Inquiry Driven Systems • In the Way of Inquiry

[Jon Awbrey]

In the Way of Inquiry • Recircus
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/06/in-the-way-of-inquiry-recircus-a/

❝I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.❞

— W.B. Yeats
• https://web.archive.org/web/20200402124816/https://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Yeats/Circus.htm

I have in mind circling back to a point in my project on
Inquiry Driven Systems, namely, the chapter addressing
various Obstacles to the Project.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

Regards,

Jon

cc: https://www.academia.edu/community/5wyx1L
cc: https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry/111711093052443586

[Jon Awbrey]

In the Way of Inquiry • Obstacles
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/07/in-the-way-of-inquiry-obstacles-a/

❝Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason,
that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so
desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to
think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves
to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy:

❝Do not block the way of inquiry.❞

C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers, CP 1.135–136.
From an unpaginated ms. “F.R.L.”, c. 1899.

Often the biggest obstacle to learning more is the need to feel
one already knows. And yet there are some things a person knows,
at least, in comparison to other things, and it makes sense to use
what we already know well enough to learn what we need to know better.
The question is, how does one know which is which? What test can tell
what is known so well it can be trusted in learning what is not?

One way to test a supposed knowledge is to try to formulate it in
such a way that it can be taught to other people. A related test,
harder in some ways but easier in others, is to try to formalize it
so completely that even a computer could go through the motions that
are supposed to be definitive of its practice.

Both ways of testing a supposition of knowledge depend on putting knowledge
in forms which can be communicated or transported from one medium or system
of interpretation to another. Knowledge already in concrete form takes no
more than a simple reformation or transformation, otherwise it takes a more
radical metamorphosis, from a wholly disorganized condition to the first
inklings of a portable or sharable form.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

Regards,

Jon

cc: https://www.academia.edu/community/VqKd1l
cc: https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry/111711093052443586

[Jon Awbrey]

In the Way of Inquiry • Justification Trap
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/10/in-the-way-of-inquiry-justification-trap-a/

There is a particular type of “justification trap” a person can fall into,
of trying to prove the scientific method by solely deductive means, that is,
of trying to show the scientific method is a good method by starting from the
simplest possible axioms, principles everyone would accept, about what is good.

Often this happens, in spite of the fact one really knows better, simply in
the process of arranging one's thoughts in a rational order, say, from the
most elementary and independent to the most complex and derivative, as if
for the sake of a logical and summary exposition. But when does that
rearrangement cease to be a rational reconstruction and start to become
a destructive rationalization, a distortion of the genuine article, and
a falsification of the authentic inquiry it attempts to recount?

Sometimes people express their recognition of this trap and their
appreciation of the factor it takes to escape it by saying there is
really no such thing as the scientific method, that the very term
“scientific method” is a misnomer and does not refer to any uniform
method at all. As they see it, the development of knowledge cannot
be reduced to any fixed method because it involves in an essential
way such a large component of non‑methodical activity. If one's
idea of what counts as method is fixed on the ideal of a deductive
procedure then it's no surprise one draws that conclusion.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

Regards,

Jon

cc: https://www.academia.edu/community/5kQ3wL
cc: https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry/111711093052443586

[Jon Awbrey]

In the Way of Inquiry • Formal Apology 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/12/in-the-way-of-inquiry-formal-apology-a/

Using “form” in the sense of abstract structure, the focus
of my interest in this investigation is limited to the formal
properties of the inquiry process. Among its chief constituents
are numbered all the thinking and unthinking processes supporting
the ability to learn and to reason. This “formal apology”, the
apologetics of declaring a decidedly formal intent, will be used
on numerous occasions to beg off a host of material difficulties
and thus avoid the perceived necessity of meeting a multitude of
conventional controversies.

Category Double‑Takes —

The first use of the formal apology is to rehabilitate certain classes
of associations between concepts otherwise marked as category mistakes.
The conversion is achieved by flipping from one side of the concept's
dual aspect to the other as the context demands. Thus it is possible
in selected cases to reform the characters of category mistakes in the
manner of categorical “retakes” or “double‑takes”.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

Regards,

Jon

cc: https://www.academia.edu/community/V1MaEV
cc: https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry/111711093052443586

[Jon Awbrey]

In the Way of Inquiry • Formal Apology 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/12/in-the-way-of-inquiry-formal-apology-a/

Conceptual Extensions —

The second use of the formal apology is to permit the tentative extension
of concepts to novel areas, giving them experimental trial beyond the cases
and domains where their use is already established in the precedents of
accustomed habit and successful application.

