Knowledge

[gL.edu] This article gathers contributions being developed by Kais Kader Ahmed [Kais Ahmed], Lukas Schwarz, within the context of the Conceptual clarification about "Information, Knowledge and Philosophy", under the supervisión of J.M. Díaz Nafría.

Teacher's Comments: This article requires the corrections indicated below: This articles cannot be considered definitive it requires a proper merging with the conceptual clarification devoted to Knowledge in glossariumBITri, the International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics and Principia Cybernetica. For the time being, the following contributors should consider glossariumBITri's article on knowledge as well as IESC's article on Knowledge. The content of the current article requires revision to avoid redundancies. Any new content can be added as separate section within this article opened by a proper title. Reference should adapt to APA style including also wiki markup. An url is never enough as a complete reference. Instead of discussing here 'Truth' cross-referencing should be used to the homonimous article, stablishing linkage to the contents discussed in both articles, Knowledge and Truth.

Summary

In this article the term knowledge will be introduced. Beginning with defining the word knowledge and all its parts. Then the difference between information and knowledge will be discussed. Are they the same thing, if not what is what? To understand what differentiates information from knowledge we need to define information. Afterwards the key differences will be presented.

The article continues with Epistemology, the "Theory of knowledge" and one of its greatest philosophers, Plato. Kant’s work in epistemology on the other hand, seeks to break knowledge into its core parts which will then be either approved or disapproved according to Kant’s judgement. Afterwards the significant difference between Kant’s and Plato’s epistemologies will be revealed. The next part is about why we as humans accumulate so much knowledge. Knowledge attempts to answer why humans want to know and what use it holds to know really means. One thing is sure, with knowledge we can find out the truth about ourselves and the world around us. But what is truth? Is it the property of being in accordance with fact of reality? The most popular definition of truth says that truth is the correspondence of language or cognition to a mindless universe. So, truth is absolute? But Is truth necessarily absolute, or may it be relative to one's point of view? Questions philosophers even today can't answer.

Definition

Knowledge is the familiarity or awareness of someone or something, such as facts (descriptive knowledge), abilities (procedural knowledge), or objects (acquaintance knowledge), and it is often helpful in understanding. Knowledge can be derived in a variety of ways and from a variety of sources, including but not limited to perception, reason, memory, witness, scientific inquiry, education, and practice, according to most accounts. Epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge.

Descriptive knowledge

Descriptive knowledge (also known as propositional knowledge, knowing-that, declarative knowledge, or constative knowledge) is epistemologically defined as knowledge that can be represented in a declarative phrase or an indicative proposition.

Procedural knowledge

Knowing how to do something is referred to as procedural knowledge. It is defined as the knowledge gained through the practice or application of a task or skill. Practical knowledge, imperative knowledge, and task knowledge are all terms used to describe this type of knowledge.

Acquaintance Knowledge

The familiarity with a person, place, or thing gained via perceptual experience is known as knowing through acquaintance. The subject has direct, unmediated, and non-inferential access to what is known in knowledge by acquaintance.

Epistemology

he words "episteme" and "logos" are derived from the Greek word’s "episteme" and "logos," respectively. "Knowledge" or "understanding" or "acquaintance" can be translated to "episteme," while "logos" can be translated to "account," "argument," or "reason." Each translation captures a different aspect of the meaning of these Greek terms, just as each translation captures a different aspect of epistemology itself. Although the term "epistemology" is only a few centuries old, the field of epistemology is as old as any in philosophy. Different aspects of epistemology have attracted attention at various times throughout its long history.

Knowledge = Information?

Is there a difference between information and knowledge or are they the same thing?

What is the definition of information? Information is a collection of data that has been processed in a meaningful way to meet a specific need. To make it meaningful and useful, it is processed, structured, or presented in a specific context. Information gives data meaning and improves its consistency. It aids in the maintenance of unfavourability and the reduction of uncertainty. As a result, when data is transformed into information, it never contains any irrelevant information. It includes information that is contextual, relevant, and useful. It also entails the manipulation of raw data, which results in the creation of knowledge. As already mentioned and is further discuss in the article devoted to information, knowledge consists of information and therefore is not the same as information.

