Kevin S. Van Horn wrote:
> Since we as humans do engage in successful induction all throughout our lives
> (learning language, learning to understand what we see and hear, etc.), we must
> therefore be born with significant prior knowledge wired into our brains. The
> interesting question now is, what exactly is that prior knowledge with which we
> are born, and where does it come from?
I know this is getting off topic so I will keep it brief (although I
guess the 'damage' has already been done!)
Kevin's suggestion that we are born with significant prior knowledge is
the essence of the Locke-Leibniz debate in philosophy. Essentially, the
debate centres around the issue of whether we are born with inate
knowledge such as the proposition {not(A and not-A)} which Locke holds
to be a fundamental truth of the Universe (I guess that makes him an
Aristotlean!!!). Locke holds that we are born with such inate knowledge
(probably as a gift from his God) whereas Leibniz believes this
knowledge is learned through experience(observation). Personally, I tend
to side with Kevin on this one...it's wired into our brains.
Take for instance a simple logic gate (say one of the trillions in your
computer right now!). It is a hard-wired (ie a physical manifestation of
a) logical function mapping from inputs to outputs. If you take the gate
on its own - without inputs or knowledge of physics - it is a
meaningless set of wires and connections. Take the inputs without the
gate and they are just signals. (This is analagous to Kevin's example on
the sequence x_1, x_2,...x_n: without the mapping
P(x_i=H|theta=t),P(theta=t)=f(t), the sequence is a useless data set).
Now, consider the signal and gate together and we see something that can
display logical reasoning. Where is the knowledge in this system. It is
not in the signal alone (which would suggest it could be learned through
observing the signal), nor in the gate (which would be akin to inate
knowledge in the brain), but rather the 'knowledge' exists in the
conjunction of the two systems. Evolution then offers a good explanation
of how our brains became wired to display knowledge that appears innate
(ie, couldn't be learned from observation).
This is not a praticularly rigourous arguement and perhaps one day I
should formalise it (if that's even possible!). It does however get me
through the day without having to question why I am able to know things
or perform logic.
Regards,
Tim Wilkin
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Tim Wilkin / \ Ph: +61 3 9905 9672
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CRC for Southern Hemisphere Meteorology, Monash Univ
School of Computer Sci. & Software Eng., Monash Univ
Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre
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