The nature of knowledge

The generation of knowledge starts in the human mind, as the human being has to or wants to cope with his or her reality. From early on, the human mind responds to itself (thoughts respond to emotions and sensations, and vice versa) and at the same time to the outside world, which includes other human beings. Knowledge is the ability to do that well, as well as the result of those processes (it is both process and content).

One of the older defintions of knowledge sees it as "the adequateness of the things and the intellect". It starts from the realization that we human beings relate to our relate mainly through thinking and it expresses that that thinking brings us further in coping with reality the more it fits the reality around us.
The classic definition of knowledge as “justified true belief” bears the marks of this. It shows that there are three elements to knowledge: the content (belief: what is it you know?), the truth quality of the content (it makes a difference if you hold a certain content as possible, certain, plausible or impossible) and the true belief being justifiable (how else would you know it is actually knowledge?). as expressions of what goes on in the human mind, there is between these three elements a dialogic relationship: thinking about the truth of a belief may affect it, as may trying to justify the fact that you hold the true belief as knowledge may do, also expressing the content may have implications for the truth value and the way in which it is justified, if at all.
The three dimensions introduce the social element of knowledge. It is typically the use of knowledge in a social setting that prompts us to find the right expression of its content, attest to its truth and try to justify it to the best of our abilities. We do this not only because we like other people to be convinced of the knowledge; more often than not we do this because we like certain actions to follow upon our explanation.
This is not just a matter of rationality. The social element of knowledge requires that knowledge is not restricted to the conceptual, as if it could exist apart from human realities, in which emotions, consciousness, experiences play a significant role as well

Truth

The notion of truth appears to be somewhat out of style, as if most people these days feel uncomfortable to speak in terms of ‘truth’. Yet, truth is very much alive. We perhaps no longer use the term ‘truth’ that often anymore, but we can not avoid depending on something like truth; even when we do not always make that explicit. For, if a manager asks an accountant for an audit, he or she expects the resulting document to contain truth (or to deviate from what it). If the very same manager asks during lunch “Is there any soup left?”, then that manager expects an answer with a fair degree of truth; even if he or she thinks that the given answer is not truthful, he or she will treat truth as a norm. And at some point the tax authorities ask you to file your report and then you will have to sign that you do so “truthfully” (again, you may do so or not, but you will be confronted with the notion of ‘truth’). One might even wonder if cooperation and other kinds of social interaction are possible at all if we were not to use that notion.

One reason for the discomfort felt in talking about ‘truth’ may well be that it so easily is perceived as arrogant. Often that is either a mistake, or a statement which might discredit the believe-ability of the person making the statement. Still, looking at truth in different ways may show that the link with arrogance is far from necessary.

Truth is often about what is the case. However, it need not always concern what is actually the case. Something that is no more than a possibility can as such be a truth. And truth can pertain to a question (“I truly wonder, . . ”), to uncertainty (“I truly do not know, whether . . ”) or options (“it is true that the course of events can go in that direction, or in the other direction”).

Usually, three kinds of truth are distinguished:
• Subjective truth
• Intersubjective truth
• Objective truth

With subjective truth we are talking about statements and thoughts which are only for oneself true and need not be true for others at all. A statement such as “I regard this as a beautiful painting” means no more than that the person making this statement has a personal belief; the fact that he or she uses concepts wider than the personal belief, such as ‘painting’ and ‘beauty’ does not make the statement any less personal. Even if the statement is rephrased as “this is beautiful”, and thus takes on the form of an impersonal statement, it is usually clear that the speaker intends no more than expressing a personal belief. This says something about that person and has value for that reason, but as a statement it does not have meaning for anyone else.

 
Intersubjective truth concerns the kind of truth that has meaning and value within a given social group. This does not mean that the meaning of this truth is limited to that social group only; rather, there is a reality outside of that social group that the truth pertains to. The mistake (in my view) that is sometimes made is that agreements within a social group resulting in intersubjective truth are treated as no more than agreements; this disregards that there was a basis for making those particular agreements and a reality expressed through them. (This goed back to the philospher Kant, who convincingly argued that knowledge is about our ways of comprehending reaity, not about reality itself. He did not deny that the reality which is the object of knowledge exists, on the contrary, while certain modern philosphers, notably postmodernists, have mistakenly popularized his philosophy as meaning just that.) 
Let us for instance look at the truths offered by accountants. They are based on agreements made within the community of accountants (a community with many of such agreements, which are typically made explicit and are being taught through formal education and tested regularly). On the basis of those agreements the accountant can provide valuable information on the (financial) state of affairs of the organization, containing statements which are true within the social context of accountancy. This does not mean at all that the accountant in question has thought these truth up, alone or with other accountants. The information provided by the accountant and attested to be true by him does express what is actually the case in the organization, if he or she has done a good job, which also has meaning to others than accountants. Their truth is expressed according to the rules of accountancy, but the reality they express is by far not limited to the social context of accountancy.

