Political Pragmatism

A reasonable and logical way of doing things or of thinking about problems that is based on dealing with specific situations instead of on ideas and theories. An approach to philosophy, primarily held by American philosophers, which holds that the truth or meaning of a statement is to be measured by its practical (i.e., pragmatic) consequences. William James and John Dewey were pragmatists. Pragmatism in common usage may mean simply a practical approach to problems and affairs. But it’s al...

 Defining "Uncertainty"

‘Uncertainty’ is a complex and multifaceted property, sometimes originating in a lack of information, and at other times from quite fundamental disagreements about what is known or even knowable (Moss and Schneider, 2000). Furthermore, scientists often disagree about the best or most appropriate way to characterize these uncertainties: some can be quantified easily while others cannot. Moreover, appropriate characterization is dependent on the intended use of the information and the parti...

 von Neumann Correctly Hypothesizes How Memory Works

The question of the physical embodiment of this memory remains. For this, various authorrs have suggested a variety of solutions. It has beeen proposed to assume that the thresholds—orr, more broadly stated, the stimulation criteria—^f or various nerve cells change with time as functions of the previous history of that cell. Thus frequent use of a nerve cell might lower its threshold, i.e. ease the requirements of its stimulation, and the like. If this were true, the memory would reside i...

 Children Have an Innate Ability to Learn Language

The fact that all normal children acquire essentially comparable grammars of great complexity with remarkable rapidity suggests that human beings are somehow specially designed to do this, with data-handling or 'hypothesis-formulating' ability of unknown character and complexity.