Common knowledge

Last updated

Common knowledge is knowledge that is publicly known by everyone or nearly everyone, usually with reference to the community in which the knowledge is referenced. [1] Common knowledge can be about a broad range of subjects, such as science, literature, history, or entertainment. [1] Since individuals often have different knowledge bases, common knowledge can vary and it may sometimes take large-scale studies to know for certain what is common knowledge amongst large groups of people. [2] Often, common knowledge does not need to be cited. [3] Common knowledge is distinct from general knowledge.

Contents

In broader terms, common knowledge is used to refer to information that an agent[ clarification needed ] would accept as valid, such as information that multiple users may know. [2] Assigning something the label of common knowledge requires certain considerations about the involved community, group, society and/or individuals, the time period, and the location. [1]

Variation

Defining something as common knowledge can differ based on circumstances because there are variations in what is considered common knowledge amongst different groups. [3] The variation can come from the time period, culture, population, class, age, demographic, and other circumstances. For example, the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution might be considered common knowledge among people residing in the United States of a certain age, but cannot be considered common knowledge when considering the general population of other countries.

Instability

Common knowledge is not always stable, and can shift over time to create new common knowledge. Knowledge that was once considered common knowledge amongst a group, society, or community might later become known as false. For example, for centuries it was common knowledge in Europe that the Sun revolved around the Earth, but after years of arguments, it is now common knowledge that the Earth revolves around the Sun. [4] [ clarification needed ]

Large scale

On a larger global scale, it is not possible to define almost any knowledge as common knowledge because it is difficult to know how far a fact has spread in global populations without large-scale global population studies. [2] For example, the current president of the United States might be considered common knowledge in much of the world because of the power associated with that position, but one cannot assume that there is global recognition of this fact as common knowledge without further research into the knowledge of global populations.

Common belief

It is hard to distinguish fact from belief and thus there are scholars[ who? ] who prefer to separate common knowledge from common belief. Common belief is something that is more easily defined because the requirement is only that a majority of people within a specific group, community, or society believe something to be true whereas common knowledge must meet this requirement and also prove that the belief is a fact.


Examples

Other settings

Many techniques have been developed in response to the question of distinguishing truth from fact in matters that have become "common knowledge". Techniques for how to shape common knowledge can vary through professional settings.

In legal settings, rules of evidence generally exclude hearsay, which may draw on "facts" someone believes to be "common knowledge". [5] The use of common knowledge in law varies between countries. [5]

See also

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conspiracy theory</span> Attributing events to less-probable plots

A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy, when other explanations are more probable. The term generally has a negative connotation, implying that the appeal of a conspiracy theory is based in prejudice, emotional conviction, or insufficient evidence. A conspiracy theory is distinct from a conspiracy; it refers to a hypothesized conspiracy with specific characteristics, including but not limited to opposition to the mainstream consensus among those who are qualified to evaluate its accuracy, such as scientists or historians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Controversy</span> State of prolonged public dispute or debate

Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view. The word was coined from the Latin controversia, as a composite of controversus – "turned in an opposite direction".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Falsifiability</span> Property of a statement that can be logically contradicted

Falsifiability is a deductive standard of evaluation of scientific theories and hypotheses, introduced by the philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934). A theory or hypothesis is falsifiable if it can be logically contradicted by an empirical test.

Philosophical methodology encompasses the methods used to philosophize and the study of these methods. Methods of philosophy are procedures for conducting research, creating new theories, and selecting between competing theories. In addition to the description of methods, philosophical methodology also compares and evaluates them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pseudoscience</span> Unscientific claims wrongly presented as scientific

Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; absence of systematic practices when developing hypotheses; and continued adherence long after the pseudoscientific hypotheses have been experimentally discredited. It is not the same as junk science.

Social epistemology refers to a broad set of approaches that can be taken in epistemology that construes human knowledge as a collective achievement. Another way of characterizing social epistemology is as the evaluation of the social dimensions of knowledge or information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nitrogen cycle</span> Biogeochemical cycle by which nitrogen is converted into various chemical forms

The nitrogen cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which nitrogen is converted into multiple chemical forms as it circulates among atmospheric, terrestrial, and marine ecosystems. The conversion of nitrogen can be carried out through both biological and physical processes. Important processes in the nitrogen cycle include fixation, ammonification, nitrification, and denitrification. The majority of Earth's atmosphere (78%) is atmospheric nitrogen, making it the largest source of nitrogen. However, atmospheric nitrogen has limited availability for biological use, leading to a scarcity of usable nitrogen in many types of ecosystems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ammonium</span> Chemical compound

Ammonium is a modified form of ammonia that has an extra hydrogen atom. It is a positively charged (cationic) molecular ion with the chemical formula NH+4 or [NH4]+. It is formed by the addition of a proton to ammonia. Ammonium is also a general name for positively charged (protonated) substituted amines and quaternary ammonium cations, where one or more hydrogen atoms are replaced by organic or other groups. Not only is ammonium a source of nitrogen and a key metabolite for many living organisms, but it is an integral part of the global nitrogen cycle. As such, human impact in recent years could have an effect on the biological communities that depend on it.

A belief is a subjective attitude that something is true or a state of affairs is the case. A subjective attitude is a mental state of having some stance, take, or opinion about something. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take it to be true; for instance, to believe that snow is white is comparable to accepting the truth of the proposition "snow is white". However, holding a belief does not require active introspection. For example, few individuals carefully consider whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow, simply assuming that it will. Moreover, beliefs need not be occurrent, but can instead be dispositional.

