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From: tjhorton@utai.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: The nature of knowledge
Message-ID: <4069@utai.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Sep-87 05:41:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: utai.4069
Posted: Tue Sep 15 05:41:03 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 16-Sep-87 05:46:23 EDT
References: <1312@pdn.UUCP>
Reply-To: tjhorton@ai.UUCP (Timothy J. Horton)
Distribution: world
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 17
Keywords: truth knowledge belief absolutes certainty
Summary: guaranteed true facts and all that

>alan@pdn writes:
>Information can be stored and/or transmitted in [a] way that does not use
>"signs" and which can not be mistaken.  Photons that have bounced off
>or come through matter carry guaranteed true facts about that matter.
>Such information carriers are called "tokens", to distinguish them  from
>"signs", which can be mendacious

"Photons that have bounced off or come through matter carry guaranteed true
facts about the matter?"  Like the proverbial husband coming home late at
night, "Only if you know exactly where they've been."  Generally, when those
truthful little photons get to us mortals, all this is not metaphysically
available to us.
-- 
Timothy J Horton (416) 979-3109   tjhorton@ai.toronto.edu (CSnet,UUCP,Bitnet)
Dept of Computer Science          tjhorton@ai.toronto.cdn (EAN X.400)
University of Toronto,            {seismo,watmath}!ai.toronto.edu!tjhorton
Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4