Conceptual clarification about "Information, Knowledge and Philosophy"

This elucidation is attached to the seminar A Journey through philosophy: What do you really know when you get information? held at the Munich University of Applied Science under the supervision of J.M. Díaz Nafría. The goal is contributing to the conceptual clarification to which glossaLAB is devoted to, namely the understanding of information and knowledge from multiple perspectives. Though practically all knowledge domains are called to participate, this activity is mostly concerned with concepts which are more philosophically relevant. You can find below a (non-exhaustive) list of around 30 topics which are worth working in, classified according to the main philosophical questions they refer to. Participants can work in just one topic or in several ones and find the connections existing with other concepts within the network of clarified concepts.

Before you start to make your contributions, please read and follow the guidelines carefully: Help:Clarification Activity

As indicated in the lectures, one should consider as the following contents were already in glossaLAB (since they are programmatically its core content):

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics. Its contents can be consulted here before they are available on glossaLAB (Cite as: François (dir.) (2003) [Article title]. International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics–glossaLAB).

glossariumBITri: Interdisciplinary glossary of concepts, metaphors, theories and problems concerning information. Its contents can be consulted here before they are available on glossaLAB (Cite as: Díaz, Salto & Pérez-Montoro (coor.) (2016) [Article title]. glossariumBITri–glossaLAB)

You should review them and cite them as they were within glossaLAB (actually they are though not visible for all).

Creating a user

Obviously, the first simply step to do is creating a user, identified by your full name and providing a brief research profile of yourself (condensed in a paragraph). Since we will measure the diversity and integration of disciplines when your user has been created, you should go to your user page (e.g. User:Modestos Stavrakis) and select -at the bottom of the edition page- the categories corresponding to the knowledge domains of your studies (the set of categories, organised in 9 trunks, contains more than 60, which are derived from the Universal Decimal Classification of disciplines). In this video you can see the process of user creation, the logging into the platform as accredited user and the initiation of the editing.

Preliminary clarifications (for participants in the seminar)

As a previous step to clarify other terms in more detail, we will continue herewith the clarification of the concepts I ask you about since the beginning of the seminar. You don't need to make any deep research on the meaning, the idea is collecting the different views you have with respect these concepts, but nevertheless with the purpose of improving what has already been clarified before. Indeed, you may see other clarifications from your colleagues when you arrive to the page.

If your view is significantly different to what already was given (or the page is still empty), you can add a new paragraph and start your contribution with the following format (suppose you are clarifying 'concept' and your user name is Anne Smith):

'''Concept''' can be understood as ... 
Supporters of this understanding: [[User:Anne Smith]]

If your understanding is very similar to what some of your colleagues has clarified before, you can just try to improve it (don't worry about overwriting because the original text can be recovered and the novelty you provide can be distinguished using the history tool), or to contribute with some further detail in the same direction. Below the corresponding paragraph you should add your user name to the list of supporters as shown above.

To provide your views just follow the following links: Data (preliminary) | Information (preliminary) | Knowledge (preliminary) | Philosophy (preliminary)

Guidelines for contributors (participants in the seminar)

The elaboration of your contribution(s) is something you can do in collaboration with other colleagues and assisted by the course's teacher. You need first to determine what articles (voices) are you going to work in the first place. It may happen, when you start, that there are other entries worth being added (for instance, a concept you use which is not clarified yet). If you need to open a new voice, you can create a new article and communicate the action to the supervisor to provide the necessary components to be properly managed and supervised.

Since your contribution needs to be adequately embedded within the glossaLAB's conceptual network, therefore, it is important to be aware what is already there and to establish connections with other conceptual clarifications. First of all, your topic may already be opened and it may have some content you should review in order to enhance or complete in the way you wish. The documentation section within the seminar's website contains published materials you can use for backing-up your contribution(s).

Possible Seminar's Topics

The quest for truth (epistemology)

The quest for reality (ontology)

The quest for well-doing (ethics)

The quest for solving problems (methodology)