Inquiry Driven Systems : Part 5
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5. Interlude : The Medium and Its Message
5.1. Reflective Expression
5.1.1. Casual Reflection
Recall that an "ostensibly recursive text" (ORT), already encountered a bit less formally in discussing the issue of the informal context, is a text that cites itself by title at some site within its body. Consider a "text in progress" (TIP) at its growing edge, anywhere that it joins new text to a body of work already established, anywhere that it sends out buds and shoots from a secular truncation of its author's intention. Here is where a growing text advances through its media of language and communication, the potentially nurturing environments and the invariably constraining surroundings that make a definite array of resources available to a text, grant it certain options for continuing its development, and limit the effects of meaning that it can achieve. A text that can form in such a medium is part of what one has in mind whenever one opens a sentence with a phrase like "A text that can ..." and continues by elaborating on a text's "abilities", "capacities", or "intentions" as if this text is not a fixed or a static entity but one whose free selection and future development are still open to question. A text that can cite itself by title is a limiting case of a text that can cite itself by chapter and verse, in other words, a text with a sufficient degree of articulation that it can make appropriate references to its own parts and sections, and can thus invoke the objects, the functions, and the structures that are represented in them. This should go to explain the interest I am taking in ORT's, their kin, and their generalizations. These kinds of texts exhibit an aspect of self reference that is usually taken for granted, to the point that it is hardly recognized as such, but one that is implied in all attempts "to make infinite use of finite means". A program is generally a text of this sort. A non trivial program, one that wraps an infinite object in a finite sign, whether it numbers its lines and directs its execution by means of instructions that have its interpreter "go to" this or that place in its own text, or whether its modules call on each other by name, is always "recursive" in this sense. The deeper that one looks into a species of text, the further that one's interest tends to shift from the distinctive features of individual texts to the properties of the medium that supports their growth. Although a medium is initially conceived to be a source of texts or a constraint on their production, that is, as a generative facility or a generated space, it is often possible to formalize it as the full grammar of a discursive language, in other words, as a comprehensive theory for that species of texts, accounting for their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects. Still, what is the status in reality of these conceptual constructions: a medium, a grammar, or a theory for a species of texts? They have no meaning apart from the texts that they admit to exist. They are only known by means of the texts that they allow to subsist in them, that they enable to live and to grow, and everything that is learned about them ultimately needs to be expressed in a text, or something like it, even if not always a text of the very same order or species.
5.1.1.1. Ostensibly Recursive Texts
Bein' on the twenty third of June,
As I sat weaving all at my loom,
Bein' on the twenty third of June,
As I sat weaving all at my loom,
I heard a thrush, singing on yon bush,
And the song she sang was The Jug of Punch.
(Traditional), The Jug of Punch, [Alt, n.p.]
Is there a true poem, a verse with the echo of divine inspiration, that resounds in the memories of this minor ditty, this song of the pubs and this ballad of the streets? Does ambrosia yet flow in the veins of the one who sings this ode on an amphoric urn? If there is, and if it does, then it is likely to involve a wholly different order of interpretation, one where the reference to a jug of punch, ostensibly denoting a simple demijohn, is sure to denote an object of much greater significance than its literal denotation can convey, and one where the cryptic imports of its invocations are intended to descant a more figurative, metaphorical, and transcendental sense.
For the sake of shortening future references to the epigraph at the top of this subsection, let the acronym "JOP" be taken as equivalent to the phrase "jug of punch", and let the italicized tag "TJOP" be taken as tantamount to the title "The Jug of Punch".
There are features of this style of abbreviation that need to be noted. Instead of letting the acronym "JOP" denote the phrase "jug of punch", and rather than letting the italicized acronym "TJOP" denote the title "The Jug of Punch", I am merely asking for the reader to take part in forming an augmented scheme of interpretation, one that adds new signs to a formerly established sign relation, but does it in a way that does nothing of serious consequence to its underlying semantic properties. This involves the construction of a "semiotic partition" (SEP), along with its corresponding "semiotic equivalence relation" (SER), in which the associated set of "semiotic equivalence classes" (SEC's) serves to stake out a number of parts. In the present illustration there are two sets of synonyms, constellating a pair of mutually exclusive classes of signs that denote their respective objects in parallel, as in Table 17.
Table 17. Semiotic Partition Implied by the ACE of J
Object SEC
jug of punch {"jug of punch", "JOP"}
The Jug of Punch {"The Jug of Punch", "TJOP"}
In each case, the abbreviated form and its expansion are set to connote each other all within a single level of signs, while both signs are set to denote their common object in a parallel fashion. This strategy for annexing compressed references to a sign relation can be referred to as an "acronymically connotative extension" (ACE) of that sign relation.
What more pleasure can a boy desire,
Than sitting down beside the fire?
What more pleasure can a boy desire,
Than sitting down beside the fire?
And in his hand a jug of punch,
And on his knee a tidy wench.
(Traditional), The Jug of Punch, [Alt, n.p.]
Let J be a hypothetical sign relation that is adequate to interpret the The Jug of Punch. Table 18 gives a bit of J that is called for in order to accomplish this interpretation. Table 19 shows an ACE of this bit. Table 20 gives a bit of this ACE that suffices to get the gist of it.
Table 18. Bit of the Sign Relation J
Object Sign Interpretant
jug of punch "jug of punch" "jug of punch"
The Jug of Punch "The Jug of Punch" "The Jug of Punch"
Table 19. ACE of a Bit of J
Object Sign Interpretant
JOP "JOP" "JOP"
JOP "JOP" "jug of punch"
JOP "jug of punch" "JOP"
JOP "jug of punch" "jug of punch"
TJOP "TJOP" "TJOP"
TJOP "TJOP" "The Jug of Punch"
TJOP "The Jug of Punch" "TJOP"
TJOP "The Jug of Punch" "The Jug of Punch"
Table 20. Bit of an ACE of a Bit of J
Object Sign Interpretant
JOP "jug of punch" "JOP"
TJOP "The Jug of Punch" "TJOP"
When I am dead and left in my mould,
At my head and feet place a flowing bowl,
When I am dead and left in my mould,
At my head and feet place a flowing bowl,
And every young man that passes by,
He can have a drink and remember I.
(Traditional), The Jug of Punch, [Alt, n.p.]
Table 21
Table 21. Budget of a Sign Relation: The Bottom of the Bit
Object Sign Interpretant
JOP "JOP" "jug of punch"
TJOP "TJOP" "The Jug of Punch"
... TJOP "Bein' ... I."
"Being on the "Being on the
twenty third of June, twenty third of June,
as I sat weaving as I sat weaving
all at my loom, all at my loom,
I heard a thrush, I heard a thrush,
singing on yon bush, singing on yon bush,
and the song she sang and the song she sang
was The Jug of Punch." was just this song."
"What more pleasure "No more pleasure
can a boy desire, can a boy desire,
than sitting down than sitting down
beside the fire, beside the fire,
and in his hand and in his hand
a jug of punch, a jug of punch,
and on his knee and on his knee
a tidy wench?" a tidy wench."
"When I am dead "When I am dead
and left in my mould, and left in my mould,
at my head and feet at my head and feet
place a flowing bowl, place a flowing bowl,
and every young man and every young man
that passes by, that passes by,
he can have a drink he can have a drink
and remember I." and remember me."
Needless to say, acute enough hearers of this humble hymn or insightful enough interpreters of its lilting lyrics would no doubt find traces of Arthurian legend and clues to the Grail mythology woven all through its homespun text, but that is not my present task, to guess at its deepest drafts of meaning. Although there are features of this particular text that possess an incidental interest here, the reason for introducing it into the current context is more to illustrate the kinds of issues that are involved in a complex text, one with recursions and multiple levels of interpretation.
5.1.1.2. Analogical Recursion
With these preparations it is possible to return to the problems of analogical recursion, as ilustrated by the poem The Lady of Shalott. In the body of the poem, the italicized phrase "The Lady of Shalott" is triply ambiguous, being amenable to any one of the following readings:
1. It can be the title of a person, italicized for emphasis.
2. It can be the name of a vehicle, for instance, a boat or a ship that is named after a person.
3. It can be the title of a text, for instance, a poem named after its principal subject or a story named after its chief character.
The first two readings are available on a literal interpretation and can be distinguished if the difference of emphasis is detected by the reader. The third reading is subtler, requiring both a figurative interpretation and a reason to suspect that some sort of subtext is possibly in force. How is the reader supposed to deal with this three headed equivocation? Is it a deliberate ambiguity on the author's part, one whose design is plotted with the aim of conveying a meaning? Does this question really matter, or does the syntactic structure of text still betray a form of intention, whether or not a conscious one?
If it is frequently necessary to distinguish the equally likely readings of equivocal signs, and if the design of the language in use is a topic open to discussion, then it is possible to bring in a requisite array of typographical conventions and a suitable set of type marking devices to indicate more explicitly the types of objects that are being denoted or the senses of signs that are being intended. But this kind of strategy only puts off the day when a capacity for intelligent interpretation is called on to resolve the ambiguities and the uncertainties that remain to all orders of finite signs. Keeping the inevitability of this outcome in mind, it is probably a good idea to spend a reasonable proportion of the meantime thinking of ways to build a capacity for flexible interpretation into a language from its very conception, or at least to leave room for its growth, and thus to facilitate an aptitude for interpretation under conditions of uncertainty throughout the entire course of development of a sign using capacity.
An intentional ambiguity in the reference of a sign is a primitive way of suggesting that there is an aspect of analogy or equality among the objects denoted, in other words, that there is a respect in which they are similar or a feature they have in common. In short, equivocation is akin to equation, becoming more pertinent the more persistent it is, and ambiguities that are systematic enough can amount to valid abstractions.
In the present case, one can observe the possibility that the author is suggesting the following analogies:
1. One analogy says that authoring a text is like piloting a vehicle. This can be written in either one of two ways.
a. Poet / Poem = Pilot / Boat.
b. Poet / Pilot = Poem / Boat.
c. Pilot / Poet = Boat / Poem.
2. ...
The arrangements of SEC's, SEP's, SEQ's, and SER's have to do with the analogies that can be discovered and the equalities that can be created among signs, but a hint of the relevant similarities can be found in the "categorical analogies" (CAN's) or the "categorical equations" (CEQ's) that it is frequently possible to recognize among general terms, namely, the class names that apply to the corresponding categories of objects.
Tables 22 and 23 show two ways of expressing these general kinds of relationship, as they apply to the present example.
Table 22. A Categorical Analogy
Pilot / Poet
=
Boat / Poem
Table 23. A Categorical Equation
Pilot = Poet
<=>
Boat = Poem
Thus, a rough outline of the ARK that transports The Lady of Shalott from a PORT or a QORT to an ORT is provided by the following example of a "categorical equation" (CEQ).
Pilot = Poet <=> Boat = Poem.
This means that the reader can get a clue as to how the author relates to his text by reading, in a metaphorical way, the statements as to how the pilot or the passenger (the Lady of Shalott) relates to her vehicle (The Lady of Shalott). What one sees illustrated here is a particular form of literary device, one that I refer to as "analogical recursion". Given the intricacy of this form, it is probably useful to analyze its workings into several steps.
For the sake of shortening future references to the epitext at the top of the last subsection, the sequence of epigraphs that lace its prose discussion, let the acronym "TLOS" stand for "The Lady of Shalott", the unofficial title of a legendary person, and let the italicized acronym "TLOS" be taken in token for "The Lady of Shalott", the title of a poem.
