientific inquiry, education, and practice.

We limit the scope of a knowledge to a party so as to allow for the existence of multiple such knowledges, where each of them is internally consistent, yet may be inconsistent with other knowledges.

Purpose​

We need a term to refer to the (intangible) sum of what is known, the familiarity, awareness or understanding of someone or something of a party, because this is what allows the party to reason, and make decisions. When a party can successfully share (parts of) its knowledge, i.e. communicate it such that when another party interpret it, the intension is preserved, mutual understanding is achieved, which is prerequisite for doing business transactions and/or collaborating.

Criterion​

The intangible sum of what is known to some party, as well as the familiarity, awareness or understanding of someone or something by that party.

Notes​

  • 'A knowledge' is 1-1 associated with a party (in a way, each knowledge defines that party).
  • a knowledge includes the rules that its party has decided constitutes valid Logics (i.e. rules for reasoning). Such logics are usually not formal, or mathematical logics.
  • In order for reasoning with, or transferring Knowledge, it must be made explicit, e.g. in writing, speech, digitally or otherwise. The mapping of knowledge onto such representations is called 'semantics'. Every party determines which semantics it chooses to use.