Scott Jamison has an interesting post on the difference between information and knowledge:
My conclusion: Knowledge = information + experience.
As an example: If you described a certain person to me, you could tell me their name, how tall they were, what they look like, etc. I have information. When I meet the person, I can experience them, and talk to them, and smell them, and understand what makes them tick. I have knowledge.
Another example (from last night’s dinner): Getting and passing along information is much easier now than it was 400 years ago. But is learning a language any easier? Not really. There’s more information available, but the learning process isn’t any easier. Holding a book on Spanish is having information. Speaking fluently is having knowledge.
One more example: A recipe for making a cheesecake is information. Being able to apply that information and turn it into a nice dessert? That’s knowledge.
For me, information is the stuff that sits in books and on the net. (Note that information has context, so it’s not the same as data.) Knowledge is what we have in our heads.
As instructional designers, the question that concerns us is transference. Merely providing content and hoping the learning happens would be a dereliction of our design duties. Jenny could put all the knowledge she has on a certain language item into a podcast, for example, but her ‘knowledge’ doesn’t become your ‘knowledge’ without some form of transfer. Until you internalize it, it’s just information.
But what makes the transfer happen?Scott Jamison make s a valid distinction and I think he’s on to the right idea with the notion of experience, but it falls a bit short. I’d like to hear your ideas. How do you internalize the learning content to convert it from information to knowledge? How does the transfer happen for you?
Ken Carroll
中文 Chinese
AuntySue Says:
April 26th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
I remember half of what I do, all of what I create, and some of what others do if it makes me laugh.
AuntySue Says:
April 26th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Oops, that might sound out of context. Of course I mean all of that stuff I do remember is knowledge, it has to be knowledge to remember some of it. Plain information I always forget, actually I don’t retain it long enough to have anything to “forget”. My brain’s getting old and finnicky lately.
Lorean Says:
April 26th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
I don’t think it’s that simple.
Everyone can sing their ABCs from A to Z. Very few people can sing from Z to A. In fact, everyone can effortlessly recite their ABCs from B to Z, C to Z, D to Z, …
We can go forward, but going backwards down the list is much harder. This is similar to a link list data structure from computer science. (http://www.brpreiss.com/books/opus5/html/page97.html)
As an other example, say we have two almost identical phone books for a small village of a few thousand people. Both phone books not only contain the names and phone numbers of the villagers, but also their professions. The difference is that one book is sorted by name, the other is sorted by profession. We then have two persons each memorize one phone book.
Which person will be more useful? Well it depends on the query, do I want to look for “Higgins, Henry” or for a carpenter.
Therefore, it is not just a mater of internalizing knowledge, but internalizing said knowledge in a matter useful to our environment.
Paul Says:
April 26th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
I think the key is in your question: “How does the transfer happen for you?”
I’m no expert, but intuitively I would say the mechanisms that result in the transfer from information into knowledge depends upon the type of learning strategy that is unique to the individual language learner.
The basic psychological/physiological processes are probably the same for each of us in the way the brain processes information input from the environment. That is…input (new language) repetition/studying/practice = output (fluency in new language).
It’s the middle part of the equation that differs for each of us. Let’s take a simple example. If some learners hear a new grammar pattern in Chinese such as “Ni3 zhe4ge ben4dan4″ (You idiot).
Learner A employs a rote memorization strategy repeating the phrase over and over until it gets transferred from S/T memory to L/T memory.
Learner B finds a contextual approach more effective, such as interacting with real people and internalizing the new phrase by associating it with situational encounters. Maybe he gets into an argument with someone, the vividness helps to re-inforce the retention of the new grammar pattern.
Learner C employs a combination of viewing the Chinese characters and flashcards.
Learner D prefers to hear the “ben4dan4″ word used in other sentence structures.
No one approach is superior to another. Its up to each of us to determine the most effective path to transfer information into knowledge.
Paul Dillon Says:
April 26th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
My conclusion: Knowledge= information action
I have not really learned something until I put it into action in some way.
For example, if I simply read a non-fiction book I will forget most of the information after a period of time (perhaps a month or two). If I do something with the information (discuss it with a friend over coffee, use it as the basis of a presentation, write a commentary about it, etc)it then becomes part of knowledge base.
In terms of learning Mandarin this means that I need to combine listening(information) with speaking (action).
