[Inquiry] Re: Introduction to Inquiry Driven Systems

[Jon Awbrey]

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INT.  Note 8

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1.4.  System-Theoretic Method

Once I have addressed the question as to "what" are
the principles that enable human inquiry it brings me
to the question as to "how" I would set out to improve
the human capacity for inquiry by computational means.

Within the field of AI there are many ways of simulating
and supporting learning and reasoning that would not of
necessity involve us in systems theory proper, that is,
in reflecting on mathematically defined systems or in
considering the dynamical trajectories that automata
trace out through abstract state spaces.  However,
I have chosen to take the system-theoretic route
for several reasons, which I will now discuss.

First, if we succeed in understanding intelligent inquiry in terms
of system-theoretic properties and processes, it equips this knowledge
with the greatest degree of transferability between comparable systems.
In short, it makes our knowledge robust, and keeps it from becoming too
narrowly limited to a particular instantiation of the target capacity.

Second, if we organize our thinking in terms of a coherent system or
an integral agent that carries out inquiries, it helps to manage the
complexity of the design problem by splitting it into discrete stages.
This strategy is especially useful in dealing with the recursive or the
reflexive quality that bedevils all such inquiries into inquiry itself.
This aspect of self-application to the problem is probably unavoidable,
due to the following facts.  Human beings are extremely complex agents,
and any system that is likely to support significant human inquiry is
bound to surpass the complexity of most systems that we are currently
able to analyze in full.  Research into complex systems is one of the
jobs that will depend on intelligent software tools to advance in the
future.  For this we need programs that can follow the drift of inquiry
and perhaps even help us to scout out fruitful directions of exploration.
Programs to do this will need to acquire a heuristic model of the inquiry
process that they are being designed to assist.  And so it goes.  Programs
for inquiry will be required to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Jon Awbrey

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