The Key differences are:

1. Information is refined data whereas knowledge is useful information
2. The outcome of information is comprehension while the outcome of knowledge is understanding.
3. Information improves representation and Knowledge increases consciousness.
4. Information alone is not sufficient to make any predictions while in knowledge prediction is possible if one possesses the required experience.
5. Information answers the questions who? What? Where? And when? Whereas knowledge answer questions such as why? and how?
6. Information is easily transferable while to transfer knowledge you require learning.

Even though information can be understood as a starting point for knowledge, in practice, it does not always transform  directly into knowledge. Information can be received in a passive way, but knowledge requires a more active effort: to interpret, relate, compare or integrate what we receive into what we already know. That is the reason why two people can be given the same information but get to two completely different conclusions or interpretations.

As it is mentioned in the article about Information, “information is understood as something that conveys knowledge or reduces uncertainty in a communication process”, which explains that information can relay on knowledge, but it does not garantee it on its own. It is not just enough with that.

Another important difference is that information does not always make sense on its own. We can have many available data, but without an adequate context, or without the ability to analyze them, we do not necessary “know” something. Knowledge implies giving a true meaning to information and to have the capacity to use it for understanding, explaining or acting in a concrete situation.

In addition, nowadays we are exposed to a massive amount of information, especially in digital environments. This abundance can give us the impression that we know a lot more, when it just really means having more information accumulated but not well understood or truly processed. To convert information into knowledge takes a lot of time and effort, but also attention and critical judgement. Received information needs to be matured in order to lead us to knowledge.

This way, knowledge can be seen as a personal way of appropiation of information: not only to receive it, but also to process it in a way that allows us to understand the world better or to make well-founded decisions. This perspective is complementary to what is said in the previous section, showing that information is like an initial material and, after maturing it, you reach the elaborated result, which would be knowledge in this metaphor. Also, the section about Information, highlights a specific sentence that can be really useful to understand this difference: “information is a difference that makes the difference”, reinforcing the idea that information only contributes to knowledge when it really transforms the way we interpret or act in a certain situation.

Plato

Plato (Athens, Greece, 428/427 BCE–348/347 BCE), ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates (c. 470–399 BCE), teacher of Aristotle (384–322 BCE) and founder of the Academy, is best known for his philosophical works of unsurpassed importance.

Plato built on Socrates' demonstration that those regarded as experts in ethical matters lacked the understanding required for a good human life by proposing that their errors were caused by their failure to engage properly with a class of entities he called forms, the most prominent of which were Justice, Beauty, and Equality. Whereas earlier thinkers, including Plato himself in some passages, used the phrase without any exact technical force, Plato began to pay focused attention to these entities throughout the course of his career.

Aesthetics, political philosophy, theology, cosmology, epistemology, and linguistic philosophy are all discussed in his works. His school encouraged inquiry not just in philosophy in the strict sense, but in a wide range of activities that are now classified as mathematical or scientific.

They were accessible not to the senses but only to the mind, and they were the most important constituents of reality, underlying the existence of the sensible world and giving it its intelligibility. Plato envisioned a systematic, rational treatment of the forms and their interrelationships in metaphysics, beginning with the most fundamental (the Good, or the One); in ethics and moral psychology, he developed the view that the good life necessitates not only a certain kind of knowledge (as Socrates had suggested), but also habituation to healthy emotional responses and thus harmony between the three parts of the soul (according to Plato, reason, spirit, and appetite).

