Watson Descartes Said That What Term Paper

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Going back to Hume's idea that one can only learn from experience, it is interesting to consider some questions related to this topic. If one is to order an amazing cheeseburger made with Kobe beef and topped with gruyere cheese and heirloom tomatoes, then delicately set upon a freshly made roll, still hot from the oven, and taste this delicious burger, can that experience be related to someone (or Watson) and its delicious nature ever truly be known by the person (or thing) without ever really experiencing it? Hume would argue that one can't. Even if someone knew every single detail about this burger, the person would never have tasted it and thus there would be some knowledge lacking. That is, the knowledge would not be complete. This is where the human part comes in. The explanation of the details of this burger would mean nothing if the person hadn't indeed tasted it. That being said, as the burger's details were passed along to different individuals, even more of its true nature would be lost.

Plato's "Apology: In Defense of Socrates" is a sobering piece of writing as one of Plato's main themes is about man's wisdom and his erroneous belief that he does, in fact, possess wisdom. Even if man did possess great wisdom, Plato writes that it doesn't matter much in the course of the world. In "Apology," Socrates says that it was the oracle that said he was the wisest person in the world, but as it turns out, the oracle was just saying that he was like a wise person because he was able to see that he wasn't wise at all. Essentially, Plato's belief in this story of Socrates' apology is that when someone is touted as being incredibly wise, it usually means that he (or she) isn't, but rather, it is the people who are not considered wise at all that are usually the wiser.

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In thinking about Plato's "Apology" in terms of understanding the philosophical issues that arise with Watson, it can be deemed that wisdom is something that a computer could hold -- perhaps because of the sole fact that it can't experience. Watson cannot hold false beliefs about itself because it is not able to do so. It has the facts and that is it, it can not go around speaking about how wise it is. Plato said that the most ignorant people were the fools that went around telling everyone how wise they were. In "Apology," Socrates is sentenced to death, but he seems rather happy about it because he is very interested in learning who of the wise people who died were really, in fact, wise.

Reference

Fish, S. (2011). What did Watson do? Opinionator. New York Times. Accessed on September 29, 2011: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/what-did-watson-

the-computer-do/

Hume, D. (1947). Part II. Dialogues concerning natural religion. Ed. Norman Kemp Smith.

Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.

Lenchner, J. (2011). Knowing what it knows: selected nuances of Watson's strategy. IBM

research. Accessed on September 26, 2011:

http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.com/2011/02/knowing-what-it-knows-selected-nuances.html

Plato. "Apology: Defense of Socrates." (2010). Trans. David Gallop. Introduction to philosophy:

classical and contemporary readings. Eds John Perry, Michael Bratman, and John Martin

Fischer. 5th ed. New York: Oxford.

Zimmer, B. (2011). It is time to welcome our new computer overlords? The Atlantic. Accessed on September 26, 2011:….....

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