Replying to LO30581 --
Dear At:
Thank you for your very thoughtful reply. Please see my further responses
interspersed below.
Mark W. McElroy
President, KMCI, Inc. [www.kmci.org]
CEO, Macroinnovation Associates, LLC [www.macroinnovation.com]
(802) 436-2250
>From: AM de Lange [mailto:amdelange@postino.up.ac.za]
>
>Greetings dear Mark,
>
>Thanks for the refutation which you promise. Nothing can be better than
>to compare by dialogue our understandings of a topic, especially an
>important one such as knowledge.
>
>>At base, if you are saying that knowledge is the same as action
>>(albeit 'effective' action), then the definition you offer mistakenly
>>confuses knowledge with action. (I believe we've been over this
>>ground before). Previously, I gave you examples of how different
>>knowledge could lead to the same action, thereby exposing the
>>fallacy of the claim that knowledge and action are always one and
>>the same. I don't recall seeing your response to that.
>
>No, i am not saying that knowledge is the same as effective action. I say
>that effective action is one of the main outcomes of knowledge. It can be
>seen as a short, operational description of knowledge. For example, in
>botany the flowers of a plant is crucial to find what species the specimen
>belongs to. Flowering is an act the specimen, but the specimen is more
>that its flowers.
Yes, the flower is an expression of its knowledge, but is not the same as
its knowledge, which the specimen separately holds (in its genetic makeup,
in this case).
>>Further, to say that knowledge is the capacity for effective action
>>is to suggest that it is a necessary and sufficient condition for
>>effective action. This has a number of problems. First, effective
>>action also requires many other things that have nothing to do with
>>knowledge. These would include (a) the desire to take action,
>>(b) the power or authority to do so, and (c) other material and
>>non-material means required to act (e.g., tools, assistance from
>>others, money, etc.).
>
>Living knowledge has to take into account essential facets of itself such
>as wholeness, openness, diversity, etc. Without them knowledge cannot
>lead to effective action. For example, wholeness entails that knowledge
>requires a human body to act. Consequently, i will never suggest that
>knowledge is a necessary and sufficient condition for effective action.
Good. I'm glad we agree on this.
>(a) The desire to take action is for me part of knowledge. A person has
>to know how to cultivate and sustain this desire. (b) Knowledge has its
>own power or authority to act. A person will know when to let this power
>or authority bear its fruit. (c) You are right -- knowledge cannot operate
>on its own. See my remark above on wholeness.
I think we agree on these points, too.
>>Thus, knowledge is a necessary but INSUFFICIENT condition
>>for effective action. It contributes to the capacity for effective
>>action, but it alone does not provide all of the elements of capacity
>>required to take action - -- effective or otherwise. So what good
>>does it do to say that knowledge is the capacity for effective action,
>>when it alone provides us with considerably less than is needed to
>>actually TAKE effective action? Here I think the OL community tends
>>to oversell the term 'knowledge' while ignoring the many other
>>conditions required to take action, not to mention a few other things I
>>discuss further below.
>
>I think we ought to avoid the danger of over specification. For example,
>a marathon runner will say that he/she has trained thoroughly to run a
>marathon. He/she will not also specify what the heart, lungs, liver and
>kidneys must be able to do.
Perhaps not consciously, but body knowledge, if you will, is no less
required in order for the organs in the runner's body to function
properly. Here again, genetic knowledge comes into play.
>>Second, 'effective action' is a terribly value-laden term. 'Effective'
>>according to whom? What if I think my action is effective and you
>>think it's not? In such a case is the knowledge I used to take it
>>'knowledge' or something else? And who gets to decide? And
>>according to whose or what values or criteria? No, this definition
>>raises more questions than it answers. That dog, as they say in
>>Texas, just doesn't hunt.
>
>I agree that "effective" is a "value-laden" term. (I would rather say that
>it
>has many values intrinsic to it.) So, should someone else need a further
>description of "effective", i will try to give it. I will begin by giving a
>synonymous phrase for "effective action", namely "creating constructively".
>This will allow me to connect to creativity and how to make it
>constructive.
Another value-laden term. To say that an action is 'constructive' is to
beg the question, as much as to say that it is 'effective' does.
>I do not want to make what is going to become a long rely even longer.
>But i have to mention that "capacity for effective action" focus on one of
>the 7Es (seven essentialities of creativity), namely liveness ("becoming-
>being"). It is possible to focus on each of the other six 7Es to give yet
>another concise description of knowledge. For example, with respect
>to wholeness ("unity-associativity") we might say that knowledge is the
>capacity to all faculties of knowledge.