Table 24. Semiotic Partition Implied by the ACE of L
Object SEC
The Lady of Shalott {"The Lady of Shalott", "TLOS"}
The Lady of Shalott {"The Lady of Shalott", "TLOS"}
Table 25. Bit of an ACE of a Bit of L
Object Sign Interpretant
TLOS "The Lady of Shalott" "TLOS"
TLOS "The Lady of Shalott" "TLOS"
5.1.2. Conscious Reflection
In this Section I examine how the intellectual process of reflection is expressed in reflective writing. Not so much as materials for analysis, since the power of analysis present in this work remains in a primitive state, but more to provide a constant reminder of what a reflective text is like, I am taking my epitext from the lifelong work of a single author, who made the aim of reflection an integral part of a whole life's work. The thesis that is developing here is this: Language users have an innate knowledge of the "situation of communication" (SOC), a knowledge that is built into the language itself and gives its users an inkling of the social setting of communication that the language is meant to serve. Such a knowledge is tantamount to a science of communication that its users develop from its initial state by dint or by virtue of using it. Language users possess an intuitive, if imperfect, appreciation of the forms that are inherent in the social "task of communication" (TOC), and they exercise an implicit, if incipient, understanding of the practical roles that are constrained by the social "hold of communication" (HOC). Although every language user actualizes these roles with more or less competence and participates in the requisite forms of relationship with more or less cognizance, it is poets, playwrights, programmers, policy analysts, and other sorts of reflective writers that are especially charged to articulate these forms in a relatively explicit fashion. The fact that reflective writers are driven to comment on the SOC itself, even if it is not always desirable or feasible to do so straightforwardly, and the fact that perceptive writers are able to find symbols of the SOC in the most inobvious places, reflected in the most refractory settings, and even when its likenesses are cast into the most unlikely images — these are two of the factors that combine to give creative writing its notably recursive and often cryptic character. A reflective writer converts a "situation of communication" (SOC), a type of object, into a "communication of situation" (COS), a type of sign, and links the succession of reflective signs into the ongoing reflective text. But what are the forces that force a text, developing freely in a medium of communication, furnishing the vehicle of an observation, and bearing the impression of an object that occasions it, to double back on its writer and itself, to turn back through the medium of communication, all to form a sign for itself and to make a name for its author? The relevance of reflective writing to the inquiry into inquiry can be seen in the following way. Let one examine a reflective text, a sample from the work of a suitably reflective writer, and one often discovers, besides the interpretation that bears on the obvious subject and serves to carry the ostensible theme, that there is coded or woven through the covering text a comment on the SOC itself, that is, a reflection on the writer, the reader, and the text itself. This reflexive interpretation reveals the writer's impressions about the process of writing, the very process that led to the text as its end result. By tracing the analogies that exist between reflective writing and the inquiry into inquiry it is possible to gain a measure of insight into the character of the latter task. It is not a strange circumstance for the life and work of a writer to be represented again in that work, indeed, to be critically reflected there. And there is no question that a text can be used by a writer to talk about itself and its author, in a way that conceivably makes sense of them both — the question is whether what a reflexive text says can be interpreted in the same way as a text about external objects, or has to be taken with a distinct grain of salt. Reflective writing arises from reflection on life and conduct and issues in a description of what goes on in the scene surrounding the reflective writer's "point of view" (POV). Of course, among the forms of conduct that are subject to inspection, a piece of reflective writing can also reflect on the process of writing itself, detailing the conditions that affect its intentions and its outcome, and thus taking on a "reflexive" character, though it is customary to express these narrower reflections in any number of less direct manners. With regard to the scene about a POV, a piece of reflective writing can take any stance from admiring, to amused, to bemused, to critical, to simply trying to puzzle out a fraction of what is going on. With respect to the process of writing and the development of a writer, a piece of reflective writing and what it articulates can be a crucial part of changing or preserving a POV. From this description, it ought to be clear that reflective writing is a naturally occurring species of inquiry into inquiry. That is to say, in analyzing the varieties of syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic phenomena that occur in reflective writing, one is performing a task that parallels the inquiry into inquiry. Notions of "recursion", informally taken, arise in this discussion for several reasons. First, there is the appearance of self application that is involved in an inquiry into inquiry, in the idea that an instrumental activity called "inquiry" can have application to an objective argument called "inquiry" and yield a meaningful result. Second, there is the appearance of self reference that is involved in an inquiry into inquiry, in the fact that a textual record of a self described inquiry needs to refer to itself as falling under the general topic of inquiry. Strictly speaking, the themes of self application and self reference are less properly described as "recursive" than "reflective" or "reflexive", but it is easy to see how these issues arise in the process of carrying out a genuinely recursive project in an effectively pragmatic context. In order to do this, I need to give a rough description of these two ideas, that of a recursive project and that of a pragmatic context. 1. In a recursive project, one attempts to clarify a complex concept in terms of simpler concepts. For instance, an important special case occurs when one tries to analyze a complex process in terms of simpler processes. A recursive project recurs upon a type of situation where the "same" concept is applied to simpler objects, in particular, where the same process, procedure, or function is applied to simpler arguments, proceeding to increasingly simpler arguments until the simplest arguments are reached. A recursive project is sound if there is a bound that can be wound around it, and it redounds to good effect if there is a ground that can be found to found it. 2. In a pragmatic context, the canonical way to clarify any concept is to give it an effective representation or an operational definition, that is, to detail the effects that the object of the concept is conceived to have when it is applied to the objects available in a specifiable variety of practical situations. An interpretive agent that follows this pragmatic prescription for clarifying concepts, persisting at it long enough and pursuing it through an adequate array of applications, can convert each concept analyzed into its corresponding "active formula". This is a form of expression that is logically equivalent, or as nearly as possible, to the intended concept, but suitable for immediate application to the contemplated domain of objects. Now, consider the concept of "inquiry" as a candidate for clarification. In the case of a concept like "inquiry", the object of the concept in question is an activity that applies to the broadest conceivable variety of objects, one of these arguments being the topic of "inquiry" itself. As a result, if one approaches a definition of inquiry by way of the pragmatic prescription for clarifying concepts, one quickly discovers that an important ingredient in the active formula for inquiry is a component that characterizes the concept "inquiry" in terms of its action on itself. What does the object denoted by "inquiry" have to do with respect to the object denoted by "inquiry", in the first place, to qualify as a genuine inquiry, in the end, to succeed as an inquiry into inquiry? Evidently, something about the sign, the object, or what transpires between the sign and the object is conducive to attaining a better description of inquiry than that given by the mere name "inquiry". The word "inquiry" and the symbol "y" are like a host of difficult signs, starting with "I" and "you", where knowing the sign does not mean knowing the object perfectly, although it can lead to a knowledge of it. Simply knowing the word "I" and being able to use it adequately does not mean that I know myself perfectly, or that I can articulate my own nature. At best, these signs can serve to indicate the direction of the object pointed out or help to remind an agent of the action that is called for to be carried out. Can the senses of a sign be so confused, or the sense of an interpreter be so confounded by it, that between the two it is difficult to know if the sign refers to something inside the self that is in the world or to something in the world that is outside the self? Given the description of a question as an unclear sign, it might be thought that the sole purpose of an inquiry is to clarify a question until it acquires the status of an answer, and thus to operate wholly within the syntactic realm of signs and ideas. But this would ignore many cases of experimental inquiry and active problem solving, natural to include among inquiries in general, that involve the manipulation of external objects and the alteration of objective states as they occur in the objective world. With these things in mind, it is best to define an inquiry as a "sign relation transformation" (SRT), in other words, and a bit more pronounceably, as a "transformation of sign relations" (TOSR). This is conceived to be an operation that acts on whole sign relations, changing one into another, typically by acting in specified ways on the "elementary sign relations" (ESR's), or on the ordered triples <o, s, i>. An inquiry, regarded as a TOSR, can be treated as a generalized form of "sign process". Whereas a sign process is restricted to acting within a single sign relation and can only change signs into their interpretants, a TOSR can subject elements of an object domain to experimental actions and induce objective states to undergo a variety of intentional changes. From an abstract relational point of view, it is not too far from grasping the concept of a sign relation to seeing that transformations, operations, and other sorts of relations that are possible to define on sign relations are bound to become of significant interest. But the present concern is to decide whether the identification of inquiries with TOSR's constitutes a good definition in practice. A good definition in practice, aside from capturing the necessary and sufficient properties of its subject, is one that facilitates the generation of fruitful, incisive, material, pertinent, and relevant ideas about it. To some extent this depends on the context of practices and the specific purposes that a particular interpreter has in mind. Still, some definitions are more generally useful than others. Accordingly, the task I need to take up next is to examine the abstract concept of a TOSR with regard to its utility in practice, in other words, to determine its practical bearing on a concrete conception of inquiry, as it is topically understood. If the essence of inquiry, or any aspect of what an inquiry can be, is captured by the concept of a TOSR, then a lot can be learned about the nature of inquiry by studying the manifest varieties and the internal structures of TOSR's. Expressing this in terms of a prospective calculus, the present inquiry, y0, constituted as an inquiry into inquiry, y.y, ... As the clarification of a concept is pursued to the limit, it approaches the status of a definition. And so one finds oneself contemplating a definition of inquiry that defines it at least partially in terms of itself. But an attempt to define a concept in terms of itself is ordinarily considered to be a bad thing, leading to the sort of circular definition that vitiates the utility of the whole effort toward clarity. In summary, because the subject of "inquiry" is something that one can reasonably be in question about, and because the topic of "inquiry" is something that one can sensibly inquire into, the chances that one can make sense of an inquiry into inquiry is not merely an interesting and diverting possibility but a necessary part of the meaning of inquiry. Definitions are limiting cases of clarifications, since a process of clarification pursued far enough approaches a formulation of a concept that is tantamount to its definition. Before an inquiry can proceed very far, it needs to develop a map or a plan of the territory that the agent of inquiry intends to investigate. This task involves the drawing of distinctions, the finding of natural differences and the making of useful separations, among the objects of inquiry. Let me call attention to a compound form of existence, the kind that is composed of a sign and the interpreter that authors it, and describe it more briefly as a "sign and issuer" (SAI) or a "text and writer" (TAW). As long as one moves through a casual context it is convenient to carry along these portmanteau words, precisely because their two components are confounded so consistently in informal speech, where it is hardly polite to keep on objecting to their ambiguities and anthropomorphisms. When I say that a SAI does this or that, it is up to the good sense of a charitable interpreter to decide whether this or that is something that a sign or rather its issuer is supposed to be able to do. In these terms, a SAI that speaks of and to itself and addresses its own composition or a TAW that talks about itself in either sense are not likely to have the same interest for others as they do in themselves. It is ordinarily thought to be a good thing for a SAI or a TAW to be able to reflect on itself, but one whose subject is solely oneself is not ordinarily thought to be of interest to others. In this work, I am interested in SAI's and TAW's that survive the onset of recursion while avoiding the snares of sheer self reference, that pose patterns of self reference but only in the service of a greater subject, and that slip the snarly bonds of narcissism frequently enough to say something significant about something else. It is a form of narcissism to think that others are necessarily as interested in every detail of one's existence as one is oneself. But narcissism is an unnatural condition that has to be distinguished from one's more commonly understandable interest in oneself. In its extreme forms, a full blown narcissism is not the natural flourishing of a healthy self interest but the outgrowth of deep and typically early disturbances in the systematic structure of the self. In order to understand how a sign functions as a sign it is necessary to understand the interpreter for whom it actually functions as a sign. The ways that a sign denotes its objects and connotes its interpretants say a lot about the interpreter for whom it denotes its objects and for whom it connotes its interpretants, where the antecedents of all these "its" can be either the sign or its interpreter. To the extent that all knowledge is expressed in signs, to know anything at all is to know an aspect of oneself, however unwittingly. In this way, one can arrive at the epigrammatic formulas that "all knowledge is self knowledge" and that "every inquiry is an inquiry into inquiry". A "symbol" is a type of sign whose relation to its object is constituted solely by the fact that an interpreter employs it to denote that object, in other words, that an interpretant connects it with that object in an "elementary sign relation", or an ordered triple of the form <o, s, i>. This means that the nature and the character of an interpreter can be studied especially well as reflected in the symbols that it employs. Unlike icons and indices, which have rationales for their denotations in the properties and instances, respectively, which are common to objects and their signs, ... term/premiss/argument: symbols with internal or instructive hints? An "argument" is a type of symbol that incorporates among its syntactic provisions an independent indication of the method that is intended for its interpretation, that is, it embodies a series of hints about the ways and the means that its issuer intends its prospective interpreter to use in order to achieve its interpretant, in short, to reach its conclusion.
5.1.2.1. The Signal Moment
One night as I did wander, When corn begins to shoot, I sat me down to ponder Upon on auld tree root. Auld Ayr ran by before me, And bicker'd to the seas; A cushat crooded o'er me, That echoed through the trees. Robert Burns, One Night As I Did Wander, [CPW, 48] There is a thought that forms the theme of the present inquiry, indeed, as a chorus to a lyric are its evocations to the text that records this inquiry, and I find myself returning to its expressions on a constantly recurring basis, however much I strive to introduce variations for the sake of developing its implications and reflecting on its meanings from a fresh angle. So let me give the current rendition: The present inquiry, y0, portraying itself as an inquiry into inquiry, y.y, proceeds on the premiss that a generic inquiry, y, can generally inquire into a generic inquiry, y, thereby achieving a settled result, one that awaits a mere determination to be signified by the name "y.y". Thus the present inquiry, acting on the pretext of a "formal posability", that is, a poetic license, a verbal permission, or a written suggestion, being motivated and justified by no more authority than these connote, is led to define itself in terms that appose its own term to its own term, and so it is led to take on a recursive, a reflective, or a reflexive cast. The terms of this description need to be inquired into, and their implications pursued in greater detail. The present inquiry, y0, portraying itself as an inquiry into inquiry, y.y, proceeds on the premiss that a generic inquiry, y, can generally inquire into a generic inquiry, y, and thereby achieve a settled result, and that this result awaits nothing other than its determination by the present inquirer to confer an objective significance on the name "y.y". All of this is summed up in the formula: "y0 = y.y". Thus the present inquiry, acting on the pretext of a "formal posability", namely, the circumstance that the rules of a prospective formal grammar allow one to write the expression "y.y" and to inquire after its meaning, is led to define itself in terms that apply to its own case as argument, since the present inquiry, y0, must be an example of whatever genus, Y, that a generic inquiry, y, is selected to represent. As a consequence, the present inquiry is forced to pursue the development of its own case in terms that appose its own actions to its own motives, and so is led to take on a recursive, a reflective, or a reflexive cast.
5.1.2.2. The Symbolic Object
I dream'd I lay where flowers were springing Gaily in the sunny beam, List'ning to the wild birds singing, By a falling crystal stream; Straight the sky grew black and daring, Thro the woods the whirlwinds rave, Trees with aged arms were warring O'er the swelling, drumlie wave. Robert Burns, I Dream'd I Lay, [CPW, 45] To paraphrase, the present inquiry acts on the pretense that an inquiry can inquire into other inquiries, perhaps even those that are presently ongoing, and even inquire into itself, in sum, being entitled to inquire into the full genus of inquiry, Y, a class that includes y0 as a member. But these representations, under cross examination, lead to a number of unanswered questions, like: Just what is a "generic inquiry", anyway? Even more critically, their close and repeated examination leads to a host of "unquestioned answers", answers already accepted as adequate, but whose appearances as answers need to be questioned again. The "formal posability" of a self application, for example, as expressed by the term "y.y", especially when the formal calculus that is called on to make sense of these applications is still merely prospective and still highly speculative, ought to arouse a lot of suspicion from the purely formal point of view. Indeed, I cannot justify this way of proceeding, beginning in the middle of things and without stopping to establish a well defined formal system ahead of time, except to say that something very like it is unavoidable in a large number of natural circumstances, and so one ought to find a way of getting used to it. A way of getting used to the natural situation of inquiry is one of the things that the present inquiry hopes to find. If it appears that this allows the present inquiry an unlimited scope or an excessive freedom, it has to be remembered that a "formal posability" is barely enough of a formal subsistence to begin an inquiry, but rarely enough to finish it. It can be invaluable as the provisonal "grubstake" for a prospecting expedition, supplying the initial overhead it takes to "prime the pump" of subsequent exploration, but it is not sufficient to continue very far with an investigation. In essence, it is nothing more substantial than a grammatical allowance or a syntactic hypothesis, in effect, a poetic license, a verbal permission, or a written suggestion. Taking all of these cautions into account, it leaves the present inquiry motivated and justified by no more authority than their titles connote, and it obliges the precocity of what is written to be atoned for with all the critical benevolence of afterthought that can be mustered after the fact, to wit, through the diligent application of that turn of mind that allows one to write first and only later to think on the meaning. Such was my life's deceitful morning, Such the pleasures I enjoy'd! But lang or noon, loud tempests storming, A' my flowery bliss destroy'd. Tho fickle Fortune has deceiv'd me (She promis'd fair, and perform'd but ill), Of monie a joy and hope bereav'd me, I bear a heart shall support me still. Robert Burns, I Dream'd I Lay, [CPW, 45] The present inquiry acts on the purely formal suggestion that a generic inquiry can inquire into other inquiries, perhaps even those that remain ongoing, moreover, that a particular inquiry can even inquire into itself. Interpolating the appropriate symbols, the present inquiry, referring to itself as "y0", acts on the instance of a purely formal possibility, one that it expresses as a premiss in the formula "y0 = y.y", intending this to be interpreted to the effect that an inquiry can inquire into a class of inquiries that includes itself as a member, and this is a hypothesis that is based on little more authority than the fact of its expression a prospective formal language, in other words, one whose interpretation is still a largely prospective matter. Stepping back and reflecting on the situation, one needs to ask how in general and how in particular does one fall so blithely into these forms and into these manners of representation. Once that process is better understood then it becomes possible to evaluate in a fairer way whether this direction of fall is tantamount to a happy accident of the natural intuition or whether it constellates a disastrous catastrophe that needs to be remedied through the application of a severer style of reasoning. Generally speaking, the point at which intellectual developments like these begin to take on an automatic character is when the intention is formed of devising a formal calculus, in the present case, a prospective calculus of "applications" or "appositions" of the form f.g, the terms of which are intended to be capable of referring to processes potentially as complex as inquiries. The project of an "appositional calculus" (AC) is what formalizes the intuitive possibility of an inquiry into inquiry and continues to suggest the formal possibility that any inquiry can be applied to itself, at least, any inquiry that can be symbolized in this calculus. But not every form of words that can be formed within the permissions of a formal language does in fact point to a form of objective reality. Whether an inquiry into inquiry is a real possibility, how its possibility is to be actualized if it is indeed real in fact, and why it is necessary for an individual species of agents to bother with the actualization of this possibility — these are just some of the questions that demand to be addressed at this point, no matter how gingerly and how tentatively it is presently conceivable to respond to them, and they are just a few of the issues the distribution of whose partial solutions are found to occupy the greater body of this work.
5.1.2.3. The Endeavor to Communicate
When o'er the hill the eastern star
Tells bughtin time is near, my jo,
And owsen frae the furrow'd field
Return sae dowf and weary, O,
Down by the burn, where scented birks
Wi dew are hangin clear, my jo,
I'll meet thee on the lea rig,
My ain kind dearie, O!