Empirical evidence is evidence obtained through sense experience or experimental procedure. It is of central importance to the sciences and plays a role in various other fields, like epistemology and law.

A non-monotonic logic is a formal logic whose conclusion relation is not monotonic. In other words, non-monotonic logics are devised to capture and represent defeasible inferences, i.e., a kind of inference in which reasoners draw tentative conclusions, enabling reasoners to retract their conclusion(s) based on further evidence. Most studied formal logics have a monotonic entailment relation, meaning that adding a formula to the hypotheses never produces a pruning of its set of conclusions. Intuitively, monotonicity indicates that learning a new piece of knowledge cannot reduce the set of what is known. Monotonic logics cannot handle various reasoning tasks such as reasoning by default, abductive reasoning, some important approaches to reasoning about knowledge, and similarly, belief revision.

Scientific consensus is the generally held judgment, position, and opinion of the majority or the supermajority of scientists in a particular field of study at any particular time.

Postdiction involves explanation after the fact. In skepticism, it is considered an effect of hindsight bias that explains claimed predictions of significant events such as plane crashes and natural disasters. In religious contexts, theologians frequently refer to postdiction using the Latin term vaticinium ex eventu. Through this term, skeptics postulate that many biblical prophecies appearing to have come true may have been written after the events supposedly predicted, or that the text or interpretation may have been modified after the event to fit the facts as they occurred.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Misinformation</span> Incorrect or misleading information

Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information. Misinformation can exist without specific malicious intent; disinformation is distinct in that it is deliberately deceptive and propagated. Misinformation can include inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, or false information as well as selective or half-truths. In January 2024, the World Economic Forum identified misinformation and disinformation, propagated by both internal and external interests, to "widen societal and political divides" as the most severe global risks within the next two years.

In artificial intelligence research, commonsense knowledge consists of facts about the everyday world, such as "Lemons are sour", or "Cows say moo", that all humans are expected to know. It is currently an unsolved problem in artificial general intelligence. The first AI program to address common sense knowledge was Advice Taker in 1959 by John McCarthy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Infinite regress</span> Philosophical problem

An infinite regress is an infinite series of entities governed by a recursive principle that determines how each entity in the series depends on or is produced by its predecessor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Data</span> Units of information

Data are a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted formally. A datum is an individual value in a collection of data. Data are usually organized into structures such as tables that provide additional context and meaning, and may themselves be used as data in larger structures. Data may be used as variables in a computational process. Data may represent abstract ideas or concrete measurements. Data are commonly used in scientific research, economics, and virtually every other form of human organizational activity. Examples of data sets include price indices, unemployment rates, literacy rates, and census data. In this context, data represent the raw facts and figures from which useful information can be extracted.

Aumann's agreement theorem was stated and proved by Robert Aumann in a paper titled "Agreeing to Disagree", which introduced the set theoretic description of common knowledge. The theorem concerns agents who share a common prior and update their probabilistic beliefs by Bayes' rule. It states that if the probabilistic beliefs of such agents, regarding a fixed event, are common knowledge then these probabilities must coincide. Thus, agents cannot agree to disagree, that is have common knowledge of a disagreement over the posterior probability of a given event.

Astrology consists of a number of belief systems that hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events or descriptions of personality in the human world. Astrology has been rejected by the scientific community as having no explanatory power for describing the universe. Scientific testing has found no evidence to support the premises or purported effects outlined in astrological traditions.

Dynamic epistemic logic (DEL) is a logical framework dealing with knowledge and information change. Typically, DEL focuses on situations involving multiple agents and studies how their knowledge changes when events occur. These events can change factual properties of the actual world : for example a red card is painted in blue. They can also bring about changes of knowledge without changing factual properties of the world : for example a card is revealed publicly to be red. Originally, DEL focused on epistemic events. We only present in this entry some of the basic ideas of the original DEL framework; more details about DEL in general can be found in the references.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Halpern, Joseph Y.; Moses, Yoram (1990-07-01). "Knowledge and common knowledge in a distributed environment". Journal of the ACM. 37 (3): 549–587. arXiv: cs/0006009 . doi:10.1145/79147.79161. ISSN   0004-5411. S2CID   52151232.
  2. 1 2 3 Geanakoplos, John (1992-11-01). "Common Knowledge". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 6 (4): 53–82. doi:10.1257/jep.6.4.53. ISSN   0895-3309.
  3. 1 2 Shi, Ling (2011). "Common Knowledge, Learning, and Citation Practices in University Writing". Research in the Teaching of English. 45 (3): 308–334. doi:10.58680/rte201113468. ISSN   0034-527X. JSTOR   40997768. S2CID   140445118.
  4. Theodossiou, E.; Danezis, E.; Manimanis, V.N.; Kalyva, E.M. (2002). "From Pythagoreans to Kepler: the dispute between the geocentric and the heliocentric systems". Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage. 5: 89–98. doi:10.3724/SP.J.1440-2807.2002.01.07. S2CID   256562413 via University of Athens.
  5. 1 2 Levi, Ron; Valverde, Mariana (2001). "Knowledge on Tap: Police Science and Common Knowledge in the Legal Regulation of Drunkenness". Law & Social Inquiry. 26 (4): 819–846. doi:10.1111/j.1747-4469.2001.tb00325.x. ISSN   0897-6546. S2CID   144058223.