Jeff Says:
April 26th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
I generally agree with what Scott has to say, but to effectively translate this discussion over to the topic of learning languages, I think there needs to be a distinction made between learning a skill and learning a trade.
In the latter type your brain becomes a huge hard drive, storing mass quantities of information to be regurgitated the same way it came in at a later time. Think history class, economics class, biology, engineering, etc.
Learning a skill, of which learning languages is a subset, is to me a different type of learning. In this type, you are fine tuning your brain to respond in certain ways to different commands.
The closest analogy I’ve found is learning an instrument. If you break it down to its most elementary level, learning an instrument and learning a language involves the same processes. You are drilling your brain over and over again until the desired response happens in an adequately short period of time.
I remember learning scales on the guitar and how my speed gradually increased as my brain became more familiar and comfortable with what was being asked of it. Learning Chinese has been the exact same thing, with my ability to process incoming data and put out an adequate response ever so slowly becoming quicker.
Brent Says:
April 27th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Lets also question “remembering” the knowledge, which is a critical aspect of learning languages, if we can not remember knowledge, it merely becomes a distant memory, I meet a lot of people in my life time but if I do not see them again I forget their names very quickly, so repetition is very important in this matter, I first get the knowledge and then subject it to repetions, how many times differs whit each person.
Ken Carroll Says:
April 27th, 2007 at 8:19 am
Lorean,
I agree. Choosing and organizing suitable content is the responsibility of the subject matter expert/instructional designer - in this case, high frequency, graded, lexical input, etc). He can only only do that if he understands the needs of the user.
Paul,
Agreed, too, that learners are unique and need to learn on their own terms, but I think it is fair to say that some, techniques are just plain better than others. It is crucial that in our community of practice we share learning inights so that individuals can assess them from her own perspective, while the group can evaluate and tag them.
Paul D,
Yes, experience and doing are closely related. Speaking is one way to use the language. Ultiomately language is about communication, so any form of communication in the target language is good.
Ken
Michael Butler Says:
April 27th, 2007 at 10:04 am
Knowledge is tacit
Information is explicit.
Having said this, I’m guessing that all information resides in a potential state. It doesn’t become information until it is made explicit in some form of expression.
Then too, brain based connections, between many pieces of information, which takes information and turns it into a unique pattern, is itself a form of knowledge.
The biggest probem I have with this dualism is that the mind is capable of picking up a great deal more “information” than we are counsciously aware of. Subliminal messages work on the principle of us receiving more than we are explicitly aware of.
So, is a subliminal message to be understood as information or knowledge?
And is this important?
In language learning some people would say that we are capable of learning something without explicitly noticing it. In other words, it is not necessary for something to be noticed (as information) before it is converted to knowledge. Wow! This, I believe, is the position of Krashen and accounts for why he is so widely loved and hotly debated.
wei1xiao4 Says:
April 27th, 2007 at 11:23 am
“effective learning combines elements of collaboration with self direction”
Many of you in this blog speak in terms of theory, while I like to speak in terms of putting theory into practice. I am the ultimate “guinea pig” if you will. I have just finished my 40 lesson “practice subscription”. I was exposed to a lot of vocabulary, grammar structures, sentence patterns, etc. But this “information” had not become “knowledge”. So I spoke to my counselor about how we might proceed. I explained that unless I used the vocabulary, sentence patterns, etc., they would never become mine. So we “collaboratively” came up with a plan that we are just now putting into practice. Vera selects vocabulary words that I have already been introduced to. First we try to use them in conversation. Then I wrote a short paragraph trying to use them. Next week she will speak to me incorporating this vocabulary so that I can learn to “hear” these words in other contexts and I can practice asking her questions about her topic. I’m really excited about this “expansion” on the typical chinesepod practice lesson. I solute the teachers at Chinesepod for being open to my suggestions and willing to try new ways to facilitate my learning at my request. These teachers are really smart! Many people say “a 10 minute call is not long enough to make any progress in chinese”, but 10 minutes can seem like a really long time when you have to listen or try to speak. Try it sometime. The point is that it puts “information into action” and hopefully will one day create “knowledge”. I know that “knowledge” will take many attempts at practicing and processing this new information, but Chinesepod is trying to allow you to make that happen in a way that is self-directed.