Robert Burns, The Lea-Rig, [CPW, 474]
An agent involved in an "effort to communicate" (ETC), no matter how various the signs and the media that make its conveyance conceivable, and no matter how articulately the character of its endeavor is styled, whether it is pointed and straightforward, or allusive and recursive, whether it is elliptic, hyperbolic, parabolic, or otherwise conically sectioned, or whether it is much less smoothly sliced into its initial approximations and final truncations, there are only so many ways that a "finitely informed creature" (FIC) can find to figure out what meaning the world has and to formulate what sense a life's work can add to it.
The present situation, as far as it goes, is a suitable subject for being investigated along the lines of the pragmatic theory of sign relations.
Since "x" is a sign, it has the potential to denote an object x, if and when there is determined to be a signified object, and one with a power to impress itself on the mind of the operative interpreter of that sign. Likewise, since "y0 = y.y" is a sign, it has the potential to denote an object, one that syntactic compunctions stop me from saying is y0 = y.y, that is, if I want to avoid a definite risk of failing to be understood. But what is this object, if it exists? At any rate, what sort of object is the receiver of the sign thereby entitled to expect it to be, whether or not the object that it foreshadows ever does come to be actualized?
In order to have a variety of more convenient names for referring to the object potentially denoted by the sign "y0 = y.y", I refer to the expression "y0 = y.y" as "The Initial Equation", or as "TIE", for short. Although it is not strictly necessary for such a small piece of text as "y0 = y.y", I here obey the rule that the titles of texts are italicized. Furthermore, the object, situation, or state that satisfies TIE, to the effect that y0 = y.y, and is therefore potentially denoted by TIE, can also be referred to as "the intended state", or as "TIS", for short.
At midnight hour in mirkest glen,
I'd rove, and ne'er be eerie, O,
If thro that glen I gaed to thee,
My ain kind dearie, O!
Altho, the night were ne'er sae wild,
And I were ne'er sae weary, O,
I'll meet thee on the lea rig,
My ain kind dearie, O!
Robert Burns, The Lea-Rig, [CPW, 474]
For the sake of shortening future references to the chief object of the present inquiry and the initial sign of its potential existence, let the acronym "TIS" be equiferent to the phrase "the intended state", and let the italic tag "TIE" be equiferent to the title "The Initial Equation". Further, let the connotations be so arranged that "TIS" is semiotically equivalent to "the intended state" and "TIE" is semiotically equivalent to "The Initial Equation". It is important to note that a set of signs can be equiferent among themselves in the wholly vacuous sense that all of them have no objective reference, and, strictly speaking of what they denote, that all of them refer to nothing at all, whereas a set of signs that are equivalent in the properly semiotic sense still have each other as their connotations.
There is a feature of this style of abbreviation that is useful to call attention to. Rather than letting the acronym "TIS" strictly denote the phrase "the intended state" and instead of letting the tag "TIE" strictly denote the title "The Initial Equation", I am merely asking the reader to arrange in behalf of the interpretation a "semiotic partition" (SEP), along with its corresponding "semiotic equivalence relation" (SER), in which a particular pair of "semiotic equivalence classes" (SEC's) serve to stake out a couple of parts, that is, to represent mutually exclusive classes of signs that denote their respective objects in parallel. This situation is depicted in Table 26.
Table 26. Semiotic Partition Implied by the ACE of Q
Object SEC
the intended state {"the intended state", "TIS"}
The Initial Equation {"The Initial Equation", "TIE"}
In each case, the abbreviated form and its expansion are set to connote each other all within a single level of signs, while both signs are set to denote their common object in a parallel fashion. This strategy for annexing compressed references to a sign relation can be referred to as an "acronymically connotative extension" (ACE) of that sign relation.
The hunter lo'es the morning sun,
To rouse the mountain deer, my jo,
At noon the fisher takes the glen
Adown the burn to steer, my jo:
Gie me the hour o gloamin grey
It maks my heart sae cheery, O,
To meet thee on the lea rig,
My ain kind dearie, O!
Robert Burns, The Lea-Rig, [CPW, 474]
5.1.2.4. The Medium of Communication
The gloomy night is gath'ring fast,
Loud roars the wild inconstant blast;
Yon murky cloud is filled with rain,
I see it driving o'er the plain;
The hunter now has left the moor,
The scatt'red coveys meet secure;
While here I wander, prest with care,
Along the lonely banks of Ayr.
Robert Burns, The Gloomy Night is Gath'ring Fast,
[CPW, 250]
Before I can advance this discussion to a higher level of reflection on my own and other texts, in other words, to augment its participation in syntactic and textual processes beyond the level of rote recitation and routine replication of whatever text comes to mind, I need to introduce a minimal set of syntactic devices and textual mechanisms for adverting to and reflecting on syntactic entities and textual objects, in other words, for generating and interpreting, or else recognizing and elaborating, a level of references to objects that are themselves composed of signs and that therefore have the characters of complex signs in their own rights.
In general, signs that denote signs are called "higher order" (HO) signs, leaving the signs denoted to be referred to as "lower order" (LO) signs. These form the subject of detailed discussions later on in this work, but the critical need for now is merely to make available an informal set of plausible devices for availing the discussion of names for pieces of text. Thus, the tools that are required can be sufficiently well illustrated in their immediate applications to the present materials.
The Autumn mourns her rip'ning corn
By early Winter's ravage torn;
Across her placid, azure sky,
She sees the scowling tempest fly;
Chill runs my blood to hear it rave;
I think upon the stormy wave,
Where many a danger I must dare,
Far from the bonie banks of Ayr.
Robert Burns, The Gloomy Night is Gath'ring Fast,
[CPW, 250]
Depending on whether it is possible to adapt, appropriate, and otherwise make use of what HO signs are already extant in a field of discussion or whether it is necessary to create, invent, or otherwise make up further HO signs to denote the signs and the texts that one notices in an area, one finds that the sorts of syntactic devices, textual mechanisms, and reflective operators that one needs are divided into two broad camps:
1. There are the anaclitic, ancillary, or auxiliary devices that an agent uses to imp out each HO connotative plane by extrapolating its indirections in novel directions, to allude in a connotative fashion to the current signs of signs and the established titles of texts, to sharpen up the reflective references already extant, and to take full advantage of the ancient orders of associations and the antecedent layers of citations that are already in place.
2. There are the creative, generative, or productive devices that an agent uses to eke out each HO denotative plane in the first place, to adduce the initial signs in that order, to create new HO signs, to refer in a denotative fashion to what thereby becomes an order of comparatively LO signs, and to issue HO citations of LO texts.
The connotative mechanism, relying on prior quotations and established titles, ...
Acronyms.
'Tis not the surging billows' roar,
'Tis not that fatal, deadly shore;
Tho death in ev'ry shape appear,
The wretched have no more to fear;
But round my heart the ties are bound,
That heart transpierc'd with many a wound;
These bleed afresh, those ties I tear,
To leave the bonie banks of Ayr.
Robert Burns, The Gloomy Night is Gath'ring Fast,
[CPW, 250]
The denotative mechanism, ...
These are devices whose function it is to operate on signs, including all sorts of characters, expressions, phrases, and texts, and whose result it is to generate signs that refer to their respective arguments as objects.
Quotation marks. Ordinary quotation marks (" ") can be used in the customary ways to create names for signs, concatenated signs, or pieces of text that they enclose. Unfortunately, for formal purposes, ordinary quotation marks have the disadvantage of being used for several other functions besides that of creating names for enclosed signs and texts. In particular, the same marks are frequently used for a motley crew of "emphatic functions" or "monitory purposes", that is, simply to call an extra measure of attention to the sign or the text enclosed, but without necessarily intending to interrupt its significance or to interfere with the corresponding process of denotation.
Arch quotations. An alternative form of quotation is provided through the employment of "raised angle brackets" (< >), also called "arches" or "supercilia". These marks are reserved to the sole purpose of creating signs for signs and generating names for pieces of text, in keeping with the "nominal intention" and the "normal use" of quotation marks.
Titles and headings. An arbitrary title for a syntactic object or a textual segment is created simply by designating anything whatsoever to a service in that role. Whatever it is before being dubbed as the title of the material in question, it becomes a pointer to its appointed object simply by virtue of being so dubbed, if nothing else, at least as regarded by a single interpreter that is duly appointed to appoint things so, if only for the sake of a purely personal recognizance.
Farewell, old Coila's hills and dales,
Her heathy moors and winding vales;
The scenes where wretched Fancy roves,
Pursuing past unhappy loves!
Farewell my friends! farewell my foes!
My peace with these, my love with those
The bursting tears my heart declare,
Farewell, my bonie banks of Ayr!
Robert Burns, The Gloomy Night is Gath'ring Fast,
[CPW, 251]
The highest order of generality among titles is not absolutely necessary in the present context. More commonly, a title is a pre arranged sign, a pre established mark, a prefixed epithet, or a pre ordained piece of text that gets re used, perhaps subject to a conventional modification or a special inflection, to serve as a sign or a name for what is customarily a disjoint sign or a distinct piece of text. Under typical circumstances, although not universal, the syntactic entity or the textual object to which a title refers is a much longer text, and thus one that occasions the practical need among its interpreters of having a briefer alias or a compressed designation for it. In short, a title is intended to serve a purpose that is similar to one of the roles of ordinary quotation, but subject to orders of pragmatic constraints that quotation marks, when literally taken and expressly used, are clearly not able to satisfy. Putting aside for the time being the issues that are raised by this general discussion, I revert to the ordinary use of quoted expressions and italicized phrases as the titles of texts.
5.1.2.5. The Ark of Types : The Order of Things to Come
Now westlin winds and slaught'ring guns Bring Autumn's pleasant weather; The moorcock springs on whirring wings Amang the blooming heather: Now waving grain, wide o'er the plain, Delights the weary farmer; And the moon shines bright, as I rove by night, To muse upon my charmer. Robert Burns, Now Westlin Winds, [CPW, 44] The present situation, as far as it goes, is a suitable subject for being investigated along the lines of the pragmatic theory of sign relations. The state of the resulting examination, as it stands at the current stage of analysis, is summarized in Table 27, indicating little more than this hypothetical circumstance: That a couple of terms of a formal language, a prospective calculus of "applications" or "appositions" of the form f.g, are intended to be identified in all of their current objective references. Thus, the terms "y0" and "y.y", formed in accord with the still inchoate and yet developing grammar of the intended "appositional calculus" (AC), are set to denote the very same object or objects, all the while that the precise nature of what these signs actually denote is still up for grabs, and in spite of the circumstance that the bare consistency of its logical possibility remains unknown, for all the plausibility of the posability. Recalling that a "bit" of a sign relation is any subset of its extension, that is, an arbitrary selection of its ordered triples, Table 27 presents a bit of a sign relation that is needed to interpret "The Initial Equation", also known as "TIE". Table 27. Bit of a Sign Relation for TIE Object Sign Interpretant Y "Y" "Y" y "y" "y" y0 "y0" "y0" y0 "y0" "y.y" y0 "y.y" "y0" y0 "y.y" "y.y" The paitrick lo'es the fruitfu fells, The plover lo'es the mountains; The woodcock haunts the lonely dells, The soaring hern the fountains: Thro lofty groves the cushat roves, The path o man to shun it; The hazel bush o'erhangs the thrush, The spreading thorn the linnet. Robert Burns, Now Westlin Winds, [CPW, 44] In order to refer to an object x, it is necessary to use a sign "x", or something equally good, an equiferent sign, to do so. In a similar vein, in order to refer to a sign "x", it is necessary to use a HO sign <"x">, or something equally good, an equiferent HO sign, to do so. In referring to the signs "x" and "y0 = y.y", I am of course using a definite style of HO signs to do so, while the corresponding LO signs, the ones that are being denoted by these mechanisms, are homologous to the portions of text that appear within the bounds of these quotations. The chief exception to this rule, attaching a note of practical caution to its exercise that precludes its overly automatic use, is due to the problem already noted, that not every LO sign extracted from quotation is safe to use, semantically speaking, in every discursive context, grammatical environment, syntactic frame, or textual niche. As long as I am referring to the signs "x" and "y0 = y.y", I can keep on using the HO signs that refer to them, all without having to employ the next layer of encapsulation in arch quotes. I am obligated to use the new order of arches only when I want to awake to, become aware of, and directly mention the order of signs that I find myself employing, in the present case, when I get a notion to critically reflect on and thus to make explicit reference to the HO signs <"x"> and <"y0 = y.y">. It is almost as if, in using an order of signs, that one takes off the wraps that one uses in order to mention them. This is generally true, but subject to exceptions at the boundary conditions, where there are no more lamina to strip away. Table 28 The bit of a sign relation that is shown in Table 28 is an example of this type of arbit. Table 28. Arbit of a Sign Relation for TIE Object Sign Interpretant y0 "y0" = "y.y" Thus ev'ry kind their pleasure find, The savage and the tender; Some social join, and leagues combine, Some solitary wander: Avaunt, away, the cruel sway! Tyrannic man's dominion! The sportsman's joy, the murd'ring cry, The flutt'ring, gory pinion! Robert Burns, Now Westlin Winds, [CPW, 44] Table 29 shows a variety of notations that are available for the first two orders of signs above "x". Table 29. Simple Signs & Their Higher Order Signs Object Sign Interpretant x "x" = <x> "x" <"x"> = <<x>> "x" <"x"> = "<x>" But, Peggy dear, the ev'ning's clear, Thick flies the skimming swallow; The sky is blue, the fields in view, All fading green and yellow: Come let us stray our gladsome way, And view the charms of Nature; The rustling corn, the fruited thorn, And ilka happy creature. Robert Burns, Now Westlin Winds, [CPW, 44] Table 30 Table 30. Complex Signs & Their Higher Order Signs Object Sign Interpretant TIS "y0 = y.y" = <y0 = y.y> TIS "y0 = y.y" = <"y0" =E "y.y"> "y0 = y.y" <"y0 = y.y"> = <<y0 = y.y>> "y0 = y.y" "TIE" = <TIE> We'll gently walk, and sweetly talk, While the silent moon shines clearly; I'll clasp thy waist, and, fondly prest, Swear how I lo'e thee dearly: Not vernal show'rs to budding flow'rs, Not Autumn to the farmer, So dear can be as thou to me, My fair, my lovely charmer! Robert Burns, Now Westlin Winds, [CPW, 44] Table 31 Table 31. More Complex Signs & Their Higher Order Signs Object Sign Interpretant TIS "TIS" = "The Intended State" TIS TIE = The Initial Equation TIS TIE = "y0 = y.y" "TIS" <"TIS"> = <<TIS>> TIE "TIE" = "The Initial Equation" TIE "TIE" = <"y0 = y.y"> TIE "TIE" = <TIE> "TIE" <"TIE"> = <<TIE>>
5.1.2.6. The Epitext
