SUO: Re: Question about Example in KR Book
Radu,
See my previous note about genetic learning, individual
learning, cultural learning, and scientific theories.
Just a comment on your final paragraph:
> Now, if the only devices we have to access "reality" are flawed
> (senses), I guess that the reason to consider "reality" as the
> "world out there" to which we all have equal access is only a
> device that allows us to consider communication useful. Things
> can't be proven to exist or not (without making use of vicious
> circles).
Nothing in science can be proved with mathematical certainty.
Einstein expressed that point very well:
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are
not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer
to reality.
But Einstein definitely believed in the existence of a reality
to which our scientific theories provide a good, but not perfect
approximation for many practical and useful puposes.
> That is, like any other model, reality doesn't have to exist,
> only to be useful.
Reality is the only thing that is not a model. It is what exists.
All of our theories, to the extent that they are useful, are
approximations to reality.
John