Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: lupton@luptonpj.demon.co.uk (Peter Lupton)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!MathWorks.Com!news.duke.edu!convex!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!pipex!demon!luptonpj.demon.co.uk!lupton
Subject: Re: Is Common Sense Explicit or Implicit?
References: <357hml$jgv@mp.cs.niu.edu> <292384118wnr@luptonpj.demon.co.uk>
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Date: Sat, 17 Sep 1994 13:56:08 +0000
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In article: <357hml$jgv@mp.cs.niu.edu>  rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
> 
> In <292384118wnr@luptonpj.demon.co.uk> lupton@luptonpj.demon.co.uk (Peter Lupton) writes:
> 
> >Common sense - Implicit or Explicit? Marvin Minsky 
> >asks us to suggest classifications other than 
> >explicit/implicit. I would like to suggest the notion of 
> >knowledge and understanding and common sense being 
> >"use-bound". This is not intended to be all or nothing - 
> >knowledge and understanding may be use-bound/non-use-bound 
> >more or less.
> 
> You go on to explain what you mean by use-bound.  I am not sure the
> explanation is satisfying, but I will skip that for the moment.  You
> have not adequately defined "non-use-bound" and I could not find any
> examples of non-use-bound knowledge.  Would that be the same as
> useless knowledge?  Does it even deserve to be called knowledge?

My ability to do arithmetic, for example. This can be used in all sorts
of ways: to check whether I have enough money in a shop, to work out
what change I should get, to say how long the rest of a journey will take,
how many miles a town is away, whether we will need another tank of petrol
and a myriad other uses ranging from the hum-drum to advanced 
mathematics.

My definition was: 

use-bound - being intertwined with and not readily available 
                  except in the context of a specific use.

It should be clear that my ability to do arithmetic is *not*
"intertwined with a specific use" *is* "readily available"
for all sorts of uses. That is, it would be a fairly extreme
case of *not* being use-bound.
 
One could also imagine, in contrast, a person that could only perform
arithmetic in, say, the context of shopping and money. Such an individual
knows arithmetic all right - but only in a use-bound way.

Again I stress that these are extreme cases - whether something is 
use-bound or not is a matter of degree. I would not like to leave any-one
with the mistaken idea that I can only think in terms of yes and no.

-------------------
Peter Lupton