Green grow the rashes, O; Green grow the rashes, O; The sweetest hours that e'er I spend, Are spent among the lasses, O. Robert Burns, Green Grow the Rashes, O, [CPW, 81] It is time to make explicit mention of a certain wrinkle in this text, even at the risk of warping the record that records this reconnaissance and rendering all the rest of its traces an unceasing problem to itself. Throughout the course of this ongoing discussion is threaded what I refer to as an "epitext", a linked succession of epigraphs, that, aside from the incidental interest that their contents may hold, are designed to keep before the mind what a real text is like, with all the potential for meaning and all the problems of interpretation that genuine symbols, complex imagery, and transcendental allusions can present. I cannot be expected to comment on, much less to clarify, all of the relevant aspects and all of the problematic features that are likely to be obvious to even the most casual reader of this epitext, but I think it is important to keep in mind a sense of the distance that is yet to be covered before any theory can claim a true comprehension of real language use. Why are poetic texts and lyrical materials relevant to the aims of the present project? It is because they "face the music" as soon as they can speak and continue to address it for the rest of their developments. In other words, they speak from the very beginning of their invocations to the most pressing issues of communication and they attempt to tackle in their informal ways the most difficult problems of interpretation, those that formal languages and formal logics often put off till the end of their days, if they ever face up to them at all. Of course, if a set of troubles can be avoided then perhaps it is best to do so. Therefore, if I want to convince anybody that it is worth their bother to engage a given array of issues and problems, then I ought to supply an argument to make it plausible why the types of phenomena in question are likely to be inevitable. One of the reasons for drawing this epitext from poetic sources is that a genuine poem, aside from its commentary on the passing show, what it seems to say about this ostensibly concrete subject or that divertingly pastoral scene, usually has something extra to say, a surplus meaning or an ulterior motive that sets its aim above and beyond the call of beauty, and this is usually something that it ventures to say about the reasons for its own existence, about the endeavor to communicate that goes into its making, and thus about its total "context of interpretation" (COI). In sum, a poem is often meant, at least partly, to address the implicit questions: Why am I writing this? And why am I writing this way? There's nought but care on ev'ry han', In every hour that passes, O: What signifies the life o man, An 'twere na for the lasses, O. Robert Burns, Green Grow the Rashes, O, [CPW, 81] Aside from its apparent subject, its basic theme, and its commentary on diverse idyllic scenes, a genuine poem often has something to say about the reasons for its existence, the very idea that an author can form an intention, and the form of reception that it is aimed or averse to find. Thus its bits of reflective imagery, properly reconstituted and happily interpreted, make it tantamount to an "implicitly recursive text" (IRT). What is it that forces a text to bear an immense variety of meanings, a few of them obvious, the bulk of them less so, if not the desire of its author to capture an image of a huge reality in an utterly tiny space, and to convey a fragment of a thicker truth along invisibly thin lines? A task like this can only be achieved through the use of multifaceted symbols and mirrored expressions, the results of multiple and repeated reflections. And a text like this can only be understood by means of an imaginative interpretation. Altogether, this mode of communication is comprehended by establishing a relation between writer and reader, one that is imprisioned at either end by the capacity at that terminus for imagination and reflection. What is it that makes a text able to hold a wealth of meanings within it, if not the complementary desires of a writer and a reader to capture a huge reality between them? The living creature, in its drive to write itself irreplaceably into the text of the universe and in its essay to render itself indispensible to the task of reading this text with any measure of understanding, ... The war'ly race may riches chase, An riches still may fly them, O; An tho at last they catch them fast, Their hearts can ne'er enjoy them, O. Robert Burns, Green Grow the Rashes, O, [CPW, 81] The more one steps back from the objects and the phenomena that first struck one's fancy to know, the ones one really desires to understand, in order to get what one imagines will be a better, more analytic, and more conceptual view of them, the more one sees the envisioned ends of understanding receding into the distance of one's altered perspective, leaving one with respect to them barely at the beginnings of analysis. Over time, the visionary ends of inquiry appear to disappear into the mists of one's lately imposed starts, to skip over the marks of one's recently interposed stations, perhaps to await one's tardy arrival at the alpha and omega of one's upstart inquiry. These effects, that are due to a developing perspective, especially the appearance of an expanding universe that grows out of one's increasing ability to see detail, can turn from being awe inspiring at one moment, increasing one's desire to know an object, and encouraging the work of understanding, to being disheartening at the next moment, overwhelming one's mind and senses with the power of a phenomenon, and dashing all hopes of comprehending it. As a consequence, short of renouncing the quest altogether, one is likely to restrain oneself to any fragment of the original question that seems easy enough to address in due order, and then to settle for any semblance of an answer that happens to present itself in due time. The intervention of an epitext is designed precisely for this reason, to compensate, counteract, and remediate the more deleterious effects of an otherwise heathily growing perspective. The epitext is meant to keep the end in view, to remind the participants in a communication of the type of text that is ultimately desirable to understand, but without demanding its complete unraveling within the immediate frame of time, nor taunting each other so severely with the distances that remain to their goals that all are daunted from continuing with the ongoing task. But gie me a cannie hour at e'en, My arms about my dearie, O, An war'ly cares an war'ly men, May a' gae tapsalteerie, O! Robert Burns, Green Grow the Rashes, O, [CPW, 81] In this way, an epitext can serve a couple of functions within a text: 1. The epitext maintains an internal model of the informal context, the actual, intended, or likely "context of interpretation" (COI), or the typical "situation of communication" (SOC) that prevails in a given society of interpretive agents. It does this by preserving a constant but gentle reminder of the type of text that ultimately demands to be understood within this social context. In other words, it represents its social context in terms of its ideals, the the expectation r that contains it dialogue between the epitext helps to provides an image of the dialogue that 2. The epitext and the text are in a relation, analogous to a dialogue, that mirrors the relation of the text itself to its casual, informal, or social context. In general, the analogy can be set up in either one of two ways, and can shift its sense from moment to moment: a. Epitext : Text = Context : Text. Here, the epitext plays the part of common expectations, generic ideals, or social norms that are invoked in the process of communication. b. Epitext : Text = Text : Context. Here, the epitext gives vent to the individual conceits, idiosyncratic caprices, or whims of the moment that are stirred up by the process of communication. What type of text is best to use in an epitext, if it is going to achieve these stated objectives? A "paragon of writing" (POW) is an apt title to give to the type of text at issue, since it marks the type of text that is originally desired to be understood and the type of text that ultimately demands to be understood. For you sae douce, ye sneer at this; Ye're nought but senseless asses, O: The wisest man the warl' e'er saw, He dearly lov'd the lasses, O. Robert Burns, Green Grow the Rashes, O, [CPW, 81] The epitext acts as a kind of tether that helps to keep the end in view. It maintains an internal model of the informal context and preserves a reminder of the kinds of texts that ultimately demand to be understood. In this way, the epitext supplies a canon, a guideline, or a standard within the text, and secrets within the main text not only an image of the object to be analyzed but also an icon of the object to be achieved. Naturally reflective texts, the kinds that occur in poems, in plays, and in other sorts of creative writing, are the best sources of stock for an epitext. These kinds of text have a double relevance to the aims of AI. As materials for analysis, they exemplify the character of real language use in natural settings. As models for methods of analysis, they are capable of addressing complex issues in a casual fashion. Because they are freely chosen from natural sources of exemplary laguage use, they can serve as examples for analysis that are realistic enough to exemplify the types of phenomena that one desires to understand and difficult enough to test the methods of analysis that one proposes to use. Because it is their nature in part to reflect on their own nature as texts, they often contain insightful commentaries on this very nature. Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears Her noblest work she classes, O: Her prentice han' she try'd on man, An then she made the lasses, O. Robert Burns, Green Grow the Rashes, O, [CPW, 81] Let me then try to summarize the bearings that these poems and songs, these innocently reflective and innocuously self reverent types of texts, can be contemplated as having on the present inquiry, and again on the encompassing viability of AIR. Their relevance is twofold, bearing on the matter in question from complementary directions: First, there is their negative or limitative bearing. As materials for analysis, poetic and lyrical texts contribute some of the hardest, most resilient, and most resistant cases that are known to confront the work of natural language understanding, and so they serve to puncture many of the rashest pretenses that this task is anywhere near to being done. Of course, if poetic and lyrical modes of production and comprehension are justly relegated to the status of mere diversions, then the task of unraveling their mysteries can be deemed a much less critical problem. However, if the resources that are elaborated and exploited in these manners of impression and expression are somehow essential to the very ideas of significant communication and meaningful interpretation, then it becomes a more crucial requirement to understand how they operate. Second, there is their positive or productive bearing. As hints of models and heralds of methods, these types of texts hold out some hope that a text can sensibly comment on the task of achieving its own style of communication, the writing of it, the sending of it, the reading of it. More than that, their stock in variety of canonical styles helps to offer a cornucopia of constructive suggestions for ways of actually doing so. The chance of a text being able to express a perceptive reflection comes near the heart of the present matter, and the likelihood of a text having the power to embody an insightful self commentary brings the immediate discussion within a heartbeat of the inquiry into inquiry, for if a writing can teach about writing then perhaps an inquiry can learn about inquiry.
5.1.2.7. The Context of Interpretation
To the weaver's gin ye go, fair maids, To the weaver's gin ye go, I rede you right, gang ne'er at night, To the weaver's gin ye go. Robert Burns, To the Weaver's Gin You Go, [CPW, 306] As this discussion proceeds, it is designed to expand the scope of what it can analyze successfully from simple signs to complex expressions to extended texts. In this progression, the pragmatic theory of signs is used as a unifying thread to connect the different levels of complexity. Accordingly, it needs to be kept in mind throughout the discussion that references to "signs", unless specified otherwise, can generally be taken in a maximally inclusive sense, referring also to expressions and texts. The more complex and more extended a sign, expression, or text becomes the more occasion it has for referring to many other objects on its way to achieving its ultimate denotation. Some of these implicit, incidental, and intermediate objects can be components, properties, and relations of the sign, expression, or text itself, perhaps amounting to its accidental connotations and its intended interpretants. When it comes to a highly involved sign, expression, or text, some of its subsidiary effects and ulterior objects can even be aspects or elements of those very agents and those very media that are actually, imagined, or intended to be involved in its production, transmission, or reception. In many respects, these "side effects" are actually more important from a practical standpoint than the "token objects" of denotation, that is, the nominal results and the ostensible values that merely serve to mark the successful outcome of the interpretation process. Anything that an agent strives toward achieving or that a system moves toward attaining can be called its "object", and so there arises the possibility that a "global object" (GO) or a "derivative object" (DO), a thing constructed or reconstructed from various bits and pieces of extraneous references, is that which primarily or effectively calls or drives the greater action. If it strikes one as strange that an object construed from epiphenomenal marks and tangential signs should be the main motive and real object of the process of interpretation, it ought to be remembered that a special case of this already appears in the form of the semantic partitions that reconstruct the forms of their object domains. Accordingly, the types of GO's and DO's that emerge from the present considerations are just the ultimate generalizations of SEC's. My heart was ance as blythe and free As simmer days were lang; But a bonie, westlin weaver lad Has gart me change my sang. Robert Burns, To the Weaver's Gin You Go, [CPW, 306] Signs are typical of the contents of consciousness. Indeed, from the standpoint of the pragmatic theory of signs, where a maximally general definition of signs holds sway, signs are considered to be all inclusive, generically identical, or simply co extensive with the class of phenomena that are commonly known as the contents of consciousness. In this view of the matter, a complex expression is analogous to a complex concept, of an order that is typically but not exclusively constructed in deliberate and purposeful thinking processes, while an extended text is analogous to an ongoing stream of consciousness or a long drawn out process of reasoning, whatever its character may be. This analogy or identity between signs and contents of consciousness can help to explain the pains I am taking in the present discussion to elucidate the structures of self referent signs, expressions, and texts. With this key to its interpretation, a sign that denotes itself attracts interest because it presents an icon of self awareness. In other words, a sign relation that is called on to make sense of a self denoting sign affords a particular type of formal model, one that captures a relevant aspect of the structure that is involved in a content of consciousness referring to itself. In a corresponding fashion, a text that refers to itself, in whole or in part, is analogous to a conscious process that makes reference to itself, its aspects, or its instants. It needs to be noted what I am not saying here. I do not say that signs and texts are themselves aware, or that consciousness needs to emerge from them, however much they can serve to attract the attention of already conscious agents. Indeed, I am taking no position yet on the questions of whether or how consciousness can emerge from conceivably non conscious materials. At present, I am only interested in describing the formal relations or the structural relationships that can be noted to exist among contents of consciousness, as noted, and not to explain the bare facts of these contents, much less to explain the circumstance of consciousness itself. With regard to this purely descriptive purpose, the main task for the near future is to develop an array of conceptual frameworks that can be put to work in organizing formal descriptions and in converting suitable portions of them into effective descriptions. As long as one works under the aegis of these methodological limitations, the following maxim needs to be kept in mind: The only thing that a formal model can capture is the form of something. Whether form is of the essence in the case of the human psyche is in fact an ancient and a still important question, but not one that I hope to answer just yet. The patent answer that presents itself is to keep the question open, and to continue exploring all of the available options. One benefit of this openness is that it permits the exploration of the thinking mind's connection with information. My mither sent me to the town, To warp a plaiden wab; But the weary, weary warpin o't Has gart me sigh and sab. Robert Burns, To the Weaver's Gin You Go, [CPW, 307] The reason for my interest in signs, a reason that accounts for their part in inquiry and helps to explain their role in AIR, is that I take signs to be identical with all that is able to appear in awareness, or all that can be a content of consciousness. This amounts to saying that the ostensible analogy between signs and contents of consciousness, and thus between texts and streams of consciousness, is a potential identity. Speaking with respect to their potentiality, I would like to suggest that signs are identical with the possible contents of consciousness, and that the contents of consciousness all have the characters of potential signs. The broadest conceivable definition of what constitutes a "sign" leads to the broadest conceivable definition of what constitutes a "text", and so one is led to the idea that the whole stream of consciousness belonging to a person or a community, not just the miniscule fraction of it that happens to get written down in the conventional arrays of characters, can literally be regarded as a text. What appears in awareness is a case of what one calls "phenomena", and a study that considers what can be a content of consciousness is called a "phenomenology". This means that This is not the place to argue for the full strength of the proposed identity: Phenomena = Appearances in Awareness = Contents of Consciousness = Signs. Indeed, if one conceives consciousness to be a continuum, more exactly, if one considers every connected field (and stream) of consciousness to be a continuous manifold, as it very likely is, then this argument would depart from the realm of discrete signs and finite texts that is proper to computational models. No matter how carefully the terms are qualified, allowing the equations to apply in purely formal and wholly potential senses, the argument for the soundness of this joint identification is by no means easy, presents the danger of leading this discussion far afield, if not astray, and is, in any case, not really needed to achieve the aims of the present work. Fortunately, while the full strength of the identity is not required for the present application, it can continue to serve as a useful analogy. A bonie, westlin weaver lad Sat working at his loom; He took my heart, as wi a net, In every knot and thrum. Robert Burns, To the Weaver's Gin You Go, [CPW, 307] This is not the place to argue for my particular way of seeing things, whose rationale ultimately depends on the integral relationship between the pragmatic style of phenomenology and the pragmatic theory of signs. There is still too much potential for misunderstanding between the writer that is due merely to possible differences in the uses of words, and not to any matters of substance. Until these ideas can be fully developed, the relation between signs and contents of consciousness, or the relation between texts and streams of consciousness, can still be treated as a useful analogy. The array of what appears in awareness and the condition of what can be a content of consciousness is the range and quality of "phenomena". To study what is able to appear in awareness and to contemplate what could be a content of consciousness is to consider "phenomena" in general. A study that treats of phenomena, whether in their widest generality or restricted in a particular way, is appropriate to call a "phenomenology". There are many different styles of phenomenology, in spite of the factious pretenses of universality that are likely to be part and parcel of any style that is particular enough to find favor with a party of individual agents. From the pragmatic point of view, there is a close relation between phenomena and signs. The style of phenomenology that is needed for this work is the subject of a later discussion. Here, I make only the remarks that are needed for orientation. I sat beside my warpin wheel, And ay I ca'd it roun. But every shot and every knock, My heart it gae a stoun. Robert Burns, To the Weaver's Gin You Go, [CPW, 307] The pragmatic idea about phenomena is that all phenomena are signs of significant objects, except for the ones that are not. In effect, all phenomena are meant to appear before the court of significance and are deemed by their very nature to be judged as signs of potential objects. Depending on how one chooses to say it, the results of this evaluation can be rendered in one of the following ways: 1. Some phenomena are in fact signs of significant objects. That is, they turn out to exist in a certain relation, one that is formally identical to a sign relation, wherein they denote objects that are important to the agent in question, an agent that thereby becomes the interpreter of these signs. 2. Some phenomena fail to be signs of significant objects, however much they initially appear to be. In this event, the failure can be accounted for in either one of two ways: a. Some phenomena can fail to be signs of any objects at all. This amounts to saying that what appears is not really a sign at all, not really a sign of any object at all. b. All phenomena are signs in some sense, even if only granted a default, nominal, or token designation as signs, but some signs still fail to qualify as signs of significant objects, because the objects they signify are not important to the agents in question. The moon was sinking in the west, Wi visage pale and wan, As my bonie, westlin weaver lad Convoy'd me thro the glen. Robert Burns, To the Weaver's Gin You Go, [CPW, 307] But what was said, or what was done, Shame fa' me gin I tell; But Oh! I fear the kintra soon Will ken as weel's myself! Robert Burns, To the Weaver's Gin You Go, [CPW, 307]