Plato's epistemology

For Plato, epistemology is best understood as an explanation of what knowledge is. If the reader is familiar with philosophy after Descartes, they could assume that epistemology must address the issue of whether knowing exists. The universal skeptic's challenge is never taken into account by Plato. He asks about the circumstances that make it conceivable, presuming that knowledge exists or at the very least that it is possible. These requirements, when viewed broadly, relate to both the knowledge objects and the rational capacities of humans, or more precisely, souls. Forms are unquestionably subjects of knowledge when it comes to objects. The question of whether anything in the material world is an appropriate object, however, is hotly debated. The physical world is a representation of an imperfect changing world. Numerous passages in the Phaedo and, most dramatically, the famous metaphors of the Sun, Line, and Cave in the Republic show that Plato is skeptical about our ability to understand the real, tangible world. Humans are limited to having beliefs about it. But the idea that Plato is such a skeptic makes many people shudder. These readers assert, citing the general theme of preceding discussions, that while all knowledge for Plato must be grounded in some way on Forms, one who understands Forms can also learn about the physical world.

Plato's proposal of the theory of recall, or the idea that our eternal, disembodied souls had already seen the Forms before being imprisoned in the body, is a response to concerns about the intrinsic intelligibility—or lack thereof—of the physical universe. We must have learned this information before engaging in commerce with the physical world if Forms are the (fundamental) objects of knowledge and Forms are not found there. The simplicity of Forms raises metaphysical questions, however, that have an impact on how we conceptualize knowledge in these middle period works. If Forms are simple, then it seems that knowledge is intuitive or acquaintance-like: in a non-propositional manner one somehow sees a Form, itself by itself. Such an image is suggested by the Republic's core texts. However, the numerous passages in which Plato asserts that in order to know a Form, one must be able to define it, imply both that Forms are related to one another (for example, the Form of Human is related to the Forms of Rationality, Bipedality, and Animality, the "elements of its definition," and that knowledge is propositional or similar to knowledge by description; see Gorgias 465a, 501a-2, and Republic 534b). These paragraphs seem to imply that knowledge might be some kind of real belief that is justified. A critical question then is how one obtains the appropriate kind of justification to tie down or convert a belief into knowledge. Plato doesn't go into great detail on this subject, but he does make two references to the use of hypotheses, implying in both The Phaedo and The Republic that developing hypotheses and eventually having them become "non-hypothetical" is a step in the process of getting to know a Form. As a result, there are four major concepts in Plato's middle period epistemology that we can examine: knowledge, belief, memory, and the method of hypothesis.

Kant

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is the central figure in modern philosophy. He synthesized early modern rationalism and empiricism, set the terms for much of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy, and continues to exercise a significant influence today in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and other fields. The fundamental idea of Kant’s “critical philosophy” – especially in his three Critiques: the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) – is human autonomy. He contends that human reason creates the moral law, which serves as the foundation for our belief in God, freedom, and immortality, and that human understanding is the source of the universal laws of nature that govern all of our experiences. As a result of their shared foundation in human autonomy—which, in the teleological worldview of reflecting judgment that Kant introduces to tie together the theoretical and practical aspects of his philosophical system—scientific knowledge, morality, and religious belief are all mutually consistent and secure.

Kant’s Epistemology

"Concepts without senses are empty...", Kant agreed with the empiricists. Knowledge cannot be defined solely by concepts or ideas. Innate concepts are not the same as knowledge. For there to be knowledge, there must be experience(s).

But, like the rationalists, Kant recognized that "...perceptions without conceptions are blind." Having only experiences or perceptions does not imply knowledge. For there to be knowledge, the mind must organize and organize experience in some way.

"It is true that all knowledge originates with experience...", Kant added. There is no knowledge without experience. The 'initiator' of acquiring information is experience. He agrees with the empiricist declaration of the necessity of experience in knowing here once more.

However, Kant also believed that "all knowledge does not originate from experience." Knowledge does not come solely through experience. For there to be knowledge, there must also be 'categories' by which experience is structured / interpreted. He agrees with the rationalists on this point.