No comment. I'm not familiar with the frameworks you're using here.
>>Third, why define knowledge in terms of something outside
>>of itself? Even if we could agree that it contributes to effective
>>action, that definition, ironically, tells us nothing about WHAT
>>IT IS!!! In a sense, who cares what it contributes to? The
>>question was 'What is it?'
>
>I would venture an answer. Knowledge is one of the living systems in a
>person's whole personality (personality seen here as Smuts saw it). But
>like in the case of "effective action", many learners will want to know
>what constitues a "living system". So again we will have to travel the path
>of increasing complexity the more we want to know.
Right, which is perhaps more than should try to accomplish here.
>>Fourth, since I asked the question, I will try to answer it. I will
>>do so, first, by quoting you once again: "Knowledge lives only
>>in the mind of a person while information exists outside it." Here
>>again we have a statement that skirts the issue. This time you tell
>>us where knowledge "lives" but still not what it is.
>
>What i did, was to distinguish between knowledge and information which
>is for me crucial. I used "lives" rather than "living system" to keep the
>description as simple as possible. I contrasted this "lives" with "exists".
>For example, a rock, even with some information engraved on it, merely
>exists. It does not live.
So noted. I take your point about information and will address that again
shortly below.
>>Enough torment. Here is a definition that I favor:
>>
>>"Knowledge consists of encoded structures representing descriptive
>>and argumentative assertions that help the systems that created
>>them to live and adapt, and which also have survived their tests
>>and evaluations for verisimilitude."
>
>What about tacit knowing? The above definition does not provide for it.
>The same for experiences. And how does wisdom, a most important
>dimension of knowledge, fit into this description?
Tacit knowledge is also an encoded structure per the definition above. In
terms of the expansion provded below, it is a form of "predispositional
belief."
As for wisdom, I really don't know what to make of that term. Mostly I
see it as a vestige of the data, information, knowledge, wisdom (DIKW)
pyramid, which I think is nonsense. I have yet to see a use of the term
that constitutes a departure from what the term 'knowledge' already means.
Thus, its use tends to be mystical, imprecise, even ambiguous, ill
considered, and sloppy. If you think it differs from what 'knowledge'
already provides, please tell me what you think it is.
>>In the human domain, these structures consist of beliefs and belief
>>predispositions, and also of claims, but only of such beliefs, belief
>>predispositions, and claims, that have survived our tests and
>>evaluations.
>
>Like you previously did, i would have ventured to ask what these tests and
>evaluations are and who determines which of them are valid? But i rather
>want to comment on your structures of "beliefs, belief predispositions, and
>claims". I would personally not reduce knowledge to a logical system.
>Furthermore, it is very easy to confuse such tested beliefs, belief
>predispositions, and claims with what is nothing else than mental models.
At, idea of testing and evaluation does not presuppose criteria for same
of any kind. We all have our different tests and evaluations, depending
on what we think works for us. The larger point is that when forming our
knowledge, we test and evaluate the competing (or even the singular)
beliefs and claims. Doing so at a personal level is one thing; doing so
at an organizational level is quite another. This raises an important KM
and OL issue, because it means when working in collectives with others, we
need to discuss and debate the testing and evaluation criteria that we
will agree to collectively use in the production of our collective
knowledge. So I ionly subscribe to the view that knowledge is the product
of testing and evaluating competing beliefs and claims, which is not to
say that I believe we all employ the same criteria in doing so.
As for beliefs and claims being synonymous with mental models, I think I
agree with that. A mental model is a form of knowledge that has survived
our tests and evaluations. So where's the contradiction?
>>What this means is that our knowledge may, in fact, be false, but
>>because we regard it as true (until we learn otherwise), we think
>>of it as knowledge. That's what differentiates knowledge from
>>information: both consist of descriptive or argumentative assertions
>>of one kind or another, but only knowledge consists of ones that
>>we regard as true. And it is precisely this introduction and treatment
>>of the issue of truth that makes the term 'knowledge' distinctive and
>>useful for us.
>
>I some sense i agree with you that truth helps us to distinguish knowledge
>from information. But allow me to tell why. We have various ways to
>establish truth like logical and empirical analyses.
Yes, per my comments above, these comprise some of our testing and
evaluation techniques.
