990113 1958 - Opinion poll B XVI Results after 1 day

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Von: ed.s@sfnet.com <ed.s@sfnet.com>
An: Multiple recipients of list <kant-l@bucknell.edu>
Betreff: RE: OPINION POLL B XVI: RESULTS
Datum: Mittwoch, 13. Januar 1999 20:08

Thanks to Prof. Bettoni for his reply on this topic.

> Typical questions in this task could be ( Ref. Humberto Maturana,
> "Explanations and Reality", Talk in Heidelberg, October 18, 1992):

> 13. "Do I own the truth ?"
>
> Marco C. Bettoni
> Assistant Professor for Artificial Intelligence

> # "If you own the truth, you cannot reflect upon it" (H. Maturana)

So in a naive cognitive system in which one defines 'percept' (concrete) and
'concept' (abstract) (neither of them traditional observables, but both
arguably necessary to observation), and one says "when percept conforms to
concept, there is truth in the act of knowing", one immediately finds room for
"goodness of fit" which may be formalizable in the sciences, classical or
quantum. Perhaps this is the ground of Novin's interest in statistics, for
instance.

> To answer that Kantian question, this is the FUNDAMENTAL TASK. Kant
> has already solved it. But after him the desert.

So the desert amounts to a failure to find any other suitable approaches to
that question, or to go "beyond" his hypothesis and the work of the CPR?

> I think that the FUNDAMENTAL TASK of any cognitive science and
> philosophy of science should be:
> 1) to accept the question about the relation between knowledge and
> reality
> 2) once the question is accepted, to explicitly reflect upon the
> relation between knowledge and reality.
> This means reflecting upon the relation between "Vorstellung" and
> "Gegenstand", between model and original (referent), between
> observer and things independent from the observer.

One of the first things to do, it seems to me, would be to reflect upon
reflection, for that seems to be implicit in the stated ground of the TASKs.

Regards,

Ed Severinghaus

"If I don't own my own truths, do they own me?"