Wikipedia:Peer review/Knowledge/archive1

Knowledge

I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to bring it to GA status. I hope to get some feedback on its current status and on what changes should be implemented.

Thanks, Phlsph7 (talk) 08:09, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Comments from Z1720

This is a very worthwhile topic to bring to GA status. Some comments after a quick skim:

• Self-knowledge is a very large article, but it only has a paragraph here. Why is this section so short, and would it be worthwhile to expand this section in this article?
• In the religion section, I do not think it is worthwhile having sections for specific religions. This is because a) it is hard for Wikipedians to remain neutral while deciding which religions get sections (and which get excluded) and b) these sections are very short. I suggest removing the level 4 headings and put this information in paragraph form.
• Ref 82: is this formatted correctly?
• Ref 101: this needs to be a complete citation (probably don't use the sfn reference for this since it is not used elsewhere in the article)

I am not a subject matter expert, so I do not know if this article is complete. However, if there are no other topics to add and some sections are fixed up, you might want to consider an FAC run.

Hope this helps. Z1720 (talk) 20:51, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Hello Z1720 and thanks for your helpful feedback.

• You are right that the self-knowledge section was a little short. I've expanded it to two paragraphs. I would be happy to expand it further but I am hesitant to add more. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has its own article "Self-knowledge" but neither the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy nor the Oxford Companion of Philosophy discuss self-knowledge in detail in their articles on "Knowledge".
• I was also not particularly happy with the many subsections in the section "Religion". I've put them all into the main section and I think it works better this way. I'm still contemplating the idea of making just one extra subsection named "In various religions" to separate the general discussion of knowledge in religion from the discussion of the specific religions.
• I've fixed the two references. From what I can tell, all references now all follow WP:CS1.

Thanks for your encouragement, I would like to get it to FA at some point. But I was hoping to get through a couple of GANs before venturing to FA territory. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:45, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Comments from GuineaPigC77

Hi Phlsph7! Thanks so much for inviting me to look at this article. I’m happy to collaborate again. What a huge and interesting topic! Standard disclaimers: I’m a non-expert and will probably be biased towards clarification for non-experts, but hopefully our efforts will improve readability for everyone. That being said, my academic training happens to be in perceptual neuroscience, so I may be able to assist with any content issues that come up in the area of perception.

I plan to go through carefully, but I’ll offer some feedback on the lead before a careful reading of the rest of the article. Perhaps this may provide a snapshot of the early reading experience more effectively than my later comments would? Anyway, it’s a starting place.

• Paragraph 1. “While there is wide agreement among philosophers that it is a form of true belief.” I would suggest changing “it” to “knowledge” or “propositional knowledge” as appropriate to clarify, especially since there is a rapid string of “it”s in the remainder of the sentence.
• Paragraph 2. “The most important source is perception”. The word "important" feels loaded/ambiguous; does it mean "most knowledge comes from perception"? The article uses this word again under #Sources of knowledge (and in the nearby figure caption), but doesn’t really explain what the word means. This is a deeply thorny issue, I am certain, but the word invites some speculation.
• General question. Does knowledge require that it be held by a conscious individual (or even just in any old nervous system), or can knowledge be held in computers? I suppose this will be addressed, but it’s a natural early question a reader might have. The lead feels unclear on this issue. On one hand, it suggests "knowledge" rests on "belief", so it requires a conscious individual to store that knowledge. But later the lead says "Science tries to acquire knowledge using the scientific method, which is based on repeatable experimentation, observation, and measurement." which makes me wonder where "science" stores its knowledge.
• Paragraph 3. I’m fairly uncertain about this one, but I might consider moving "It is the primary subject of the field of epistemology, which studies what we know, how we come to know it, and what it means to know something." to become the second sentence of the first paragraph.