5.1.2.8. The Formative Tension
A lassie all alone, was making her moan Lamenting our lads beyond the sea: "In the bluidy wars they fa', and our honor's gane an a', And broken hearted we maun die." Robert Burns, As I Stood by Yon Roofless Tower, [CPW, 570] An incidental purpose of this reconnaissance is to point out the more problematic features of interpretation, and especially the properties of sign comprehension that are observed to be salient in natural settings. It is these more problematic aspects of interpretation that ultimately place the greatest demands on "artificial intelligence research" (AIR), at any rate, if it is going to support an understanding of the ways that human beings use real languages in real practice, or if it is ever going to supply a medium for modeling the ways that human beings develop an ability to produce and to understand real texts. I am sensitive to the possibility that there are many features in the situation of the present inquiry, perhaps due solely to my description, that make it appear like an artificial, an implausible, or a specialized set of circumstances. I begin by discussing a number of these features, after which I argue that they are really quite typical of any situation where one has to interpret a problematic text in a problematic language. A text or a language is "problematic", of course, only in relation to a prospective interpreter. To clarify this sense of the word "problematic" it helps to introduce the following definitions. 1. A "fully interpretive language" (FIL) is one whose attributes are fully filled out in all three directions of natural language use, to wit, along syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic dimensions. 2. A "fully interpretive grammar" (FIG), more commonly referred to as the "full grammar" of a language, is a body of knowledge that generates or specifies a FIL, incorporating the full details of its syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. 3. A "problematic text" is one that seems to make some sort of sense, but whose meaning, if any, is not entirely clear on first reading. 4. A "problematic language" is one whose "full grammar" is not yet available for articulation by the user in question, no matter how well the user is able to employ the language itself. It ought to be obvious that all "natural languages" are problematic for their customary users. As I stood by yon roofless tower, Where the wa'flow'r scents the dewy air, Where the houlet mourns in her ivy bower, And tells the midnight moon her care: Robert Burns, As I Stood by Yon Roofless Tower, [CPW, 570] One of the functions of the epitext that I am weaving through the main text of this discussion is to keep constantly before the mind the more problematic features of natural languages, to illustrate the diversity of their utilities, and to notice a few of the elaborative, figurative, and imaginative devices that are not so easily formalized. It is true that poems and programs share a conscious definition, coming to their collective senses under the head of "effective description" (ED). At least, it ought to be clear to the impartial observer that there is a close kinship between "the words that do" to engender action, that start it toward the hope of eventual success, and "the words that fit" a finite ambition, that point it toward the realms of eternal truth, and that this relation amounts to an accord that unites their intentions or a resonance that serves to bind their performance into a concerted whole, so I leave the reader to rede which is which and to judge on a case by case basis what the individual occasion demands. It is also true that abstract category theory, in the ways that it affords a view of formal analogies, is largely a study of mathematical metaphors. But aside from all that, there is much else that mathematicians, poets, and programmers are bound to see alike and ought to share in common. Under many natural circumstances, the only way to unravel the meaning of a problematic text is to place it in the field of influence of a FIL, typically as embodied in a variety of different interpreters, and to see how it is led to develop along the prevailing lines of interpretive force. In corresponding circumstances, approached in a complementary fashion, the only way to uncover the structure of a problematic language is to scatter a sample of signs and texts throughout its field of influence, and then to observe how these literal test particles are led to develop along interpretive lines, and if there is a coherent sensibility in force. The winds were laid, the air was still, The stars they shot along the sky, The tod was howling on the hill, And the distant echoing glens reply. Robert Burns, As I Stood by Yon Roofless Tower, [CPW, 570] One of the abiding tasks of "artificial intelligence research" (AIR) is to figure out how natural languages do what they do for the human mind. This task amounts to articulating the FIL's that humans actually use, and thus to arrive at the "fully interpretive grammars" (FIG's) that generate these FIL's, shaping their syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The main tool that one has in this task is "formalization", the process that devises formal models for the ongoing processes of interpretation. Until one develops a battery of formal methods for exploring fields of interpretive influence and for tracing lines of interpretive force, one tends to be impelled by signs without understanding how or why one is moved by them, to wallow around in interpretive phenomena with little control over what develops, and to wander aimlessly through domains of apparent significance and evident meaning with no insight into their underlying structures and generative forms. Consequently, an attempt to avoid all formalization, though it appears at first sufficient to the gaining of experience, is not sufficient to the gaining of understanding, and therefore ultimately leads to the impoverishment of experience itself. Unfortunately, there are equally pernicious tendencies that arise in the attempt to formalize experience and thus to arrive at formalized models. There is the tendency, in pursuing formalizations of a difficult subject, to settle on a premature formalization, that is, a narrowly circumscribed set of models, or an overly simplistic typology for addressing the topic, and then, in a vain attempt to avoid further difficulties by dictating to the subject how it ought to behave, to think that a partially successful formalization gives one the right to bar the subject from leaving the charmed circle swept out by its survey, or else to think that one can afford to ignore all aspects of the subject that do not fit within it. This temptation seems to arise on a recurring basis in the history of every formal science, being so well known from the dawn of awareness that its pattern is emblazoned in myth under the name of "Procrustes". The burn, adown its hazelly path, Was rushing by the ruin'd wa', Hasting to join the sweeping Nith, Whase roaring seemed to rise and fa'. Robert Burns, As I Stood by Yon Roofless Tower, [CPW, 570] Generally speaking, formalizations constitute an indispensable utility in adapting the intellect to its environment and in helping it to build up relatively stable systems of organized knowledge. But it takes a "force" to make things "fit", since the formal picture is partial to its own bias, and the intellectual image distorts the world as much as it adapts to it. The "violence" that is involved in a formalization, that is, the degree of its departure from nature, is observed to become especially acute each time that a specialized community of inquirers succeeds in developing a fresh array of formal methods and formal models, and thereby acquires a standardized resource that appears to equip them with an expanded range of formal powers. For those inquirers, these are competencies whose winning is not easy and whose salve they do not wish to give up, as they think they might by thinking too much about the lineaments of its ligaments and the limitations of its liniments. Consequently, one finds that the following sort of situation typifies the state of formal inquiry: Against every conscious caution that the formalization is only partial and in spite of every conscientious concession that the object domain is vastly more complex that any representation can contain, the tendency persists, once a formalization is fixed, to treat it just as if it were already and always would be perfectly adequate to the object. The cauld blae North was streaming forth Her lights, wi hissing, eerie din: Athort the lift they start and shift, Like Fortune's favors, tint as win. Robert Burns, As I Stood by Yon Roofless Tower, [CPW, 570] Now, looking over firth and fauld, Her horn the pale faced Cynthia rear'd, When lo! in form of minstrel auld A stern and stalwart ghaist appear'd. Robert Burns, As I Stood by Yon Roofless Tower, [CPW, 570] And frae his harp sic strains did flow, Might rous'd the slumbering Dead to hear, But O, it was a tale of woe As ever met a Briton's ear! Robert Burns, As I Stood by Yon Roofless Tower, [CPW, 570] He sang wi joy his former day, He, weeping, wail'd his latter times: But what he said it was nae play! I winna ventur't in my rhymes. Robert Burns, As I Stood by Yon Roofless Tower, [CPW, 570]
5.1.2.9. The Vehicle of Communication : Reflection on the Scene, Reflection on the Self
5.1.2.10. (7)
5.1.2.11. (6)
5.1.2.12. Recursions : Possible, Actual, Necessary
Is there a whim inspired fool, Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule, Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool? Let him draw near; And owre this grassy heap sing dool, And drap a tear. Robert Burns, A Bard's Epitaph, [CPW, 220] The purpose of a sign, for instance, a name, expression, program, or text, is to denote and possibly to describe an object, for instance, a thing, situation, mode of being, or activity in the world. In cases of practical interest, the object is usually very complex and the sign is usually very simple. Indeed, the intention of the whole descriptive enterprise is take objects as complex and as subtle as possible and to arrive at signs as simple and as concrete as the agent can conceive of fashioning to describe that object. Not surprisingly, the value of this exercise to the agent that carries it out is measured by the degree of difference in the apparent complexities of the object and the sign, or the proportion of success in this project is the measure of its value to the agent involved in it. In the cases of ultimate interest, the sorts of objects that the agent is charged to describe begin with something like the natural and social world itself, moves on to the natural and social language that avails itself to describe this world, and ends up with the natural and social mind that evolves in association with this language and with this world. In effect, a "trialogue", a three way dialogue or a threefold dialectic. When the reality to be described is infinitely more complex than the typically finite resources that an agent has to describe it, then any number of elliptic, multiple, and repeated uses of these resources are bound to occur, leading to the strategies of approximation, abstraction, and recursion, respectively. All of these techniques have in common the fact that a "systematic ambiguity" in the use of signs is introduced and tolerated, necessitating a new order of context sensitivity, discernment, intelligence, or just plain good sense in the conduct of interpretations. A "systematic ambiguity" or a "controlled equivocation" occurs when the same sign is used for many different things or when the same sign is used at many different stages of a process. Although the elliptic strategy of approximation is tantamount to simply "leaving off" from the effort to describe a difficult object, in effect, "throwing up one's hands" in exasperation, exhaustion, supplication, or surrender, by this means hoping to escape from the self imposed part of the requirement to describe it more closely, and finally "giving up" the attempted description with the significance of the data already recorded, no matter how much the "broken off" approach "falls short" of its goal, the closely related strategies of abstraction and recursion are rather more persistent in their tries at describing the object. Is there a Bard of rustic song, Who, noteless, steals the crowds among, That weekly this area throng? O, pass not by! But, with a frater feeling strong, Here, heave a sigh. Robert Burns, A Bard's Epitaph, [CPW, 220] In effect, so long as an agent sticks to the object and persists in the purpose of describing it / this kind of object, ... In other words, an agent is forced to resort to the stratagems of abstraction and recursion, where the same sign is used for many different objects and when the same sign is used to mark the progress of an activity at many different stages of its process, respectively. The underlying principle involved here is a kind of "pragmatic pigeonhole principle" (P3) Is there a man, whose judgment clear Can others teach the course to steer, Yet runs, himself, life's mad career, Wild as the wave? Here pause and, thro the starting tear, Survey this grave. Robert Burns, A Bard's Epitaph, [CPW, 220] A "resilient enough system of interpretation" (RESOI), if driven to the point of distraction by the task of describing an inexhaustibly complex reality, makes several strategies available to its interpretive agent, either for preventing its being driven over the edge or for recovering from the inevitale lapses of attention that nevertheless happen to occur. The most salient of these strategies can be organized for discussion in the following manner: Approximation. In resorting to approximation, one accepts the variety of natural bounds that apply to one's capacities for significant denotation, acknowledges the practical constraints that affect one's abilities for attending to detail and retaining exact records, and acts accordingly. This means recognizing the limitations of one's capacity for attention, recording the amounts that one can at the levels of accuracy that are feasible, and restricting one's intentions appropriately to capturing an aspect of one's object or representing a fraction of its reality. Abstraction. In resorting to abstraction, one is trying to escape the limitations of a "strict democracy" in one's representations, otherwise known as the "one object, one sign" rule. Abstraction occurs when the same sign is used to refer to many different things, often conceived to form a class or a set of objects. In effect, abstraction introduces a common name or a general concept that denotes each individual object in a multitude of particular objects. Typically and most effectively, this comes about in recognition of a common attribute, a general feature, or a universal property that all of these objects share, giving the process of abstraction the beneficial side effect that the abstract sign can be newly re interpreted as referring to the abstract property in question. Depending on the kinds of entities that are covered by an abstraction and the orders of logical complexity that are involved in this coverage, abstractions can be classified according to their domains of application and qualified according to their manners of construction and derivation. The next topics for discussion are two varieties of abstraction, called "recursion" and "polymorphism", that are especially important for the purpose of building computational models of interpretation and that deserve special mention in the present inquiry. The poor inhabitant below Was quick to learn and wise to know, And keenly felt the friendly glow, And softer flame; But thoughtless follies laid him low, And stain'd his name! Robert Burns, A Bard's Epitaph, [CPW, 220] "Recursion" occurs when the same sign is used at different stages of a designated process, referring to different amounts of work to be done, marking the different amounts of work already done that establish the different settings of work going on, and often appearing at different levels of the agenda, charge, or mission that plots out this process. When a process is described by a text, that is, by a recorded agenda, outline, program, recipe, or script, then the recursion is typically reflected in the recursive sign's appearance at different structural levels of the text that serves to recapitulate or specify the process. For instance, a recursive sign can show up initially in the heading and then turn up at least one more time in the body of a text that codes a specification of a procedure, a text that formulates a definition of a function, or a text that constitutes a program, routine, or subprogram. "Polymorphism" is a type of higher order abstraction that occurs when the same sign is used to denote elements of many different conceptual classes or objects of many distinct logical types. Comprehending the possible options calls for many alternative "conventions of intention", many heterogeneous "directions of connotation", and many splintered if still overlapping "moments of interpretation" to sort out the profusion of senses that is engendered. In the intermediate time frame, this type of diversity can appear to require a panoply of intellectual conceptions to organize the resulting multitude of meanings and to demand a variety of connotative planes to arrange their separate senses across, but it ultimately leads to a richer idea of the original aim or the intended object, as the potential for interpretation can be attributed to it. Reader, attend! whether thy soul Soars Fancy's flights beyond the pole, Or darkling grubs in this earthly hole, In low pursuit; Know, prudent, cautious, self control Is wisdom's root. Robert Burns, A Bard's Epitaph, [CPW, 220] One of the aims of this work as a whole is to explain the use of sign relations in the interpretation of complex texts, for instance, this sentence, this paragraph, this entire work, just to name a few of the most obvious examples among the many that are conceivable. As the text I produce to explain the pragmatic theory of sign relations is itself just a sign in a sign relation to which the theory is intended to apply, the encounter with self reference, in both the senses of a self referent text and a self referent writer, cannot be avoided. Among the questions that this encounter brings in its train are the issues of self indicating signs, texts, and interpreters, bringing the following topics to a head: 1. "Indexical signs" are signs that indicate their own interpretive context. 2. "Reflexive signs" are signs that indicate themselves or their issuer. 3. "Recursive signs" are signs that embody, enclose, or invoke themselves, that count themselves among their own parts or that include references to these parts within their own compositions, for instance, texts that incorporate references to their own headings, subtitles, or titles.
