User:KYPark/DIKW

Against DIKW 

The hierarchy of DIKW is largely built on helpless and hopeless category mistakes, and perhaps mainly used to underrate cognitive (user-centered) information science and overrate such parodies as materialist tall librarianship in disguise of awkward LIS (library and information science), emphasizing the best store of recorded knowledge, and cognitivist digitall librarianship in disguise of reworked KM (knowledge management), e.g., CiteSeer.

No doubt, computing makes progress in enhancing both human and dehumanizing brains! Both should complement rather than compete so as to do good to us at last. Meanwhile, it should be frankly admitted that the on-going information revolution mainly owes to cognitive, user-centered, "direct-manipulating" human-computer interaction rather than cognitivist, computer-centered, dehumanizing augmentation of AI. Wikipedia and Google are marvelous examples of such a close cognitive interaction.

Either information or knowledge implied in books, encyclopedias and libraries does not readily manifest itself of itself, but only varying from person to person from context to context in terms of meaning, significance, utility, etc. Without the user in context, the mere messy mass of library holdings could not make sense of useful information at all, but perhaps a dull body of knowledge at best. Therefore, it is no use grading and gracing knowledge as a whole of context over information as a "snippet out of context" [sic], as defined by Gorman (2004), the then president-elect of ALA. He was speaking, if not thinking, of a different kind of context, hence perhaps an evil sophistry! Poor philosophical tradition always remain most responsible for poor scholarship as well as poor worldview, as may be more shown in the following.

Taking information seriously

 * A parody of the title of Dworkin (1977) of interpretivist jurisprudence

Matter M, Energy E, and Information I make up Universe MEI. Each element is known and used by virtue of the last, I, to be wise or foolish. The following color mixing may suggest the relationship among them.

Category mistaking
It is often said that to teach is to learn. This is a shorter way of saying. A longer way may be such that before you teach, you have to learn. Or, before you speak or inform, in everyday life, you have to know. To inform is to help or let know at all after all. Or, to teach is to help or let learn at all after all.

In parallel, informing is (to) teaching, while knowing is (to) learning. Then, to say that informing is worse than knowing is to say that teaching is worse than learning. Hence, either way of saying is a fallacy or sophistry relying heavily on the category mistake. Either informing & knowing or teaching & learning do not compete at all but complement after all. It appears as evil to subordinate informing to knowing, as teaching to learning.

Sadly, the hierachy of DIKW looks like a total fallacy or sophistry relying heavily on various category mistakes such that information and knowledge compete, and so do knowledge and wisdom.

Know and inform
To know and inform, or to learn and teach may be one of the social responsibilities of the learned. The following would be problematic in this perspective:

He who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know.

In the opening passage of their book (1923), Ogden & Richards quote the above skeptical cases from Lao-Tzu. The following 2x2 contingency table would reflect the wider perspective, where inform just replaces speak above:

You do know (DK) --- and do inform (DI). \ /                     or                \ / \                     do not know (NK) --- and not inform (NI).

Then, between the lefthand and righthand sides of the table, there are:

1. two parallel, rational paths, DK-DI and NK-NI, 2. two diagonal, skeptical paths, DK-NI and NK-DI.

In analogy, you may consider the following cases as well:

You do learn (DL) --- and do teach (DT). \ /                    or                 \ / \                    do not learn (NL) --- and not teach (NT).

Triangle of reference
While our body walks on two body's legs, our mind does on two mind's ones. That is to say, our mind's eyes alternatingly see facts or forms on the one leg, and artefacts or norms on the other. For example, we see through the sight, situation or realism on the one leg, often by virtue of the sign, narration or symbolism on the other. This biped stance of the mind may be well illustrated as the triangle of reference below by Ogden & Richards (1923), or as the parody further below by Blackburn (1984).

Besides Blackburn (1984), there are various signs of the biped mind:

Contrary to the wide-spread and deep-rooted belief in academia and elsewhere, the two mental legs relate to each other only indirectly indeed, necessarily via the mind on top, hence the dotted bottom of the triangle. Korzybski (1933) put forward the dictum "The map is not the territory." Ogden & Richards (1923) required that this indirect, imputed relationship or truism be taken most seriously in theory of meaning, hence logic as well. In effect, they were undermining not only the biblical tradition but also the logical tradition of philosophy and science, especially the analytic doctrine as an alternative to idealism around the mind.

Their thesis was too devastating a revolution indeed to be readily received in Western tradition. In addition to Dewey and Sapir, it prompted Russell to write two reviews (1923, 1926), which in turn prompted Skinner to decide to major in psychology, as witnessed by Skinner (1976). However, it was not original but originating in modernism and even romanticism since the 19th century. The Roman Catholic Church had rigidly enforced the Oath Against Modernism during the period 1910-1967.