Talk:Knowledge
Belief is defined as a "confidence in the truth of something, without subjecting it to rigorous proof." In other words, it is a subjective supposition. For example, "I think you are an idiot" is a statement of belief. Given the assertion here that "knowledge = belief," it would also be defined as a statement of knowledge. Hmmm. Danny
- I was taking my lead from the "what this article is not" section of propositional knowledge... but yeah, hmm... :-/ Martin
- The problem seems to be a faulty assumption that knowledge = truth. If we eliminate that and begin with a reverse definition of knowledge as "confidence in the truth of something, after subjecting it to rigorous proof," the question is then "what constitutes proof?" Standards of proof have changed historically, as have, as a result, our standards for what constitutes knowledge. For example, most people no longer accept as proof that Aristotle wrote it in a book or that it appears in the Bible. At another time, historically, that may have been considered sufficient proof for the validity of an assertion. (Of course, a problem remains--who determines standards of proof--but that is a question of POV.) Danny
- Rotem Dan's criticism of philosophy removed at his request
Why should it be a disambiguation page? There is no ambiguity for Knowledge like for Mercury. I think it should be introductory to the various form of knowledge or redirected to Knowledge (philosophy). --Ann O'nyme 03:58, 30 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- That is what I used to think, but this caused a huge flame war. A very small number of people began turning the "Knowledge" article into a treatise about sexuality, sexism, politics, environmental ethics, etc. Our discussions about "knowledge" were attacked as censorship, because the article wasn't discussing what they wanted it to discuss. The Wikipedia community gave in to this pressure, and allowed them to redefine what the word "Knowledge" means. The same thing is also currently happening in the ethics article. It is shameful that people with no background in philosophy are letting themselves be tarred as bigots and censors, when in fact they are not. RK 23:24, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- This article wasn't meant to be a pure disambiguation page. However, neither should it be a duplicate of knowledge (philosophy), as the current "overview" section appears to, to some extent. Rather it needs to discuss knowledge from the most general perspective possible.
- This is difficult, so I expect this page to remain a stub for some time. Also, Procedural knowledge is currently empty. Martin 15:28, 30 Aug 2003 (UTC)
All the material we have here on to acquire knowledge already is discussed in the propositional knowledge article. I have thus moved the text on this subject from here to there; actually, very little needed to be moved, since what was here was a near carbon-copy of what was there anyways. RK 01:42, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I have reverted Fred Bauder's universal rewrite of this entire article to push his POV. I find it ridiculous that Fred claims to have "restored" material, when that same material was never removed from Wikipedia in the first place. It simply is another (related) article; an article that is appropriate for that specific content. RK 23:00, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)
People need to read the comments on the Talk page and in the Summary edit lines. All the recent changes made here were described and justified. As stated above, one problem with the previous version of this page was that it was a repeat of what already existed in the other Knowledge articles. (We made a number of new knowledge articles to avoid this problem. Let us not recreate the problem we originally had months ago!) If you have a specific problem, mention it here and we will work it out together. RK 22:58, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)
re: People need to read the... Summary edit lines. - I disagree. Angela 23:03, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)