ONT Re: Inquiry Driven Systems
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Note 11
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Aspects of Inquiry
| Author: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
| Version: Draft 11.30
| Created: 04 Aug 1996
| Revised: 31 Oct 2001
| Advisor: M.A. Zohdy
| Setting: Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA
| Excerpt: "The Irritation of Doubt"
In the next few paragraphs I discuss a critical problem
to be solved in this approach, indicating its character
to the extent I can succeed at present, and I suggest a
reasonable way of proceeding.
In human inquiry there is always a relation between cognitive and affective
features of experience. We have a sense of how much harmony or discord is
present in a situation, and we rely on the intensity of this sensation as
one measure of how to proceed with inquiry. This works so automatically
that we have trouble distinguishing the affective and cognitive aspects
of the irritating doubt that drives the process. In the artificial
systems we build to support inquiry, what measures can we take to
supply this sense or arrange a substitute for it? If the proper
measure of doubt cannot be formalized, then all responsibility
for judging it will have to be assigned to the human side of
the interface. This would greatly reduce the usefulness of
the projected software.
The unsettled state that instigates inquiry is characterized
by a high level of uncertainty. The settled state of knowledge
at the end of inquiry is achieved by reducing this uncertainty to
a minimum. Within the framework of information theory we have a
concept of uncertainty, the entropy of a probability distribution,
as being something we can measure. Certainly, how we feel about
entropy does not enter the equation. Can we form a connection
between the kind of doubt that drives human inquiry and the kind
of uncertainty that is measured on scales of information content?
If so, this would allow important dynamic properties of inquiry
driven systems to be studied in abstraction from the affective
qualities of the disagreements which drive them. With respect
to measurable qualities of uncertainty, inquiry driven systems
could be taken as special types of control systems, where the
variable to be controlled is the total amount of discrepancy,
disparity, or dispersion in the knowledge base of the system.
The assumption of modularity, that the affective and the intellectual
aspects of inquiry can be disentangled into separate components of the
system, is a natural one to make. Whenever it holds, even approximately,
it simplifies the task of understanding and permits the analyst or designer
to assign responsibility for these factors to independent modules of the
simulation or implementation. However, this assumption appears to be
false in general, or true only in approaching certain properties of
inquiry. Other features of inquiry are not completely understandable
on this basis. To tackle these more refractory properties, I will be
forced to examine the concept of a measure that separates the affective
and intellectual impacts of disorder. To the extent that this issue can
be resolved by analysis, I believe that it hinges on the characters that
make a measure objective, that is, invariant over many perspectives and
interpretations, as opposed to being merely the measure of a subjective
moment, an impression limited to a special interpretation or perspective.
Jon Awbrey
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