VirusWiki - weyken

Weyken

Weyken Wey*ken, n.: Data internalised as supportable knowledge with a sustainable provisional truth value ascribed to it through the medium of reasoning based on evidence (for example - and ideally, through the scientific method). OE weye, weigh or measure: ME kennen (influenced by Old Norse kenna, to know), OE cennan, to declare. Perception; understanding.

Also:

Weyken, tr. & intr.v.: The process of developing weyken.

Weyken System, n.: A group of coherent, related and mutually consistent weyken.

Aweyken, tr. & intr.v.: Realization of the benefits of having separate words to describe the very different processes (and possibly outcome qualities) involved in ascribing and establishing truth values via rational cogitation as opposed to naive belief.

Introduced: The Hermit, 2005 April (Letter based on the "Provisional Introduction" to follow)

Provisional Introduction

Words are important. Everytime we say "I believe the sun will rise tomorrow", we appear to provide "supporting evidence" for those who say "I believe in pixies" (or who believe in other wholly imaginary things - like gods). There is, of course, a qualitative difference between these classes of statement - Newton's laws underlie the first (no matter how erroneous the concept of "sunrise" may be), while the second are unsupportable in any rational sense. Yet, this distinction is in no way apparent when examining the statements in the absence of knowledge about the process of formulating them. Both seem to speak of belief.

While I weyken that those who tend to issue statements of the latter class are unlikely to follow an argument that a distinction is necessary, and suspect that those few who might, almost certainly disapprove of the intent of distinguishing between the rationally supported and irrational belief altogether. So if those given to the first class of assertions find such buried equivocations distasteful, then it is up to us to find a palatable solution. While this topic has previously been addressed on the CoV, and "belif" as a word to describe so called rational beliefs (WikiHelpWanted A link to the discussions with Eric (1998?) would be helpful here) was proposed as a solution. This had the, to my mind, dubious advantage of being an homonym. Dubious because, for people attempting to clarify a confusion of concepts, a homonym perpetuating and disguising the distinction - at least in verbal communication - and possibly taken as mere erroneous usage in written form, appears less than clear at best - and distinctly disingenuous at worst. At anyrate, despite the merits of the suggestion, the concept never seems to have taken off in any major way - even on the CoV. Weyken is an alternative proposition, hopefully with more general appeal.

Weyken may be perceived as a direct replacement for the words "believe", "belief" and "belief system" when used in circumstances where the belief asserted to is a consequence of the application of reason, preferably formal (as in the scientific method), and in particular when the reasoning results from the rational evaluation of available evidence for the truth value of the proposition in question. In other words, weyken provides a new word to separate the overloaded concepts of "accepting as true in consequence of evaluation" and "accepting as true in the absence or the face of evidence" carried by "belief." These overloadings appear to the originator as a primary cause of the confusion and equivocation of ideas and values based on reason, with those developed through religious, political, social or other strongly held convictions.