nelson_p@apollo.uucp (05/21/88)
Gilbert Cockton says: >The idea that there is ONE world, ONE physical reality is flawed, and >pace Kant, this 'noumenal' world in unknowable anyway, if it does exist. >Thus, to ask if the world would change, this depends on whether you >see it as a single immutable physical entity, or an ideology, a set of >ideas held by a social group (e.g. Physicists whose ideas are often >different to engineers). To the extent that we try to map the world onto the limited resources of our central nervous systems there is bound to be a major loss of precision. This still doesn't provide any basis for assuming that the world is not a physical entity, though why you choose to say a 'single' physical entity or why you feel that anyone has suggested that it is 'immutable' is unclear. Perhaps you could elaborate. What does this discussion have to do with computers and artificial intelligence? I think that this topic would go better in one of the 'talk' groups where fuzzy thinking (not to be confused with fuzzy set theory) is more appropriate. --Peter Nelson
rjc@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley) (05/24/88)
In-reply-to: nelson_p@apollo.uucp's message of 20 May 88 17:43:00 GMT >Gilbert Cockton says: >>The idea that there is ONE world, ONE physical reality is flawed . . >>Thus, to ask if the world would change, this depends on whether you >>see it as a single immutable physical entity, or an ideology, a set of >>ideas held by a social group (e.g. Physicists whose ideas are often >>different to engineers). > > To the extent that we try to map the world onto the limited > resources of our central nervous systems there is bound to > be a major loss of precision. This still doesn't provide any > basis for assuming that the world is not a physical entity, . . . I would like to suggest that at the centre of this disagreement is an ambiguity in the concept of 'reality' or 'the world'. The 'reality' which may or may not be out there, of which physicists try to build a model, which may be made up of quarks or wave functions or whatever is singular and immutable more or less by definition. The 'reality' which people confront in their day to day existance is something quite different; it contains chairs, elephants and some things ( for instance the british constitution ) which have no _physical_ existance at all and so exist only as social constructs. > What does this discussion have to do with computers and artificial > intelligence? I think that this topic would go better in one > of the 'talk' groups where fuzzy thinking (not to be confused with > fuzzy set theory) is more appropriate. > --Peter Nelson Any AI system must perform its function in the world of people's everyday experience. A system which modeled the world as a system of wave functions might make an interesting Expert System for a physicist, but it would not be able to cope with going to the supermarket to buy lunch.