# 1999/7/28
#=============#
# Tabula Rasa #
#=============#
Ayn Rand, "The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution", page 190
At birth, a child's mind is tabula rasa; he has the
potential of awareness -- the mechanism of a human
consciousness -- but no content. Speaking metaphorically,
he has a camera with an extremely sensitive, unexposed
film (his conscious mind), and an extremely complex
computer waiting to be programmed (his subconscious).
Both are blank.
Knowledge Explorer provides an initital knowledge unit,
at view = tabula_rasa
ready to receive new knowledge. It is "blank", but contains the
concepts which characterize the mechanism of a human consciousness
existent, entity, characteristic, proposition,
action, causality,
consciousness, volition,
knowledge, integrate, differentiate,
space, time, view
and the grammatical relationships of the knowledge representation
language, KR. For example:
at, with, from, to,
either, or, all, and, not,
is, has, do, isin, haspart,
changes, causes, means,
if, then, else, fi,
every, do, done
As a concession to practical efficiency, the tabula_rasa view
includes some commonly used concepts, e.g.,
animal, plant, object,
man (person), purpose,
live, move, birth, death,
number
and some less common concepts used by Knowledge Explorer, e.g.,
identify, perceive, classify, measure,
enumeration, requisite, sequence, set,
hierarchy, lattice, group,
file
Here's the final tabula rasa hierarchy.
The tabula_rasa view is augmented with a knowledge of the attributes
and actions of Knowledge Explorer.
Here's the description of Knowledge Explorer
and its attributes and actions.