More to come, thanks again Phlsph7! GuineaPig_C77 (𒅗𒌤) ☕ 00:36, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

• #Definitions paragraph 1. "utilized" I think "used" is better here, but I can't seem to find anything in the WP:MOS.
• #Definitions paragraph 1. We are told the three quoted expressions are synonyms, but a definition isn't given until the next paragraph where it defines "analysis of knowledge". Can that all be put together?
• #Definitions paragraph 1. "a cognitive success or an epistemic contact with reality" is hard to understand. Can this be unpacked?
• #Definitions paragraph 1. I think "which is also referred to as knowledge-that" should be the beginning of a new sentence. It's kind of tacked onto the end of the sentence, which may undersell the importance of this distinction.
• #Definitions paragraph 2. "general but vague characteristics" needs to be concretized. Perhaps with an example? Or can it just say "general characteristics"?
• #Definitions overall. The section seems effective in conveying the variety of definitions, and the reasons for the disagreements, but perhaps sentences could be re-ordered for better readability. Here's a very rough sketch of an alternative approach to consider. Please take this more in spirit than in letter (I added some temporary footnotes as well):

Numerous definitions of knowledge have been suggested. There is wide, though not universal, agreement among philosophers that knowledge can be characterized as a cognitive success, defined as XXX, or an epistemic contact with reality, defined as XXX, and that propositional knowledge is a form of true belief. Most definitions of knowledge in analytic philosophy recognize three fundamental types. "Knowledge-that", also called propositional knowledge, can be expressed using that-clauses as in "I know that Dave is at home". "Knowledge-how" (know-how) expresses practical competence, as in "she knows how to swim". Finally, knowledge by acquaintance refers to a familiarity with the known object based on previous direct experience. Most definitions of knowledge in analytic philosophy aim to identify the essential features of propositional knowledge.

Disagreements about the precise nature of knowledge relate to differences in the goals and methods within epistemology and other fields, or to differences concerning the standards of knowledge that people intend to uphold. Methodological differences concern whether researchers base their inquiry on abstract and general intuitions or hypotheses, or on concrete and specific cases, referred to as methodism and particularism, respectively. Another source of disagreement is the role of ordinary language in one's inquiry: the weight given to how the term "knowledge" is used in everyday discourse. According to Ludwig Wittgenstein, for example, there is no clear-cut definition of knowledge since it is just a cluster of concepts related through family resemblance. Different conceptions of the standards of knowledge are also responsible for various disagreements. Some epistemologists hold that knowledge demands very high requirements, like infallibility, and is therefore quite rare. Others see knowledge as a rather common phenomenon, prevalent in many everyday situations, without excessively high standards.

One definition that many philosophers consider to be standard is justified true belief (JTB), which holds that XXX. However, this common definition has been criticized and many alternative definitions have been suggested. Some theorists focus on knowledge's most salient features in their attempt to give a practically useful definition, while others try to provide a theoretically precise definition by listing the conditions that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient. The term "analysis of knowledge" (or equivalently, "conception of knowledge" or "theory of knowledge") is often used for this approach, which can be understood in analogy to how chemists analyze a sample by seeking a list of all the chemical elements composing it. Others seek a common core among diverse examples of knowledge, such as Paul Silva's "awareness first" epistemology or Barry Allen's definition of knowledge as "superlative artifactual performance".

References

In something like this approach, the paragraphs would be: (1) "what people agree on"; (2) "what people disagree on"; and (3) specific frameworks. GuineaPig_C77 (𒅗𒌤) ☕ 07:51, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi GuineaPigC77 and thanks for taking the time to review this article. I think your background in perceptual neuroscience should definitely come in handy. This is only the reply to your first post. I saw that you just added more comments and I'll go through them later.

• I've fixed the issue with the "it". This way, it's also not optimal since it's a little repetitive now, but I guess repetition is better than having a confused reader.
• The "most important" was intended to express that theorists usually give most weight to the discussion of perception. It's difficult to count knowledge. If you count all your mathematical beliefs (1+1=2; 1+2=3;...), they may be more numerous than all your empirical beliefs. I restricted the claim in the article to empirical knowledge. This way, it should be less controversial.
• You are right that the term knowledge is used mainly but not exclusively for the knowledge of individual persons. One example for computers might be a knowledge base used by expert systems. Group knowledge is another example. I've added a short clarification to the section definition. But there is not much discussion of this issue in the literature on knowledge in general, so I'm hesitant to include this explanation in the lead. For example, the source on group knowledge states that "explicit analyses of group knowledge remain rare".
• I think your suggestion for mentioning epistemology right in the beginning would also work. The motivation for the current structure is that it is discussed together with all the other fields, which also makes sense. I'm not sure which version is better. There have been various discussions on the talk page about the exact formulation of the first few sentences, which is why I would tend more to leave it as it is.

I'm looking forward to your further comments. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:26, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Now I also had a look at your 2nd post. I used your suggestions for the first paragraph and implemented various of the changes from your other two paragraphs. I wanted to keep the distinction between methodism and particularism in the 3rd paragraph since it is not as widely discussed as the issues explained in the 2nd paragraph. But I don't feel very strongly about this point and your version would work fine as well. I moved the "justified true belief"-characterization as an example of the analysis-approach, where it seems to fit best.