>We have to learn some
>of these ways to get closer to the truth. But too much emphasis on analysis
>will not bring us closer and closer to the truth. For example, i can
>analyse
>the morphology and physiology of a plant into great detail. But this does
>not help me to keep the plant alive and propagating. I also have to
>cultivate
>that plant by synthesising in captivity a sound environment for it.
Sorry At, but you've lost me here. If your objective is to 'keep the
plant alive and propagating,' then you need BOTH knowledge of its
structure and the environmetal conditions needed to support it. To say
that you need knowledge of both, and not just the former, is not to argue
against the role of testing and evaluation in knowledge production. That
is a non sequitor.
>>Sadly, this 'truth dimension' to the subject of knowledge is
>>conspicuously missing from too many contemporary definitions of
>>the term, including the "capacity for effective action' school. It's as
>>if we either don't care about truth and falsity, or that we somehow
>>always assume that what's in our heads is true. If something we
>>think happens to be false, don't we want to know that? God forbid
>>we should have a definition of knowledge that takes truth versus
>>falsity into account!
>
>I agree with you that 'truth dimension' of knowledge receives far too
>little
>attention nowadays. But the same goes for other dimensions of character
>like beauty and ethics. Knowledge and character get so fragmented from
>each other that both now have to stand on their own legs. I think
>differently.
>Character has some of it as roots (related to truth, ethics and beauty) in
>knowledge. But character goes beyond knowledge. As an emergent from
>knowledge its greatest task is to direct knowledge with a feedback loop.
Here I think you point to the fact/value dichotomy. In other words, there
is difference, for example, between the truth of a fact, versus the truth
of a value. The former can be tested against the real world, whereas the
latter cannot. So I am reluctant to see them treated as equals, so to
speak, in the same sentence in which we're using truth as a standard.
>>Finally, the definition of knowledge I favor provides us with just
>>the antidote we need to counter the terribly anthropocentric flavor
>>of so many contemporary perspectives. It does this by pointing
>>out, for example, that knowledge can exist in the minds of
>>non-humans, and also in the embodiments of all species and other
>>physical forms (i.e., not in minds at all, human or otherwise). Our
>>very DNA and the organs we rely on (in all species) are nothing
>>more than knowledge claims, produced through a kind of trial and
>>error process that we call mutation.
>
>I wonder. Is your phrase "representing descriptive and argumentative
>assertions" not typically anthropocentric. Consider a human-eater lion.
>It is
>usually the outcasted male of a pack(?) of lions by younger male taking its
>place. The knowledge (perhaps cunning in this case) of such a human-eater
>lion is legendary. It can outwit the best of lion hunters for many months.
>Lions do not have any "descriptive and argumentative assertions" of which
>i know, unless we assume the sounds they make to be such assertions.
>The biggest problem with a human-eater lion is that it becomes silent for
>the rest of its life so as to hunt humans with incredible stealth.
The terms may be anthropocentric, but the functions they represent are
not; they are universal. To the extent that the lion experiences its
world, it at least tacitly engages in belief production and use, and its
beliefs and predispositions are tacitly held. Think of this as sense
making, with the sense made being descriptive to the lion, itself.
Next is the argumentative function. Here it may simply consist of If/Then
rules carried out by the lion, again in tacit form only. 'If a man is
alone in a field and you are hungry, then attack and eat him.' Simple
If/Then rules are arguments, and all organisms have and rely on them (see
John Holland's work for more on this re: message processing functions in
living agents, or complex adaptive systems).
>>Indeed, we can now "read" DNA and the claims it makes
>>about how to construct a body. Moreover, that the bodies we
>>see before us in a species have survived the tests of time amounts
>>to a record of knowledge claim validation, the content of which
>>says, 'Hey, the claims encoded in this organism's DNA is true --
>>at least so far, that is.'
>
>I think we must be careful here. Can any claims encoded in an organism's
>DNA be false? What we do know that the vast majority of base pair
>clusters (genes) in DNA have become switched off. But is this the same
>as saying that they are false? They are rather undecidable in the sense of
>Goedel.
Fair enough. As I have said before, the disposition of a claim is not
simply limited to true or false. It may also be relegated to a category
of 'undecided,' or to some place in between the three.
But I do think certain body organs such as the human appendix may amount
to a false claim, in the sense that it no longer contributes to our
survival. Perhaps it was once 'true' in the sense that it did, and then
later fell out of favor or need as things changed. The same may go for
tonsils, I don't know. But I think you get my point.
