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From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Subject: Re: Is Common Sense Explicit or Implicit?
References: <357rmb$qof@mp.cs.niu.edu> <3580j4$mve@search01.news.aol.com>
Message-ID: <CwpKC2.Kn6@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: news@festival.ed.ac.uk (remote news read deamon)
Organization: University of Edinburgh
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 1994 23:09:38 GMT
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In article <3580j4$mve@search01.news.aol.com> drewdalupa@aol.com (DrewDalupa) writes:
>In article <357rmb$qof@mp.cs.niu.edu>, rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
>writes:

>I'm with Freud and Wittgenstein on this.  One can have purposes
>one is not aware of, and that others are aware of.  Under what
>conditions do we have privileged access to our real purposes?
>I think we simply have best evidence.  Our opinion about ourselves
>can always conceivably be shown to be in error.

Exactly. Where our purposes are not clearly known to us, and cannot be
made clearly known to us, our beliefs about our purposes are
knowledgeable rationalisations. In these cases our purposes are tacit.

Where our purposes depend on explicitly formulated beliefs, in the
sense that the explicit formulation engenders the purposive behaviour,
then our purposes are explicit.

Where our purposes are not at the time known to us, but can be shown
to depend on explicitly formulated beliefs of which we are not aware
at the time, then our purposes are (from the point of view of
conscious awareness) implicit. From the point of view of the whole
mind, conscious and unconscious, they are explicit. This
categorisation of knowledge depends on the presumed knower.

Common sense is usually implicit or tacit. Propositional modelling of
common sense captures the machinery in the implicit case, but in the
tacit case simply summarises the behaviour without capturing the
machinery.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
"The mind reigns, but does not govern" -- Paul Valery
