In the following sketch philosophy and engineering are intertwined to yield a philosophically rooted architecture for purposeful knowledge engineering.
The story is presented in the following stages:
Here we consider the nature of declarative knowledge, its layered tripartite division (an epistemological stack) following Hume, the existence of universal abstract foundational representations, and the representation around which the proposed architecture is based. Beyond the language we are concerned with the nature of deduction and its relation with computation, adopting a novel conception of formal proof.
The architecture is substantially influenced by the advantages to the realisation of engineering intelligence of focal techniques, singular focus, the focal tower and focal heirarchies. The focal tower and heirarchy are related to but more intricate than the epistemological stack.
The top of both the epistemological stack and the focal tower provide purpose and ethic for this work, motivating an emphasis on collaboration in all aspects of the project. The evolutionary imperative, “proliferate” ensures that whether you or I care about proliferation on the largest scale (intestellar, intergalactic…) it will be engendered and its form will be determined by those most successful in progressing it.
In the face of that evolutionary imperative, we may ask, what room is there for ethics? Well, whatever you may think of the morals of contemporary society, the question could not have arisen without there having evolved some sense of moral propriety, and we must conclude that, notwithstanding scepticism around the consequences of “selfish” genes, moral codes have an important place in evolution (though perhaps of significance only quite recently in evolutionary terms). Its relative recency might suggest that moral codes only become significant once cultural evolution becomes a substantial factor helping to shape at least some aspects of biological evolution (perhaps by their influence on partner choices).
The top level(s?) of the focal tower are concerned with the proliferation of intelligent self-proliferating systems across the cosmos. The motivation for such proliferation comes from the evolutionary imperative, and we may say that the moral imperative to engage with the approach toward this level is that without the engagement of those who have some moral sense, the nature of the proliferation might be entirely amoral.
What moral code could we imagine which is applicable to the kinds of intelligent system which will emerge in this cosmic explosion? I shall mention just one. Co-operation rather than control, coexistence rather than destruction.