When did knowledge exist?

If knowledge is defined as information which a sentient being received and holds in their memory..... (and instinctual reactions are not knowledge?)...dam now I am confused again...

I'm still stuck on knowledge and information... I think all the information is out there (or in there) waiting for our discovery tis just us...

two of us are in class...information is being presented...one of us gets it.... transfers the information to knowledge we can use to solve a problem....

hmmmm...
 
wil said:
If knowledge is defined as information which a sentient being received and holds in their memory..... (and instinctual reactions are not knowledge?)...dam now I am confused again...
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And well you should be, because now you are confusing me! Knowledge isn't *just* information.

Case in point...a musician plays a song over and over through the years. Pick a song, pick an instrument...it doesn't matter which...what matters is the musician plays the song so well for so long. Now, even as that musician grows old and begins to succumb to alzheimer's, he is still able to play that song. I suggest that the musician's ability to play the song is because of the knowledge. Whereas a person at a comparable state of existance...age, debility, etc...would not be able to gain that knowledge. The opportunity to learn would still be available, but to develop that learning into knowledge would no longer be possible (the alzheimer's would rob that person of the ability to form muscle memory, effectively stealing the "knowledge" before it could be gained).

I'm still stuck on knowledge and information... I think all the information is out there (or in there) waiting for our discovery...
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Information *is* out there, but there are questions we haven't even begun yet to ask. Knowledge and information are entirely different animals, remotely related but entirely different.
 
Let me see if I can present it another way. Knowledge isn't always about thinking or reasoning. Knowledge has it's core in experience. A person could be a walking encyclopedia, but without experience, they cannot with honesty claim to have any legitimate knowledge. Learning? Yes. Familiarity with a concept? Yes. Be conversant on a subject, even to the point of teaching others? Yes. But without experience, there is no genuine knowledge.
 
Okay I thought this was put to bed. Nope. Well let me see. Who is on first...;)
 
wil said:
I think all the information is out there (or in there) waiting for our discovery tis just us...
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I don't think so. From your description, you seem to be saying that information is some form of substance, or energy that is waiting to be discovered by us. I really do not see it that way. Information is a void, it does not exist until we discover it. And there are some types of information we will probably never discover due to the limitations of the human condition.
 
Sensory input is information: hot/cold, light/dark, soft/hard, salt/sweet/bitter, sharp/blunt, blue/yellow/red...given time I'm sure I can think of more. I presume by this point that we're being species centric here, humans only. Even so, there is a great deal of information we process routinely without even giving a thought. So information doesn't even require thought.

All of the sources we tend to think of now as information are only symbolic language anyway, every alphabet is a collection of symbols, every mathematical table is a collection of symbols. It is *really* easy to confuse the symbols for the things they represent.

How hot did it get today? 84 degrees. A bit early to be that hot, isn't it? Not really.

That is an example of transfer of information by a set of shared symbols.
 
Shibolet said:
Could the Flood have been only a parable to explain a lesson in Physics?
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What board are we on? Ah, Philosophy...I should be OK... ;)

I think the rainbow could have been a parable to explain a lesson in physics, with a lot caveats. For one, it wasn't called physics back then. In general I think folks had a more working knowledge of the natural environment, it wasn't until the Enlightenment in the west, Copernicus, Gallileo and Newton, and the consolidation of science into the form we know it as now that anything like "Physics" had any real meaning. (I suppose one could argue for certain Greek philosophers and the Islamic preservation of thought through the Dark Ages, but even then it was two thousand years removed from the original stories.)

The Flood on the other hand is a bit more problematic. I don't think you will find anyone who has thoughtfully researched the question who will not conclude that as described it wouldn't be possible without some serious adjustments, the topography alone would not allow a "round-the-world" Flood. But there are plenty of connections to be made just the same...one being that the Flood story isn't isolated to the Jewish texts alone, there are quite a few unrelated "worldwide" Flood stories across multiple cultures and traditions, which suggests that some cataclysmic water event did indeed happen in the region...which would have been the whole world that those humans knew at that time.
 
Devils' Advocate said:
Excellent point. Sensory input is information that would be used to form knowledge. So to answer the OP, basic knowledge began a very, very, very long time before humans came on the scene!
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Yep... Probably the first time a single celled creature bumped into another and realized there was another living creature next to him/her/it.


Whoa! Deja Vu! ;)
 
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juantoo3 said:
What board are we on? Ah, Philosophy...I should be OK... ;)

I think the rainbow could have been a parable to explain a lesson in physics, with a lot caveats. For one, it wasn't called physics back then. In general I think folks had a more working knowledge of the natural environment, it wasn't until the Enlightenment in the west, Copernicus, Gallileo and Newton, and the consolidation of science into the form we know it as now that anything like "Physics" had any real meaning. (I suppose one could argue for certain Greek philosophers and the Islamic preservation of thought through the Dark Ages, but even then it was two thousand years removed from the original stories.)

The Flood on the other hand is a bit more problematic. I don't think you will find anyone who has thoughtfully researched the question who will not conclude that as described it wouldn't be possible without some serious adjustments, the topography alone would not allow a "round-the-world" Flood. But there are plenty of connections to be made just the same...one being that the Flood story isn't isolated to the Jewish texts alone, there are quite a few unrelated "worldwide" Flood stories across multiple cultures and traditions, which suggests that some cataclysmic water event did indeed happen in the region...which would have been the whole world that those humans knew at that time.
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But the question is being made today when Physics is a matter of studies. Then, the world was the world perceived around them was the one they were used to.
 
wil said:
Does this mean you believe in a real garden with a real adam and even snake and fig and tree? That made them G!ds like us?
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No, the whole Genesis account of Creation is a huge allegory. All the items within are supposed to be interpreted metaphorically.
 
So this portion of the metaphor of the garden is about the creation of knowledge in man... from an author 3500 years ago?

How does your response indicate when knowledge began to exist? And are you saying nothing other than human in the animal kingdom has knowledge?
 
wil said:
So this portion of the metaphor of the garden is about the creation of knowledge in man... from an author 3500 years ago?

How does your response indicate when knowledge began to exist? And are you saying nothing other than human in the animal kingdom has knowledge?
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Knowledge comes to man as a result of his intellect, a divine attribute the Lord has granted to man only. So, according to Prophet Hosea, people perish rather if they don't use their intellect to acquire knowledge. (Hosea 4:6) Then, the evidence of the Catch-22 is that at the moment they ate of the tree of knowledge, they did not die but rather lived the full span of their lives. According to Prophet Hosea, they would have died prematurely if they had not used of their intellect to acquire knowledge. (Hosea 4:6) This is an evidence that the command not to eat from the tree of knowledge was to be obeyed as a Catch-22. To do just that, there is.

Yes, only humans have knowledge. Irrational animals behave according to their instincts. Intelligently some times but still instinct.
 
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