In reading this back, I sound a bit like a commercial. I don’t mean to, I’m really just sharing my experience. There is a famous quote which says, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If flashcards and memorization are not getting you where you want to be, try something else. I don’t think you can learn a language without speaking. And many people do not have native Chinese speakers available to them, so this is an option.
I liked the analogy Jeff made of learning a language to learning an instrument. In the beginning in both languages and instruments there is excitement and a rather quick learning curve of basics. Then it gets tough. You reach a plateau where you must practice, practice, practice to improve even a little. This is when most people quit languages and stow those musical instruments in the closet. That’s why there are so many beginner language classes, and few intermediate or advanced classes. But what is it that keeps some people practicing even when they reach that plateau? Somehow, you must keep language learning exciting, offer support and encouragement to those who are about to give up. For me and perhaps for others trying new learning techniques will help language learners to continue when they reach that plateau. Just recognizing that this “plateau” happens to almost everyone and that you are not alone, could be a supportive measure.
But the old joke about, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”
“Practice, practice, practice…” rings true for speaking Chinese. Experiment with new learning tools that keep you motivated. But I do think that we in the Chinesepod community could reach out to help each other more.
The Language Realm Blog When Proverbs Collide « Says:
April 29th, 2007 at 2:19 am
[...] Proverbs Collide April 28th, 2007 — rbchriss While reading a post about the idea that knowledge is a combination of information and experience, I recalled two [...]
Auntie Says:
April 30th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
This is such an interesting thread, thanks everyone. According to the few books and articles I’ve read on multilingualism/applied linguistics, one very important factor behind success in language learning seems to be: Prior experience of acquiring/processing more than one language at a time. Even if these languages are unrelated to the target language.
I would really like to know whether other users of CPOD think it is true that each new language learnt makes it easier to learn the next. Or if they feel they have benefitted before from learning more than one “foreign” language simultaneously.
Eg. At the moment, I am revising my rusty Chinese with ChinesePod, and studying Japanese and Thai. I catch myself stealing time from this to learn Arabic script too. Btw, I only have about 30 minutes a day to spend on learning languages, so I normally can’t do more than one language on any given day. I don’t even have a regular study time, but the common factor for all three languages is that all the materials are flexible enough for me to be able to dive in whenever my intuition tells me that I’m in a receptive mood (for language-learning) and likely to internalise whatever I choose to study. Memorizing vocab lists does not seem to work for me.
“Mixing it up” in this way has always worked the best — and felt the most comfortable/natural — for me. Switching between different languages seems to refresh and recharge the part of my mind that drives language acquisition. In a very subtle way, it seems to help me to approach that day’s language study with a fresh and receptive mind, like a child (and we know how fast they learn languages!), by putting me slightly off-kilter.
I’ve also noticed that occasionally dipping into material which is far too advanced for me seems to have a similar effect. Possibly because it forces me to use my intuition as well, not only the reasoning skills that I depend on more and more as I get a deeper understanding of the “architecture” of any language I learn.
Just wondering if anybody else acquires language knowledge (vs info) in a similar way…
Lorean Says:
April 30th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Auntie, you pose such a difficult question! We should make the distinction between natural and formal learning.
I learned to speak both French and English naturally growing up. Knowing French, I had an easier time learning to pronounce Mandarin vowels (yu, xun) than if I had been plain vanilla English speaker. So clearly, knowing more languages helps with pronunciation.
I have only formally studied Mandarin as a second language. Theoretically, if I were to pick up a 4th language, I should be able to benefit from study techniques used for Chinese.
Auntie Says:
April 30th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Hee hee, but you answered it so well Lorean! Thanks. I’m sure you’ll do very well with the fourth language, and the fifth, and…
Actually, you may find that your two naturally-learned languages may aid your ability to acquire other languages, even more than the experience of studying Mandarin formally. I think it has to do with the way early bilingualism develops the child’s ability to process two separate languages. Growing up with French and English, you may have mixed words from one language into the other, but I’m quite sure that your use of syntax was only French when you were speaking French, and only English when you were speaking English.
Btw, I think that one simple way of describing the difference between “information” and “knowledge” in learning Mandarin is: Whether what you are learning is capable of forming a bridge to further language acquisition.
Eg., It is one thing to have memorized the meaning of “chuang4ban4″ (establish; set up), and even to be able to use it correctly.
