Posted by Reilly Atkinson on June 07, 1999 at 17:52:24:

In Reply to: Re: What is the difference between information and explicit knowledge? posted by Mezei on June 07, 1999 at 11:43:35:

As David Hume wrote a few years ago,"We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but tis in vain to ask, Whether there be body or not?

Naturally, in the quote (The Cambridge Companion to Hume, p37)one might well replace "body" by "whole". As old as mankind are the debate and concern as to whether there is a whole, which I suppose is equivalent to the universe, whether it is discernable, understandable, immutable and so forth. The current reasoning in these matters is highly sophisticated, based as it often is on the Quantum Theory and on neurophysiology. Sir Roger Penrose, very much a Platonist, has written a superb book, The Emporer's New Mind that attempts to give a theory of conciousness -- the holy grail of the new cognitive scientists. A different perspective on these matters is contained in Heinz Pagels' book, The Dream of Reason. (Heinz was a brilliant physicist who died much too early)

The work on the science of the brain and mind now allows us a remarkable detailed understanding of how human perception occurs -- and how it may be distorted. Allows one to think about questions like: is the universe, the whole, perceived by a green-red color blind person the same as that perceived by a person with normal vision? Similarly, Eric Kandel and his colleagues and competitors have, by means of brilliant experiments on the sea slug, have provided very convincing evidence on the elctrochemical basis of learning.

My point is that there is now, as there was not in Hume's time, an enourmous volume of empirically based knowledge on minds and brains. And, this knowledge begins to allow an increasingly empirical basis for epistomology, which could have very beneficial effects on the theory of KM.

A few more books: Steve Kosslyn's Wet Mind: The New Cognitive Neuroscience; Steve Pinker's book The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, Machinery of the Mind, George Johnson, and older book, but quite valuable in its extensive discussions of the relation of classical AI and human behaviour.

Finally, physicists have yet to come up with a common notion of the universe -- they have been working at it for some time.

In real life debates there are generally more than two perspectives. If the group does not arrive at a consensus, what is the whole?

The entirety of color vision is based on a triad of elements, stemming from the nature of the receptors in our eyes. As many Eastern philosophers, and Western scientists have suggested, a binary view of the universe is unduly simplistic. The fundamental components of matter are not particle/antiparticle, but rather electrons and quarks - which come in threes.

The debate as to Absolute knowledge is, for many of us physicists comfortable with quantum theory, over. As Louis MacNeice put it: "There ain't no universals in this man's town."(from a long and wonderful poem entitled Autumn Journal).

Reilly Atkinson

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Follow Ups:

• Whole vs. Coincidence ron dw 08:03:43 6/08/99 (4)
  • Re: Whole vs. Coincidence Reilly Atkinson 18:14:19 6/08/99 (3)
    • Good philosophical ontology? ron dw 09:19:25 6/09/99 (2)
      • Re: Good philosophical ontology? Reilly Atkinson 21:16:09 6/11/99 (1)
        • Re: Good philosophical ontology? ron dw 09:56:27 6/13/99 (0)

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