5.1.2.13. Ostensibly Recursive Texts
5.1.2.14. (3)
5.1.2.15. The Freedom of Interpretation
5.1.2.16. The Eternal Return
5.1.2.17. (1)
5.1.2.18. Information in Formation
5.1.2.19. Reflectively Indexical Texts
Now Robin lies in his last lair, He'll gabble rhyme, nor sing nae mair; Cauld poverty wi hungry stare, Nae mair shall fear him; Nor anxious fear, nor cankert care, E'er mair come near him. Robert Burns, Elegy on the Death of Robert Ruisseaux, [CPW, 268] A "reflectively indexical text" (RIT) is a text that refers to any aspect of its actual or intended "context of interpretation" (COI). With respect to a text, a COI is everything that is conceived to embody its prospects for communication, incorporating the dynamics to actuate the text along with the media to situate the text. For instance, a RIT can refer to any of the formal roles that play a part in actualizing the meaning of a text, in particular, it can refer to the roles of the agents that collaborate to bring its sense to life, in effect, the agents that work to "animate" it. A special case of a RIT, distinguished as a "reflexively indexical text", is one that adverts to its issuer. Depending on whether its references to a COI are "explicit" or "implicit, a RIT is called an ERIT or an IRIT, respectively. Because the same RIT can make many different references, explicit and implicit, to many different aspects of a contemplated COI, the associated attributions do not lead to mutually exclusive categories but merely to overlapping qualifications, any number of which a RIT can possess in parallel, inclusively and independently. Aside from the usual arrays of messages that a text is meant to convey, a RIT has something to say about the "communication situation" where it finds itself engaged, where it happens to fall whether the possibility of such an occasion falls within its original intention or not, and where it summons agents to fall in line with its images of things and its patterns of action even if they fail to suit the occasions of their invocations. But more than that, a RIT can indicate the "pragmatic setting" where it has a call to be understood, where it is designed to evolve one or more clear meanings, and where it presses agents to render these meanings ever more effective in practice.
5.1.2.20. (4)
5.1.2.21. (5)
5.1.2.22. (6)
5.1.2.23. (7)
5.1.2.24. (8)
5.1.2.25. The Discursive Universe
Wee sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an chase thee,
Wi murdering pattle!
Robert Burns, To a Mouse,
On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough,
November 1785, [CPW, 131]
This project began with the aim of articulating an aspect of intelligent activity, namely, the inquiry into inquiry that appears to be implied in the very ability to do inquiry, to learn from the impressions of passing experience, and to reason about their indications for future experience. Inspired by the enunciation of these high aims the work proceeds in a top down fashion, though of course the rubble of previous experience is always there to suggest the orders of material to expect at the bottom. This mode of investigation, when it works, amounts to a recursive form of conceptual analysis, starting from the barest conception of its aim, seeking the conditions necessary for the possibility of its actualization, trying to determine the functional components that allow it to operate in principle, undertaking to shore up the practical supports that permit it to prosper in reality, and working to alleviate the practical obstacles that impact on its implementation in adverse ways.
A particular agent does what appears to be necessary at each moment in a succession of moments in order to achieve a particular aim, and hopes that what appears to be necessary to an agent who follows a given path cannot be totally immaterial to what is actually necessary in general. The relationship between apparent necessity and actual necessity is the topic of another discussion later in this work, so I leave it till then. At this point, it only needs to be observed that an apparent necessity constitutes a real force on the agent who observes it, in other words, that it constrains the acts of the agent to whom it appears necessary. Given the freedom of intellect that comes from the reflective criticism of particular developments, a particular agent's particular inquiries are hopefully conceived in such a way as to work toward necessary truths.
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion,
An fellow mortal!
Robert Burns, To a Mouse, [CPW, 131]
Given the nature of particular agency, along with the circumstance that an inquiry must be carried out by a particular agent, an inquiry is apt to proceed in ways that are far from being absolutely necessary, and it is bound to wander on paths that fail to be optimal in the use of time. But this fact — the fact that many departures from necessity are likely to affect the progress of any particular inquiry, and the fact that such contingencies, deficiencies, and facticities are almost sure to apply to one's present inquiry — although its likelihood in general is frequently suspected by a reflective agent and its certainty in theory is probably apparent to a critical agent, its import is usually not clearly "known", not in the detailed sense that its application to the moment in question is available to the agent who needs to act on it, and not in the pressing sense that its bearings on the consequences for experience are apparent to the agent who ought to be concerned about their subsequent effects. But the widespread suspicion that what appears to be necessary is not always actually and absolutely necessary, however much it is likely to verge on the truth, remains completely vague in that form, and it does not conjure up enough of an objection to deter action on what appears to be necessary, not unless a concrete alternative also appears.
In this way one is able to see the form of short term independence, the apparent indifference and the seeming lack of correlation that persists in the meantime, between actual necessities and apparent necessities. The apparent necessity continues to subsist as a facticious matter, no matter how grave it appears to the agent who falls within its orbit and no matter how much it constrains the circumstantial actions of the agent to whom it in fact appears necessary. A lack of actual necessity does not prevent an apparent necessity from continuing to appear just as if it were called for. Conversely, a lack of apparent necessity in no way impedes an actual necessity from continuing to rule the total situation. With all due respect to apparent necessities, the fact of their actual facticity is perfectly capable of holding true, however much these very conditions are able to constrain the actions of the particular agents to whom they appear necessary. Moreover, the facticious nature and the virtual force that are severally attributed to an apparent necessity are just as apparently independent of each other, at least, in medias res. The facticity of an apparent necessity continues to hold in fact, however forcefully it actually succeeds in compelling the activities of an agent. The force of an apparent necessity continues to stay in effect, in spite of its actual facticity, right up until the time when it no longer appears to be necessary.
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma request;
I'll get a blessin wi the lave,
An never miss't!
Robert Burns, To a Mouse, [CPW, 132]
What I hope that my discussion of The LOS leads to is an inkling of the type of dialogue that is capable of taking place between a formal domain and the informal context in which it lives, the world in which it is born, continues to grow, and even forces to evolve along with its development, the setting at times in which it lies dormant, remaining restively inert for years or simply sleeping through the appointed phases of the night, the fold in which it is able to be reborn, to come to a new life, and to arise afresh. The form of this dialogue is one that suggests the name for itself of a "discursion", a word that is coined to carry a wealth of various possibilities: a "dialectic recursion" or a "recursive dialogue", a "recursive analysis" (RA) or a "recursive excursion" (RE), perhaps the very form of "recursive inquiry" (RI) that admits of its decomposition into one or another "recursive undertaking" (RU) and thereby maintains the very form of its own constitution. This array of acronyms serves to stake out a ready field of discursive research and exploration, one that is open in certain directions to unformalized possibilities of experience, in a sense or in essence, to its own future.
But the question remains whether sign bearing agents can act, at least, as if they are able to be aware of their bearing as one component of a coherent, competent, and complete code of conduct, even a form of life. And the question continues how interpreters can acquire their faculties for the conscientious development and the deliberate elaboration of the factors that affect their own interpretive activities, in sum, how they can reflect on the factual contingencies that affect their own sign use, on the facticity of the circumstances that constrain these uses, and on the factors that determine the facility of the conditions that lead up to these uses, and then act on the results of all these reflections to make improvements in all these factors. In this way of broaching the subject of reflection, I am forced to drop it almost immediately, with the aim of starting afresh at another point and approaching the topic again, the next time from another direction.
Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An naething, now, to big a new ane,
O foggage green!
An bleak December's win's ensuin,
Baith snell an keen!
Robert Burns, To a Mouse, [CPW, 132]
At times one enters a state of mind that seems so rich in possibilities, teems with so many avenues of interesting departures, and unlocks such veins of unsuspected wealth in the world of ideas that one wants to be sure to revisit it again, in order to explore the rest of the thoughts that seem likely to unfold from its locus, its nexus, and its treasury. But the only way that one can be sure to return to anything like the same state of mind is to put reminders of it all about, at every other point that one later passes through and in the vicinity of every locus the neighborhood of which one is likely to visit. Now a state that one experiences at a former time is not always possible to experience again, but it may be possible to make nearby passes or to approach arbitrarily close to the essence of the exact experience at a host of future times. Then consider a manifold of possible states of mind as forming a space that possesses its conceivable extension. And so one gets these ideas: (1) of a manifold that is suffused with the idea of a manifold that is suffused just so, (2) of a manifold that is suffused with more or less accurate ideas of itself, and (3) of a manifold that is suffused with its own idea just far enough that it can serve to maintain the orbits of the agents that pass through it in suffusion with the very idea of doing so.
If the writer can din the reader into an awareness that the repetition of a word does not imply the repetition of a thought, that the repetition of a sign does not imply the repetition of any idea, that the repetition of a state does not mean its repetition forever, then this repetition serves its purpose, however close it verges on absurdity.
The discussion arrives at the question of signs and texts that signify, beyond their ostensible denotations and their obvious connotations, the characters of their authors, the features of their intended readers, and much more besides about the nature of their joint adventures, whatever their levels of participation in them, the processes of communication.
If the question of the interpreter that is signified by a sign reduces to the question of the interpretation that is signified by that sign, and if this reduces to the question of the interpretant that is signified by the sign, then one arrives at the circumstance of sign that relates to its interpretant along several paths.
"effective descriptions and finite texts" (EDAFT's)
Thou saw the fields laid bare an waste,
An weary winter comin fast,
An cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro thy cell.
Robert Burns, To a Mouse, [CPW, 132]
At this juncture the discussion comes face to face with a type of text, many of whose signs are subject to different levels of interpretation. Besides denoting characters and creatures of legend and myth that form at first sight the subjects of the text, describing their features, and depicting their various adventures, they also appear to be amenable to recursive or self referent interpretations or to suggest an extra sense for themselves. Indeed, they seem designed to serve an added intention of their author, namely, to say something about the aims of the author, the attributes of the audience, whether hoped or feared, and the nature of the whole attempt to communicate.
Just to indicate the types of self reference that are being contemplated, it helps to introduce a number of informal definitions. Let any suitable set of entities {writer, sign, reader} be called a "linkage" of the sign in question, and let any suitable set of entities {writer, text, reader} be called a "linkage" of the text in question. In either of these uses, let the subset of entities {writer, reader} be called the "link" of that linkage, and let the elements of a link be called its "ends" or "termini". At present, the situations of interest are those in which all of the signs in a text, at least, those that denote anything at all, are considered to share the very same link, which they all bear in common with their text. From now on, this condition is taken for granted unless it is otherwise expressly noted. Given a sign within a text, the union of their linkages is a set of entities {writer, sign, text, reader} that is useful to call a "nocking" of the sign. Together with the specification of a sign relation that suits a particular condition of interpretation, these constructs go toward defining a "communication situation", an "interpretive setting", or a "pragmatic frame" for the sign or the text in question.
Naturally, these constructions require a lot more information about the details of a given interpretation in a given situation in order to pin them down exactly, but this is enough to rough out their general ideas. Their main use in the current setting is simply to provide a ready way of talking about the properties of certain kinds of complex texts, as they are become subject to certain kinds of "loopy", "recursive", or "self referent" interpretations.
If a sign within a text is interpreted as making any kind of denotative reference to its own nocking, namely, to the appropriate set of entities {writer, sign, text, reader}, its elements, or its properties, then it is useful to consider this sign and this text as being self referent in the broad sense that they refer to accessory or instrumental aspects of the pragmatic frame itself, and thus can be said to have an "internal aim". This can happen whether or not a sign within a text denotes any object beyond its nocking, and thus can be said to have an "external aim".
That wee bit heap o leaves an stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An cranreuch cauld!
Robert Burns, To a Mouse, [CPW, 132]
In the pragmatic theory of signs it is often said that: "The question of the interpreter reduces to the question of the interpretant". If this is true then it means that questions about the special interpreters that are designated to serve as the writer and the reader of a text are reducible to questions about the particular sign relations that independently and jointly define these two interpreters and their process of communication. The assumptions and the implications that are involved in this maxim are best explained by retracing the analysis that leads to this reduction, setting it out in the following stages:
1. By way of setting up the question of the interpreter, it needs to be noted that it can be asked in any one of several modalities. These are commonly referred to under a variety of different names, for instance:
a. What may be: the "prospective" or the "imaginative";
also: the contingent, inquisitive, interrogative, optional, provisional, speculative, or "possible on some condition".
b. What is: the "descriptive" or the "indicative";
also: the actual, apparent, definite, empirical, existential, experiential, factual, phenomenal, or "evident at some time".
c. What must be: the "prescriptive" or the "imperative";
also: the injunctive, intentional, normative, obligatory, optative, prerequisite, or "necessary to some purpose".
It is important to recognize that these lists refer to modes of judgment, not the results of the judgments themselves. Accordingly, they conflate under single headings the particular issues that remain to be sorted out through the performance of the appropriate judgments, for instance, the difference between an apparent fact and a genuine fact. In general, it is a difficult question what sorts of relationships exist among these modalities and what sorts of orderings are logically or naturally the best for organizing them in the mind. Here, they are given in one of the possible types of logical ordering, based on the idea that a thing must be possible before it can become actual, and that it must become actual (at some point in time) in order to qualify as being necessary. That is, being necessary implies being actual at some time or another, and being actual implies being possible in the first place. This amounts to thinking that something must be added to a condition of possibility in order to achieve a state of actuality, and that something must be added to a state of actuality in order to acquire a status of necessity.
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o mice an men
Gang aft agley,
An lea'e us nought but grief an pain,
For promis'd joy!
Robert Burns, To a Mouse, [CPW, 132]
All of this notwithstanding, it needs to be recognized that other types of logical arrangement can be motivated on other grounds. For example, there are good reasons to think that all of one's notions of possibility are in fact abstracted from one's actual experiences, making actuality prior in some empirically natural sense to the predicates of possibility. Since a plausible heuristic organization is all that is needed for now, this is one of those questions that can be left open until a later time.
2. Taking this setting as sufficientaly well understood and keeping these modalities of inquiry in mind, the analysis proper can begin. Any question about the character of the interpreter that is acting in a situation can be identified with a question about the nature of the process of interpretation that is taking place under the corresponding conditions.
3. Any question about the nature of the process of interpretation that is taking place can be identified with a question about the properties of the interpretant that follows on a given sign. This is a question about the interpretant that is associated with a sign, in one of several modalities and as contingent on the total context.
