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Article 3965 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: petersow@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com (Wayne Peterson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Aristotelian Ontology and AI
Message-ID: <1992Feb24.163802.11622@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com>
Date: 24 Feb 92 16:38:02 GMT
References: <1992Feb21.213124.3895@a.cs.okstate.edu> <1992Feb22.191412.4446@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com> <1992Feb23.064940.14760@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Organization: Honeywell Air Transport Systems Division
Lines: 52

AZ = Antun Zirdum
WP = Wayne Peterson

WP:
>If we wait for science to tell us the answer to fundamental
>questions, we better live a long time and be very patient.  For
>science can never find the existential is and discern the is not.
>It is hopelessly lost in the shadows.
>
AZ:
How very true! But I do not see another option, nor have you proposed one.
What you are talking about is, to some extent, great literature, but as an explanationit is lacking.

WP:
Socrates proposed "Know Thyself"  Do you think that he felt it
possible or do you think he was cruelly setting his listeners up 
for failure.

Plato in his Republic presents his allegory of the cave.  You
are sitting chained to a bench watching shadows on the wall.
You have been doing this so long that you forgot you had a life
before you were chained.  When a compassionate soul helps
unbind you from the chains,  you get confused first because
you need to adjust to looking at the fire in the cave, then
because what you took for "reality" were only shadows on the
wall.  One shadow you thought was yourself.  Isnt that a shock as
you are so bound up in identitifying with the shadows of
time and space.  Of course once you turn and see the real
objects that cast the shadows, the shadows lose their appeal.
The people still bound will laugh at your discription of 
what you see for they only know the shadows, and became
even clever at predicting the movements of the shadows.  They
have much committed to there cleverness and do not want to
turn around.  You, of course lose your interrest in the shadows
only truth matters, and slowly you will adjust to the sun's
light and exit the cave.

Science is nothing more than studying the shadows,
AI is just another shadow on the wall that seems smart.

WP:
>"What good is science, It does not even know what happens to you
>when you die."   Bob Prokup  Science Student

AZ:
What happened to you before you were born?

WP:
I do not remember.

Wayne Peterson
"Life is just a painting on water."  Sarmad


