Synthetic Philosophy and Deductive Engineering
Note that in this glossary, many terms are given special meanings for SPaDE which may differ from their general usage.
See also: synthetic.
Obtained by breaking something complex down into its constituent parts or elements.
A judgement or proposition where the predicate is contained in the concept of the subject. A proposition which is derivable from the principle of non-contradiction alone.
A proof which proceeds by analysis from the conclusion to be proved back to axioms and premises.
A philosophical tradition that emphasizes clarity and logical rigor, often through the analysis of language and concepts.
A sentence that is true in virtue of its meaning alone, independent of empirical verification (though not independent of the logic required to establish that meaning?). A tautology. A sentence of which the truth conditions are satisfied in all possible circumstances.
[The truth of the sentence in fact depends only on that part of the meaning which consists in its truth conditions, and to say that it depends only on those conditions is to say that the truth conditions are the constant function yielding true (and it is therefore what we call a logically necessary proposition). Hence once its meaning is established (in this formal sense) not even logic is required to establish its truth. Of course this formal stance may not be convincing when considering natural languages, but the difficulty is primarily in establishing the meaning, or even deciding what meaning is.]
Knowledge captured in propositions expressed by sentences in a well defined declarative language.
Languages having sentences with truth conditions, the assertion of which affirms that those conditions hold.
The process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true.
An approach to engineering design and construction in which the formal modelling of requirements is progressed concurrently with automated deductively verified design and implementation. Design methods are implemented as derived inference rules which prove compliance of designs with system specifications from premises about the characteristics of components and subsystems, thus progressively refining specifications into designs and implementations.
Concerning the entire cosmic reach of the progeny of a single origin of intelligence, such as Planet Earth.
A distributed repository spanning the knowledge of an intelligent diaspora. A maximal connected component of the pansophic repository.
The placement or incorporation of one thing within another.
A mapping of one language into another (possibly defined in a third language).
A language embedding that preserves meaning, see: Semantic Embedding.
A semantic embedding which is not deep, and therefore does not require a target more expressive than the source language.
A mapping (in a target- or meta-language) that represents the semantics of a source- or object-language, in a manner which supports metatheoretic reasoning about the language, typically as a function defined over the abstract syntax of that language.
Concerning knowledge.
The philosophical study of knowledge or philosophical theories about knowledge.
A conceptual framework for understanding how abstract deductive reasoning contributes to deduction in all domains of declarative knowledge. Also contributing to the understanding of the focal tower.
Giving particular attention to parts of a whole.
AI systems specialising in narrow domains unencumbered by the support of broader capabilities. These will often be perfect information spaces in which competence can be achieved by exploration of the space without need of training data, as exemplified by DeepMind’s AlphaZero.
A conceptual framework for understanding how focal engineering (including singular foci) can be applied to problems in various domains, by identifying the perfect information spaces within those domains and applying appropriate focal AI techniques to solve problems within those spaces.
An organised society or establishment founded for a specific purpose.
A category of related logical systems sharing common syntax and semantics, such as first order logic or higher order logic.
An ordinally indexed family of logical systems, sharing common syntax but with semantics defined by increasingly strong notions of model, such that for any member of the family there exists a subsequent member in which the semantics of the former can be rendered as a deep embedding (and is therefore strictly more expressive).
A maximally expressive foundational institution.
The philosophical (as opposed to scientific, and hence a priori) study of the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, and potentiality and actuality. In Synthetic Philosophy, which follows logical positivism in rejecting the synthetic a priori, the residual metaphysics is ontological and conventional.
Concerning all knowledge in the cosmos.
A domain characterized by complete observability, well-defined rules, deterministic behavior, finite and discrete state/action spaces, objective evaluation criteria, and self-contained specification. Examples include chess, Go, and formal proof systems. Perfect information spaces are precisely coextensive with formal deductive theories and define the scope of focal methods. See Perfect Information Spaces and Focal Methods for detailed treatment.
A hypothesised future point at which technological progress, particularly in AI, becomes so rapid and profound that it defies human understanding and control. Often associated with the acceleration of AI development expected when AI is able to improve its own capabilities or design its successors autonomously.
The use of focal intelligence to accelerate progress, by giving priority to the capabilities which enable AI to improve its own design and implementation. There are multiple levels at which focus on reflexive capabilities can be beneficial, and this is a special kind of focal engineering incorporated into the development strategy for SPaDE.
An acronym for Synthetic Philosophy and Deductive Engineering. The name of an open source knowledge engineering project with a repository at github.com/rbjones/SPaDE.
See also: analytic.
Constructed rather than discovered.
A judgement or proposition where the predicate adds new information not already contained in the concept of the subject.
A proof which proceeds from axioms and premises to a conclusion by direct logical inference.
Those parts of synthetic philosophy (SPaDE) seeking to understand knowledge by designing the epistemic engines of the future.
An approach to philosophy which seeks to integrate and unify knowledge from diverse fields and disciplines into a coherent, comprehensive worldview or system of understanding.
A constructive philosophy seeking to understand the future by shaping it, primarily through deductive engineering including synthetic epistemology.
A sentence that is not analytically true; its truth conditions are non-trivial. A sentence expressing a contingent proposition.
Concerning Planet Earth.
The intelligent progeny of homo sapiens.
The distributed repository encompassing the declarative knowledge of the terran diaspora.