Kant stated that the mind is "active" in the process of knowing. The intellect contributes actively to "the-world-as-it-is-known." The "known world" (what Kant would term the "phenomenal")

In the knowing process, the mind conforms to the realm, rather than the world conforming to the mind. That has its own structure / organization that is not dependent on the intellect. As a result, knowledge has a significant impact. There is a subjective (= mind) and an objective (= "the world as it is in itself") dimension. - Kant's concept of the 'noumenal' realm.) 'Understanding categories' exist in the mind. These are the ways in which the active mind constructs or produces experience. There were twelve of these categories for Kant, one of which being the 'Causation / cause-and-effect' is a category. The active mind connects and comprehends events. Some event-experiences are considered causes, while others are considered consequences. 'Synthetic a-priori truths,' Kant affirmed. These are "universal and necessary" truths, just as a-priori truths are universal and necessary truths. In contrast to universal and necessary truths, are analytically true (= true in terms of the meaning of concepts, but not in terms of what they mean) Kant asserted that some universal and necessary truths are 'synthetic' - "the way the world is" –

They tell us about "the known-method worlds of being." They are a part of 'the world as we know it.' "Every event has a reason," according to scientific knowledge. We cannot claim to know or explain this based on empiricist assumptions, as Hume proved. He claimed that "cause" is neither a thing or a truth that exists "out there" in the world. As a result, we can't know or understand causal relationships in reality - causal attributions are just a mental 'habit.'

"Every event has a cause," Kant claimed, is a universally and unavoidably true statement — something we all know. It's not just a mental 'habit,' either. However, the statement's veracity is rooted in the mind's ‘cause-category,' which actively shapes, universally and unavoidably, all of our experiences of the universe. As a rational person, Kant assumed that every human being possesses and uses the same categories of knowledge. Because all rational creatures have the same reason, the right application of reason should lead all people to objectively and universally true knowledge assertions.

As a result, we don't know reality "as it is"—apart from how our thoughts are structured. We have no experience of ‘mind-independent reality.' We only have experience of reality in terms of 'noumena.' of how our active minds shape, organize, and form our mind-independent reality experiences We Only 'phenomena' is known, and this distinction would lead to doubt for at least two reasons:

1) the discovery of cultural-anthropological disparities, which called into doubt Kantian rationalism's claim that all humans have the same reason 2) Friedrich Nietzsche's 'perspectivism,' which challenged Kantian rationalism.

Plato vs Kant

Both thought that there was some ultimate final essence of a thing. Plato called this the form, and Kant called this the thing-in-itself. From both these things come certain appearances, which is how we often see the object, but it's not the ultimate reality.

The main difference is that Plato thought we could get to the ultimate forms by use of reason. Kant didn't think so. Instead, he thought that we were limited to only ever knowing things as they appear to us. In other words, Plato thought that we could see things truly and for what they ultimately are, whereas Kant thought that we always see things as we see them, which is rooted in a particular mental structure that 'creates' the object.

What is the use of knowledge?

Why do we humans accumulate so much of it.

To recognize why we humans want to know everything we must understand what the reasons for gathering knowledge was. In the beginning mankind use their ability to think and learn to survive. The knowledge that was collect helped the later generations to live better than the previous one. That happened over and over again, thousands of years, the reason of gathering knowledge was to solve problem to live an easier life. However, survival is not the sole purpose of knowledge. It also gives humans the ability to perceive themselves and the world around them. „I think, therefor I am“A statement by the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes. With that he found that he no longer can question his own existence. He really does exist Our kind has the ability to question the world around us. Philosophy (love of wisdom) use theses question to find out the truth of this world and with knowledge we can try to answer.

Truth

The property of being in accordance with fact or reality is known as truth (which is considered in further depth in the article Truth). Truth is commonly applied to things that try to represent reality or otherwise conform to it, such as beliefs, assertions, and declarative phrases, in ordinary language. Falsehood is commonly thought to be the opposite of truth. Truth is disputed and discussed in a variety of situations, including philosophy, art, theology, and science. Most human actions rely on concepts, where the concept's existence as a concept is assumed rather than debated; examples include most sciences, law, media, and everyday life. Some philosophers regard the concept of truth as fundamental, incapable of being defined in terms more easily comprehended than the concept of truth itself. The most popular definition of truth is the correspondence of language or cognition to a mindless universe. The correspondence theory of truth is what it's called.

