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From: fostel@eos.ncsu.edu (Gary Fostel)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Consciousness
Message-ID: <1990Nov9.202525.11717@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Date: 9 Nov 90 20:25:25 GMT
References: <10126@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> <1990Oct27.070636.4144@wam.umd.edu> <5891@suned1.Nswses.Navy.MIL> <1990Nov9.180404.8915@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
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Reply-To: fostel@eos.ncsu.edu (Gary Fostel)
Organization: North Carolina State University
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  I looked up Kuhn's "definition" of science, wondering if cog. sci, 
  AI or related subjects would fit.  Kuhn is also a post World War II
  philosopher of science, and his definition (beginning of chapter 2 in 
  "Structure of Scientific ..." is delightfully recursive.  I don't have it
  here at hand, but paraphrasing it (hopefully accurately) he say that 
  science is that research activity that follows or builds upon previous
  scientific achievements. (!)

  By this sort of definition, a great many things can get bootstrapped up
  as a "science" and then stay a science by satisfying only a very weak
  membership test later on.  This is actually a fairly good match to the
  modern usage of the term "science", but it is descriptive, not proscriptive.
  In that book he is clearly describing how things are rather than how they
  ought to be.  

----GaryFostel----                   Department of Computer Science
                                     North Carolina State University