ONT Re: Inquiry Into Inquiry
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Subj: Re: Theory of Inquiry, Types of Inference, Missing the Bus
Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 16:56:28 -0400
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
To: Arisbe <arisbe@stderr.org>,
SemioCom <semiocom@listbot.com>,
Standardize Unto Others <standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>
CC: Cathy Legg <cathy@coombs.anu.edu.au>,
David Low <low@cdi.com.au>,
Arien Malec <arien_malec@yahoo.com>,
John F Sowa <sowa@bestweb.net>,
David Whitten <whitten@NETCOM.COM>
Inquiry SIG,
Here is the next installment in my analysis
of Cathy Legg's "Missing the Bus" paradigma.
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Note 3
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Subj: Re: Theory of Inquiry
Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 12:40:12 -0400
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
To: Peirce Discussion Forum <peirce-l@lyris.acs.ttu.edu>
Cathy,
This is part three in my syllogistic or "propositional constraint reasoning" (PCR)
analysis of your "Missing the Bus" problem. I quote your original statement for
the sake of our fellow travellers who are just now arriving at the bus stop.
| I guess I'm having trouble getting my head around how induction
| could play this sort of role, given that abductions arise when
| a phenomenon appears surprising and irregular. Would this be
| a possible example -- I'm waiting for my morning bus and it
| doesn't arrive: surprise. I then think -- in the past
| sometimes my bus hasn't arrived when it's a public holiday
| I've forgotten about: this case should be the same (induction),
| I then form the hypothesis that it is a public holiday (abduction).
I left off last time at the point where you were just beginning to
contemplate the possibility that your current situation might fall
under the case description of a public holiday, thereby explaining
the absence of the expected bus, and a hypothesis which, if true,
would reduce your affective sense of surprise at the accustomed
bus not being there at the place time that you were accustomed
to observe it.
Now, if you're like me, you might eventually think to look up,
and then to look around your surrounding neighborhood, to see
if you can observe any further evidence or any other naturally
occurring signs that might bear on your new hypothesis one way
or another.
This, of course, brings us to the deductive phase of our present inquiry.
And, equally of course, our immedately present phase of deduction must be
distinguished from all of those previous deductions, not to mention their
Promethean and Epimethean (fore and aft) bracketings by all of those previous
bits of abductive and inductive reasoning that went to make up what were no doubt
many previous cycles, and a multitude of parallel cycles, and a countless array
of epicycles upon our deferents to an inquiry that may be indefinitely deferred.
Well, after that importunate word from our spontaneity,
I think that it is due time to get back to our story.
We've all been waiting for this bus long enough!
I hope you will excuse me if I import a bit of my local color
and project it on your local situation -- what is the spatial
analogue of "anachronism"? -- since I do not know all of your
public holidays, nor even whether the ones we are likely to
share in common are celebrated on precisely the same dates.
But if I had been on a residential street here, through most of last week,
when this "missing of the bus" caper was alleged to have happened, I could
have looked up and looked around and seen all of the gaily colored balloons,
the flapping ribbons, and the many other festive decorations that were put out
on the houses and the trees by all of the neighborhood parents who were throwing
together to treat their collective broods to an Easter Egg Hunt. So that would
have served to confirm the hypothesis of a holiday, more or less, and perhaps
it may even have altered my sense of what was "best", "benign", "beneficial":
trudging off on my accustomed way, in pursuit of my habitual goal, or else
stopping to enjoy the signs of another custom, and even to follow them
but that is another story altogether!
Anyway, it behooves me to try to size up the present situation of inquiry.
Let me unfold the map again, and make a few additional notations upon it.
| A D (A)
| o o o
| \ /
| \ * * * /
| \ /
| \ * * * /
| \ /
| \ * * * /
| \ /
| \ * * * /
| \ /
| \ * * * /
| \ /
| \ * * * /
| \ /
| \ B * (B) /
| \ /
| \ * * * /
| \ /
| \ * H /
| \ /
| \ * * /
| \ /
| \ * * /
| \ /
| \ * * /
| \ /
| \ * * /
| \ /
| \*/
| o
| C
|
| Figure 2. Missing the Bus, Again
|
| A = Arriving bus situations,
| B = Best case situations,
| C = Current situation,
| D = Decoration situations,
| H = Holiday situations.
I think that this pretty graphically says what I've been striving to say
in the last thousand words or so, and I am tempted to leave it at that,
but temptations to desist, you will have observed, are the sorts of
temptations I can easily resist! So let me attempt to sum it up
all over again, this time once again in schematic symbols and
in more verbose but descriptive phrases.
Abduction of a Case:
Fact: C => (A), In the current situation, the bus is not arriving.
Rule: H => (A), If it is a holiday, the bus would not be arriving.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Case: C => H , Perhaps the current situation is a holiday.
Once again, the validity of this abduction as a form of reasoning, in the only way
that its form of non-demonstrative inference can be said to be valid, depends on the
validity of the corresponding deduction, from Case C=>H and Rule H=>~A to Fact C=>~A.
