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Directory:Jon Awbrey/Papers/Inquiry Driven Systems : Part 8 (view source)
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, 16:32, 20 August 2011→8.2. Features of Inquiry Driven Systems: + text (very drafty variants)
===8.2. Features of Inquiry Driven Systems===
===8.2. Features of Inquiry Driven Systems===
I have described inquiry as a process of determination that takes an agent from a state of uncertainty to a state of relative certainty or increased information, of a kind and to a degree sufficient for action, ...
I am operating on the assumption that / If inquiry is a process of determination that leads from uncertainty to the kind of certainty, sufficient for action, that an agent experiences as a state of belief or knowledge, then I need to say something about / articulate / examine the underlying epistemology, the implicit theory of knowledge and belief, that I employ / is employed in this project.
... then I need to say something about the kind of certainty that can be the goal of inquiry, and how I intend to use words like "belief" and "knowledge" in this discussion / understand concepts like belief and knowledge.
I do not believe I know of any difference in my immediate experience between belief and knowledge. To be more precise, I do not think I can tell a difference/ I detect no difference, from any quality present in the moment of experience itself, between an experience of believing something to be true and an experience of knowing something to be true. I do not think that, by itself, any agent can tell a difference between what it believes and what it knows.
By myself, I do not see how I can draw a distinction / tell a difference between what I believe and what I know. The distinction posed between them is not essential, but serves rhetorical and statistical functions, as a measure of intensity and commonality.
To say I "know" something is true is to mean that I really believe it. To say that someone else "knows" something is to say that the other believes the same as oneself.
Within the moment / I believe momentary experience has no quality in itself that distinguishes/ In the moment of experience /
The distinction made between belief and knowledge serves a largely / is partly rhetorical and partly statistical. The word "knowledge" operates as an intensifier, to say that one "really" believes something and to measure / as a modifier to indicate the intensity of belief or the measure of commonality / shared belief across a community/ to say that one has checked a belief by various means, verified it with others, including one's recollective former and preconceivable future selves, and found it to be a widely shared belief across this group.
There is nothing about the experience itself that distinguishes a state of belief from a state of knowledge. The distinction of knowledge serves as an intensifier, to say that one "really" believes something, or as a statistical function, to say that one has checked this belief by various means, with others, including one's past future selves.
For my purposes, I can see no difference present in the quality of the state itself between an agent "believing" a sign (expression or indicator) to be true and the same agent "knowing" the sign to be true.
If there is a difference between belief and knowledge, then it must have something to do with the way that one state of experience can refer to other states of experience outside of itself. In other words, it has to do with global and relational properties of the manifold of experience, and with the possibility that information about these constraints can be reflected and articulated within the individual moments of the manifold itself.
Thus, the distinction of "knowledge" is not essential or phenomenal, but incidental and epiphenomenal. That is, it has to do with the way that relations between basic levels of phenomena can reflect themselves within/ The way I use these words is not perjorative, but taxonomic. It neither diminishes the reality of epiphenomenal features and accidental attributes nor excuses me from the task of analyzing the geometry of their incidence/ but merely classifies / and does not diminish the importance of epiphenomena or the reality of accidental events ...
For my purposes, I can see no difference in the state itself between an agent believing a sign (statement or indicator) to be true and that agent knowing that sign to be true.
The intention of this section is to discuss in some detail two examples of inquiry driven systems that have already been implemented in the form of computer programs.
The goal of this section is to present in concrete detail significant examples of two different kinds of inquiry driven system which have already been implemented in the form of computer programs.
In this section I describe two examples of inquiry driven systems that have already been implemented as computer programs. The basic terms of description are taken from the pragmatic theory of signs, which I introduce as briefly as possible.
In this section I describe two examples of inquiry driven systems that have already been implemented as computer programs. The description is cast within the pragmatic theory of signs, which I review briefly and only to the extent necessary for discussing the examples.
====8.2.1. The Pragmatic Theory of Signs====
====8.2.1. The Pragmatic Theory of Signs====