This works to dispel the “in principle” objection that any category distinction
puts a prior constraint on the recognition of similar structure between materially
dissimilar domains. It leaves the issue a matter to be settled by after the fact
judgment, a matter of what fits best “in practice”.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

Regards,

Jon

cc: https://www.academia.edu/community/lnRk3l
cc: https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry/111711093052443586

[Jon Awbrey]

In the Way of Inquiry • Formal Apology 3
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/12/in-the-way-of-inquiry-formal-apology-a/

Explosional Recombinations —

Another obstacle to inquiry is posed by the combinatorial explosion
of questions arising in complex cases. The embarrassment of riches
found here is deceptively deadly to the ends of inquiry in the very
measure it appears so productive at first. An eye to form provides
a way to manage the wealth of material diversity by identifying formal
similarities among materially distinct domains. It allows the same
formal answer to unify a host of concrete questions under a single
roof, overall reducing the number of distinct topics that need to
be covered.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

Regards,

Jon

cc: https://www.academia.edu/community/lJGW75
cc: https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry/111711093052443586

[Jon Awbrey]

In the Way of Inquiry • Formal Apology 4
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/12/in-the-way-of-inquiry-formal-apology-a/

Interpretive Frameworks —

Iterations of the recombinatorial process generate alternative hierarchies
of categories for controlling the explosion of parts in the domain under
inquiry. If by some piece of luck an alternative framework is uniquely
suited to the natural ontology of the domain in question, it becomes
advisable to reorganize the inquiry along the lines of the new topic
headings.

But a complex domain seldom falls out that neatly. The new interpretive
framework will not preserve all the information in the object domain but
typically capture only another aspect of it. To take the maximal advantage
of all the different frameworks that might be devised it is best to quit
depending on any one of them exclusively. Thus, a rigid reliance on a
single hierarchy to define the ontology of a given domain passes over
into a flexible application of interpretive frameworks to make contact
with particular aspects of one's object domain.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

Regards,

Jon

cc: https://www.academia.edu/community/5wr0Pl
cc: https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry/111711093052443586

[Jon Awbrey]

In the Way of Inquiry • Material Exigency 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/20/in-the-way-of-inquiry-material-exigency-a/

Our survey of obstacles to inquiry has dealt at length with
blocks arising from its formal aspects. On the other hand,
I have cast this project as an empirical inquiry, proposing
to represent experimental hypotheses in the form of computer
programs. At the heart of that empirical attitude is a feeling
all formal theories should arise from and bear on experience.

Every season of growth in empirical knowledge begins with
a rush to the sources of experience. Every fresh‑thinking
reed of intellect is raised to pipe up and chime in with the
still‑viable canons of inquiry in one glorious paean to the
personal encounter with natural experience.

But real progress in the community of inquiry depends on observers
being able to orient themselves to objects of common experience —
the uncontrolled exaltation of individual phenomenologies leads
as a rule to the disappointment and disillusionment which befalls
the lot of unshared enthusiasms and fragmented impressions.

Look again at the end of the season and see it faltering to a close,
with every novice scribe rapped on the knuckles for departing from
that uninspired identification with impersonal authority which
expresses itself in third‑person passive accounts of one's own
experience.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

Regards,

Jon

cc: https://www.academia.edu/community/VD07mV
cc: https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry/111711093052443586

[Jon Awbrey]

In the Way of Inquiry • Material Exigency 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/20/in-the-way-of-inquiry-material-exigency-a/

A turn of events so persistent must have a cause, a force of reason to
explain the dynamics of its recurring moment in the history of ideas.
The nub of it's not born on the sleeve of its first and last stages,
where the initial explosion and the final collapse march along their
stubborn course in lockstep fashion, but is embodied more naturally
in the middle of the above narrative.

Experience exposes and explodes expectations. How can experiences impact
expectations unless the two types of entities are both reflected in one medium,
for instance and perhaps without loss of generality, in the form of representation
constituting the domain of signs?

However complex its world may be, internal or external to itself
or on the boundaries of its being, a finite creature's description
of it rests in a finite number of finite terms or a finite sketch of
finite lines. Finite terms and lines are signs. What they indicate
need not be finite but what they are, must be.

Fragments —

The common sensorium.

The common sense and the senses of “common”.

This is the point where the empirical and the rational meet.

