{"id":998,"date":"2019-11-29T23:08:46","date_gmt":"2019-11-30T04:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aristotle2digital.blogwyrm.com\/?p=998"},"modified":"2023-05-06T23:21:35","modified_gmt":"2023-05-07T03:21:35","slug":"the-three-acts-of-the-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aristotle2digital.blogwyrm.com\/?p=998","title":{"rendered":"The Three Acts of the Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The last post presented the concept of a hybrid AI or,\nperhaps more correctly said, a hybrid intelligent system which mixed and\nmatched various tools, developed in computer science, to mimic the Three Acts\nof the Mind.&nbsp; The idea is that to best\nmimic the intelligent behavior of humans one must understand what is being\nmimicked (the human mind) so that one may most closely align one\u2019s mimicry (machine\nbehavior) to the object being mimicked.&nbsp;\nOf course, the last sentence is a bit fanciful in its language but its\nmessage is quite serious \u2013 to best duplicate the behavior of the human mind\nfirst figure out what is going on within the human mind.&nbsp; And that is the point of this post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To be clearer, neither the dark corners of the human mind,\nexplored by Freud, nor the nearly inexplicable connections between minds and\nsociety at large, posited by Jung, nor the red hot passions presented in oh so\nmany of the Greek tragedies are being pursued here.&nbsp; Only that smallest sliver of human thought,\nthe rational and ordered part, is being discussed because this is the only part\nthat maybe can be mimicked by a machine.&nbsp;\nAnd the description of the rational mind that will be employed is Three\nActs of the Mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The go-to reference on this is Peter Kreeft\u2019s <em>Socratic Logic<\/em>.&nbsp; The entire text book is built around the Three\nActs of the Mind and concentrates on classical, Aristotelian logic rather than\nthe usual symbolic propositional logic (more on this in a future post).&nbsp; Despite the fact that the book boasts nearly\n400 pages of content, the basic principles as summarized in a few pages in\nSection 5.&nbsp; A condense form of that\nsummary will be presented below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The situation is bleaker when considering online references.&nbsp; There isn\u2019t a large amount of material to be\nfound on the web concerning the Three Acts of the Mind. &nbsp;On possible explanation is that the Three Acts\nare so obvious as first principles that there really isn\u2019t anything to say on\nthem.&nbsp; But careful reflection should lead\none to realize that this argument is vacuous since it is the first principles of\nany philosophy that always receive the most scrutiny because they can\u2019t be\nproved; they must either be accepted or rejected at face value.&nbsp; Anyway, for those who can\u2019t obtain Kreeft\u2019s\nbook, Dr. Christopher Anadale from Mount Saint Mary\u2019s provides a nice succinct\nsummary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tZtww50W9aY\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media;\ngyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both Kreeft and Anadale agree on the basic observations of\nhuman thought that underpin the Three Acts, namely that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Human beings think<\/li><li>Human thought has structure<\/li><li>That structure is objective and knowable<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>These three assumptions are the hunting license that allows\nus to go off and categorize the acts of the human mind.&nbsp; Briefly stated the Three Acts are (in order\nfrom least to most complex):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Act of Understanding<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 grasp one object\nof thought, &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Act of Judgement<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 combine to objects\nof thought into a proposition with a subject and predicate,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Act of Reasoning<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 combine two or more propositions\ninto a reasoned argument producing a conclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Several things should be noted for each act.&nbsp; For the First Act of Understanding, it is important\nthat the term or concept be clearly defined.&nbsp;\nNothing obscures human communication so much as when two individuals are\nusing the same word to mean different things and nothing is so tricky as a logical\nargument where the meaning of a term changes somewhere between the beginning and\nend.&nbsp; For the Second Act of Judgement\nthere is little to be said in general.&nbsp;\nThe key point here is being able to see whether a proposition is true or\nfalse and this is a difficult task with no fixed rules for figuring out the\ntruth value of a claim.&nbsp; For the Third\nAct of Reasoning, deductive arguments can be algorithmically determined to be valid\nor invalid.&nbsp; Inductive arguments can also\nbe analyzed but only to the probability of certainty since an inductive\nargument can only rendered conclusions that are true within a confidence\ninterval.&nbsp; It should also be noted that\nthe Act of Reasoning, with its arguments and conclusions, is the activity that\nactually produces new knowledge, conjectures, hypotheses, and actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now\nthat Three Acts can be a bit obscure when stated in an abstract way, so the\nfollowing table, adapted from the table on page of Kreeft\u2019s book, should\nhelp.&nbsp; Note that some rows have been omitted,\nsimply for brevity, and that a new row, proposing a possible machine equivalent\nhas been added. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table style = \"border-style :  none !important;\"><tbody><tr><th style = \"border-style :  none !important; background-color : #ffffff !important;\">\n  &nbsp;\n  <\/th><th>\n  1<sup>st<\/sup> Act \u2013 Understanding\n  <\/th><th>\n  2<sup>nd<\/sup> Act \u2013 Judgement\n  <\/th><th>\n  3<sup>rd<\/sup> Act \u2013 Reasoning\n  <\/th><\/tr><tr><td style = \"border-style : solid !important;\">\n  Logical Expression\n  <\/td><td>\n  Term\n  <\/td><td>\n  Proposition\n  <\/td><td>\n  Argument\n  <\/td><\/tr><tr><td>\n  Linguistic Expression\n  <\/td><td>\n  Word or Phrase \n  <\/td><td>\n  Declarative sentence\n  <\/td><td>\n  Paragraph\n  <\/td><\/tr><tr><td>\n  Example\n  <\/td><td>\n  book or football game\n  <\/td><td>\n  All books have pages with words.\n  &nbsp;\n  A football game is a sport\n  <\/td><td>\n  All books have pages with words.\n  <em>Too Many Cooks<\/em> has pages with words.\n  Therefore, <em>Too Many Cooks<\/em> is a book \n  <\/td><\/tr><tr><td>\n  Structural Parts\n  <\/td><td>\n  None\n  <\/td><td>\n  Subject term and a predicate term\n  <\/td><td>\n  Premises (propositions) and conclusion (also a proposition)\n  <\/td><\/tr><tr><td>\n  Question Answered\n  <\/td><td>\n  What it is\n  <\/td><td>\n  Whether it is\n  <\/td><td>\n  Why it is\n  <\/td><\/tr><tr><td>\n  Aspect of Reality\n  <\/td><td>\n  Essence\n  <\/td><td>\n  Existence\n  <\/td><td>\n  Cause\n  <\/td><\/tr><tr><td>\n  Good When\n  <\/td><td>\n  Clear (unambiguous)\n  <\/td><td>\n  True\n  <\/td><td>\n  Valid\n  <\/td><\/tr><tr><td>\n  Bad When\n  <\/td><td>\n  Unclear (ambiguous)\n  <\/td><td>\n  False\n  <\/td><td>\n  Invalid\n  <\/td><\/tr><tr><td>\n  Possible Machine Equivalent\n  <\/td><td>\n  Recognized percept\n  <\/td><td>\n  Classification\n  <\/td><td>\n  Syllogism and action\n  <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, there is a lot more to be said about the Three\nActs but the above sets the generally agreed upon framework from which other\nanalyses spring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The last post presented the concept of a hybrid AI or, perhaps more correctly said, a hybrid intelligent system which mixed and matched various tools, developed in computer science, to&#8230; 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