Common-knowledge is a human-made framework of shared information — facts, assumptions, and practices held as known by a community without requiring formal verification. Its parameters are: (1) shared — known by multiple members of a group; (2) unverified — held without systematic proof or authoritative sourcing; (3) assumed — treated as background rather than contested. It persists through social reinforcement: repeated assertion, teaching by example, and the expectation that others also know it. [formal: communis cognitio | substrate: mind | horizon: a life | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.91]
Accepted ontology entry
common-knowledge
Common-knowledge is a human-made framework of shared information — facts, assumptions, and practices held as known by a community without requiring formal verification. Its parameters are: (1) shared — known by multiple members of a group;…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made framework of shared information — facts, assumptions, and practices held as known by a community without requiring formal verification. Built to persist through social reinforcement and repeated assertion across a group.
Names and aliases
- common-knowledgeen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
No accepted relations in this direction.
Relations to this entry
- cmrvru9pn02642cei2uhuh6ab← DEPENDS_ON
Folk theories build on the shared baseline beliefs of a community. Remove common-knowledge (the pool of unverified shared beliefs) and folk-theories have no material to elaborate — they are precisely folk elaborations of common-knowledge. The removal test passes at the object level: without shared background knowledge, the folk-theory mechanism has nothing to work with.
- cmrmpithv016wd1nlzmhff5we← DEPENDS_ON
Removal test passes: folklore needs common-knowledge as its raw material — without the community's shared baseline beliefs, traditional stories and customs lose meaning and context. Folklore is elaboration of common-knowledge, not independent of it.
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 22, 2026, 8:03 AM UTC
- Content hash
- b71e4fe1c0d686ee9baf377152133bd5498f484829a6fb9fc839f81394c24af5