I describe as “empirical” any method which exposes theoretical
descriptions of an object to further experience with that object.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

Regards,

Jon

cc: https://www.academia.edu/community/L6q1rV
cc: https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry/111711093052443586

[Jon Awbrey]

In the Way of Inquiry • Reconciling Accounts
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/24/in-the-way-of-inquiry-reconciling-accounts-a/

The Reader may share with the Author a feeling of discontent
at this point, attempting to reconcile the formal intentions
of this inquiry with the cardinal contentions of experience.
Let me try to express the difficulty in the form of a question:

What is the bond between form and content in experience, between
the abstract formal categories and the concrete material contents
residing in experience?

Once toward the end of my undergrad years a professor asked me
how I'd personally define mathematics and I told him I saw it
as “the form of experience and the experience of form”. This
is not the place to argue for the virtues of that formulation
but it does afford me one of the handles I have on the bond
between form and content in experience.

I have no more than a tentative way of approaching the question.
I take there to be a primitive category of “form‑in‑experience” —
I don't have a handy name for it yet but it looks to have a
flexible nature which from the standpoint of a given agent
easily passes from the “structure of experience” to the
“experience of structure”.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

Regards,

Jon

cc: https://www.academia.edu/community/lPKK8L
cc: https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry/111711093052443586

[Jon Awbrey]

In the Way of Inquiry • Objections to Reflexive Inquiry 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/02/05/in-the-way-of-inquiry-objections-to-reflexive-inquiry-a/

Inquiry begins when an automatic routine or normal course
of activity is interrupted and agents are thrown into doubt
concerning what is best to do next and what is really true
of their situation. If this interruptive aspect of inquiry
applies at the level of self‑application then occasions for
inquiry into inquiry arise when an ongoing inquiry into any
subject becomes obstructed and agents are obliged to initiate
a new order of inquiry in order to overcome the obstacle.

At such moments agents need the ability to pause and reflect — to
accept the interruption of the inquiry in progress, to acknowledge
the higher order of uncertainty obstructing the current investigation,
and finally to examine accepted conventions and prior convictions
regarding the conduct of inquiry in general. The next order of inquiry
requires agents to articulate the assumptions embodied in previous inquiries,
to consider their practical effects in light of their objective intents, and
to reconstruct forms of conduct which formerly proceeded through their paces
untroubled by any articulate concern.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

Regards,

Jon

cc: https://www.academia.edu/community/le6RQ5
cc: https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry/111711093052443586

[Jon Awbrey]

In the Way of Inquiry • Objections to Reflexive Inquiry 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/02/05/in-the-way-of-inquiry-objections-to-reflexive-inquiry-a/

Our agent of inquiry is brought to the threshold of two questions:

• What actions are available to achieve the aims of the present activity?

• What assumptions already accepted are advisable to amend or abandon?

The inquirer is faced in the object of inquiry with an obstinately
oppositional state of affairs, a character marked by the Greek word
“pragma” for “object”, whose manifold of senses and derivatives
includes among its connotations the ideas of purposeful objectives
and problematic objections, and not too incidentally both inquiries
and expositions.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

Regards,

Jon

cc: https://www.academia.edu/community/lyXRZL
cc: https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry/111711093052443586

[Jon Awbrey]

In the Way of Inquiry • Objections to Reflexive Inquiry 3
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/02/05/in-the-way-of-inquiry-objections-to-reflexive-inquiry-a/

An episode of inquiry bears the stamp of an interlude — it begins
and ends “in medias res” with respect to actions and circumstances
neither fixed nor fully known. As easy as it may be to overlook the
contingent character of the inquiry process it's just as essential to
observe a couple of its consequences:

First, it means genuine inquiry does not touch on the inciting action
at points of total doubt or absolute certainty. An incident of inquiry
does not begin or end in absolute totalities but only in the differential
and relative measures which actually occasion its departures and resolutions.

Inquiry as a process does not demand absolutely secure foundations from
which to set out or any “place to stand” from which to examine the balance
of onrushing events. It needs no more than it does in fact have at the outset —
assumptions not in practice doubted just a moment before and a circumstance of
conflict that will force the whole situation to be reviewed before returning
to the normal course of affairs.

Second, the interruptive character or escapist interpretation of inquiry
is especially significant when contemplating programs of inquiry with
recursive definitions, as the motivating case of inquiry into inquiry.
It means the termination criterion for an inquiry subprocess is whatever
allows continuation of the calling process.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

Regards,

Jon

cc: https://www.academia.edu/community/54RwOL
cc: https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry/111711093052443586