With objective truth we are talking about truth that is valid always, independently from whoever discovers and formulates the truth. The truth of statements in this model of truth can always be checked by anyone, provided he or she has the proper training and facilities. This is, in short, the kind of truth that is independent of individual human perceptions and opinions.
We know this model from the sciences, where knowledge is sought of fundamental material realities, governed by “laws of nature”.  Still, also physics, especially since the developments in the 20th century, has to treat truth as related to human interactions and perspectives.

This model has perhaps become a bit too dominant in our thinking about truth. Those who refrain from using the notion of 'truth', typically have this meaning of it in mind. Their objections would be far less convincing if 'truth' were understood in the meaning of 'intersubjective truth'.


Within organization, we are usually dealing with intersubjective truth. Organizations consist of groups and form social structures on a regular basis. If within an organization, the legal people talk about what is the case, whether they explicitly use the term ‘truth’ or not, they
Base this on the many agreements that are of force within the legal world and use that to express something that also has meaning to people who are not in the legal world. The same goes for other groups within and around the organization.
Truth in the form of intersubjective truth can form a bridge between the abilities of a group to make sense of reality on the one hand and the shared reality on the other hand. This means that within organizations, ‘truth’ remains an important concept for as far as it is able to function as a bridge.
Sometimes it can be confusing when two notions of truth meet. It does happen that, for instance, someone from research and development, who is used to thinking in the scientific notion of objective truth has a hard time communicating with people from other parts of the organization, where intersubjective truth is much more relevant. Making expectations regarding knowledge and truth explicit is than quite helpful.

Truth and Culture

The intersubjective model of truth is presumably best fitting a situation of cultural diversity. The agreements which produce truths of this kind are often typical of groups with a cultural identity. Those agreements produce truths, which are relevant beyond the group from which the agreements originate, as the realities shared with other group will be more or less the same. Thus, truth can be a multi faceted thing, recognizable from many angles and with a core that is dependable.

Story

The Story of Lord Bommel and the Mushroom

Ethics and knowledge
There is a strong link between ethics and knowledge. Have you ever noticed that at universities often the same people teach ethics and epistemology? Maybe this is just because the same people become interested in both fields; maybe there is more to it than that.
The link appears to lie in the dialogic nature of knowledge. As knowledge is the result of the human interaction with his or her reality, especially with other human beings, the fairness and honesty of this interaction has implications for the results. This was already present in the dialogues of Socrates, who was seeking in them for the kind of insight that would lead to the morally right course of action (he did not pretend to have that insight or to know that course of action, merely that the inquisitiveness into it was important.)
Imagine a team involved in team learning. The members are professionals and dedicated to their company and the objectives of the team. But they are new in the team, which has only recently been formed, and they are careful. In the initial meetings they offer input, perhaps because not offering input would upset others and endanger their position. They agree with each other’s input, despite the apparent fact that some of the input conflicts with some of the other input. Does the input that is being collected consist of knowledge, even shared knowledge? Probably not. Perhaps this is not a problem, as perhaps the team members are at that moment primarily interested in familiarizing themselves with each other and that may be a worthwhile outcome. But if they expect to leave the meeting with knowledge, preferably knowledge they can act on next, they may have a problem. Perhaps later on, after they have familiarized themselves with each other and established a sense of safety with each other, they can be more real about the belief they express, the truths they hold, the justifications they see for the true beliefs and the value of the input of others. That is when dependable knowledge becomes possible, allowing people in groups to act on it and even to do so as a group.

An aspect that can also be seen with Socrates is, whether you can act in a certain way once you have the knowledge that would inform you of the negative impact of that course of action, perhaps even compared to alternative courses of action. In Aristotle, much of ethics is about the ability of an individual to find a balance between alternartive courses of action. The two sides of ethics that are derived from this are strength of character (virtue) and insight, which both make the choices between courses of action possible.

Later, medieval, thinking, strongly depending on Aristotle, turned this into the question: "how can you act immorally once you have the right insight?". In modern days, this sounds problematic (who dares speak of "the right insight" these days?), but are we not still using the assumption behind the question: once you know what is right, you should act on it?

The passion of Communities of Practice

In more and more companies we see interesting developments around communities of practice (COP's). In those COP's, people from all over the world and typically working in the same company (there are some new developments of COP's including external stakeholders) share knowledge and deal with issues around the subject that is at the focus of the COP they are in. In most cases, this is supported by a dedicated and restricted website and other increasingly sophosticated tools.

However, the factor determining succes for the COP's may well be of an entirely different nature: passion. If you look at the subjects of the COP's that are currently successful, they often are of a nature that is rather down to earth - such as "drilling at an angle" - and the issues discussed are very practical. What the members of such a COP have in common, apparently, is that they face similar challenges and that they recognize in each other a similar passion for the subject and its challenges; a passion that may not be shared by people outside of the COP, but drives the members of the COP to stay in touch with each other. It may even be that they do not trust colleagues who do not have that passion in quite the same way. Does this mean that managing a COP is partly a matter of being able to manage passion?