Re: Predictions of the Future...

Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu> writes (27 Feb):

> ... knowledge about where we want to go, and putting this knowledge
> into practice, may be the only truth we can count on.

Certainly the Values or criteria which help shape human decisions, and
reduce the effects of contingency and other indeterminacies, are powerful
factors in guiding and directing human affairs.  In trying to anticipate
outcomes, a knowledge of probable decision criteria - whether
authoritarian, democratic and the specifics thereof - will be part of the
calculation of disinterested observers, as well as within and between
states and multinational corporations, etc.

In order to account for goal-directed behavior and the role of values,
however, notions of knowledge and truth must be understood in operational
terms, and in models adequate to the complexities at work, as in
systems/cybernetic models.

Ref:   http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Einmag_Abstr/FGeyer.html

Bruce B-
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Bruce H. Buchanan       	          bbuchan@netcom.ca
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