ONT Re: Inquiry Driven Learning Environments (IDLE's)
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S&P = IEEE P1600.1 SUO WG Scope & Purpose
S&P: C. Application Areas
2. Educational applications in which students learn concepts
and relationships directly from, or expressed in terms of,
a common ontology. This will also enable a standard record
of learning to be kept.
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With respect to our S&P, let me say right off the top that I have
little interest in a "standard record of learning" except insofar
as that record might be of use to a learner so-concerned to learn.
A few episodes of preambulatory peripatetic will of course
be prerequistite to my setting out the conceptual backdrop
of this project on "inquiry driven learning environments".
So we might as well get that out of the way.
| Document History
|
| Subject: Extensions Of Mind
| Subhead: Essays And Reports On Intelligent Systems
| Contact: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
| Version: Draft 3.00
| Created: 10 Sep 1993
| Revised: 08 Mar 1995
| Revised: 06 Feb 2002
| Advisor: C.C. Wagner
| Setting: Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA
Extensions Of Mind: Essays And Reports On Intelligent Systems
1. Components of Intelligence
| Or, "some thoughts off the top of my head", as Data might say.
1.1 Abstract of Argument
A threefold scheme is proposed for organizing the various
functions of intelligence. Three generic categories are
outlined that cut across multiple levels of reasoning and
representation and that serve to classify in broad terms
a multitude of more specialized components. These three
modalities are intended to be regarded as components of
intelligence more in the mathematical sense of the word,
that is, as generative dimensions of variation, and not
of necessity in the merological sense of "components",
that is, spatially discrete and localized parts.
These abstract components or schematic categories may be labelled
as "deductive", "inductive", and "abductive", when considered as
types of reasoning, or as "syntactic", "semantic", and "pragmatic",
when treated as aspects of representation. It is a working hypothesis
of the philosophy that I am taking up here that these three dimensions
are irreducible and exhaustive, at least when they are taken at their
own proper level of approximation, but the character of their relative
independence as dimensions does not seem to involve that of interacting
trivially with each other. In fact, the evidence of my own experience
with implementing some fraction of their capabilities leads me to the
following provisional conclusion: In order to build a live, real-time
capacity for "understanding" it will be necessary to integrate all three
of these dimensions of intelligence so thoroughly about a common family
of data structures that each of the distinct aspects will operate more
like an alternate perspective on the same facts than as a separately
embodied module of code. Along the way, partly in support of this
deliberately short list of functionalities, a particular slant
on the aims of AI will be advanced.
1.2 Etymology of "Intelligence" and Related Words
1. "Intellect" is from Latin "intellectus", the past participle of
"intellegere" = "to understand".
2. "Intelligent" is from Latin "intelligens", the present participle of
"intelligere" or "intellegere".
These, in turn, come from "inter-" (= "among", "between")
plus "legere" (= "to gather", "to select", also "to read").
This entire complex of words devolves on us from
the Greek verb "legein" = "to gather", "to say".
Finally, all of these concepts are rooted in the
Greek word "logos" = "reason", "speech", "word".
Source: Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary.
3. Entelechy? It appears possible that our modern conception of
intelligence, especially when its goal-directed or intentional
aspects are considered essential, as when a host of teleological
or purpose-bearing homunculi are invoked to account for its acts,
may also be influenced by the Greek notion of "entelechy", to wit,
an organism or an agency that embodies its goal or its completion
in itself. This word stems from the Greek "enteles" (= "complete")
plus "echein" (= "to have"), and finally from "telos" = "end".
| That will be enough, Data!
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