Path: utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!scs!spl1!laidbak!att!pacbell!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!AI.AI.MIT.EDU!NICK
From: NICK@AI.AI.MIT.EDU (Nick Papadakis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: [BOCK@INTELLICORP.ARPA: Objective standards for agreement on theories]
Message-ID: <19880604050241.1.NICK@INTERLAKEN.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: 4 Jun 88 05:02:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: INTERLAK.19880604050241.1.NICK
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 18
Approved: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu

Date: Fri, 3 Jun 88 16:06 EDT
From: Conrad Bock <BOCK@INTELLICORP.ARPA>
Subject: Objective standards for agreement on theories
To: ailist@AI.AI.MIT.EDU


Those concerned  about whether theories are given by reality or are social
constructions might look at Clark Glymour's book ``Theory and Evidence''.
It is the basis for his later book, mentioned already already on the AIList,
that gives software that determines the ``best theory'' for a set of data.
Glymour states that his intention has been to balence some of the completely
relativist positions that arose with Quine (who said: ``to be is to be
denoted'').  His theoretical work has many case studies from Copernicus
to Freud that apply his algorithm to show that it picks the ``winning''
theory.

Conrad Bock
-------