Through simulation, variability is accounted
for, relations are scrutinized, functional dependencies are
tested over a wide array of data critical to the performance of
new systems, or over a wide array of the people involved with
them. After heroically, and necessarily, separating from
philosophy and establishing its own methods, science is
rediscovering the need for the dimension covered by human
reasoning. This is, after all, what the subject matter of
artificial intelligence is and what it ultimately produces:
simulations of our capability to reason. In the same vein,
scientists are concerned with the metaphysics of the beginning of
the universe, and the language of the mind (lingua mentis),
evidently assumed to be different from language as we use it in
the framework of community, cultural, and national existence.
To reflect upon the beginning of the universe or upon the mind
means to constitute oneself, together with the appropriate
language, in a pragmatic context different from community
interaction, cultural values, or national characteristics. The
focus is changed from obsession with quantity to preoccupation
with quality. Qualities are pursued in the attempt to build a
science of artificial reality. As a scientific artifact, this
reality is endowed with characteristics of life, such as change
and evolution over time, selection of the fittest, the best
adapted to that world, and acquisition of knowledge, common
sense, and eventually language.
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