The use of knowledge in open-ended systems

TL;DR

This paper develops a new framework for understanding how knowledge is used and acquired in open-ended evolutionary systems, highlighting local reasoning, disagreement, and the emergence of nonlogical reasoning modes.

Contribution

It introduces a formal representation of knowledge in dynamic, open-ended systems, extending traditional static models to account for innovation and unbounded change.

Findings

Observers can agree to disagree in open-ended systems

Knowledge use is fundamentally local and frame-dependent

The framework explains emergence of nonlogical reasoning modes

Abstract

Economists model knowledge use and acquisition as a cause-and-effect calculus associating observations made by a decision-maker about their world with possible underlying causes. Knowledge models are well-established for static contexts, but not for contexts of innovative and unbounded change. We develop a representation of knowledge use and acquisition in open-ended evolutionary systems and demonstrate its primary results, including that observers embedded in open-ended evolutionary systems can agree to disagree and that their ability to theorize about their systems is fundamentally local and constrained to their frame of reference what we call frame relativity. The results of our framework formalize local knowledge use, the many-selves interpretation of reasoning through time, and motivate the emergence of nonlogical modes of reasoning like institutional and aesthetic codes.