Executable Epistemology: The Structured Cognitive Loop as an Architecture of Intentional Understanding - PhilSci-Archive
Kim, Myung Ho (2025) Executable Epistemology: The Structured Cognitive Loop as an Architecture of Intentional Understanding. [Preprint] This is the latest version of this item. Large language models exhibit intelligence without genuine epistemic understanding, revealing a fundamental philosophical gap: the absence of epistemic architecture. This paper introduces the Structured Cognitive Loop (SCL) as an executable epistemological framework for emergent intelligence. Unlike traditional AI research that asks "what is intelligence?" (ontological), SCL asks "under what conditions does cognition emerge?" (epistemological). Situated within contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive phenomenology, this framework bridges conceptual philosophy and implementable cognition. Drawing on process philosophy, enactive cognition, and extended mind theory, we reconceptualize intelligence not as a possessed property but as a performed process—a continuous loop of judgment, memory, control, action, and