But it is another thing entirely — true knowledge, IMHO — if what your understand by those two characters helps you to intuit (and retain) the meanings of other words. Such as “chuang4kan1″, “chuang4li4″, “chuang4zao4″ etc, and “ban4gong1″, “ban4zuo4″, “ban4an4″ etc. Even if you have never been taught these words.
That is why I try not to refer to the pdfs when I am listening to CPOD lessons for the first time. Instead, I try to look up any words I don’t know in the dictionary while the lesson is going on, using the helpful clues that John and Jenny are so good at giving. Somehow, the process of looking up the words, and deciding which character is the right one for the sound I am hearing, helps to internalise the new material much better. If I listen to the lesson again, I can usually write more of the new words correctly, even a few days later, than if I had been following the pdfs.
This was supposed to be 2-cents’ worth, but its more like 5 - 6 euros. Take care, all
Hans - Nyon/Switzerland Says:
May 1st, 2007 at 4:14 am
May I add my grain of salt, a mixture of varied elements accumulated during my last 60 years. When I was young, I learnt two instruments that are similar and at the same time very dissimilar, the piano and the church organ. I’m still playing, on the piano Chopin and Jazz for my own pleasure, and as far as the organ is concerned, I’m the responsible organist for two parishes in French-speaking Switzerland.
I grew up bilingually, Romansh (4th Swiss national language, only spoken by roughly 40′000!) and Swiss German. In middle and high school, I studied Latin (8 years) ancient Greek (6 years), French (8 years) and English (1 year).
Before going to university, I took a leave and lived a few years in England. When coming back, I started Spanish and English linguistics at Zurich university. At the same, I was studying Swedish, Finnish and trying to improve my Italian (I lived my first 13 years 1 kilometer from the Italian border). I did the latter three for mere fun, but the experience was beneficial for my two main subjects (Spanish / English) in that the opposing styles and differences (Finnish!) increased my intellectual flexibility.
At the time, I was using the usual traditional methods. But, as a musician, I’ve always associated language, and language structures, with sound and rhythm. And thanks to the discipline acquired through patiently practicing difficult musical instruments, I’ve equally persevered in language learning.
I generally acquaint myself easily with pronunciation and phrase structures of any language. But what had always been missing in my picture of success was context. That’s why I have some regrets about my Spanish, which is no doubt at a high level, but having lived 5 years in that country and being married to a Spaniard, plus ongoing business relationships with that country, I sometimes have the feeling of not being 100% up to certain situations, on the spoken level. As just said, my study was not systematically context-driven, my picture was not complete, in fact, the image itself was missing.
When I started with Chinese characters 4 years ago, the image came into full play. I devoted the first two years just to the study of the history and evolution of some 1000 characters, apart from some basic pronunciation exercises. It’s practically only with the arrival of Chinesepod and its reusable material that I was slowly believing in the feasibility of a successful oral Chinese learning.
The assiduous work with characters has taught me the importance of the image, hence I’ve started visualizing all things important in my life. My practice time at the organ has been practically reduced to nil, all those harmony structures and melodies are engraved as mental images. It’s also starting to work out for my spoken Chinese, as increasingly during discussions with Chinese people, I can mentally see characters, rendering the sense evident.
Over the last year or so, I’ve started to build hierarchical situational mental image structures, always associated with key characters corresponding to sample sentences. It is immensely rejoicing being oftentimes salvaged by inner imagery when ordinarily I would have been let down by my rational thinking patterns. In spite of my age, my learning speed has never been so fast. The contributing factors are varied but all are important.
Auntie Says:
May 1st, 2007 at 9:33 am
Hans, thank you SO MUCH for your perspective. It is so close to what I was struggling to articulate earlier in this thread.
Especially what you wrote about “the image”. Yes! I never had any problems picking up spoken Thai, but I, too, felt that “my picture was not complete”.
That is, until I started studying the script about three years ago. Btw, Thai spelling is very irregular and complicated, on par with English, because of the lingering influence of Sanskrit and Pali. It’s a “brahmic” script, an abugida.
You can’t imagine the difference made by having “the image”. Logically, it would seem natural that the “rational thinking patterns” would become more important as I focussed on the writing (Thai is written as one long linguini, no spaces between words, and they DON’T even have convenient “final” letters like in Hebrew and Arabic).
