[Inquiry] Re: Prospects for Inquiry Driven Systems

[Jon Awbrey]

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PRO.  Note 26

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1.2.1.1.  Observation and Action

It seems clear that observations are a special type of action, and that actions
are a special type of observable event.  At least, actions are events that may
come to be observed, if only in the way that outcomes of eventual effects are
recognized to confirm the hypotheses of specific causes.  Is every action
in some sense an observation?  Is every observable event in some sense
an observation, a commemoration, an event whose occasion serves to
observe something else?  If this were so, then the concepts of
observation and action would be special cases of each other.
Computer scientists will have no trouble accepting the
mutual recursion of complex notions, so long as the
conceptual instrument as a whole does its job, and
so long as the recursion bottoms out somewhere.
The mutual definition can find its limit in
two ways.  It can ground out centrally,
with a single category of primitive
element that has all the relevant
aspects being analyzed, in this
case both action and perception.
Or it can scatter peripherally,
resolving into simple elements
that distinctively belong to
one category or another.

Jon Awbrey

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