: Re: Referring to machines and sensors as "knowing" I'm editing a technical text about autonomous systems. I feel the following sentence is anthropomorphizing a machine and also introduces some confusion

@Cooney417

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I don't see a problem with the use of the word "knowledge" in this context, but I do agree that there's some ambiguity about who should not have that knowledge - the function, or the person implementing it. That ambiguity can be eliminated thusly:

A clear separation of control and protection is possible if the safety-critical protection function can be specified and implemented without it having any knowledge of the workings of the control function.

It should be pretty clear that "it" refers to the function.

If you're dead set on removing the anthropomorphization, however, I think the most sensible alternative would be "information":

A clear separation of control and protection is possible if the safety-critical protection function can be specified and implemented without it having any information about the workings of the control function.

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