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Human Interaction

 

Knowledge involves a human interaction with reality (or with information about reality, or information about other knowledge or information), where the human is the subject and acts as the active, creative element, and modifies the latter by way of reconstructing it. Knowledge involves attribution of meaning and significance by the knower as a person. In fact, every reconstruction is a reinterpretation as well.

 

When I know something, it is relative to me. There can be no knowledge without me. It is always in relation to my existence and my knowing it. With my death dies my world, and with it my knowledge. In knowing something I individualize, subjectify and appropriate it, and make it my own. What I know, in the process, becomes my own. It is peculiar to knowledge that it can belong to somebody without ceasing to belong to somebody else! What is knowledge for you is just a piece of information for me till I interpret and reconstruct it, empathies with the generator of the knowledge, subjectivise and internalize it, and make it my own. However, my empathy need not mean I fully accept the others perspective. I may accept it, I may reject it and hold on to my own, or I may develop a new one which is beyond yours and mine.

 

Social Interaction

 

Knowledge is essentially social in nature. We need universal categories for generation, expression, representation, storage, retrieval and reappropriation of knowledge. The categories are universal in the sense that:

 

• they are, whether actually or potentially, capable of holding the same or similar meanings for all humans belonging to the same community and sharing the concerned common universe of discourse;
• they can be socialized – in terms of being shared, reconstructed and applied by other humans belonging to the concerned universe of discourse. They are inter-subjectively objective. A knowledge, in this sense, has both an objective (rather inter-subjectively objective) universality about itself (the capability of being understood, known by others who share the universe of discourse), and yet a subjective singularity that is specific to the knower.

 

Human Belief

 

In knowing something, I believe it to be true. Without this belief, it could just be some information, without that stamp of individualized identity marked on it. And this belief is a part of a system of beliefs, values and rationality, and hence constitutes a responsibility and potential commitment. What about something which is understood but not accepted? Well, it remains a piece of information, information about somebody else's past knowledge. On the other hand, a position taken in relation to this information as a kind of alternative belief or alternative construct, or even a counter-belief, or an attitude of respected opposition or even indifference, can qualify to be knowledge. In fact, much of the creation of new knowledge takes place through this process of interaction between alternative and diverse interpretations, perspectives, beliefs and belief systems.

 

This truth, however, has, potentially at least, elements of relative universality, specific to a culture or frame of reference, without which it could be a pure fantasy or arbitrary construction. Potentially, because there may be spatial and temporal gaps between the generation of knowledge in potentio and its validation through socialization. Knowledge, therefore, necessarily involves a belief in the concerned construction which is potentially social in nature in terms of its truth value. It is to be understood, that this relativity is both historical and social, and can be mapped in the interfaces between individuals, between communities, and between frameworks or universes of discourse.

 

Existing Knowledge

 

Knowing takes place in relation to existing knowledge – it is placing things in the context, in relation to existing constructions of reality, content and concepts.

 

Knowledge involves a judgment, a subsumption of the particular under the universal. It involves a certain amount of synthesis and integration of discreet information under a category, a construction or an attribution of a causality or justifiability, relative to the knower's frame of reference.

 

Knowledge has a moment of categorical imperative, and can induce a cognitive dissonance between belief and practice, between the past and the present, between the present and the future, between what is and what ought to be, and so on, and therefore, can form a springboard for potential action. In other words, knowledge by definition is driven into practice. Paradoxically, the more ‘theoretical' the knowledge is, the more drastic and resolute are its practicability. On the other hand, sometimes what is popularly called as ‘practical' knowledge may be no knowledge at all.

 

Knowledge is always a part of a dynamic system. Knowledge has the tendency to go for more of itself, to bypass itself, and to constantly develop itself. It is only limited by the mental and environmental constraints.

 

Knowledge is gregarious by nature, and has a tendency to socialize itself. Socialization is the means by which individual knowledge gets reinforced, challenged, modified, improved and validated.

 

Knowledge processes are always a part of an open system. It is like a game where the goal post keeps on shifting itself. The meanings, the dictionaries, and even the rules of the language are always in flux – as volatile as the turns in modern life. Knowledge creation, by definition, is a process of innovation.