cognitive v. executive

according to don i need to (eventually) work out whether my thesis is cognitive or executive cognitive:

• an argument or the logical outcome
• facts are facts, what do you do with them?
• start with a theory
• who else uses this system? it is scientific: geographers, physicists, other scientists
• caution: this type of argument is warped by being inside it
• there can be an issue with what you want as opposed to what you get (think: creationism)

executive:

• an act
• do what you want to do, facts are variable
• start with a problem

editorial:

• trying to do both is very difficult - but may be possible using an editorial position

"The editorial page of a newspaper is an opinion on any certain topic. Articles appearing on a newspaper's editorial pages represent the views of the newspaper's editor and/or it's editorial board." (wikipedia, april 12, 2009, 10:01 pm)

i'm straddling the line, at the moment: i have a problem - which is wishing to increase the agency of the have-not residents of galt. i have a theory - that the collective intelligence of a group of people can be enhanced by architecture (i have some hunches as to how). i also have some ideas about robert venturi's work as a starting point for thinking about architecture as emergent, rather than top-down (executive?). i think my problem came from a desire to find an application for my interest in theory so... if i have to pick a side: i'm going with cognitive, for now. of course that raises another issue: if what i am doing is watching, acting as participant-observer, then i am by definition in the middle of this work, which, as noted above, risks warping the argument. hmmm...