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Generative AI and Inquiring Systems: Ways of Patterning and Ways of Knowing | Systems Thinking Ontario | 2025-01-08

January 9, 2025
2 Comments

In the 1970s, five ways of knowing were established by C. West Churchman in The Design of Inquiring Systtems. In the 1990s, his student Ian Mitroff carried on the tradition and extended that work in The Unbounded Mind.  Now in the 2020s, the technology of Generative AI opens up opportunties to query or request responses through chatbot interfaces, drawing from bodies of codified knowledge in a style expressed implicitly or explicitly.  Just as there are multiple ways of knowing, there are multiple ways in which underlying language models can be implemented and/or mixed.

The January 2025 Systems Thinking Ontario session, included:

  • the progression of patterning of information, in a simile of a recipe collection, from the days of cookbooks on library shelves, through the now familiar technologies of search engines and data science, to the new transformer and retrieval augmented generation techniques;
  • some Q+A chat challenges, feeding the same question and observing the differences in responses across (i) OpenAI ChatGPT, (ii) Microsoft Copilot, (iii) Mistral LeChat, (iv) Anthropic Claude, (v) Google NotebookLM, and (vi) Preplexity.ai;
  • five inquiring systems described in a mini-lecture, followed by summarized descrptions by each of the six generative AI products; and
  • a hypothetical scenario requesting the how the five inquiring systems might guide ways of deciding about Small Modular Reactors for Canada.

The discussion closed with an outline of Type 1 errors, Type 2 errors, Type 3 errors, and Type 4 errors, as structured by Ian Mitroff.… Read more (in a new tab)

In the 1970s, five ways of knowing were established by C. West Churchman in The Design of Inquiring Systtems. In the 1990s, his student Ian Mitroff carried on the tradition and extended that work in The Unbounded Mind.  Now in the 2020s, the technology of Generative AI opens up opportunties to query or request responses through chatbot interfaces, drawing from bodies of codified knowledge in a style expressed implicitly or explicitly.  Just as there are multiple ways of knowing, there are multiple ways in which underlying language models can be implemented and/or mixed.

The January 2025 Systems Thinking Ontario session, included:

  • the progression of patterning of information, in a simile of a recipe collection, from the days of cookbooks on library shelves, through the now familiar technologies of search engines and data science, to the new transformer and retrieval augmented generation techniques;
  • some Q+A chat challenges, feeding the same question and observing the differences in responses across (i) OpenAI ChatGPT, (ii) Microsoft Copilot, (iii) Mistral LeChat, (iv) Anthropic Claude, (v) Google NotebookLM, and (vi) Preplexity.ai;
  • five inquiring systems described in a mini-lecture, followed by summarized descrptions by each of the six generative AI products; and
  • a hypothetical scenario requesting the how the five inquiring systems might guide ways of deciding about Small Modular Reactors for Canada.

The discussion closed with an outline of Type 1 errors, Type 2 errors, Type 3 errors, and Type 4 errors, as structured by Ian Mitroff.… Read more (in a new tab)

Nonrelativistic pragmatism and systems thinking

July 9, 2023
0 Comments

The ties between systems thinking and pragmatism are apparently strong, but the breadth in the philosophy of pragmatism can be confusing.  Within the tradition, one of the threads is called nonrelativistic pragmatism, proposed by systems luminaries C. West Churchman with Russell L. Ackoff, descending from the work of philosopher Edgar A. Singer, Jr.

A concise description of nonrelativistic pragmatism might be as a branch that centers on the entanglement of facts and values, within philosophy of science.  This centering surfaces in an interview of Hilary Putnam, expanded from the two into a “triple entanglement of theory, value, and fact”.

My alma mater was the University of Pennsylvania. The first teacher who really influenced me there was a pragmatist. His is an interesting story. His name was C. West Churchman. (I do not know what his first name was, because he obviously did not like it.) He was a philosopher of science for a while, but then he eventually left the field of philosophy, and became Professor of Operations Research at the University of California. He was a pragmatist, and he was a student – which makes me a “grandstudent” – of a philosopher named E. A. Singer Jr., who was in turn a student of William James. Singer created a pragmatist tradition at the University of Pennsylvania. The other pragmatist at that point – she did not even have tenure, she was just an assistant professor but later she became a full professor – was Elizabeth Flower.

… Read more (in a new tab)

The ties between systems thinking and pragmatism are apparently strong, but the breadth in the philosophy of pragmatism can be confusing.  Within the tradition, one of the threads is called nonrelativistic pragmatism, proposed by systems luminaries C. West Churchman with Russell L. Ackoff, descending from the work of philosopher Edgar A. Singer, Jr.

A concise description of nonrelativistic pragmatism might be as a branch that centers on the entanglement of facts and values, within philosophy of science.  This centering surfaces in an interview of Hilary Putnam, expanded from the two into a “triple entanglement of theory, value, and fact”.

