What is knowledge?

Not so much definitions that might begin with justified true beliefs

More what type of activity is knowledge?

A gene knowing when to be active?
A hand or a bug knowing to move away from fire?
A bird knowing migration patterns?
A sea turtle knowing where to lay eggs?
A dog knowing where home is? who the owner is?

One place to start is to look at the Theaetetus and see where the conversation more or less begins.

Knowledge is less than information.

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/claude-shannon-the-father-of-the-informat...

I'm working through Spinoza just now and he had something to say about knowledge:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/spino-ep/

Does a light know to come on when you throw the switch?

Does a stone know to roll down hill?

When do the laws of physics emerge as knowledge in the subject?

Emerge where?

I don't think I understand what your question is in >1 richardbsmith:.

The word know can mean many different things, depending on the context. In your examples in >1 richardbsmith: it seems to be related to "having the instinct to" (except the first). Where are you going with this?

I am not going anywhere, except to attempt to understand what the topic is when philosophers discuss a theory of knowledge.

We can eliminate inanimate objects obeying the gravity.

Can we eliminate reflexes and instinct?

Does knowledge require conscious awareness?

Using the definition from the OP, it seems perhaps to require belief. Which suggests a subject with the capacity to consider whether to believe or not to believe? Knowledge then would require the mental capacity for conscious thought, perhaps the object of conscious thought.

Does this eliminate things which might be sub conscious?

Does it eliminate the dog knowing its master?

Epistemology is an interesting topic, but one full of rabbit holes. You have taken an interesting tack starting with non-human examples. You might find Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? interesting. (I haven't read it, but the reviews are intriguing.)

One way I might try to clarify your questions is to see if you can rephrase them without using the word "know" and while conserving meaning.

"Does a gene know when to be active?" would get turned to "What causes a gene to become active?"
"Does a bug know to move away from fire?" would get turned to "What causes a bug to move away from a fire?"
"Does a dog know where home is?" would get turned to "What enables a dog to recognize its home?"

(This last is perhaps the most interesting.)

Do you think anything is lost in this translation? If so what?

No. Nothing is lost in your translation.

It still seems to approach my question.

Is knowledge the impression/order which mind gives to the world? Or is knowledge the impression the world gives to the mind.

At what point does the cause of behavior become knowledge, or what is discussed when knowledge is the topic?

Earlier my use of emerge intended to refer to that point when mind emerges from the interaction of forces, that point when a nervous system gains the capacity to be a mind, and perhaps self aware.

To throw more at the question, if there is no free will, then how does the mind differ from instinct?

>10 richardbsmith:

Too many questions. Epistemology, psychology, minds, materialism, knowledge.

Try something a little more manageable. Some say there is no such thing as "mind", everything we attribute to mind is just physical responses determined by physical processes. Knowledge in that view is just then some stored state of that physical matter.

I don't buy those arguments. I believe mind is a non-physical attribute of the universe, perhaps the fundamental attribute of the universe. I also believe that dogs (and cats) have minds, very unlike human minds, but that they share in that attribute of the universe. Rocks, perhaps, do not. Knowledge is then a state of those minds, clearly related to memory. Perhaps the easiest definition of knowledge is useful memory.

rrp,

that is interesting, your thoughts about mind as the ultimate reality?

Hegel?

I think though my question is manageably reduced. What are we talking about when we use the word knowledge. I was not intending to ask about mind. And we can definitely skip the question about free will.

If we cannot define knowledge, then surely difficulties arise to discuss it.

Does knowledge require conscious awareness or can a thing be know by a body absent consciousness.

Does knowledge include the rock falling in gravity? the sea turtle coming to its nesting home? reflexive swat of a fly on my arm?

Knowledge is a slippery concept, and you are free to use it any way you please, so long as you clarify to to interested.

I'd say knowledge reposes in minds, conscious and unconscious, at many levels. I'd also limit it to things learned. So rock's don't need it, turtles don't learn it and neither does your swat. Although you did learn to target your hand through practice in the same way you learned and hence know how to walk, so that is maybe knowledge.

The power to B?

>12 richardbsmith:

One way to think about it is that knowledge has a normative aspect. If this is the case, it would require self awareness.

>18 March-Hare: That seems to address much of what I was asking. Thanks.

Is belief less evolved than knowledge? I think so. Is mind possible absent language and social webbing? I think no.

Knowledge is what you think you know.

What weighs on a $26B cash decision from to for how many people?

As heard, Ron Coast economist quoted:

the cost of information gathering determines the size of the organization

Knowledge exists because of the knower(s).

What does a baby know when it finally recognizes its own face in a mirror, as being it's own face?