einkennis

Einkennis is a term used in discussions of knowledge theory and artificial intelligence to denote the internal repository of essential, readily accessible knowledge held by a person or a system. The word is a neologism that combines the Dutch word kennis (knowledge) with a prefix often used in technical discourse to signal internalization or embedding.

Definition and scope: In human cognition, einkennis refers to the minimal set of rules, schemas, and heuristics that individuals rely on to operate in familiar domains without recourse to explicit instructions. In artificial systems, it describes the learned parameters and architectural priors that encode tacit capabilities and domain competence, as distinct from explicit data stores or external documents.

Origins and usage: The term appears mainly in theoretical or interdisciplinary writings on cognition, learning, and human-computer interaction. It is used to highlight the contrast between what a system can perform from its innermost knowledge and what must be retrieved from external sources.

Relations to other concepts: Einkennis overlaps with tacit knowledge (Polanyi), procedural memory, and embodied cognition in humans, and with the weights or priors in neural networks in machines.

Criticisms: Critics argue that einkennis can be vague or redundant with existing terminology, and that clear definitions are context-dependent. Proponents say it helps clarify the boundary between internalized competence and externalized information.

See also: tacit knowledge, procedural memory, implicit learning, embodied cognition, neural network weights.