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Subject: metaepistemology
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Date: 25 Jun 88 19:25:00 GMT
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Date: Fri, 24 Jun 88 12:46 EDT
From: YLIKOSKI%FINFUN.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject:  metaepistemology
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In AIList Digest   V7 #41, John McCarthy 
writes:

>I want to defend the extreme point of view that it is both
>meaningful and possible that the basic structure of the
>world is unknowable.  It is also possible that it is
>knowable.


Suppose an agent which wants to know what there is there.

Let the agent have methods and data like a Zetalisp flavor.

Let it have sensors with which it can observe its environment and
methods to influence its environment like servo motors running robot
hands.


Now what can it know?


It is obvious the agent only can have a representation of the Ding an
Sich.  In this sense the reality is unknowable.  We only have
descriptions of the actual world.

There can be successively better approximations of truth.  It is
important to be able to improve the descriptions, compare them and to
be able to discard ones which do not appear to rescribe the reality.

It also helps if the agent itself knows it has descriptions and that
they are mere descriptions.


It also is important to be able to do inferences based on the
descriptions, for example to design an experiment to test a new theory
and compare the predicted outcome with the one which actually takes
place.


It seems that for the most part evolution has been responsible for
developing life-forms which have good descriptions of the Ding an Sich
and which have a good capability to do inference with their models.
Humans are the top of this evolutionary development: we are capable of
forming, processing and communicating complicated symbolic models of
the reality.


                        Andy Ylikoski