Summary:
Understanding 'knowledge' is no simple thing. The lead that T.D. Wilson (thanks to Seb Paquet ) has provided us can give us a good start. In this entry I sketch an outline not only of what knowledge is but how, in general, one recognizes knowledge when demonstrated by individuals or groups of individuals acting as 'one'.

 

What is the difference between information and knowledge?
TD Wilson emphatically differentiates 'information' from 'knowledge'. In addition he notes that knowledge is a property of an individual and cannot be directly transmitted; information and data can. [I would add that a corporation, a learning community and human systems, generally, can meet the criteria for knowing. See what you think after you read what I say below.]

 

What does 'to know something' mean?
According to Gilbert Ryle, "Know is a capacity verb, and a capacity verb of that special sort that is used for signifying that the person described can bring things off, or get things right." Thus, an observer, saying , "Agnes can make bread" is making a statement about her knowledge. The claim as to her knowledge is based on observing her interactions with and effects upon her environment.

 

How does someone move from not knowing to knowing?
Karl Popper, Jean Piaget, and Dewey also see knowledge as something which allows one to achieve goals, to get it right [the relation between goal and an action which will transform situations so as to allow realization of the goal] is to be able to transform situations so as to match goals. Those philosophers also see knowledge as being achieved in successive stages in which an individual applies capacity for critical analysis to her/his most recent experience. By doing so that individual has altered his/her method for producing the transformations that s/he desires. At some point or another, after multiple alterations in approach and successive enhancements in the ability to produce results under widely varying conditions, it is obvious that the individual is 'getting things right'. Whether the transformations that are produced are referred to as something specific, (e.g., 'giving an order in a restaurant' or 'setting the table' or 'bringing a meeting to order') or more general (e.g., cooking, fishing, boat building, writing code, blacksmithing, horticulture, childraising or teaching) the knowledgeable individual is seen to be able to achieve a quality result through her/his own efforts under a variety of conditions.

 

How do we recognize a system that knows something?
In my opinion systems can be called knowledgeable. To say it may feel awkward, initially, but it's a meaningful distinction.

For example, we could apply some criterion of quality in education (e.g., a common one, 'each child learns a minimum of one year's worth of material in one year of time') and based on this criterion say that a given school 'knows' how to teach 'any' child who attends that school for one or more years. Clearly, to say that a school meets this criterion is a meaningful distinction.

Similarly, to say, and be able to justify, that "the Ravenswood Radio Userland Users [fictitious name] group knows how to help any new weblogger write effective entries" is to say something important about the entity "Ravenswood Users Group" and how it, as a whole, interacts with newcomers.

As for recognizing this ability: one watches the interaction of the system as a whole with its environment. If we find that a) children walk out of one year of school with "one year more" of knowledge [as defined here] and b) that our study of this school includes five years of observation and very complete records. then we should feel comfortable that we can justify a statement like, "This school knows how to teach!".