Richard Loosemore wrote:
Ben,
I am not sure the question has been stated clearly enough to be
answered meaningfully, yet.
The list given by your correspondent was extremely vague: what does
it mean to talk about "an implicit set of constraints on ontologies
that can be discovered by systematic 'scientific' investigation"? For
example, there are things I can only perceive *directly* (whatever
that means) if they are in 3-D space, but "systematic scientific
investigation" allows me to think about spaces with other numbers of
dimensions, in all kinds of ways. Same goes for causality.
Having said that, I know what you mean at an intuitive level (and I do
believe there are built in biasses) but I think the problem is deeply
tangled up with what you think the machinery is, that is getting
biassed. I am not even convinced that the question can be properly
asked unless you can talk in terms of that machinery.
Well, off-the-cuff, here are some biases that can be stated without
reference to underlying machinery:
-- Assume perceptual inputs refer to a 3D space
-- Bias perceptual pattern search toward patterns among nearby percepts
-- Assume there will be persistent objects in the 3D space
-- Assume that imitation of percepts may be an effective strategy in
many contexts
And what is the boundary between an ontological bias and a lesser
tendency to learn a certain kind of thing, which can nevertheless be
overridden through experience?
There is no rigid boundary, of course, and won't be any complete and
comprehensive list...
Ben
-----
This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email
To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to:
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
