I don’t think in the context of this discussion that it does beg the question.
The point I was discussing was whether we really mean the same thing by “knowledge in a book” and “knowledge known by an agent”. My argument is that the phrase “knowledge in a book” is just a notational shorthand for “knowledge some implied agents can be expected to gain from it”.
If this is a reasonable position, then “knowledge in an object” is not a property of the object itself. Examining how it is present there is making a probably erroneous assumption that it is there to be found at all.
The question does remain about how knowledge is represented in agents, and I think that is the much more interesting and fruitful meat of the question.
I don’t think in the context of this discussion that it does beg the question.
The point I was discussing was whether we really mean the same thing by “knowledge in a book” and “knowledge known by an agent”. My argument is that the phrase “knowledge in a book” is just a notational shorthand for “knowledge some implied agents can be expected to gain from it”.
If this is a reasonable position, then “knowledge in an object” is not a property of the object itself. Examining how it is present there is making a probably erroneous assumption that it is there to be found at all.
The question does remain about how knowledge is represented in agents, and I think that is the much more interesting and fruitful meat of the question.