But quite on the contrary, it’s as if “the image” speaks more directly to me, on an intuitive level. So the way I remember a Thai person’s name is to see it in Thai characters. I suppose there is a simple explanation here; like Mandarin, Thai has many homonyms (pluse the “tone demon”), and so it could be that knowing the spelling helps me to process and retain words more like the way a Thai would.
ChinesePod helped me to discover (intuitively) “the image”, too. After ten years of studying Mandarin formally as a school subject, I was still practically illiterate (due to zero exposure/interest outside class, abysmal exam-oriented teaching methods, a bad start that quickly snowballed into understanding only 15% of what my Chinese teacher was saying in class). CPOD was so flexible, so non-judging and friendly, and yet intellectually substantial, that it gave me the tools to focus afresh on the written part even as the podcasts were teaching me a new way to listen to Chinese.
Thank you, Hans, and all the best with your language-learning!
Cheers,
Auntie
Hans - Nyon/Switzerland Says:
May 1st, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Auntie - it’s a pleasure to share my experience. I admire your articulateness! I might add some more here. In my case, it’s not any longer about just LANGUAGE-learning. As I have been painfully finding out, mastering Chinese has in my case ceased to be a goal per se. Instead it’s become more part of a learning process contributing to rendering my life increasingly wholesome. It has to do with age and life perspective. Of course, I’ll be the more happy the faster my Chinese progresses. But such material result should only be a pleasant side-effect, to be graciously accepted from life, in a philosophical, or transcendental sense. In my previous post, I deliberately focused on the concept of the mental image. In our western languages, the image seems, on the surface, to have disappeared, but in actual fact, all of us unconsciously associate words with images. I’m living in a phase of my life where I try to attain more consciousness in all my spheres, through self-observation (”Watch self go by”, one of the principles promoted by the American Edgar Cayce - you can find out with Google). I’ve always being intrigued by China, by the Indian yoga philosophy, by their all-inclusive law of Cause and Effect. Before the human being could speak, it already possessed the creative power of the image. So, we have the seeming contradiction of language richness in its diversity, but equally with its dividing borders. I’m watching in awe the changes being brought about by globalization, how many languages will die, how will humanity evolve, will communication become more mental than outspoken? How has humanity used or misused mental creativity through the ages? Yes, I believe in a higher creative principle, my creed is a mixture of Christian and the eastern philosophical principles. We learn things - whether languages or technology etc. - in order to leave things behind and to become aware of our true essence: mental, or soul, entities.
Ningkun Says:
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Knowledge = information experience ?
Philosophers like Karl Popper have devoted nearly all their life thinking and writing about these concepts. Not that obvious.
Ningkun Says:
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:38 pm
the “plus” sign doesn’t work
I wrote “information plus experience”
hans_in_nyon Says:
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Ken Carroll: How does the transfer happen?
Are we so sure that a transfer must happen? How do we account for those types of people who don’t need to work in order to internalize, who in half an hour learn a completely strange language, like that English guy who was reported, some time ago, to have mastered Finnish within such an arguably impossible time-frame?
Nevertheless, geniuses are a fact of life whose performances logically follow some natural principle, otherwise denominated as higher consciousness. In our obstacle-ridden lives, most of us fail to see the subliminal interconnections of life. Nature, of which we are an integral part, is exceptionless at-one-ment, i.e. harmony on all levels and associative communionship among all members. One sole atom refusing to cooperate would have the whole thing disintegrate. At this point, I’m not going to dwell at length on my philosophical stand, but in short what is implicitly meant is that life is more of the mental nature, or higher vibration, while the universe is its lower-vibrational externalization. The human being is an expression of both, the internal, high-vibrational reality, and external lower-vibrational expression of inner life.
I’am of the humble opinion that we should strive to become more aware of what goes on inside. I’m sure that ‘there’ we would find the solutions to any - whatever - questions and problems and tasks that we face in life.
There are some techniques as meditation and self-hypnosis on which I have been intermittently working over the last two decades. Since having become an enthusiastic student of Chinese, the topic of self-hypnosis has for my part regained preponderance in my attempt to speed up learning, or even better: to uncover the hidden connections to universal knowledge within, to un-earth ever existing internalization. But, even without reaching this ultimate dream-world - dreams are as real as anything, self-hypnosis greatly relaxes and thereby improves hidden associative links, hence remembrance, which is just another expression for mental association. I’m into drafting and voice-recording of self-hypnosis programs on a wide range of topics, including language-learning.