>>My problem with contemporary treatments of the distinction
>>between data, information, and knowledge is that most: (a) tend to
>>be arbitrary, (b) fail to take actual semantic content into account,
>>and (c) fail to address the issue of truth or verisimilitude as a
>>distinguishing factor. Data, information, and knowledge are ALL
>>forms of information, and all three contain descriptions and/or
>>arguments. Knowledge is simply information that we regard as true
>>or which has survived its tests and evaluations; data and information
>>may or may not be true, but if we decide that they are true, we call
>>them knowledge. Otherwise, we may be undecided about their
>>semantic content, in which case they're "just data" or "just
information";
>>or if we have falsified them, then they are false data or false
>information.
>>But knowledge is always information (which can include data) that we
>>regard as true. So knowledge is a type of information, and is not
>>separate and distinct from it. Knowledge is true information.
>
>I am in doubt how much of the above i should have quoted since i have
>already answered to much of it. However, i want to answer to the
>following. Your data => information => knowledge distinctions seems
>to be a hirarchial one. I myself also have a hirarchial distinction for
>knowledge living in the mind as well as another one for information
>existing outside it. My hirarchial distinction for knowledge (which i can
>write on again as in the past) is carefully based on levels which emerge
>from each other in succession. My hirarchial distinction for information
>lack this feature since information itself has no emergences.
First, I do not subscribe to the 'information is only external to the
human' view, because I know that I can hold information in my mind and not
regard it as knowledge. In fact, I can think of information that I
believe is false. Therefore, information can be held in human minds and
not be knowledge.
This invariably takes us back to what we mean by these terms, since where
they can or cannot be found or exist is a consequence of our defintions
and not their determinants. Again I rely on my use of the 'descriptive'
and 'argumentative' senses of the term 'information.' Information consists
of messages that provide descriptions or arguments, which are either held
mentally in the form of beliefs or belief predispositions, or expressed
objectively (linguistically) in the form of claims.
Thus according to this defintion of 'information,' it can be held or found
in minds and not just in external objects, so to speak. Why? Because its
content can be held or found in both places.
Now, lest we find ourselves embroiled in what anmounts to a mere political
battle over defintions, let us agree to try and use terms that are useful
and descriptive of what we think our experiences tell us. For example, I
can think of claims that other people make with which I disagree. I am
thinking of one now. It is a claim that I am actively considering in my
mind. I 'see' it there, and I understand it. Nonetheless, I regard it as
false. Thus, it is a claim that someone else has made (which, by the way,
is knowledge to them), but it is only information to me.
And so if you will not allow me, by virtue of your defintion, to define
information as something which may exist EITHER inside minds or outside of
them, what would have me call this claims that I hold in my mind that I
happen to regard as false? And why shouldn't I regard the restriction you
wish to place on the use of the term 'information' as unjustifiably
arbitrary and ad hoc?
>>Finally, since I have explained that knowledge need not be
>>human-based, it should also be clear that knowledge can exist
>>outside of human minds and in other forms. DNA in other species,
>>for example (or in ourselves, for that matter), is a form of knowledge.
>>And so is a claim made by a human in objective form (such as on
>>paper, or in a computer, or in a book, in an e-mail, or in the form
>>of speech). The same goes for extraterrestrial creatures.
>
>I agree that not only humans learn and thus have knowledge. But humans
>have very little, if any, knowledge to communicate with other kind of
>animals
>with similar neurological systems so as to understand their knowledge.
So what? The point was that not only humans have knowledge. Whether or
not we can communicate our knowledge between us is a separate issue.
>Sadly,
>humans have even little knowledge of communication in terms of information
>with others of their own kind to understand their knowledge. I believe that
>they do not have a sound enough distinction between knowledge and
>information upon which they can develop such knowledge of communication.
Then perhaps they (we) should adopt the views I have expressed above to as
to close this gap.
>I do not think of DNA as knowledge, even though it lives in the body, since
>it is not supported by a neurological system. The DNA base pairs, for
>example, is form at the byte level of information. I do not consider any
>information in a computer, despite how dynamically it may be represented
>or processed, as knowledge.
Yes, I know we disagree on this point. I refer you to Karl Popper's
notion of 'objective knowledge' (which he sometimes referred to as 'world
3 knowledge'). This is a tough concept to grasp, I admit, but the idea
that a claim may survive its creator, such as Einstein's theory did him,
lends credence to the view that knowledge can exist outside the mind and
that it has a certain kind of objective autonomy when so expressed; and
also that it may be deciphered and understood by a third party when
expressed, not by a human, but by its written or objectively encoded form.
