[Inquiry] Re: Prospects for Inquiry Driven Systems

[Jon Awbrey]

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PRO.  Note 40

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1.2.4.  Simple Minded Systems

Of course, not every total manifold need have a nice factorization.
It might be thought to dispense with such spaces immediately, to put
them aside as not being "reasonable".  But it may not be possible to
dismiss them quite so easily and summarily.  Intelligent systems of
this sort may end up being refractory to routine analysis and will
have to be regarded as "simple minded".  That is, they may turn out
to be simple in the way that algebraic objects are usually called
simple, having no interesting proper factors of the same sort.

Suppose there are such simple minded systems, otherwise deserving to be
called intelligent but which have no proper factorization into the kind of
gross dynamics and subtle dynamics that might correspond to the distinction
ordinarily made between somatic and mental behavior.  That is, they do not
have their activity sorted into separate scenes of action, one for ordinary
physical and thermal dynamics, another for information processing dynamics,
symbolic operations, knowledge transformations, and so on up the scale.
In the event that this idea of simplicity can be found to make sense,
it is probable that simple minded systems would be deeply involved in
and place extreme bounds on the structures of all intelligent systems.

A realm of understanding subject to a certain rule of analysis may have
a boundary marked by simple but adamant exceptions to its further reign.
Or, it may not have a boundary, but that appears to verge on orders of
understanding beyond the competence of computational systems.  Whether
the human form of finitude abides or infringes this putative limitation
is something much discussed but not likely to be settled any time soon.

In order to pursue the question of simplicity the assumed form of analysis
being used must be examined more carefully.  The type of factorization that
system-theoretic analogies suggest is gotten by locating a convenient stage
at which to abridge or to truncate the typical datum.  This is tantamount to
projecting the data space onto a stage that is set by the particular process
of critical evaluation in question.  The fibers of this projection are the
data sets that constitute the inverse images of the points in its range.

In reflecting on the form of analysis that has naturally arisen at this point
it appears to display the following character.  An object is presented to
contemplation in the light of a finite collection of features.  If the
object is found to possess every one of the listed features, then
this incurs the existence of another object, a simpler object
in some sense, to which analytic attention is then shifted.
It may be expressed in figurative terms that the analysis
descends to a situation closer to the initial conditions
or bounds to a site nearer to the boundary conditions.

The condition of a simple minded system appears to
comprise at least the following two possible cases:

First, a simple minded system may come into being already knowing itself
perfectly, in which case all the irony of a Socrates would be lost on it,
in terms of bringing it a wit closer to knowledge.  The system already
knows its whole manifold of possible states, that is, its knowledge
component is in some sense complete, containing an answer to every
possible dynamic puzzle that might be posed to it.  Rather than an
overwhelming richness of theory, this is more likely to arise from
a structural poverty of the total space and a lack of capacity for
the reception of questions that can be posed to it, as opposed to
those that can be posed about it.

Second, a simple minded system might be born into an initial condition of
ignorance, with the potential of reaching states of knowledge within its
space, but these states may be discretely distributed in a continuous
manifold.  This means that states of knowledge could be achieved
only by jumping directly to them, without the benefit of an
error-controlled feedback process that allows a system
to converge gradually upon the goals of knowledge.

Let's hope we have a choice.
Let's hope we choose wisely.

Jon Awbrey

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