Auntie Says:
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Dear Hans, this “auntie” thinks that you’ve just written some very bold words. I’m one of those people who limit their language-learning time to 30 mins (more or less) a day. How do I account for the results?
With friends and family, I play everything down (absolutely) all the time, because it’s plain embarrassing; I just have no way of explaining to anybody why it just feels very natural for me to be studying yet another language.
But if I had to put it into words, I could only say, (i) “Well, it’s not so difficult, it’s only 30 minutes a day, and it’s even fun”; and (ii) “To be absolutely honest, I have never studied a new language before that didn’t feel like an old friend, that didn’t make “the world”/ some strange new culture feel comfortable and familiar”. That’s all I can say.
Podcasts and web-based language-learning are very powerful, that is beyond a doubt. But the joy of finding something of home in an “exotic” culture has been with us even from the days when this kind of learning was a physical pilgrimage. As long ago as 450CE, scholars from places as diverse as India, Tibet, Indonesia, China, Persia, Greece, and Central Asia spent many years of their lives studying in Nalanda, the first “global university”. A few hundred years before that, Ashoka Maurya was engaging the Seleucid Empire with diplomatic missions from Bactria to Athens, even as he was sowing the seeds of buddhism in (today’s) Sri Lanka and — effectively — all over Southeast Asia.
It is true (and sad) that the beautiful and monumental Buddha statues of Bamyan were blown up by the Taliban of Afghanistan within my lifetime. Yet I can’t helping feeling encouraged to be reminded — in any way, it doesn’t matter to me — that we are somehow equipped to seek out, study, and love, cultures which seem “foreign”.
hans_in_nyon Says:
May 3rd, 2007 at 10:06 pm
You are intriguing me, we seem to be on a par on these points? Your talent seems inconmensurable, but everyhing has a reason. Not everything needs posting, do you prefer another way?
hans_in_nyon Says:
May 3rd, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Auntie - reverting to my first part: part of the picture is the picture itself. I have a daughter who is doing classical and contemporary dance at the Conservatory of Palma de Mallorca, she is a tough worker althgough she is highly talented. She retains choreography within seconds, it is immediately trasnformed to a mental picture within herself. It’s always the same; everything is intimately interwoven, music and image have the same colours, internalized = having become aware of the interiority of reality, everything becomes natural, easy, creative.
Auntie Says:
May 4th, 2007 at 7:39 am
Zhou sunn. Hans, I think that very soon we are going to be found guilty of hijacking a perfectly good thread. Why not e-mail me at auntie68@mac.com
On the topic, I wonder whether the Chinese-speaking mind divides up the concepts in the same way. I think the Mandarin word for “knowledge” is “xue2wen4″ (also, “zhi1shi4″)?
But based on my too-shallow reading of Chinese history/culture, it seems that “xue2wen4″ does also refer to the mere accumulation of a lot of information. My China grandmother (b. pre-1911) was the daughter of a traditional scholar/civil servant, but what she described to me sounded very much like a very deep and broad cultural/literary education, rather than a direct study of administration. Even in French, what anglophones refer to as “general information” is “culture generale”; the introduction of the notion of “culture” here has always made me think of the Chinese.
Auntie Says:
May 4th, 2007 at 7:44 am
P/s: I hope that if anybody out there can correct me on the idea of what acquiring knowledge has traditionally meant in China, they will do so because I am curious! Thanks!
Yet Another John Says:
August 11th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Information different from knowledge? A fascinating polemic.
Withe respect to the world’s great thinkers:
I think we have confusion in action.
(The method or the substance?)
A radio announcer gives me information: tomorrow’s weather will be fine.
I retain the knowledge: fine tomorrow and tell my wife ie she gets the information from me. Now that I know that tomorrow will be fine I know by experience that the sun will be out and I can mow the lawn. My wife knows from experience that it will not rain so she can put the washing out.
It is clear that adding experience augments the knowledge. But the original information, it’ll be fine tomorrow, remains constant whether I know it or tell it, whether I believe it or doubt it, whether it saddens or gladdens me or even if I perceive that this will make the fifth consecutive dry day . The substance doesn’t differ, only the method (communicating or cogitating).