From a formal point of view, knowledge can hardly be formalized, systematized, and accurately described in general. The very understanding that such knowledge depends on a particular person, on the level of his education, life experience, profession, mental characteristics, emotionality.
There are a lot of factors of knowledge perception. It is only essential and indisputable that this perception develops in time in the consciousness of one who perceives this or that knowledge. It is important to understand - knowledge can be presented to those who have perceived it and transferred it to another subject, but without guaranteeing the same accuracy of perception and understanding.
What connects people together in understanding the essence of knowledge?
The knowledge that a person needs for life, study and work is mostly perceived and understood by all people equivalently. To the trivial sentence: “Try to give examples of declarative and procedural knowledge”, both Russian, Chinese, and American will respond immediately, but if any of them has been a programmer for many years, there will be a problem with associations.
The profession leaves an imprint on a person’s perception, and the fact that this perception definitely allows a person may not be associated with such simple school concepts. It is doubtful that in this example a professional programmer will generally recall the word “procedural” and attribute it to knowledge, although before that he did not hesitate to complete the declaration of variables and wrote a function for transferring information from a site to a server. The specialist knows what it is, but there is no associative connection.
The meaning of the word "declaration" is not understood only by a child from kindergarten. Everyone makes declarations at the airport, at customs, in tax, but not everyone understands what declarative knowledge is.
Thus, an elementary school student and an adult to a simple question: “Give examples of their declarative and procedural knowledge” may simply not answer, but not because they do not know. First you need to first explain that declarative knowledge describes something, and procedural knowledge determines the algorithm of actions.
Representative declarative knowledge
There are many ways to describe an object, phenomenon, food product or machine. A search on the Internet for the phrase “declarative knowledge, examples” gives the following answers: “Any knowledge about the world that a person has conscious access to” or “Declarative knowledge is stored in the memory of the intellectual system so that it is directly accessible for use after accessing the corresponding field memory. "
It is said in both cases beautifully, but it has a weak relation to declarative knowledge. First, any knowledge of the world can be stated declaratively, even if it is by its nature an obvious algorithm. Secondly, what is the significance of the presence or absence of “informed” access.
Is the perception of information unconscious? But if the perception was unconscious (this is real), then how would it perceive precisely knowledge, and not a signal, not a sensation, not a reaction? So far, only science fiction writers can implant knowledge into the brain using complex mechanisms.
Thirdly, what is the meaning of the memory of an intellectual system? To call the program intellectual or not is a matter of imagination. In addition, today there is not a single software system that can be objectively called intellectual.
Views on Procedural Knowledge
Everything is more complicated here. The ability to fry fried eggs, the ability to open the door or wash oneself is not perceived as procedural knowledge. All this is so familiar and natural that he does not perceive all conceivable and inconceivable actions that a person usually performs as an algorithm.
All people are programmers by nature, but not everyone can write programs. And of those who know how to do this, there are even fewer programmers. If you simplify the situation and try among professional programmers to find those who can write a really object-oriented, completely recursive program at the level of each component, then these will be units.
In this case, reality does not pass through the barrier of familiarity and is not perceived as procedural knowledge, but if you just tell what the matter is, any person will give examples of declarative and procedural knowledge not only from their own experience, but on the example of any events, phenomena and circumstances.
Examples of declarative and procedural knowledge
The green apple is declarative knowledge. Football field too. But an apple can be not only green, but not an apple at all. To distinguish a real apple from a wax made, you will need to know how it looks in reality and other differences (smell, texture, shape).
With a football field more difficult. By defining a specific surface as a football field, you can make a mistake. A friend came from the city to the village and he was scheduled to meet on the football field. Naturally, he will look for a place where there are gates, stands and classic football markings.
Procedural knowledge:
- recipe;
- car assembly;
- writing an essay or verse.
In the latter case, everything is more complicated. You must have certain knowledge to write poetry. Under the terms, there are various requirements for rhyme or writing style.
It is always harder to make mistakes in an algorithm than in a description. Procedural knowledge is usually tested for performance. The declarative also requires verification, but which one determines the area of use of declarative knowledge.
For an artist displaying examples of such knowledge (a green apple and a football field) it is completely indifferent to what he paints. It is important for him to convey the form, color, proportions, to display what he sees. For the buyer in the market, a completely different value system. The shape and color of the fruit of the buyer is less worrying than his consumer qualities. For a person who has an appointment on the football field, criteria are important that allow you to make an unambiguous decision.
Programming and knowledge
The best criteria for declarative and procedural knowledge are axioms from the field of programming. Moreover, programming in the 80s of the last century in this context is more practical. In those days, the description of the data was clearly understood, that is: what is declarative knowledge. Any such description is clearly indicated: the computer never forgives mistakes.
Modern programming does not oblige the programmer to strictly declare what he intends to process, and in some cases, does not make any complaints at all if he described something wrong.
Procedural knowledge is always clearly regulated. The concept of syntax in the description of an algorithm or procedure is so important that without concrete conventions and notations it cannot be recognized as procedural.
Considering declarative knowledge, examples: “I know that ...” two points can be clearly formulated:
- an example is one thing;
- I know that ... is a completely different thing.
An example in most cases (in education, in production, in everyday life) is clearly defined and people who have an idea about it understand its meaning in the same way. A person who came to study, work or found himself in another place determines the meaning of the example in his own way, he has two ways: to insist on his own or to change his own opinion about concrete knowledge.
Intelligent Systems and Knowledge
Declarative knowledge as examples are descriptive parts of programs. This is not a description of variables, but a description of real data. For example, staffing, employee card, workbook, thanks and more. Any of these documents is real declarative knowledge.
Procedural knowledge, as examples, is functions (procedures) = algorithms of actions, and not necessarily sequential ones. Procedural knowledge is not always a recipe that should be performed sequentially.
Procedural knowledge is characterized by nesting, recursiveness, independence and interaction with their own kind. It can take into account declarative knowledge, but it would be more correct to say: procedural knowledge extracts from declarative only what it expects to receive.
With this option and the real state of things, declarative knowledge is an example of perfectly executed statics. As for the procedural ones, in this context they are always static. Any super-technological modern intellectual or expert system will not answer the simple to insanity question: "Try to give examples of declarative and procedural knowledge."
There won't be a classic blue screen from Windows, but so will the solution. The criterion for the intelligence of any program is not at all what the developer calls it, what rating it has made, but what this product can do beyond its imagination.
Probably, the history of programming is simply silent about the achievements of specialists and it will become known when the first systems appeared that manipulated knowledge on their own, and not in the way that was laid down by their author.
However, it is known that in the period of the next wave of interest in artificial intelligence, a program was created that imitated the situational stage of human intelligence ("Lisi"). The developer positioned it as a system of accumulating situational (declarative) and reproducing (procedural) knowledge and its independent application. What I learned, then I did.
Other developers had access to the system. The author taught her simple knowledge: “mom”, “ball”, “play”, “tell dad”, “round ball” and more. Colleagues decided differently and taught Lisi mathematics: 1 + 1 = 1; 1 x 0 = 0; 2 x 0 = 0.
All this has nothing to do with artificial intelligence, but still the fact is that a correct understanding of the essence of declarative and procedural knowledge allows them to be used more effectively. In addition, a clear indication of knowledge is important for people to understand each other.