ONT Re: Inquiry Driven Learning Environments
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
IDLE. Note 4
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
2. Loose Threads
| Many definitions of mind and thinking have been given.
| I know of but one that goes to the heart of the matter:--
| response to the doubtful as such. No inanimate thing
| reacts to things 'as' problematic.
|
| John Dewey, 'The Quest for Certainty'
| In the middle of the night
| I go walking in my sleep
| Through the jungle of doubt
| To a river so deep.
|
| Billy Joel, "The River of Dreams"
2.1. Axes of Value
Of all the suggestions made about the essential components of intelligence
and of all the questions raised about the relationship of human mentality
to artificial intelligence, a number of the most troubling problems seem
to turn on dimensions of value that go beyond the limits of a purely
cognitive perspective.
2.2. The Reality of Uncertainty
The pragmatic theory of reasoning takes the threefold moment of
appreciation, tolerance, and responsibility toward uncertainty
as the beginning of inquiry.
2.3. AI as Authentic Interest and Autonomous Intent
One place where classical cybernetics foundered in its approach
to intelligent systems was on the question of where the goals or
the preferences come from. The reflexive (and not too reflective)
answer was both too easy and too hard. For artificial systems the
answer was too easy -- they come from us, the aims of the designers --
but this only sidesteps the real question in this domain, which is how,
exactly, do we get inert lumps of rock to take on our aims? For natural
intelligence in living systems the answer was too hard to come by, and
the effort was undermined by the fact that we do not know all of the
goals of a system or how a system itself might come to know them.
2.4. The Order of the Normative Sciences
Goal-Directed Intentionality => Normative Issues. In pragmatic philosophy,
logic is viewed as a normative science, a special case of ethics, telling
us how we ought to conduct our reason if we want to achieve the goals
of reasoning in general, that is, knowledge and truth.
2.5. Forms of Conduct: Four Bearings
Language, logic, ethics, esthetics =>
reference, inference, deference, preference.
Consider this analogy as the provenance of my paradigm:
"Ethics is to esthetics as deference is to preference".
Consider the issue of situated learning and reasoning,
the embedding of inquiry within custom and community.
2.6. Affective Computability?
The question of emotion, the role that affects play in human intelligence,
combined with the idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny (Haeckel?),
brings to mind Freud's idea about emotions and affects as phylogenetic
analogues of hysterical symptoms, for example, conversion. In this view,
we consider symptom formation as a special case of symbol formation, one
that tries to express (manifest, assert) and repress (disguise, negate)
its latent meaning all in one and the same representation. In general,
the abstract symbol serves partially to remind us of important motives,
collecting their scattered moments under a single heading, and partially
to hide the full import of their details from our more acute consciousness.
Since it was selected under conditions of adaptive evolution,
we may well conjecture that this symbol-engendering kind of
stratagem provides the creature that exploits it with some
kind of precocious advantage. Perhaps it is a useful
tactic in the struggle against information overload.
Maybe it is actually helpful on occasion to protect
the substance of our motivations from the weathering
effects of reflective expression and to preserve the
love of charged ideas against the erosion that a level
of critical attention might bring. But these do not seem
like strategies that can persevere in the long run. There
must be better ways of integrating attention and reflection,
expression and critique.
Recall a theme from Lisp programming: "Quotation is evaluation inhibition".
Relate the above ideas about semantic suppression and symptom formation to
the technic of gödel numbering as a form of quotation and parenthesis.
Contemplate "higher order propositional expressions" (HOPE's) as yet
another way of placing assumptions and beliefs, willing or not, and
conflicting or not, in a state of suspended animation. In particular,
we can achieve in this same manner the effect of propositional attitudes,
intentions, modalities, qualifiers, quantifiers, and many other forms of
hedging and trimming our bets, logically speaking.
Markers like these could arise naturally and inevitably from trying to
reconcile contradictory beliefs or from failing to satisfy conflicting
constraints, for example, the desire to say something and the demand not
to say it. The symbol is formed in order to tag the meaning of a poignant
experience and to preserve the information of the occasion from the brand of
a theorem-prover that would render all inconsistent theories into a solitary
equivalence class. "Placing obstructions in suspension when extension fails?"
These reflections put a funny twist on the aporia that John Searle dubbed
the "Chinese Room" and that others know as the "English Boarder" antinomy,
if it is intended to point out a property that distinguishes intentional
creatures from computer simulations, since it is likely that few of us
really keep in awareness the full meaning of the symbols that we use --
as any good poet, or even bad poet, could tell you -- and thus we are
constantly being surprised by their implications in concept and their
consequences in action. Derrida and other deconstruction workers find
much to say on and about this point, and around and around it, theretoo.
2.7. Recapitulation
| What do you get when you cross a chicken with a fast intersection?
|
| I don't know -- parts is parts.
| The important work of Karl Ernst von Baer (1828) first emphasized the fact
| that the more general basic features of any large group of animals appear
| earlier in development than do the special features that are peculiar to
| different members of the group ("von Baer's law"). (PFOE, page 3).
|
| The story of individual development sketches for us an approximate
| outline of the evolutionary changes passed through by our forebears.
| This concept is known as the "biogenetic law of Müller and Haeckel".
|
| The general idea of recapitulation was first propounded by Müller (1864) on
| the basis of his studies of the development of invertebrates. Haeckel (1868)
| formulated its principles much more fully and called it the "biogenetic law".
| In essence the law tells us that "an animal in its individual development passes
| through a series of constructive stages like those in the evolutionary development
| of the race to which it belongs". More technically and succinctly, "ontogeny is an
| abbreviated recapitulation of phylogeny". (PFOE, page 38).
|
| Bruce M. Carlson,
|'Patten's Foundations of Embryology',
| 5th edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, 1988.
Jon Awbrey,
Auburn Hills,
14 Sep 1993
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o