User:Kevin A P Kirchman

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.

Hello, I have a broad background in technology, especially the field of artificial intelligence and epistemology. I have two degrees, one from Cornell University, in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and one from the University of Georgia, in computer science. I have also attended the London School of Economics in their graduate philosophy program, after having spent 6 years in independent research in epistemology, two of them attending courses and reading in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

I realized many years ago that because the field of epistemology was still at a pre-science stage, few successful applications of artificial intelligence software could be developed. After more than 10 years of working on the problem, I wrote a book on epistemology. Subsequently, I founded a company which grew to 30+ employees, where we developed artificial intelligence software that was sold to many F500 companies, using the theoretical epistemological work I had developed, including new theories of concepts, validation, induction and deduction. In a sense, these commercial applications to real world problems validated the new outlook.

Epistemology as a field has as its purpose distinguishing knowledge from opinion, or ungrounded knowledge. A good theory of knowledge can help us each do that, whereas a poor theory does not aid us. As a concept of knowledge does not derive its epistemic stature from the number of nor qualifications of people holding it, a tolerant yet critical mind is important to ascertain not only the validity of old, common ideas, but also of new and different ones.

Thus I hope my contribution here will be to consider openly new ideas, to see if they are indeed unique and valuable contributions to knowledge, or simply different ways of saying the same thing as existing, acknowledged views. Because human knowledge is growing so quickly, it does not make sense to limit 'a new knowledge society' to only old knowledge. And, for fields such as epistemology and ethics, still in the pre-science stage, but of such importance to our societies, an open critical mind is the best way to explore emerging ideas that may promise breakthrough, without curtailing conceptual evolution.