And it needs to be remembered that the utility of this deduction, which only concludes
what has already been observed, is that it reduces the surprise of that observation.
Deduction of a Fact:
Case: C => H , In the current situation, it is a holiday.
Rule: H => D , If it is a holiday, there will be decorations.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact: C => D , In the current situation, there will be decorations.
The inductive phase, in this situation, consists of looking up and testing
whether the prediction is observed. I have been studying for few years now,
and still remain a bit puzzled, as to how exactly this meaning of induction
fits in logically, if it does at all, with the other meaning of induction,
namely, of a non-demonstrative inference from a Case and a Fact to a Rule.
And that is just about where I came in,
And that is just about where I go out,
Jon Awbrey
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Inquiry SIG,
I will have to wait for the appropriate permissions from
my fellow non-travellers before I can reveal the further
non-adventures of our earnest non-pilgrims to the public.
Perhaps we ought to occupy the meantime by returning to
our consideration of the sort of occasion that prompted
me to recall this non-epic story, namely the visitation
of that avatar of entropy, that embodiment of confusion,
that mythical end-user, upon the site of David's office:
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JS: Your observation is falsified by every SQL database in the world.
The facts are in the DB, which any authorized user is allowed to
update. The definitions and constraints are stored separately,
and only the DB administrator is allowed to modify them. There
is a major difference in the ease of modifying the two kinds of
assertions.
JA: Here's a chance for me to ask some of my favorite questions again:
1. a. What forms of reasoning are involved in the decision of
a DBA [or a KBA] to create, modify, remove a concept
[in/of/from] the conceptual base?
b. Can these putative forms of reasoning
be computationally formalized?
DW: I'm not John, but if I as a DBA might answer:
DW: I don't create, modify, or remove a concept [in/of/from] a conceptual base.
JA: I was trying to be concise for a change, the price of which
is that I had to try and paint this image of changing bases
in very broad brush stokes indeed. See my amendments above.
You may well speculate on how I decided what amends to make.
JA: It may serve a little to think of a Deductive Data Base or a Knowledge Base,
but really all I have in mind here is any sort of significant restructuring.
DW: I create, modify, or remove
a field/column/data-element
from a file/table/structure.
JA: Now, if you really think about it, a table is like a concept,
namely, a concept of some relation that you find to be of use.
Think about the way a medical research database changes when
somebody hypothesizes a new disease entity, starts to keep
tabs on its signs, symptoms, test results, mortality data,
and then either confirms or discards the notion.
DW: Some of those fields/columns/data-elements represent
concepts or groups of concepts. Some do not.
JA: You hadda go and make me say it:
"Everything is just a concept".
(Sorta).
DW: I usually recognize that someone has a need/concept that is not being
adequately represented by the existing database so I need to change it.
If intent can be computationally formalized, then the reasoning should
be capable of being computationally formalized.
DW: Most systems don't have any representation of intent.
A barely adequate one might have intent represented in
a user help manual. A system that integrates its help
system with the actual working of the program is very
rare. In some better cases, the help system is only
text associated with the operations being performed
so that context sensitive help may be provided.
2. a. What entropic pressures or informational tensions
determine a decision to introduce, modify, delete
concepts, symbols, terms to/in/from the manifold
of those already present in the system?
b. Can these pressures or tensions be localized and measured?
DW: Do you include an end-user dropping by my office with
a confused look on their face as an entropic pressure?
JA: Good example. Now tell me, why are they confused?
What is confusion, anyway? Now that I mention it,
how did I get so confused about what confusion is?
JA: Serially now, folks, entropy is just a measure on
a distribution, say, a distribution of things you
might choose from as being true, or as being good
things to do if & when you do decide what is true.
^ ^ ^
| | |
o o--------o o o--------o
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
o-----------------o o | o | |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
o--------o--------o o--------o--------o o--------o--------o
Thing1 Thing2 Thing1 Thing2 Thing1 Thing2
High Entropy Case Low Entropy Case 1 Low Entropy Case 2
JA: So high entropy, or high uncertainty, means that you do not know much
about what is true or what to do in the question of Thing1 and Thing2.
It really does not matter if it is categorical goo or imperative stew,
when you are confused, it really does not matter all that much to you.
DW: What about an error-report on the system exceptions log?
DW: What about a failure description generated by
an internal consistency check program?
DW: and what is the manifold of my data base system?
is this like the manifold of math?
or the manifold of a car?
JA: I Know But I Kant Tell You.
DW: Are you talking about localizing and measuring
the decisions or the tensions and pressures?
Or are you talking about local-izing in some
physical sense? or just localized in some
conceptual cluster?
JA: It's an essay question.
You get to use your imagination.
Give me time to make something up.
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Now, what do all of these "moments of inquiry" (MOI?) have in common?
Painted in very broad strokes, we can discern two very rough species:
1. The "Problem" situation, very sketchily characterized as a discrepancy
between a situation that one Intends and a situation that one Observes.
2. The "Surprise" situation, very sketchily characterized as a difference
between a situation that one Expects and a situation that one Observes.
And thereby hangs a tale --
An epic tale if any tale is.
Jon Awbrey
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