Scholars, philosophers, and theologians continue to argue various theories and perspectives on truth. There are many distinct questions about the nature of truth that are still being debated today, such as the question of what constitutes truth. If there is such a thing as an informed definition of truth. Identifying things are truth-bearers, which means they can be true or incorrect. If there are several truth values or if truth and untruth are bivalent. Identifying the truth standards that allow us to recognize it and tell it apart from lie. The importance of truth in the formation of knowledge. Is truth necessarily absolute, or may it be relative to one's point of view?

Own ideas and beliefs

Humans try to understand everything because they fear the unknown. Mankind deeply desirer power with the words of philosopher Sir Francis bacon “Knowledge is power”. One who knows everything, an omniscient being, is omnipotent. (Even if omnipotence can’t exist in our reality.) With that power these people can live a life that is perfect and be perfect but is it possible to know everything? Is knowledge truly finite? if so, how do we reach that point and what lies beyond it. My hypothesis is that knowledge is in fact infinite, but should anyone ever truly know everything, they would end their life. When someone is omniscient it no longer can be called human, human’s existences alone consist of learning and evolving and a being that is omniscient / perfect does not need to evolve or grow and will realize that life holds no meaning and kill themselves.

What the future beholds

The way knowledge Travels around the world has completely Changed over the years. With the internet information can be transferred from A to B in an instant. Knowledge might travel and evolve faster nowadays, however, problems that are to be solved with said knowledge are becoming increasingly complex and therefore take a lot more time to solve. At some point in the future, we will reach a limit where arising problems will be beyond us and therefore impossible to answer. That doesn’t prove that knowledge is infinite or finite, but it shows that we can never know.

Contemporary Approaches to Knowledge

In contemporary philosophy, there does not exist  only one definition of knowledge. As mentioned in the main entry on Knowledge, traditional definitions focus on different types of knowing, and contemporary approaches try to expand that perspective. Instead of just focusing on the classical idea of a “Justified true belief”, the contemporary approaches, try to also describe how people really get to know something in real situations, in their daily life, beyond theory.

An important aspect to take into account is that it is not enough to just have a true belief: how we have obtained it, its origin, is also important. For instance, if we use processes that normally work well, like seeing, remembering or reasoning in a basic way, then, that knowledge would be considered more reliable. This idea is typical from the theories that focus on the reliable methods. This idea is very associated to the philosopher Alvin Goldman, who claims that a belief can be considered as knowledge if it comes from a process that is in general reliable.                                                                            

Other authors such as Ernest Sosa or John Greco support the idea that knowing also depends on our intellectual attitudes, like putting effort in proving something is true, avoid biases or also paying attention to other perspectives. Ernest Sosa´s idea fits perfectly here, since he explains that knowing implies a sort of “intellectual success” when we use our capacities on a responsible way. From this point of view, knowledge is not just about being right but also about reaching it in a responsible and reliable way. It is not only what we know, but also how we have obtained or where from.

In addition, the social aspect of knowledge is also considered: the majority of things that we know have not been discovered by ourselves, but from other people who has given us that information and transmitted that knowledge to us. Other times, knowledge comes from intuitions or can even come from technological systems. This idea makes concepts like trust, credibility, and information quality essential for understanding what it means to know.

Also, it is recognised that knowledge does not always take the same form. Sometimes, it means to know a fact (know-that), other times, it is only to know how to do something (know-how), and in other cases it is just familiarity with a person or an experience (know-for-acquaintance).

The Role of Interpretation

In real life, to obtain information about a certain aspect is not enough to really understand it and know about it. It is also necessary to process this information and interpret i ton its correct and adequate context. As it has been previously mentioned, two people can have the same information about something but reach two complete different conclusions or opinions. This situation can be caused because each person interprets information from their own point of view, from their experiences, their way of reasoning and also their expectations.

That is the reason why interpretation of information has become a central topic in the contemporary theory of knowledge. Because it makes the difference.

Interpretation influences even in the way we understand what is “data”. As it is explained in the section about Information, this term is usually understood as “something that conveys knowledge or reduces uncertainty”, but that only happens when someone interprets it in a certain and correct way. Without that interpretation, data would only be separate signals without meaning or sense.

