Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!its63b!epistemi!edai!rjc
From: rjc@edai.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: this is philosophy ??!!?
Message-ID: <86@edai.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 10 May 88 00:06:52 GMT
References: <4134@super.upenn.edu> <3200014@uiucdcsm> <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <30502@linus.UUCP> <1069@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <1588@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Organization: AI Edinburgh Uni
Lines: 58
In-reply-to: acha@centro.soar.cs.cmu.edu's message of 3 May 88 19:05:06 GMT
Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.44.4 of Fri Oct  9 1987 on aipna (berkeley-unix)


In article <1069@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes:

> { that 'reality' is seen in some theories as  the negotiated outcome of 
>   social processes }

In reply acha@centro.soar.cs.cmu.edu writes

>You wish to assert that reality is a negotiated outcome of social processes ?

No he said that some theories said that and there are good arguments for 
them and AI tends to ignore them.

> Imagine Mr. Cockton, you are standing on the 36th floor of a building and 
> you and your mates decide that you are Superman and can jump out without 
> getting hurt.

Then there is something going wrong in the negotiations within the group!!

> By the 'negotiated outcome of social processes' claptrap, you really are 
> Superman.

Calling something claptrap is not a very good argument against it, 
especially when you are talking through your hat.

Saying that Y is the result of process X does not imply that any result
from X is a valid Y. In particular 'reality is the outcome
of social negotiation' does not imply that "real world" (whatever that is)
constraints do not have an effect. 

Peoples' view of the world is very restricted and so their model of how
the world really is is massively underconstrained; social and logical
norms are used to fill in the gaps. I have no proof that Australia exists
since I've never been there; I accept the picture of reallity which has 
developed in this society which includes the existence of Australia.

> Would you then jump out and have fun ?

If we decided that I was Superman then presumably there is good evidence
for that assumption, since it is pretty hard to swallow. _In_such_a_case_
I might jump. Being a careful soul I would probably try some smaller drops
first!

To say you would not jump would be to say that you would not accept that
you were Superman no matter _how_ good the evidence. Unless you say that the
concept of you being Superman is impossible ( say logically inconsistent with
your basic assumptions about the world ), which is ruled out by the 
presuppositions of the example ( since if this was so you would never come
to the consensus that you were him ), then you _must_ accept that sufficient
evidence would cause you to believe and hence be prepared to jump.




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