In summary: The question of the interpreter that is signified to act reduces to the question of the interpretation that is signified to occur, and thus to the question of the interpretant that is signified to follow the given sign under the given conditions. Expanding over the various modalities: The question of the interpreter reduces to the question of the interpretation that is determined, designed, or depicted to occur, and this in turn reduces to the question of the interpretant that is indicated, intended, or imagined to be associated with the given sign.
To follow this reduction in stages, the character of the interpreter that can be signified in some modality to be acting in a situation is identified with the nature of the process of interpretation that can be signified in that same modality to be taking place in that same situation, and this is the matter of the kind of interpretant that can be signified in that same modality to be following on the sign that is given in that same situation.
Still thou art blest, compar'd wi me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An forward, tho I canna see,
I guess an fear!
Robert Burns, To a Mouse, [CPW, 132]
5.1.2.26. (7)
5.1.2.27. (6)
5.1.2.28. (5)
5.1.2.29. (4)
5.1.2.30. (3)
5.1.2.31. (2)
5.1.2.32. (1)
5.2. Reflective Inquiry
5.2.1. Integrity and Unity of Inquiry
One of the very first questions that one encounters in the inquiry into inquiry is one that challenges both the integrity and the unity of inquiry, a question that asks: “Is inquiry one or many?” By this one means two things:
- Concerning the integrity of inquiry: How are the components and the properties of inquiry, as identified by analysis, integrated into a whole that is singly and solely responsible for its results, and as it were, that answers for its answers in one voice? These qualities of unanimity and univocity are necessary in order to be able to speak of an inquiry as a coherent entity, whose nature it is to have and to hold the boundaries one finds in or gives to it, rather than being an artificial congeries of naturally unrelated elements and features. In other words, this is required in order to treat inquiry as a systematic function, that is, as the action, behavior, conduct, or operation of a system.
- Concerning the unity of inquiry: Is the form of inquiry that is needed for reasoning about facts the same form of inquiry that is needed for reasoning about actions and goals, duties and goods, feelings and values, guesses and hopes, and so on, or does each sort of inquiry — aesthetic, ethical, practical, speculative, or whatever — demand and deserve a dedicated and distinctive form? Although it is clear that some degree of modulation is needed to carry out different modes of inquiry, is the adaptation so radical that one justly considers it to generate different forms, or is the changeover merely a matter of mildly tweaking the same old tunes and draping new materials on the same old forms?
If one reflects, shares the opinion, or takes the point of view on experimental grounds that inquiry begins with uncertainty, then each question about the integrity and the unity of inquiry can be given a sharper focus if it is re-posed as a question about the integrity and the unity of uncertainty, or of its positive counterpart, information.
Accordingly, one is led to wonder next: Is uncertainty one or many? Is information one or many? As before, each question raises two more: one that inquires into the internal composition of its subject, or the lack thereof, and one that inquires into the external diversity of its subject, or the lack thereof. This reflection, on the integrity and the unity, or else the multiplicity, of uncertainty and information, is the image of the earlier reflection, on the facts of sign use. Once more, what appears in this reflection is so inconclusive and so insubstantial that there is nothing else to do at this point but to back away again from the mirror.
To rephrase the question more concretely: Is uncertainty about what is true or what is the case the general form that subsumes every species of uncertainty, or is it possible that uncertainty about what to do, what to feel, what to hope, and so on constitute essentially different forms of inquiry among them? The answers to these questions have a practical bearing in determining how usefully the presently established or any conceivable theory of information can serve as a formal tool in different types of inquiry.
Another way to express these questions is in terms of a distinction between form and matter. The form is what all inquiries have in common, and the question is whether it is anything beyond the bare triviality that they all have to take place in some universe of inquiry or another. The matter is what concerns each particular inquiry, and the question is whether the matter warps the form to a shape all its own, one that is peculiar to this matter to such a degree that it is never interchangeable with the forms that are proper to other modes of inquiry.
5.2.2. Apparitions and Allegations
Next I consider the preparations for a phenomenology. This is not yet any style of phenomenology itself but an effort to grasp the very idea that something appears, and to grasp it in relation to the something that appears. I begin by looking at a sample of the language that one ordinarily uses to talk about appearances, with an eye to how this medium shapes one's thinking about what appears. A close inspection reveals that there are subtleties issuing from this topic that are partly disclosed and partly obscured by the language that is commonly used in this connection.
- An apparition, as I adopt the term and adapt its use to this context, is a property, a quality, or a respect of appearance. That is, it is an aspect or an attribute of a phenomenon of interest that appears to arise in a situation and to affect the character of the phenomenal situation. Apparitions shape themselves in general to any shade of apperception, assumption, imitation, intimation, perception, sensation, suspicion, or surmise that is apt or amenable to be apprehended by an animate agent.
- An allegation, in the same manner of speaking, is any description or depiction, any expression or emulation, in short, any verbal exhalation or visual emanation that appears to apprehend a characteristic trait or an illuminating trace of an apparition.
The terms apparition and allegation serve their purpose in allowing an observer to focus on the sheer appearance of the apparition itself, in assisting a listener or a reader to attend to the sheer assertion of the allegation itself. Their application enables an interpreter to accept at first glance or to acknowledge at first acquaintance the reality of each impression as a sign, without being forced to the point of assuming that there is anything in reality that the apparition is in fact an appearance of, that there is anything in reality that the allegation is in deed an adversion to, or, as people commonly say, that there is anything of substance "behind" it all.
Ordinarily, when one speaks of the appearance of an object, one tends to assume that there is in reality an object that has this appearance, but if one speaks about the apparition of an object, one leaves more room for a suspicion whether there is in reality any such object as there appears to be. In technical terms, however much it is simply a matter of their common acceptations, the term appearance is said to convey slightly more existential import than the term apparition. This dimension of existential import is one that enjoys a considerable development in the sequel.
If one asks what apparitions and allegations have in common, it seems to be that they share the character of signs. If one asks what character divides them, it is said to be that apparitions are more likely to be generated by an object in and of itself while allegations are more likely to be generated by an interpreter in reaction to an alleged or apparent object. Nevertheless, even if one agrees to countenance both apparitions and allegations as a pair of especially specious species of signs, whose generations are differentially attributed to objects and to interpreters, respectively, and whose variety runs through a spectrum of intermediate variations, there remains a number of subtleties still to be recognized.
For instance, when one speaks of an appearance of a sign, then one is usually talking about a token of that type of sign, as it appears in a particular locus and as it occurs on a particular occasion, all of which further details can be specified if required. If this common usage is to be squared with calling apparitions a species of signs, then talk about an appearance of an apparition must have available to it a like order of interpretation. And thus what looks like a higher order apparition, in other words, an apparition of an apparition, is in fact an even more particular occurrence, specialized appearance, or special case of sign. At this point I have to let go of the subject for now, since the general topic of higher order signs, their variety and interpretation, is one that occupies a much broader discussion later on in this work.
Any action that an interpreter takes to detach the presumed actuality of the sign from the presumed actuality of its object, at least in so far as the sign appears to present itself as denoting, depicting, or describing a particular object, remains a viable undertaking and a valuable exercise to attempt, no matter what hidden agenda, ulterior motive, or intentional object is conceivably still invested in the apparition or the allegation. If there is an object, property, or situation in reality that is in fact denoted or represented by one of these forms of adversion and allusion, then one says that there is a basis for acting on them, a justification for believing in them, a motivation for taking them seriously, a reason for treating them as true, or a foundation that is capable of lending support to their prima facie evidence.
Once the dimension of existential import is recognized as a parameter of interpretation, for example, as it runs through the spectrum of meanings that the construals of apparitions and appearances are differentially scattered across, then there are several observations that ought to be made about the conceivable distributions of senses:
- In principle, the same range of ambiguities and equivocalities affects both of the words apparition and appearance to the same degree, however much their conventional usage tilts their individual and respective senses one way or the other.
- Deprived of its existential import, the applicational phrase appearance of an object (AOAO) means something more akin to the adjectival or analogous phrase object-like appearance (OLA). Can it be that the mere appearance of the preposition of in the application "P of Q" is somehow responsible for the tilt of its construal toward a more substantial interpretation, one with a fully existential import?
- Interpreting any apparition, appearance, phenomenon, or sign as an appearance of an object is tantamount to the formation of an abductive hypothesis, that is, it entertains the postulation of an object in an effort to explain the particulars of an appearance.
- The positing of objects to explain apparitions, appearances, phenomena, or signs, to be practical on a regular basis, requires the preparatory establishment of an interpretive framework (IF) and the concurrent facilitation of an objective framework (OF). Teamed up together, these two frameworks assist in organizing the data of signs and the impressions of ideas in connection with the hypotheses of objects, and thus they make it feasible to examine each object-like appearance and to convert each one that is suitable into an appearance of an object.
At this point it ought to be clear that the pragmatic theory of signs permits the whole of phenomenal reality (WOPR) to be taken as a sign, perhaps of itself as an object, and perhaps to itself as an interpretant. The articulation of the exact sign relation that exists is the business of inquiry into a particular universe, and this is a world whose existence, development, and completion are partially contingent on the character, direction, and end of that very inquiry.
The next step to take in preparing a style of phenomenology, that is, in acquiring a paradigm for addressing apparitions or in producing an apparatus for dealing with appearances, is to partition the space of conceivable phenomena in accord with several forms of classification, drawing whatever parallel and incidental lines appear suitable to the purpose of oganizing phenomena into a sensible array, in particular, separating out the kinds of appearances that one is prepared to pay attention to, and thus deciding the kinds of experiences that one is ready to partake in, while paring away the sorts of apparitions that one is prepared to ignore.
It may be thought that a phenomenology has no need of preparation or partition, that the idea is to remain openly indiscriminate and patently neutral to all that appears, that all of its classifications are purely descriptive, and that all of them put together are intended to cover the entire range of what can possibly show up in experience. But attention is a precious resource, bounded in scope and exhausted in detail, while the time and the trouble that are available to spend on the free and the unclouded observation of phenomena are much more limited still, at least, in so far as it concerns finite agents and mortal creatures, and thus even the most liberal phenomenology is forced to act on implicit guidelines or to put forward explicit recommendations of an evaluative, a normative, or a prescriptive character, saying in effect that if one acts in certain ways, in particular, that if one expends an undue quantity of attention on the "wrong" kinds of appearances, then one is bound to pay the price, in other words, to experience unpleasant experiences as a consequence or else to suffer other sorts of adverse results.
This observation draws attention to the general form of constraint that comes into play at this point. Let me then ask the following question: What is the most general form of preparation, partition, or reparation, of whatever sort of disposition or structure, that I can imagine as applying to the whole situation, that I can see as characterizing its experiential totality, and that I can grasp as contributing to its ultimate result? For my own part, in the present situation, the answer appears to be largely as follows.
As far as I know, all styles of phenomenology and all notions of science, whether general or special, either begin by adopting an implicit recipe for what makes an apparition worthy of note or else begin their advance by developing an explicit prescription for a "worthwhile" appearance, a rule that presumes to dictate what phenomena are worthy of attention. This recipe or prescription amounts to a critique of phenomena, a rule that has an evaluative or a normative force. As a piece of advice, it can be taken as a tentative rule of mental presentation (TROMP) for all that appears or shows itself, since it sets the bar for admitting phenomena to anything more than a passing regard, marks the threshold of abiding concern and the level of recurring interest, formulates a precedence ordering to be imposed on the spectra of apparitions and appearances, and is tantamount to a recommendation about what kinds of phenomena are worth paying attention to and what kinds of shows are not worth the ticket — in a manner of speaking saying that the latter do not repay the price of admission to consciousness and do not earn a continuing regard.
The issue of a TROMP ("tentative rule of mental presentation") can appear to be a wholly trivial commonplace or a totally unnecessary extravagance, but realizing that a choice of this order has to be made, that it has to be made at a point of development where no form of justification of any prior logical order can be adduced, and thus that the choice is always partly arbitrary and always partly based on aesthetic considerations, ethical constraints, and practical consequences — all of this says something important about the sort of meaning that the choice can have, and it opens up a degree of freedom that was obscured by thinking that a phenomenology has to exhaust all apparitions, or that a science has to be anchored wholly in bedrock.
If it appears to my reader that my notion of what makes a worthwhile appearance is tied up with what I can actually allege to appear, and is therefore constrained by the medium of my language and the limits of my lexicon, then I am making the intended impression. One of the reasons that I find for accepting these bounds is that I am decidedly less concerned with those aspects of experience that appear in one inconsistent and transient fashion after another, and I am steadily more interested in those aspects of experience that appear on abiding, insistent, periodic, recurring, and stable bases. Since I am trying to demonstrate how inquiry takes place in the context of a sign relation, the ultimate reasons for this restriction have to do with the nature of inquiry and the limited capacities of signs to convey information.
Inquiry into reality has to do with experiential phenomena that recur, with states that appear and that promise or threaten to appear again, and with the actions that agents can take to affect these recurrences. This is true for two reasons: First, a state that does not appear or does not recur cannot be regarded as constituting any sort of problem. Second, only states that appear and recur are subject to the tactics of learning and teaching, or become amenable to the methods of reasoning.
There is a catch, of course, to such a blithe statement, and it is this: How does an agent know whether a state is going to appear, is bound to recur, or not? To be sure, there are hypothetically conceivable states that constitute obvious problems for an agent, independently of whether an instance of them already appears in experience or not. This is the question that inaugurates the theoretical issue of signs in full force, raises the practical stakes that are associated with their actual notice, and constellates the aspect of a promise or a threat that appears above. Accordingly, the vital utility of signs is tied up with questions about persistent appearances, predictable phenomena, contingently recurrent states of systems, and ultimately patterned forms of real existence that are able to integrate activity with appearance.
In asking questions about integral patterns of activity and appearance, where the category of action and the category of affect are mixed up in a moderately complicated congeries with each other and stirred together in a complex brew, it is helpful on a first approximation to "fudge" the issue of the agent a bit, in other words, to "dodge", "fuzz", or "hedge" any questions about the precise nature of the agent that appears to be involved in the activities and to whom the appearances actually appear. This intention is served by using the word "agency" in a systematically ambiguous way, namely, to mean either an individual agent, a community of agents, or any of the actions thereof. In this vein, the following sorts of questions can be asked:
- What appearances can be recognized by what agencies to occur on a recurring basis? In other words, what appearances can be noted by what agencies to fall under sets of rules that describe their ultimate patterns of activity and appearance?
- What appearances can be shared among agents and communities that are distributed through dimensions of culture, language, space, and time?
- What appearances can be brought under the active control of what agencies by observing additional and alternative appearances that are associated with them, that is, by acquiring and exploiting an acquaintance with the larger patterns of activity and appearance that apply?
There is a final question that I have to ask in this preparation for a phenomenology, though it, too, remains an ultimately recurring inquiry: What form of reparation is due for the undue distribution of attention to appearance? In other words, what form of reform is called on to repair an unjust disposition, to remedy an inadequate preparation, or to adjust a partition that is not up to par? Any attempt to answer this question has occasion to recur to its preliminary: What form of information does it take to convince agents that a reform of their dispositions is due?
As annoying as all of these apparitions and allegations are at first, it is clear that they arise from an ability to reflect on a scene of awareness, and thus, aside from the peculiar attitudes that they may betray from time to time, they advert to an aptitude that amounts to an inchoate agency of reflection, an incipient faculty of potential utility that the agent affected with its afflictions is well-advised to appreciate, develop, nurture, and train, in spite of how insipid its animadversions are alleged to appear at times. This marks the third time now that the subject of reflection has come to the fore. Paradoxically enough, no increment of charm appears to accrue to the occasion.
