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From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Causality (was: Re: Can Machines Think?)
Message-ID: <11104@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 22 Dec 89 23:14:10 GMT
References: <6724@cbnewsh.ATT.COM> <5767@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <5610@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu> <4678@itivax.iti.org>
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In article <4678@itivax.iti.org> dhw@itivax.UUCP (David H. West) writes:
>In article <5610@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu> miken@rice-chex.WISC.EDU (Michael N.
Nitabach) writes:
>>metaphysical tradition, beginning with the British Empiricists, e.g. Locke
>>and Hume.  This is the view that causation is not an aspect of the world
>>which our mentality can recognize, but rather a schema which our mind imposes
>                         ^^^^^^^^^
>>on events with appropriate spatiotemporal relations.  A conceptually
>>opposite--Realist--stance would be that causation exists as an actual
>>attribute of certain pairs of physical events.  
>
>What, in this view, is "recognition"?   Is it fallible?

If we progress beyond Locke and Hume to Husserl, we discover that fallibility
may not be the appropriate question.  However we choose to characterize this
"recognition," the important point is that it is IDIOSYNCRATIC.  That is, each
individual mind imposes its own set of schemata on the perceptions it
experiences, including relations of causality.  The fundamental issue
of understanding then becomes one of how agent A, with his personal set
of schemata, can communicate with agent B, who may have quite a different
set of schemata.  This brings to mind the old joke about Wittgenstein asking
how a sunrise looked different to a man who believed that the sun was in orbit
about the earth.

Disclaimer:  These remarks are based on my first reading of Husserl's THE
CRISIS OF EUROPEAN SCIENCES AND TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY.  This is one
of those books which deserves, if not demands, multiple readings.  If I have
misinterpreted Husserl, I hope that I shall do better after my next reading.
Meanwhile, any supplementary comments will be greatly appreciated.

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