2013.02.12

Collection of notes and ideas, followed by a skype session record

Notes:

Subject: What is the difference between knowledge and wisdom.
Body:
This question broadens the thread far beyond the original issue
of a Hippocratic oath for ontologists.  But it's relevant to many
questions about the ways that human thinking (and language) differ
from the formalized systems in our computers.

JFS
>> This is the kind of advice that a wise old physician might give to
>> a young MD or PhD who is full of "book learning", but lacks the
>> clinical experience about how to apply that learning in an emergency.

KI
> The response above triggered the question above. As was the case
> with Data and the Datum, there is scant information about how one
> clearly distinguishes Knowledge and Wisdom.

The first point I'd make is that knowledge is essential for wisdom,
but it is not sufficient.  But I also believe that wisdom is not
limited to humans.  Some pet owners, farmers, and naturalists who
spend years living with animals in the wild know that.  But I won't
elaborate on that point because it would take us too far afield.

There's a lot of nonsense written about left-brain vs. right-brain
thinking, so I hesitate to raise that issue.  Instead of saying
that that wisdom resides in one side or the other, I believe that
wisdom requires an *integration* of all aspects of all modes of
thinking, feeling, knowing, perceiving, interpreting, and acting.

I gave a talk recently that covers some of those issues.  I put it
together from slides I used in other talks, but I also added some
new slides to show how they're related:

    http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/relating.pdf
    Relating Language to Perception, Action, and Feelings

The material in Sections 3 and 4 covers issues we haven't discussed
in Ontolog Forum.  For background on catastrophe theoretic semantics,
see the readings on the last slide.  The following survey about
René Thom is 36 pages long, but you can browse through it:

http://www.hum.au.dk/semiotics/docs2/pdf/bundgaard_peer/rene_thoms_semiotics.pdf

For Section 3 of the talk, I borrowed a lot from Chapter 3 of the
book by Wolfgang Wildgen (with his permission).  For more detail
about some of the diagrams I used, see

http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/homepages/wildgen/pdf/LexiconandBasicSyntax.pdf

In later chapters of that book, Wildgen sketched out a way of using
those ideas for interpreting narratives, but he and his colleagues
did not implement them for computer processing.  But Arun Majumdar
(listed as coauthor of those slides) did implement a version, which
has produced some very useful results.  He contributed some of the
slides (and *all* of the implementation) for Sections 3 and 4.

Scroll down to The Opinions Of Search Engines


JP Notes


There is a sense in which the Periodic Table of the Elements served as a platform for discovery. Given the algorithmic nature of the underlying physics, it didn't take long to actually create and name theoretical elements, each of which was later discovered. In that sense, there is an candidate conjecture (how redundant is that?) which seeks to determine whether a dense graph, which is really composed --in a very broad sense -- of sparse matrices of concepts, lends to spreadsheet-like what-if wiring of ideas.  Douglas Lenat's Eurisko program used evolutionary programming to accomplish something like that.


Session Record


[11:19:00 AM] Jack Park: http://www.crystalinks.com/wheelofkarma.html
[11:31:47 AM] Jack Park: AH: that's not a good definition of wheel of karma - lets take something from the dissertation
[11:44:26 AM] Jack Park: AH: Tony Judge making two claims about academy; academia failing to translate into practical governance of global citizenship; failure for dialogue between different academic disciplines - call for problem to be addressed -- how can quality of discourse between disciplines be enhanced in context of ignorance;
[11:44:48 AM] Jack Park: AH: "you can't talk to us because you're not one of us" -- each has exclusive right to "truth"
[11:53:00 AM] Jack Park: AH: second Tony Judge; academia failing to converse with governance of people (simple terms); academic disciplines failing to converse with each other.
[11:56:36 AM] Jack Park: AH: sees broader relation of Judge with knowledge federation; knowledge created largely by elite academics, but nolonger restricted to academic domain; rules are changing. When federating knowledge, look at politics of knowledge creation: who, why, how
[11:57:22 AM] Jack Park: AH: raised issue with Sam about equity of access when creating and federating -- that's a principal that should stretch across entire KF project.
[11:57:34 AM] Jack Park: JP: violent agreement
[11:58:05 AM] Jack Park: AH: Tony's comments relate to principle of equity
[12:01:04 PM] Dr Alexandra Hart: democratisation of everything: eg. access to printing - up to 3D objects
[12:01:20 PM] Dr Alexandra Hart: knowledge federation: democratisation of conversation
[12:01:49 PM] Dr Alexandra Hart: you don't have to give us all the details but kindly put out into the general domain the topics you are discussing
[12:03:49 PM] Dr Alexandra Hart: AH: there is a connection between Anthony's comments and the need to see equity of access to the knowledge federation process and the creation of knowledge process and the education project within knowledge federation
[12:18:34 PM] Jack Park: AH: co-creation, empathy, ... when have two protagonists engaged continuously, constantly evolving process; niche between them never static; leads to another domain of ideas (lots of links to wheel of karma)

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