In addition, interpretation is not just something that we all do individually. Many times we interpret things relying on other people, institutions or social contexts.We relly on the origin of the information. This can be related with what is already mentioned in the original section of Knowledge, where it is emphasized that much of what we know is not the result of a direct observation, but rather of trusting testimonies, texts, or technical systems. Interpreting implies evaluating sources, recognising possible bias and, deciding what deserves to be considered as reliable knowledge and what does not deserve it.

Finally, interpretation is also a main key to distinguish between information and knowledge. Information on its own does not guarantee comprehension. It can only be converted into knowledge when, after received, it is interpreted, related to previous knowledge and given its own meaning. In this regard, interpreting is not just reading information but giving it sense and meaning within a wider framework.

Knowledge and Artificial Intelligence

The development of artificial intelligence (AI), raises new problems when discussing what is the meaning of knowledge and who is allowed to posses it. Nowadays, many AI systems can process massive amounts of information, detect patterns and generate answers that seem intelligent. Nevertheless, the ability to use these patterns does not mean that these systems can really “know” in the same way that human beings do.

The main difference is that AI works with information and data, but it lacks understanding in a human sense. AI systems do not interpret information from a personal experience, nor are they conscious of what they do. They operate by following mathematic models and statistical rules that allow them to obtain useful results, but without really understanding its meaning and much less in a human way. That is why, even though AI can give a correct answer, or at least one that seems to be correct, it is not technically right to say  that it “knows” something the same way that we all humans do.

Moreover, the growing presence of AI in the production and diffusion of information has a great

repercussion on how human beings build knowledge. Many times, we rely on automatic systems in

order to obtain information, make decisions or even evaluate content. This fact gives place to new

challenges related to responsibility, bias and reliability. If an AI gives incorrect or biased

information, the problem is not just only technical but also epistemologic: can that content be

considered knowledge?

Other important aspect is that AI also influences our own way of interpreting information. By

relying on automatic systems for cognitive tasks, we become gradually more dependent on

them and we reduce the active participation of our critic way of thinking. This reinforces the idea

that human knowledge is not just about having access to information but also about evaluating

it, interpreting it and placing it between its corresponding context.

This way, AI does not erase the human necessity of knowledge, instead, it makes it more

important. While some automatic systems process information in an automatic way, human

knowledge depends on comprehension, critical judgement and, the capacity of giving a meaning

to everything we receive. Artificial intelligence can be a really powerful tool, but it does not

substitute the role of the person in the process of building knowledge, since, as mentioned, it does not follow the same steps nor tries to meet the same requirements in the process of knowing the same way we do.

Knowledge, Trust and Credibility

In day to day life, the main part of what we tend to consider knowledge, does not come from a direct experience, but from the trust we lay on other people, institutions or systems. On our own, we can not provea ll the scientific information that we receive, and neither the historical or social that we assume as true. Nevertheless, we say that we “know” them. This demonstrates the immense role of trust and credibility in our process of building knowledge.

To know something in that meaning does not mandatory mean that we have personally verified it. It only means that this information has been taken from reliable and trustworthy sources. Teachers, experts, books, communication media or digital platforms function as tools that provide us with information. If we had not trusted these sources, human knowledge would have been practically impossible, since, in that case, every person would have had to prove every piece of information they receive. For this reason, trust is not the complete opposite of knowledge. Whether we believe it or not, these two terms are not that far away one from another, meaning that sometimes, to achieve knowledge, we have to trust. The necessary condition to reach a complex society is credibility.

However, to trust is not a neutral act. It always implies a judge, a critic judge, it does not matter whether it is implicit or not, related to the source of information. We all evaluate if the person seems honest, coherent, competent, even when we are not totally capable of believing it. In this process, aspects such as reputation, authority, social context and our own beliefs have a great influence. This aspecto explains the reason why different people trust different sources of information, and, as a consequence, we all build different knowledge  from the same information available.