The problem with "cognitive success" and "epistemic contact with reality" is that the exact meaning of these terms depends a lot on the type of knowledge and which conception of knowledge one holds. The SEP article Epistemology just lists various examples to explain what it means. We could do that too but that would further expand the section. You are right that this is rather vague but the article acknowledges this in the 2nd paragraph in relation to the "vague characteristics listed above". I hope it's now clearer that the vague characteristics are the ones discussed in the 1st paragraph. The basic point is: there is agreement on some vague points (cognitive success & epistemic contact) but the disagreement starts as soon as you look closer. Maybe there is a better way to get this message across. Phlsph7 (talk) 14:09, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

The updates look great!

• "It" looks better now, but I agree it's a tradeoff. I lean towards disambiguating it given how early it is in the article.
• "Most important" works better with the qualification.
• Interesting. I'm surprised that there is relatively little on those topics, but I appreciate the two examples. In this case, agree to leave as is. The last paragraph of #Definitions seems to work, and the wiki links will probably be sufficient to satisfy further curiosity.
• Thanks for pointing me to the talk page. It seems there wasn't a solution for the lead that satisfied everyone, but the general concerns were (1) starting with a general enough definition, but at the same time (2) not neglecting serious concerns with it. Do I understand that right? Since I can't comment on the content here, I'll just point out that MOS:LEAD says the lead is an "introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents" which to me would suggest the weight placed on the items in the lead should match the weight placed on them in the article.
• I would consider replacing "five senses" with "senses" throughout. (The wiki link redirects there anyway). I'm not bothered but people may complain. The only caveat to this suggestion is this: the five "main" senses tend to refer to distal objects, whereas so-called "other" senses include internal things like vestibular information or muscle tension, etc. I know that "introspection" plays a role in this article, and I have no idea whether introspection would include such things. So I'm qualifying. Under ###Self-knowledge, the article refers to an “inner sense” but doesn’t comment further on whether that includes things like the vestibular sense.
• I'm still scratching my head with "general but vague characteristics" in the article, but your explanation here is very helpful. What about something like "there is general agreement about the characteristics required for knowledge, but there is disagreement about exact definitions."

Overall it looks great. I'll move on to further sections. GuineaPig_C77 (𒅗𒌤) ☕ 04:46, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

The discussion on the first sentences started at Talk:Knowledge#Opening_statement. There, the main question was whether the lead should start with a general characterization or with the justified-true-belief account. We managed to get a consensus at Talk:Knowledge#Issues_with_the_lead where we settled on the exact formulation of general characterization in the 1st sentence and left the justified-true-belief account for the 2nd sentence. I'm still open to making changes to it if we are both relatively certain that they are improvements. But if we are not, it's probably better to leave it as it is.

Concerning the five senses: that's a good point. I left two mentions of "five senses" where it seemed helpful to make it more concrete and where it was not implied that they are the only forms of perception. The Stanford article qualifies this expression as "Our perceptual faculties include at least our five senses" but does not go further into the issue. Introspection is usually restricted to knowledge of mental states which would exclude things like muscle tension. But the discussions in the academic literature are often not explicit on this point or how exactly the "inner senses" fit into this picture.

I've tuned your expression about the "general characteristics" somewhat. I hope we are moving slowly in the direction of a workable sentence here. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:33, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

The "general characteristics" sentence works for me! Regarding the first few sentences of the lead, apologies I think I missed the flow of the discussion and didn't understand that there was already agreement. Let's leave it. Re five senses, the changes look good! GuineaPig_C77 (𒅗𒌤) ☕ 09:39, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

• #Justified true belief paragraph 2. "many true beliefs do apparently not amount" is awkward - perhaps typo? Otherwise this section seems clear in my opinion.

GuineaPig_C77 (𒅗𒌤) ☕ 09:52, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

I made the corresponding change, have a look if it's better this way. Phlsph7 (talk) 21:30, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

That works!

