Intentionality and defaults
Donald R. Perlis · 1991
The world is too complex to always correctly model it or algorithmize responses that are always appropriate to it. For bacteria it seems not to matter, they survive in sufficient numbers without having to deal with this issue. But we are not so lucky, or rather, we are lucky that we are not so lucky, since it has forced us to ev olve ways to deal with our own incorrect algorithms, namely, to postulate errors in our beliefs and, on detecting them, take corrective action. Yet to postulate error is to distinguish between error and supposed truth, and thus to recognize a sort of aboutness relation: the mistaken belief is seen as being meaningful (about some-thing) but getting it wrong somehow. I will consider the extent to which this capac-ity of distinguishing between error and supposed truth may confer advantages to a commonsense reasoner, including connections to the frame problem. I.