Codified and Embodied!

As the result of an active process, knowledge is necessarily embodied by the individual thinker. Knowledge floating above or apart from a knower would be no different than memorizing some statement like “the sine of 90 degrees is 1.” Written out and sitting on a document, the codification is not itself knowledge, and reading it doesn’t impart knowledge immediately. At best, codification is an expression of knowledge – a document isn’t an active knower, because it doesn’t even have awareness. I’ve only provided an expression of my knowledge that the sine of 90 degrees is 1.

Being a knower means having the ability to evaluate and decide upon goals, so until someone actively holds information, along with the aboutness and truth of the information (e.g. that sine is a ratio of angles), there is no knowledge. Disembodied knowledge is a contradiction in terms.

By saying knowledge must be embodied, and subject-based. Gaining knowledge is the active process of discovering the aboutness and truth of information, in order to accomplish a goal. Even if the goal is abstract, like discovering the fundamentals of trigonometry, there will always be a goal. The important thing about goals is that not just any method will accomplish the goal. Reading tea leaves will not reveal anything true about math, no matter how biased someone is in believing that fortune telling is valid. A subject is required to choose valid methods of thought, such as induction and/or deduction, in order to discover knowledge. Objectivity is establishing what methods of thinking and discovery remain consistent with reality. These methods are chosen.

Choice, which is embodied like knowledge, enables analysis. Anyone can read codified knowledge, analyze it, and convert it to knowledge.

Just as explicit knowledge is intertwined with tacit knowledge, tacit knowledge is intertwined with explicit knowledge. The entire process of making the hamburger recipe involves details of how much onion to put on, and how the ground beef should be formed. Even though know-how is tacit, there is know-what of 1 cup of onions, and formed into a circular patty 1 inch thick and 3 inches in diameter. What I’ve demonstrated is that what may be seen as either explicit or tacit knowledge is actually both. Since all knowledge is part explicit, the intimate connection means all knowledge can be codified and expressed. But, it must be embodied by the knower to even matter!

#knowledge