The only difference between DNA and, say, a claim made in a book is that
the former is expressed in non-linguistic form of some kind, whereas the
later is always expressed in human linguistic form. DNA 'says': 'build
the organism according to this specification.' If that's not a knowledge
claim, I don't know what is.
>>Is all of the above just useless pontification, of no practical value
>>to managers in the real world? Not at all. These ideas translate
>>into a style of Knowledge Management strategy and practice that
>>is profoundly important to performance in business, but which is
>>as different from other styles of KM as democracy is from
>>communism. And yet we tend to gloss over them. I will pursue
>>this claim further only if asked to do so, for I have already gone
>>on far too long here.
>
>I will speak of your KM as IM (Information Management). I think that
>IM is crucial to any worker having passed secondary school and not only
>managers. The traditional term of someone leaving secondary school and
>no able to manage information is called "functional illiterate". But i
>think of
>it in much broader sense than being unable to make sense of "words in
>writing". It can also involve numbers and other forms of symbolic
>presentations.
You should not speak of my KM as IM because I sharply distinguish between
the two. Thus, I do not wish to be interpreted in that way. The key
difference between KM and IM is that KM includes treatment of Knowledge
Claim Evaluation as the primary process in organizational learning that
results in the designation of information as either having (a) survived
our tests and evaluations, (b) failed our tests and evaluations, or (c)
not yet survived or failed our tests and evaluations (undecided claims).
IM makes no such distinctions since it effectively assumes that all claims
in the system are true. This is its weakness, and this is why KM is so
important to organizations. If what we want are systems and strategies
that enha,ce the production, capture, organization, and delivery of claims
contained in information, then IM is what we should have. If, on the
other hand, what we want is all of that relative to TRUE claims, then KM
is what we should have, because only KM addresses the relative degree of
truth or falsity in claims made in business. An IM system is just as
likely to serve up a false claim as it is a true one; not so for KM.
>It is shocking that "functional illiteracy" (in its broad sense, i.e., lack
>of IM)
>is steadily increasing among students who enter university. We might be
>inclined to say that here in South Africa it may be the result of slipping
>back into a 3rd world country. But in the USA Alan Bloom was one of the
>first to identify its increase in his "The closing of the American Mind".
>He
>wrote on p62 that he began to notice this in the late sixties. I was not
>aware
>of "functional illiteracy" until i became a teacher in 1972. I only began
>to
>notice as a lecturer its increase in the late seventies.
>
>Then there is also such a thing as managing the knowledge which lives in
>the mind which obviously cannot be called KM.. For me this has to be
>done by the person self. It places a high premium on me as a teacher not
>trying to meddle in a learner's mind, but to act as a mentor.
I think I agree here up to a point. However, my view of KM is that it has
more to do with knowledge PROCESS management (i.e., learnng) than with
knowledge OBJECT management, per se. Thus, some people, such as Jerry Ash
and his colleagues, are beginning to speak of 'Personal KM' in ways that I
think are useful and legitimate, even though they are not the same as KM
in an organizational context.
>Yes, you have written a long and complex contribution. Thank you very
>much for it. It gave me once again the opportunity to reconsider my own
>thoughts on this topic. It also made my reply even longer and complexer.
>But hopefully some fellow learners, when they have struggled through it
>up to this point, will have had enough opportunities to reflect upon their
>own thinking on this topic.
Thank you, too, At for the opportunity to put a finer point on my own
ideas, even as I manage to get a better understanding of yours.
>One last thought. The fact that we differ in what knowledge and information
>are, ought not to cause a controversy. Try as hard as i can, i cannot find
>any way to validate either my viewpoint or yours as either true or false.
>The only way to know which viewpoint is the better, is to see how far each
>goes without getting too deep into inconsistencies. This points to a
>paradigm
>shift in the making.
Yes, and doesn't this sound an awful lot like the process I described
above of taking competing knowledge claims and submitting them to our
tests and evaluations? Here you suggest a test of 'logical consistency,'
which is one I happen to subscribe to myself. In many ways, I have tried
to apply this test in my discussion above, as I tried to show that the
common-sense use of the term 'information' can also apply to mental
experience, and that in this regard your restriction of the term to
non-mental phenomena is arbitrary and presents us with a contradiction to
our own experience.
Thanks again,
Mark
--"Mark W. McElroy" <mmcelroy@vermontel.net>
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