Formal Learning Theory

Disputes about human nature inevitably evolve into disputes about the acquisition of knowledge, since the core issue in each controversy is the interaction of environment and human genetic endowment. Over the past two decades, a novel approach to this interaction has been developed by automata theorists and mathematicians. Within this approach, the impact of experience on the emerging competence of an organism is construed as a species of functional dependency. Using methods proper to the theory of computation, this construal has yielded mathematical insights that occasionally permit speculation about the acquisition of competence to be cast in sharper terms than heretofore. This cluster of related mathematical results has come to be known as (formal) learning theory. 1

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