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, 16:12, 20 September 2010+ Inquiry Driven Systems 3.2.9. Principle of Rational Action (June 2002)
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==Work Area 3==
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Principle of Rational Action
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| Document History
|
| Subject: Inquiry Driven Systems: An Inquiry Into Inquiry
| Contact: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
| Version: Draft 8.75
| Created: 23 Jun 1996
| Revised: 10 Jun 2002
| Advisor: M.A. Zohdy
| Setting: Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA
| Excerpt: 3.2.9 (Principle of Rational Action)
|
| http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/inquiry.htm
3.2.9. Principle of Rational Action
| Knowledge systems are just another level within this same hierarchy,
| another way to describe a system. ... The knowledge level abstracts
| completely from the internal processing and the internal representation.
| Thus, all that is left is the content of the representations and the goals
| toward which that content will be used. As a level, it has a medium, namely,
| knowledge. It has a law of behavior, namely, if the system wants to attain
| goal G and knows that to do act A will lead to attaining G, then it will do A.
| This law is a simple form of rationality -- that an agent will operate in its
| own best interests according to what it knows.
|
| Allen Newell, 'Unified Theories of Cognition', [New, 48-49].
How does this ancient issue, concerning the relation of reason, to action,
to the good that is overall desired or intended, transform itself through
the medium of intellectual history onto the modern scene? In particular,
what bearing does it have on the subjects of artificial intelligence and
systems theory, and on the object of the present inquiry? As it turns out,
in classical cybernetics and in systems theory, and especially in the parts
of AI and cognitive science that have to do with heuristic reasoning, the
transformations of the problem have tarried so long in the vicinity of
a singular triviality that the original form of the question is nearly
unmistakable in every modern version. The transposition of the theme
<Reason, Action, Good> into the mode of <Intelligence, Operation, Goal>
can make for an interesting variation, but it does not alter the given
state of accord or discord among its elements and does nothing to turn
the lock into its key.
How do these questions bear on the present inquiry? Suppose that
one is trying to understand something like an agency of life, a
capacity for inquiry, a faculty of intelligence, or a power of
learning and reasoning. For starters, "something like" is a
little vague, so let me suggest calling the target class of
agencies, capacities, faculties, or powers that most hold
my interest here by the name of "virtues", thereby invoking
as an offstage direction the classical concepts of "anima"
and "arete" that seem to prompt them all. What all of these
virtues have in common is their appearance, whether it strikes
one on first impression or only develops in one's appreciation
through a continuing acquaintance over time, of transcending or
rising infinitely far beyond all of one's attempts to construct
them from or reduce them to the sorts of instrumentalities that
are much more basic, familiar, mundane, ordinary, simpler, in
short, the kinds of abilities that one already understands well
enough and is granted to have well under one's command or control.
For convenience, I dub this class of abilities, that a particular
agent has a thorough understanding of and a complete competency in,
as the "resources" of that agent.
The language of "virtues" and "resources" gives me a way to express the
main problem of this inquiry, indeed, the overriding challenge that is
engaged in every round of effective analysis and functional modeling.
I emphasized the "apparent transcendence" of virtues because the hope
is often precisely that this appearance will turn out to be false, not
that the virtue is false in any of the properties that it seems to have,
but that the awesome aspect of its unapproachability can be diminished,
and that a way opens up to acquire this virtue by means of the kinds of
gradual steps that are available to a fallible and a finite agent.
If I had my own choice in the matter I would proceed by using the words
"knowledge" and "understanding" as synonyms, deploying them in ways that
make them refer to one and the same resource, roughly corresponding the
Greek "episteme", and thus guaranteeing that the faculty they denote is
teachable. But others use these terms in ways that make one or the other
of them suggest a transcendental aptitude more akin to "wisdom", and thus
amounting to a virtue extending in the intellectual direction whose very
teachability is open to question. Keeping this variety of senses and
understandings in mind, it is advisable to be flexible in one's usage.
Virtue involves, not just knowing what is the case and knowing what can be done
in each case, but knowing how to do each thing that can be done, knowing which
is the best to do in a given case, and finally, having the willingness to do it.
What are the features that are really at stake in the examination of these
admittedly paradigmatic and even parabolic examples? There are two ways
that virtues appear to transcend the limitations of effectively finite
and empirically rational resources and thus appear to distinguish
themselves from teachings and understandings, that is, from the
orders of disciplined conduct and doctrinal knowledge that bind
themselves too severely to the merely mechanical ritual and the
purely rote recitation.
1. In their qualitative aspect, virtues appear to combine characters of act and
will that appear to be lacking in the simple imputations of knowledge alone.
In particular, virtues appear to display qualities of persistent action,
efficient volition, the will to actually do the right thing, and the
willingness to keep on doing the right thing on each occasion that
arises. Thus, virtues appear to possess a live performance value
that is not guaranteed by simply knowing the right thing to do and
to say, indeed, they appear to have a unique and irreproducible mix
of qualities that goes beyond the facts circumscribed by any name and
thus that goes missing from the ordinary interpretation of its meaning.
2. In their quantitative aspect, virtues appear to be infinitely far
beyond the grasp of discrete, finite, and even rational resources.
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Principle of Rational Action
01. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg04266.html
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