[xmca] The distinction between "information" and "knowledge" A response to Brandom

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Andy, Arthur
Ingold has an interesting position on the giving and asking for reasons.
Ingold suggests information may be communicated in propositional form from
generation to generation. But for Ingold information is NOT knowledge nor do
we become any more knowledgeable through accumulating information. Our
"knowledgeability consists in the capacity to SITUATE such information
within the context of a DIRECT PERCEPTUAL ENGAGEMENT within our
environments. Ingold emphasizes, we develop this knowledgeability not
through gathering information but rather by having things SHOWN to us in
order that we "experience" by touch, taste, smell, hearing, seeing, by the
other person so it can be apprehended directly. In that way the world is
revealed or DISCLOSED bit by bit to the novice. Ingold refers to this
process as an EDUCATION OF ATTENTION [borrowed from Gibson]. Through the
fine-tuning of perceptual SKILLS the relational contexts of the perceiver's
INVOLVEMENT dwelling in the world are not so much constructed as discovered

A very interesting stance on "information" and "knowlege"

The term "environment" is contrasted with "nature"  We are INVOLVED and
ENGAGED within environments but we take a stance of distance FROM "nature"
Ingold is critical of the phrase "natural environment" as conflating two
very distinct notions.

Larry
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