Related papers: Knowledge is non-fungible
A sketch of some of the fundamental notions related to the nature of knowledge is offered, with special focus on the role of mathematics and my own opinions. No single idea exposed here is entirely original; indeed, this topic has been…
Over the course of the last 50 years, many questions in the field of computability were left surprisingly unanswered. One example is the question of $P$ vs $NP\cap co-NP$. It could be phrased in loose terms as "If a person has the ability…
We consider decision-making under incomplete information about an unknown state of nature. We show that a decision problem yields a higher value of information than another, uniformly across information structures, if and only if it is…
One purpose -- quite a few thinkers would say the main purpose -- of seeking knowledge about the world is to enhance our ability to make good decisions. An item of knowledge that can make no conceivable difference with regard to anything we…
Scientific research's mandate is to comprehend and explore the world, as well as to improve it based on experience and knowledge. Knowledge embedding and knowledge discovery are two significant methods of integrating knowledge and data.…
As David Berlinski writes (1997), the existence and nature of mathematics is a more compelling and far deeper problem than any of the problems raised by mathematics itself. Here we analyze the essence of mathematics making the main emphasis…
We claim that human mathematics is only a limited part of the consequences of the chosen basic axioms. Properly human mathematics varies with time but appears to have universal features which we try to analyze. In particular the functioning…
Notions of unknown truths and unknowable truths are important in formal epistemology, which are related to each other in e.g. Fitch's paradox of knowability. Although there have been some logical research on the notion of unknown truths and…
The purpose of this note is to raise two different questions, which are rarely if ever considered, and to which, it seems, we lack convincing, systematic answers. These questions can be posed as: - Why do we compute? - What do we compute?…
This paper establishes grounds for deeper exploration into the question of dual nature of mathematics as an abstract discipline and as a concrete science. It is argued, as one of the consequences of the discussion, that the division into…
This is an essay that considering the knowledge structure and language of a different nature, attempts to build on an explanation of the object of study and characteristics of the mathematical science. We end up with a learning cycle of…
In this paper, we generalize epistemic logic so that it can help reason about ways of combining common knowledge and distributed knowledge such as "common distributed knowledge", "distributed common knowledge", "distributed common…
Information is a precise concept that can be defined mathematically, but its relationship to what we call "knowledge" is not always made clear. Furthermore, the concepts "entropy" and "information", while deeply related, are distinct and…
The key difference between math as math and math in science is that in science we blend our physical knowledge with our knowledge of math. This blending changes the way we put meaning to math and even to the way we interpret mathematical…
People employ their knowledge to recognize things. This paper is concerned with how to measure people's knowledge for recognition and how it changes. The discussion is based on three assumptions. Firstly, we construct two evolution process…
In this note some philosophical thoughts and observations about mathematics are expressed, arranged as challenges to some common claims.
In the past century many fundamental results on unpredictability, undecidability and uncertainty have compelled scientists to grapple with the idea that some questions may never be resolved within our current theories. While this…
Modifiable combining functions are a synthesis of two common approaches to combining evidence. They offer many of the advantages of these approaches and avoid some disadvantages. Because they facilitate the acquisition, representation,…
Is our world just information? We argue that our current notion of information has one serious shortcoming: It is quite literally meaningless. We suggest a meaningful extension of the notion of information that is dynamic, internal,…
Knowledge amount is an integral indicator of the development of society. Humanity produces knowledge in response to challenges from nature and society. Knowledge production depends on population size and human productivity. Productivity is…