What we term communications, of all sensory sorts - the spoken or written word, images, sounds - including music, smells, tastes, touch - are not knowledge, but they are experiences.
Our mortal life is about experiences, and how we respond to them; so communications are very important. But we should not mistake communications for knowledge.
Why not? Well, that is obvious - in the sense that we have many generations of philosophical reflection that emphasise how unreliable are communications, that they cannot be relied upon for knowledge (or 'certainty').
This for multiple reasons - to do with limitations of cognition, of biased and incomplete sampling, of the multi-step nature of communications and so on. Some have concluded that therefore there is no possibility of knowledge - e.g. that knowledge is entirely subjective, based on arbitrary information, a matter of opinion, contingent, labile, uncommunicable etc.
But the inference that there because communication is non-valid therefore there can be no knowledge includes a false assumption - which is that only the material world exists...
We assume that this non-material world does not exist - but that is merely an assumption; furthermore a very modern and entirely Western assumption...
One implication is that when we personally are communicating, we are providing experiences for others - but we are not transmitting knowledge.
By contrast, when we are engaged in primary thinking we are engaged in direct knowing - and, because knowledge must potentially be universally accessible to be knowledge, others may also know directly what we know.
Thus knowledge is not communicated, and communications are not knowledge...
"Communications are experiences - not knowledge..."
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