My alma mater was the University of Pennsylvania. The first teacher who really influenced me there was a pragmatist. His is an interesting story. His name was C. West Churchman. (I do not know what his first name was, because he obviously did not like it.) He was a philosopher of science for a while, but then he eventually left the field of philosophy, and became Professor of Operations Research at the University of California. He was a pragmatist, and he was a student – which makes me a “grandstudent” – of a philosopher named E. A. Singer Jr., who was in turn a student of William James. Singer created a pragmatist tradition at the University of Pennsylvania. The other pragmatist at that point – she did not even have tenure, she was just an assistant professor but later she became a full professor – was Elizabeth Flower.

… Read more (in a new tab)

Inquiring systems and asking the right question | Mitroff and Linstone (1993)

May 18, 2019
1 Comment
Inputs, Operator, Outputs, Guarantor

Fit the people around an organization; or an organization around the people? Working backwards, say @MitroffCrisis + #HaroldLinstone, from current concrete choices to uncertain futures, surfaces strategic assumptions in a collective decision, better than starting with an abstract scorecard to rank candidates. The Unbounded Mind is an easier-reading follow-on to The Design of Inquiry Systems by C. West Churchman.

This scorecard metaphor shows up in the second of five ways of knowing (i.e. inquiring systems)

Chapter 3 is “The World as a Formula: The Second Way of Knowing”. A case study commonly used in business school education is described.

To illustrate the use and meaning of the Analytic-Deductive IS in a social realm, we’ll apply it to a situation that on the surface at least is as “simple” as the question that occupied us in the last chapter. There is a somewhat dated yet classic case in the Harvard Business Review that provides a perfect depiction of the Analytic-Deductive IS. [5] Four men are running for the presidency of a fictitious life insurance company, Zenith Life. Background information on their strengths and weaknesses, families, career history, skills, and so on, is given for all four, although we do not receive the same information for each of them. Thus, we know more about one candidate in one category than we do about another. Also, the history and current nature of Zenith Life itself, its prospects and problems, its opportunities as well as threats, are described.

… Read more (in a new tab)

Fit the people around an organization; or an organization around the people? Working backwards, say @MitroffCrisis + #HaroldLinstone, from current concrete choices to uncertain futures, surfaces strategic assumptions in a collective decision, better than starting with an abstract scorecard to rank candidates. The Unbounded Mind is an easier-reading follow-on to The Design of Inquiry Systems by C. West Churchman.

This scorecard metaphor shows up in the second of five ways of knowing (i.e. inquiring systems)

Chapter 3 is “The World as a Formula: The Second Way of Knowing”. A case study commonly used in business school education is described.

To illustrate the use and meaning of the Analytic-Deductive IS in a social realm, we’ll apply it to a situation that on the surface at least is as “simple” as the question that occupied us in the last chapter. There is a somewhat dated yet classic case in the Harvard Business Review that provides a perfect depiction of the Analytic-Deductive IS. [5] Four men are running for the presidency of a fictitious life insurance company, Zenith Life. Background information on their strengths and weaknesses, families, career history, skills, and so on, is given for all four, although we do not receive the same information for each of them. Thus, we know more about one candidate in one category than we do about another. Also, the history and current nature of Zenith Life itself, its prospects and problems, its opportunities as well as threats, are described.

… Read more (in a new tab)

The Meta-design of Dialogues as Inquiring Systems

January 13, 2012
3 Comments

Dialogic design and systems thinking can be closely related, although not everyone appreciates the ties.  For the Design with Dialogue community, at the invitation of Peter Jones, we jointly organized a workshop based on some ideas that I had previously brought together in teaching in Finland.  I’ve posted the slides — both with builds and as printable — over on the Coevolving Commons.  For people who weren’t there, I can provide an outline of the activities of the three hours.

After introducing ourselves in the circle, and speaking about dialogues that each of us might be interested in pursuing, I provided an explanation of the Map of Ignorance, as described in the Curriculum on Medical Ignorance by Witte, Kerwin and Witte in the University of Arizona College of Medicine.  We walked through the interpretation of Unknown Knowns, Known Unknowns, and Errors.

Unknown unknowns raise questions about what might or might not be knowable.

Taboos and denials typically don’t enter a dialogue unless the facilitator ensures that they do.

Dialogic design and systems thinking can be closely related, although not everyone appreciates the ties.  For the Design with Dialogue community, at the invitation of Peter Jones, we jointly organized a workshop based on some ideas that I had previously brought together in teaching in Finland.  I’ve posted the slides — both with builds and as printable — over on the Coevolving Commons.  For people who weren’t there, I can provide an outline of the activities of the three hours.

After introducing ourselves in the circle, and speaking about dialogues that each of us might be interested in pursuing, I provided an explanation of the Map of Ignorance, as described in the Curriculum on Medical Ignorance by Witte, Kerwin and Witte in the University of Arizona College of Medicine.  We walked through the interpretation of Unknown Knowns, Known Unknowns, and Errors.

Unknown unknowns raise questions about what might or might not be knowable.

Taboos and denials typically don’t enter a dialogue unless the facilitator ensures that they do.

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