[Inquiry] Re: Introduction to Inquiry Driven Systems

[Jon Awbrey]

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INTRO.  Note 22

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2.2.3.  Inquiry

Getting back to our "Rainy Day" story, we find our
peripatetic hero presented with a surprising Fact:

   Fact:  C => A,  In the Current situation the Air is cool.

Responding to an intellectual reflex of puzzlement about the situation,
his resource of common knowledge about the world is impelled to seize on
an approximate Rule:

   Rule:  B => A,  Just Before it rains, the Air is cool.

This Rule can be recognized as having a potential relevance to the situation
because it matches the surprising Fact, C => A, in its consequential feature A.

All of this suggests that the present Case
may be one in which it is just about to rain:

   Case:  C => B,  The Current situation is just Before it rains.

The whole mental performance, however automatic and semi-conscious
it may be, that leads up from a problematic Fact and a previously
settled knowledge base of Rules to the plausible suggestion of a
Case description, is what we are calling an abductive inference.

The next phase of inquiry uses deductive inference to expand
the implied consequences of the abductive hypothesis, with the
aim of testing its truth.  For this purpose, the inquirer needs
to think of other things that would follow from the consequence
of his precipitate explanation.  Thus, he now reflects on the
Case just assumed:

   Case:  C => B,  The Current situation is just Before it rains.

He looks up to scan the sky, perhaps in a random search for
further information, but since the sky is a logical place to
look for details of an imminent rainstorm, symbolized in our
story by the letter B, we may safely suppose that our reasoner
has already detached the consequence of the abduced Case, C => B,
and has begun to expand on its further implications.  So let us
imagine that our up-looker has a more deliberate purpose in mind,
and that his search for additional data is driven by the new-found,
determinate Rule:

   Rule:  B => D,  Just Before it rains, Dark clouds appear.

Contemplating the assumed Case in combination with this new Rule
leads him by an immediate deduction to predict an additional Fact:

   Fact:  C => D,  In the Current situation Dark clouds appear.

The reconstructed picture of reasoning
assembled in this second phase of inquiry
is true to the pattern of deductive inference.

Whatever the case, our subject observes a Dark cloud, just as he would
expect on the basis of the new hypothesis.  The explanation of imminent
rain removes the discrepancy between observations and expectations and
thereby reduces the shock of surprise that made this inquiry necessary.

Jon Awbrey

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inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
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