Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!apollo!nelson_p@apollo.uucp
From: nelson_p@apollo.uucp
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: RE Social Construction of Reality
Message-ID: <3c2b0d98.44e6@apollo.uucp>
Date: 20 May 88 17:43:00 GMT
Sender: user@apollo.uucp
Lines: 23
To: comp.ai@news


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