The Idea

I am working on a new approach to creating knowledge management systems. An idea that I backed into as part of this work is the context principle.

Traditionally, the context principle states that a philosopher should always ask for a word's meaning in terms of the context in which it is being used, not in isolation.

I've redefined this to make it more general: Context creates meaning and in its absence there is no meaning.

And I've added the corollary: Domains can only be connected if they have contexts in common. Common contexts provide shared meaning and open a path for communication between disparate domains.

Possible Topics

I'm considering posting on how the context principle relates to certain topics. Right now I'm researching and collecting notes.

Possible topics to relate the context principle to:

• explicit and tacit knowledge
• theory of computation
• debate and communication
• rationality
• morality
• natural and artificial intelligence
• "emergence"

My Request

I am looking for general feedback from this forum on the context principle and on my possible topics. I have only started working through the sequences so I am interested in specific pointers to posts I should read.

Perplexed has already started this off with his reply to my Welcome to Less Wrong! (2010) introduction.