SUO: RE: Re: automating abduction?
Who else but Chomsky could have gotten away with an "accounts for" that has
exactly the explanatory force of Moliere's "dormative power"?
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org
[mailto:owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org]On Behalf Of
Jon Awbrey
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2003 4:55 PM
To: SUO
Subject: SUO: Re: automating abduction?
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John, Rich, Tom, et al.
More old notes that bear on this topic --
| The human mind is a biologically given system with certain powers and
limits.
| As Charles Sanders Peirce argued, "Man's mind has a natural adaptation to
| imagining correct theories of some kinds .... If man had not the gift of a
| mind adapted to his requirements, he could not have acquired any
knowledge"
| (ed. Tomas, 1957). The fact that "admissible hypotheses" are available to
| this specific biological system accounts for its ability to construct rich
| and complex explanatory theories. But the same properties of mind that
| provide admissible hypotheses may well exclude other successful theories
| as unintelligible to humans. Some theories might simply not be among the
| admissible hypotheses determined by the specific properties of mind that
| adapt us "to imagining correct theories of some kinds", though these
| theories might be accessible to a differently organized intelligence.
| Or these theories might be so remote in an accessibility ordering of
| admissible hypotheses that they cannot be constructed under actual
| empirical conditions, though for a differently structured mind
| they might be easily accessible. (Chomsky, ROL, 155-156).
|
| Noam Chomsky, 'Reflections on Language',
| Pantheon Books, New York, NY, 1975.
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