[Inquiry] Re: Prospects for Inquiry Driven Systems

[Jon Awbrey]

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PRO.  Note 9

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1.1.2.3.  The Trees and The Forest

A sticking point of the whole discussion has just been
reached.  In the idyllic setting of a knowledge field the
question of systematic inquiry takes on the following form:

What piece of code should be followed in order to discover that code?

It is a classic catch, whose pattern was traced out long ago in the paradox
of Plato's 'Meno'.  Discussion of this dialogue and of the task it sets for
AI, cognitive science, education, including the design of intelligent tutoring
systems, can be found in (H. Gardner, 1985), (Chomsky, 1965, '72, '75, '80, '86),
(Fodor, 1975, 1983), (Piattelli-Palmarini, 1980), and in (Collins & Stevens, 1991).
Though it appears to mask a legion of diversions, this text will present itself at
least twice more in the current engagement, both on the horizon and at the gates
of the project to fathom and to build intelligent systems.  Therefore, it is
worth recalling how this inquiry begins.  The interlocutor Meno asks:

| Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue can be taught,
| or is acquired by practice, not teaching?  Or if neither
| by practice nor by learning, whether it comes to mankind
| by nature or in some other way?  (Plato, 'Meno', p. 265).

Whether the word "virtue" ('arete') is interpreted to mean virtuosity
in some special skill or a more general excellence of conduct, it is
evidently easy, in the understandable rush to "knowledge", to forget
or to ignore what the primary subject of this dialogue is.  Only when
the difficulties of the original question, whether virtue is teachable,
have been moderated by a tentative analysis does knowledge itself become
a topic of the conversation.  This hypothetical mediation of the problem
takes the following tack:  If virtue were a kind of knowledge, and if
every kind of knowledge could be taught, would it not follow that
virtue could be taught?

For the present purpose, it should be recognized that this "trial factorization"
of a problem space or a phenomenal field constitutes a significant intellectual
act in itself, one that deserves its due attention in the effort to understand
the competencies that support intelligent functioning.  It is a good question
to ask just what sort of reasoning processes might be involved in the ability
to find such a middle term, as served by "knowledge" in the example at hand.
Generally speaking, interest will reside in a whole system of middle terms,
which could well be called a "medium" of the problem domain or the field
of phenomena in question.  This usage makes plain the circumstance that
the very recognition and expression of a problem or a phenomenon is
already contingent upon and complicit with a particular collection
of hypotheses that will inform the direction and the outcome of
each problem's resolution and each phenomenon's explanation.

Jon Awbrey

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