Aimingwhether

Aimingwhether is a neologism used in philosophy, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence to describe a planning principle in which an agent designs goals conditioned on the truth value of a prescribed proposition. The core idea is to organize goals by whether a given condition holds, often by maintaining parallel or guarded strategies that respond to different outcomes.

Origin and etymology: The term combines aiming, referring to intentional action toward a goal, with whether, a conditional clause. It is a modern coinage without a formal, widely accepted standard, appearing mainly in speculative discussions about conditional planning and decision making.

Formal concept: Under aimingwhether, an agent formulates a set of subgoals tied to each branch of a proposition p. If p is true, the agent pursues goals A; if p is false, it pursues goals B. This can be modeled as a conditional planning problem or as a guarded objective set, with the aim of maximizing expected utility across branches or ensuring robustness to uncertainty.

Applications and examples: In AI planning, aimingwhether supports hedging under uncertainty, robotics, and strategic decision making. For example, a delivery drone might plan to use route R if weather condition W holds, otherwise switch to route S. In philosophy and cognitive science, it is discussed as a way to formalize contingent agency and rational deliberation, illustrating how beliefs about conditions shape goal formation.

Criticism and limitations: Critics argue that maintaining multiple branches can be resource-intensive and may lead to indecision or inefficiency in fixed environments. Proponents contend that aimingwhether clarifies how conditional beliefs influence goal setting and behavior, offering a structured way to model conditional rationality.