• Gettier problem and alternatives, paragraph 1. “factive mental state operator” is difficult - I wonder if there is a relevant wiki link that could be added nearby? Or perhaps a brief gloss in a footnote like the one in the subsequent paragraph for "defeaters".
• Gettier problem and alternatives, paragraph 2. "through a defect, flaw, or failure" is in single quotes - is that intentional?
• Types. This makes "cognitive success" clearer.
• Propositional knowledge, paragraph 1. I don't know the word "know-wh" but I'm guessing it is a general term for things like "know-who" or "know-where" etc.?
• General. Is there a difference between "apriori" vs "a priori"?
• Overall the Types section is very clear. (and fascinating!)

GuineaPig_C77 (𒅗𒌤) ☕ 02:42, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

• Good that you spotted this difficult term. I've added a footnote but it's a difficult term so the footnote is rather long. An alternative would be to just put the term "most general factive mental state operator" into quotation marks without the footnote to signal to the reader that this is a specific technical term or maybe remove it altogether.
• Concerning the "through a defect, flaw, or failure": I couldn't find this quote in the source so I removed the claim. Blackburn is a virtue epistemologist so we might be able to come up with something similar. But we already have a couple of examples in the previous sentence, so this is not that important.
• You are right about the meaning of "know-wh". I've added some italics to make this clearer. This expression is used in the knowledge-article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• "apriori" and "a priori" are just two different spellings. I changed all to "a priori".

Phlsph7 (talk) 09:19, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

The "factive" footnote is very helpful and works for me. It seems likely that a non-expert will read this footnote so I think it's worth including. Yes! The italics make it clear that it's technical and I think that works better. All sounds good.

• #Sources of knowledge Overall this section seems very clear.
• #Sources of knowledge, paragraph 1, sentence 2. Replace "Different" with "Various"?
• #Sources of knowledge, paragraph 1. I think the first sentence could be improved. It says "Sources of knowledge are ways how people come to know things or how knowledge is created." One issue is that I think the word "how" could be removed for brevity, but also, it seems odd to say that a "source" is a "way". Not sure.
• #Sources of knowledge, paragraph 3. "it is accessed through a special form of remembering" This is intriguing, is there a wiki link that could go nearby?
• #Structure of knowledge. Clear and followable. Perhaps the figure size could be reduced a bit since there isn't too much fine detail?

These are all minor things; I'll keep moving through. GuineaPig_C77 (𒅗𒌤) ☕ 09:28, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

• #Philosophical skepticism, paragraph 1. I think "right now" pushes agains the 4th wall. Would something like "in that moment" work just as well?
• #Philosophical skepticism, last paragraph. In the sentence "In this case, the skeptic only has to show that no belief is absolutely certain, that while the actual belief is true, it could have been false." can we put a colon after "certain" instead of the comma?
• ##Science. "Science, and the nature of scientific knowledge have also become the subject of philosophy." I would either remove the comma after science or add one after knowledge.
• ##Science. I think of biology as a hard science, but I'm not aware of any objective list.
• ##Anthropology. "how people ascribe truth values to meaning contents even if some of them are mistaken". The expression "meaning contents" is unclear to me.
• ##Anthropology. Last paragraph of article. Gentle re-working of first sentence: "An important finding is that individuals belonging to the same social group usually understand things and organize knowledge in similar ways to one another."

Phlsph7 this is an outstanding article. I haven't been an editor long enough to have a feel for the FA criteria, but as a reader of the encyclopedia I think it's among the best there is. GuineaPig_C77 (𒅗𒌤) ☕ 10:57, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

I hope I got all the points you mentioned. The "how" sounded more natural to my ears in the "Sources of knowledge"-sentence so I left it but I included a characterization of them as rational capacities to put less emphasis on them being "ways". Again, thanks so much for all the effort you put into this section-by-section review and for the many helpful and detailed suggestions! I hope the article is now in a good shape for the GAN. Phlsph7 (talk) 13:11, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

All the changes look great! Thanks again for inviting me to take part, I do think this is easier to understand for the non-expert. I'm not sure if you have more in the pipeline, but always happy to take a look :-) Best wishes for GAN! GuineaPig_C77 (𒅗𒌤) ☕ 04:53, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

I already feel guilty for asking: I just finished the new article Schramm's model of communication and I was going to start the peer review tomorrow or the day after. This one is not as ambitious as it's smaller concerning both the topic and the article size. Your feedback would again be very much appreciated. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:29, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Haha no need! I'm in! As before, I'll probably need a few days before I can read carefully, but perhaps that'll be about the time you're ready to post for review. GuineaPig_C77 (𒅗𒌤) ☕ 11:42, 30 October 2022 (UTC)