Defining Knowledge

by Maria Odete Madeira

If one makes the assumption that all living systems are cognitive systems, then all the living processes, as such, are cognitive processes (Maturana and Varela), with empirical evidence in the cellular organization (Morin).The value attributed to cognition imposes that one should know something about the term cognition, itself, whose Latin root is cognitio (cognoscere), and whose Greek root is gignwskw and gnwsiz, and in Sanskrit is jnana with the (co)meaning of conjoint captation and comprehension. The Indo-European common trunk allows the relation between the term gnwsiz and the term genesiz, which allows, equally, the signaling and codification, in the definition of the term cognition, of a constitutive genetic sense that attributes to it a replicative value. In this way, each cognitive act envisions its own replication.In this sense, it is pertinent and consistent the statement that the knowledge is a presence or existence (ousia, dasein) that proposes and exposes something or some thing (Heidegger), thus understood, the knowledge is aletheia (entbergung, to come to presence).