This aspecto has become especially problematic in our actual context, where information goes from one side to another in a massive and fast way. Internet and social media have boosted the grow of information sources. Nevertheless, as we all know, not all of them have the same reliability. In many cases, the appearance of credibility can be misleading: information can seem convincing while being fake or not completely true. This leads us to a very important epistemological challenge, since it is crucial to distinguish between reliable information and justified knowledge.

In addition, the presence of both individual and collective bias, affect the way we all evaluate credibility.

We tend to trust the information that confirms what we already think or have as an opinion, and, at the same time, we reject and do not tend to trust what questions or previous thoughts. These cognitive bias have a direct influence in what we take as knowledge and they also show that the process of building knowledge is not only rational, it also is human and in consequence, limited.

As it can be deduced from the previous sections, the relation between knowledge and credibility or trust is also connected to the role of interpretation

Even when a source is considered reliable, the obtained information has to be analyzed or evaluated by the person who recieves it. That interpretation can vary depending on the context, used languaje, or the previous experience of the subject. This explains why the credibility of a source does not automatically guarantee that the piece of information turns into knowledge for everyone on the same way.

In this context, quality of information becomes an essential criterion. Not every piece of information  that reduces uncertainty es equally reliable or trustworthy in order to build knowledge. In order for information to truly contribute to knowledge, it has to be clear, on the right context andrelevant. If it does  meet these requirements, it can lead to missunderstandings or to a fake sensation of comprehension. All these aspects reinforce the idea that knowledge does not only depend on the amount of information available, bu ton how it has been selected, interpreted and evaluated.

Ultimately, knowledge can not be only understood as a mere relation between subject and data, but as a social process on which confidence, credibility and critical judgement take part. To know implies accepting information from others, evaluate its reliability and to give sense to it in a wider framework. In a society saturated by an enormous amount of information, these capacities become esential in order to distinguish between just being informed and truly knowing.

Limits of Knowledge in the Digital Age

Despite the unprecedented access to information in nowadays societies, human knowledge has not necessarily increased in the same proportion. Actually, the digital age or era has revealed important limits to what people can really get to know in a real and not just superficial way. The enormous amount of  available information overcomes many times our own capacity to actually process all of it and also to evaluate and comprehend it in a significant way that it enters our brain and stays consolidated there.

One of the first important limits has to do with attention. When information is constantly available and it is continuously updated, it turns out to be really difficult to keep full attention the period of time long enough to develop an adequate understanding of all the topics. However, knowledge requires time, an active way of meditating and maturing and continuity.

The fast consumption  of information can give place to a fragmented comprehension, in which it is known a Little bit of several different things, but any of them is profoundly well known. Which, at the end of the day, is as if anything is known.

Other limit that has the same importance and repercussion as attention, is reliability of the sources of information. In digital environments, coexist true information and fake, and, to have the capacity to distinguish between them requires critic abilities that are not always present. In addition, algorithms and systems of recommendation have a clear influence on what kind of information we see, reinforcing in many cases our own previous beliefs and opinions, reducing the exposition to points of view that differ with ours. This can lead, and it actually does, to bubbles of information that decrease the capacity to reach knowledge and makes it difficult the comprehension of the wider reality.

It is also relevant to take into account the fact that every time we tend to delegate more cognitive tasks to digital systems. And it increases with years among this age. Searcher engines, platforms, tools of artificial intelligence provide us with faster answers without really understanding the reasons that sustain what they say, which raises doubts when asking if that access can really be considered as true.

These limits do not imply that knowledge is impossible in digital era, but only that it requires a bigger effort and responsability from the subject who recieves it, especially if it has been provided by AI systems. Nowadays, to know does not only mean to have access to information, but to evaluate it critically, detect its limits and understand the conditions under which it has been produced. This reinforces the idea that knowledge is an active process, not just a simple result of availability of information.

In this meaning, the digital age that we are living in highlights the fragility of human knowledge. Even though technologies of information can facilitate learning and increase our possibilities of having access to knowing, it also ensures the importance of taking into account the limits of digital systems and the information it provides us with.

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