Process Thinking

The key to the rote/process distinction and to much of my positive philosophy pivots on the notion of "process." How is it different from rote and how does it really manifest in someone's life as a true, natural intellectual style? (I have suggested in overly simple terms, time and time again, that rote is memorization and process is creative critical thought*)

The first answer is, I don't know. I can tell you what it looks like but I don't think anyone can do a very good job of explaining it completely or investigating an efficient cause (where it comes from). With consideration to Newton and Reid, I would say that much of our "complete" knowledge of "process" is unattainable, but I can tell you what it looks like, how it appears and how we use it.

I've said it before: think of the quintessential computer and then think of a man. Even in simpler men, that difference, the remainder (between him and the device) is the "process." When we think of the computer's abilities we think of them as fast. And they are fast. But men have those same abilities: memory and combining and regurgitation. Humans just aren't as fast and that is why they use their invention: the computer.

How did the first computer get invented? Did it spin out of memory and the combining of memorized facts? Probably not. Some method, other than simple computing, actually did the inventing.

There are a number of ways to come at this question about what "process" really is. I'll try a couple and then hopefully show you how difficult it can become and then leave you with the beginning of a definition. Man's invention, the computer, is good at a few specific things and really nothing else. That computer and a human brain are not two sides of a coin - they are markedly different. That difference is the initial conception of "process."

I'm going to suggest that Reid's notion of active power is key to understanding this difference, but before that I need to address one more modern issue. AI. Artificial intelligence is just that: artificial. What man is trying to do (and in my mind failing) with AI is produce a short-sighted example of "process" intelligence. Because "process" is understood by people in such a limited sense - and examined in a way that is just as limited - there is no measure to say if they have succeeded. But what I will say is that it cannot be done. To understand "process" just look at the expectations of the AI pioneers. That is a clue. But because we can imagine what the initial hope and goal might be does not mean that there is any connection between this hope and what is produced. What I see in AI is simply the extension of the computer's original skill-set. I see these limited, rote-based skills extended in a way to appear like human intellect. The closer they can make that simulation, the more they think they have succeeded. To understand this clearly one would have to go backwards and spend the time neglected by most philosophers in the past three centuries and truly understand "process." Simply: what is intelligence?

Perhaps more importantly, as "process" intelligence gets more and more confused with "rote," it becomes easier to show how a version of AI is really intelligence (rote). As we lose sight of "process," AI becomes deceptively more successful. When we regain a version of "process," AI will look stupid.

Maybe one should ask the best AI the answer to what "process" is. Unfortunately, it will be a rote answer.

Reid's notion of active power, for our purposes, can be taken to mean free will. He was attempting to set out a theory regarding free choice and what it means to understand and will action. He also believed that if this action could not be otherwise, it is not based on freedom. It is in this original conception of freedom that a difference can be seen between a man and his invention. This is true in the same way as my argument about the common God-structure. It is a "being" that enslaves us with his power (and his moral precepts) and holds us accountable while simultaneously (I know, a contradiction) supplying us with "free will." What I mean is that this God-structure, as explained, common to most "understandable" religious writing, is in no way a path to freedom. God cannot provide and take away at the same time. This is true also of a conception of general free will if, in fact, we are ruled by instinct or motive or authority, etc. I believe this is commensurate with Reid's definition. True freedom is, well … free.

This careful analysis (though brief) begins a discussion of active power. This active power can lead us to an intellectual state that, though deep, is something we all potentially share (which makes it more social then analytical) and that can highlight a difference between us and computers. It can also shed light on a more critical and deeper analysis of our preliminary discussion of rote knowledge versus process knowledge. To understand the latter we must really define the former and then, arduously, everything in-between.

*Time and time again I have suggested that messing up this distinction causes us to wrongly value rote intelligence. We have a habit of claiming that knowing few things versus knowing many things is the difference between ignorant and smart, when in fact it is the type of things, not the quantity or the regurgitation speed, that make the difference. In order to diagnose mass ignorance we have to understand intelligence properly and not assume that the work has been done for us by loud-mouthed, armchair rote thinkers in the past. In addition what I'm saying is that to diagnose our problem we need to analyze the distinction between rote and process by process and not rote.