[Inquiry] Re: Prospects for Inquiry Driven Systems

[Jon Awbrey]

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PRO.  Note 41

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1.3.  Telos:  Horizons and Further Applications

One of the questions that must be pursued in this investigation is:
What is the relationship between "intelligence" and "entelechy", the
ancient idea of an entity or a capacity that contains its goal ('telos')
within itself.  Of course, it does not initially grasp that for which it
reaches, does not always possess its goal, otherwise it would be finished
from the start.  It must be that it contains only a knowledge of its goal.
This need not be a perfect knowledge even of what defines the goal, leaving
room for clarification in that dimension also.  Some thinkers on the question
suspect that the capacity for setting goals may answer to one or another among
a host of other names:  wisdom ('sophia'), prudence ('phronesis'), and even
elegance ('arete') are among the candidates often heard.  If so, entelechy
would have a relationship to this wisdom and sagacity that is analogous to
the relationship of logic to ethics and aesthetics.  At any rate, this is
how it appears from the standpoint of one philosophical tradition that
recommends itself to me.

Jon Awbrey

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