A good part of the work ahead is taken up with considering ways to formalize the process of reflection. This is necessary, not just in the interest of those apparitions that are able to animate reflection, or for the sake of those allegations that are able to survive reflection, but in order to devise a regular methodology for articulating, bringing into balance with each other, and reasoning on the grounds of the various kinds of reflections that naturally occur, the apparitions that arise in the incidental context of experience plus the allegations that get expressed in the informal context of discussion. Later discussions will advance a particular approach to reflection, bringing together the work already begun in previous discussions of interpretive frameworks (IFs) and objective frameworks (OFs), and constructing a compound order or a hybrid species of framework for arranging, organizing, and supporting reflection. These tandem structures will be referred to as reflective interpretive frameworks (RIFs).
Before the orders of complexity that are involved in the construction of a RIF can be entertained, however, it is best to obtain a rudimentary understanding of just how the issues associated with reflection can in fact arise in ordinary and unformalized experience. Proceeding by this path will allow us to gain, along with a useful array of moderately concrete intuitions, a relatively stable basis for comprehending the nature of reflection. For all of these reasons, the rest of this initial discussion will content itself with a sample of the more obvious and even superficial properties of reflection as they develop out of casual and even cursory contexts of discussion, and as they make themselves available for expression in the terms and in the structures of a natural language medium.
5.2.3. A Reflective Heuristic
In a first attempt to state explicitly the principles by which reflection operates, it helps to notice a few of the tasks that reflection performs. In the process of doing this it is useful to keep this figure of speech, where the anthropomorphic reflection is interpreted in the figure of its personification, in other words, as a hypostatic reference that personifies the reflective faculty of an agent.
One of the things that reflection does is to look for common patterns as they appear in diverse materials. Another thing that reflection does is to look for variations in familiar and recognized patterns. These ideas lead to the statement of two aesthetic guidelines or heuristic suggestions as to how the process of reflection can be duly carried out:
- Try to reduce the number of primitive notions.
- Try to vary what has been held to be constant.
These are a couple of aesthetic imperatives or founding principles that I first noticed as underlying motives in the work of C.S. Peirce, informing the style of thinking that is found throughout his endeavors (Awbrey & Awbrey, 1989). It ought to be recognized that this pair of imperatives operate in antagonism or work in conflict with each other, each recommending a course that strives against the aims of the other. The circumstances of this opposition appear to suggest a mythological derivation for the faculty of reflection that is being personified in this figure, as if it were possible to inquire into the background of reflection so deeply as to reach that original pair of sibling rivals: Epimetheus, Defender of the Same; Prometheus, Sponsor of the Different.
Aesthetic slogans and practical maxims do not have to be consistent in all of the exact and universal ways that are required of logical principles, since their applications to each particular matter can be adjusted in a differential and a discriminating manner, taking into account the points of their pertinence, the qualities of their relevance, and the times of their salience. Nevertheless, the use of these heuristic principles can have a bearing on the practice of logic, especially when it comes to the forms of logical expression and argumentation that are available for use in a particular language, specialized calculus, or other formal system. Although one's initial formulations of logical reasoning, in the shapes that are seized on by fallible and finite creatures, can be as arbitrary and as idiosyntactic as particular persons and parochial paradigms are likely to make them, a dedicated and persistent application of these two heuristic rudiments, whether in team, in tandem, or in tournament with each other, is capable of leading in time to forms that subtilize and universalize, at the same time, the forms initially taken by thought.
5.2.4. Either/Or : A Sense of Absence
| Che faro senza Euridice ? | |
| Dove andro senza il mio ben ? | |
| Che faro ? Dove andro ? | |
| Che faro senza il mio ben ? | |
| What can I do, with Eurydice gone? | |
| And whither go, without my dearest love? | |
| What can I do? And whither go? | |
| What can I do without my dearest love? | |
| Gluck, Orfeo ed Euridice, [Glu, 74] | |
While I'm on the subject of imperatives and maxims, of how they often come in pairs that appear to strive both pro and con each other, and of how they are able to make a kind of sense, whether in conjunction or in alternation, without having to be logically consistent with one another, …
Absent a sense of what is good a creature is lost. And since this sense is only a feeling, a groping, a hint, an inkling, all in all a wandering shade, it can only be a sign of what is good, and a fallible sign at that. Does a sense of what's good ever contend with a sense of what's good? If the mind is inclined to emphasize the turn of the phrase that it is bound to hold nearer to itself, namely, the mind's own “sense”, then it seems to indicate an aesthetic sensibility. If the mind is disposed to stress the part of speech that it places more dearly in association with its object, namely, the mind's own “good”, then it seems to take on an ethical intention. But this is just shadow play. The live question is: What is there in this state of disharmony that speaks to its absence?
5.2.5. Apparent, Occasional, and Practical Necessity
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In the present state of things a man abandoned to himself in the midst of other men from birth would be the most disfigured of all. Prejudices, authority, necessity, example, all the social institutions in which we find ourselves submerged would stifle nature in him and put nothing in its place. Nature there would be like a shrub that chance had caused to be born in the middle of a path and that the passers by soon cause to perish by bumping into it from all sides and bending it in every direction. |
| Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, [Rou1, 37] |
I appear to be entering an apparent arena where it is apparently necessary to approach every appearance of an absolute concept, and so every apperception of an abstract idea, with an air of apprehension, to attend as assiduously as I am able to the factitious aspect of every concept approached, every fact asserted, every idea approximated, and every predicate applied, as each advances from a potentially articulate to a palpably artificial species of phenomenon, and thus to appreciate for myself the quality of an apparition that seems to affect everything that I apprehend, and also to apprise others of the attitude that I find I am advised to adopt, by attempting to append to every article of note an appraisal of the aura of evanescence and instability that appears all about it, to assign to every point of application a device to reflect the animate artifice that is pressured to suit its address to the subject, to attach to every point of articulation a reflex of the animating instinct that is appealed to for flexing the armament of its attack on the theme, to affix an array of verbal hedges all around it to serve as an appellate apparatus and to assure an attitude of appropriate reserve toward it.
As I enter this allegorical and apparitional context, I find that every attempt at articulate expression is affected with an array of afflictions. In this abode of seeming allegations, this abyss of teeming apparitions, every point I try to make is quickly surrounded by a brace of blooming confusions and rapidly swarmed over by a mass of buzzing diffusions.
Here, the qualifiers "alleged by", "alleged", "allegedly", in allegiance with the qualifiers "appears to", "apparent", "apparently", and arranged alongside all of their associated, derivative, and equivalent modifiers, can literally be distributed to any part of speech, any phrase of any sentence, or any phase of discourse that I can think to assemble or venture to articulate.
Here, the admonitions "alleged" and "apparent" can arguably be applied to any term, any premiss, and any argument that appears to enter an arena of discussion or that afterwards appears to arouse attention.
Here, the amplifications that appear almost able to assert themselves here, that array themselves at all available points of articulation and arraign as arrant adventures all attempts at advancing any appreciable amount beyond appearances and allegations, that avail themselves of all the available veils of allusion to the vanity of appearances, but only accomplish another order of obfuscation, that are able to accumulate in any account that attempts to appreciate all that allegedly appears in it, all the allied assonances of asinine alliterations and that is augmented in accord with all that is actually fit to print, ascends to an altitude of such arrogance that it assumes the ability to arrest all the associates of its nominal constants and of the point of overpowers its pronounced variables, as the latter are so typically represented by the deceptively percussive decussation of the variable name "X", appear to excise out of existence the very objects that it aims to mark in the forms of its syntax.
As I continue to pursue the problems that remain of interest to me here, I am led to increase the manifold of ways that are available to converge on each object, to insert a growing multitude of signs into the medium, and to introduce new points of articulation into the developing text. Each of these developments appears to arise in a natural fashion from the intentions that I bring to this work and as I bring them to bear on each object in view, as I search for a way to catch at least a fractured image of its more glaring aspects and as I strive to settle on a way to pin down at least a fragmentary inkling of its more striking features. If I aim to bring home this catch in the net of those few terms that I can fix in the forms of its sieve and fasten in the figures of its syntax, then I need to adjust the scope of the modifiers that are affixed from the frames of its paradigms and afforded by the folds of its inflections. But each new sign that I adduce, in the instant that it starts to afford a point of attachment, one that seems sufficient to suspend the orders of variation that appear to me, in that same moment it also occasions a point of departure, one that seems necessary to pursue through orders of variation that are barely hinted at in my present imagination, and each element of which promises to serve as a conceptual peg that whole new orders of conceivable changes can be pinned on.
As a result of these developments, an initially admirable attempt at clarification issues in a luminescent haze of modulations that affects every object in sight with a spectral host of modifiers, that glosses over the original indictment of every object of investigation, that limns every outline of a potential content with a dubious aura of charismatic nuances, that surrounds every figure with an array of apprehensions without quite arresting any detail of observation, and that obscures the interior features of every shape with a sheer but sketchy silhouette.
The reverberant perturbations that stem from each new predicate added to the account appear to interfere with the very mode of action or the very state of being that it attempts to delineate about its subject, where the numinous veils of adumbration that evolve about every object ascend to levels of amplitude that appears to collapse the very objects, acts, and facts that they began with the aim to connote, and finally, where the corresponding moment of coruscation that precipitate about every object finally seems to crush it beneath the weight of its own encrustation, to corrupt the sense of the original signs, to corrode the very object of their intention, and to scatter the remains of the object in a chorus of vacillations that detonate every intention to denote.
In this way it is possible to discover, if nothing else, a few of the ways that reflection can go astray. It appears to be clear from the drift that is evident in this particular style of investigation that there do indeed exist "modes of dispersive reflection" (MODR's) that "murder to dissect" the objects of their investigation. Under the influence of these styles, an initially admirable attempt at clarification appears to issue in a fog of glosses, a luminous haze of interpolations, a numinous cloud of nuances, a questionable array of qualifications, all of which threaten to blot out the original object of inquiry.
Try to imagine a religious icon, an object of veneration in many ways — to many it is a mystery in its own right, to many it is a wonder that they invest in it, and to some it is meaningful solely for the sake of what it represents to the understanding — now broken to pieces by the catastrophes of nature, the invading infidel, or the indifferent vandal, now scattered by hordes of iconoclasts, now gathered again and hoarded by troops of souvenir seekers, here and there exploited for use as raw materials in a host of new constructions, leaving the chips in the dust and the immovable chunks to fall where they may, or casting what's left in the waterway, now and again finding the pieces partly encrusted with barnacles and partly worn smooth by the actions of waves through time, until they barely bear a likeness to anything anyone ever bore in mind. What chance is there now of anyone re assembling the resemblance once more, of fitting the pieces together in the way they are meant to be?
This is the situation of humanity after the "Destruction of Babel", if one takes this fable as a metaphorical way of accounting for a current condition that is real enough, the evident lack of communication that prevails among the host of purported communities. This is not just a matter of linguistic diversity, but a question of fundamental beliefs. If the legend is interpreted with a due measure of discernment, then the downcast state of understanding that it purports to explain is not so much a matter of superficial differences in syntax as it is concerned with the deeper semantics of ultimate meanings.
Humanity survives in what appears to be an abject state, with regard to its fondest hopes and with respect to its projected ideals if not with reference to its literal origins, that is, in relation to the founding meanings that it appears to invest in all of its most basic intentions. Each portion of humanity takes the share of value that is disbursed to it as their collective host is dispersed into a rout of value systems. Taking each fragment of meaningful value as it receives it from this encounter and from this deliverance, it appears as if each fraction of humanity is deliberately restricted to a dissipative way of acting for ever after. Given the numerous "common koines" that are its lot, its loot, its boot, and its strapping, the abiding community of interests appears to be hobbled by the limited extent that these means afford it to purchase a meaningful expression for itself in the market of ideas. For all of these reasons and more, humanity appears to operate in what amounts to a degraded condition, at least, as it stacks up against the potential that humanity conceivably has for actualizing common ideals, implementing shared meanings, and realizing globally distributed values.
At this point one chances on a new source of power in symbols, signs that allow of being cobbled together in just the condition that they arrive and in just the mode that they derive from incidental sources, in all their partially eroded shapes and variously polished textures, without being forced to fit exactly in any form of pre arranged setting. In this way one is forced, as it were, by the ravages of time, and in a rather paradoxical fashion, to accept responsibility for an extra degree of flexibility and a novel measure of freedom. More than other types of signs, namely, in contrast to icons and indices that retain more or less independent arrays of formal and material connections, respectively, with their objects, symbols require the living actuality of an interpreter to read between the lines and to fill in the mortar between the more static building blocks of discourse.
There has to be a way to alleviate the tensions that are vaulted away in this suspension of signs without recanting the significance of the sense that their union is intended to intensify, a way to bear the overbearing turgidity of the result that is expressed in their coagulate composition without precipitating the full collapse of the subtended circumspection, a way to clarify the oppressive turbidity of the medium that is stirring to carry this tedium without embroiling the odium in the melody past all hope of its ultimate redemption, a way to distill the solutions that are synthesized in this distribution of moduli to termini without despoiling the tribute of the lesson that all are concerted to spell out in unison, a way to redress the grievances that remain disconsolate in their levies without leaving a pan of their balancing act to wait upon imponderables, a way to revisit the guarded commentaries that are billetted at, around, and through every locus that rises to a point of note in this discourse, a way to trim the edges of the hedges that trim each note of vacillation just as it begins to border on broaching any point that falls into view, a way to unify the manifold of apparent sensitivities to appearance that are likely to be displayed in the complexion and the countenance of this evolving expression and that ought to find their signs manifested in any sensible account of its conduct, its demeanor, its meaning, or its mien, but without numbering up to infinity the signs of apparent sensitivities that could express an appearance in the evolution of this expression and without numbing down into oblivion the sensitivity to apparent sensation that the expression of this evolution is adapted or designed to develop, and thus I am charged to go in search of the likeliest ways that appear.
|
From time to time some brief and insubstantial reflection arose concerning the instability of the things of this world, whose image I saw in the surface of the water, but soon these fragile impressions gave way before the unchanging and ceaseless movement which lulled me and without any active effort on my part occupied me so completely that even when time and the habitual signal called me home I could hardly bring myself to go. |
| Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, [Rou2, 87] |
It is just when the whole phenomenal world threatens to dissolve into a texture of appearances that this show of nature reveals a secret kinship with the very texts of human discourse that interweave its pattern — that interlace its threads and interpret its suggestions, here supplying a neutral backing for the bolder displays of natural phenomena, there embroidering a new elaboration or a wholly superfluous decoration on the brocades that nature affords, that try to catch up the raveled clues of phenomena in the variegated weaves of their own local colors, that vie to sew up the knots of the world within their nets of rival description, and that venture to convert a patchwork of piecewise sensible events into a manifold of eventual sense, no matter how transient and tentative it proves itself to be — and thus the whole show of nature saves itself through the artifice of recognizing this kinship.
After a state of affairs advances this far, it is easy to see what an unwieldy nuisance it is to have to keep on inserting the reminders of appearance on the scene of awareness, what a cumbersome annoyance burdensome constant that might be inserted on apparitional reminders of appearance / to save the mementos of mortal frailty that no earthly agent has sufficient forbearance to attend on all the apparitions of appearance that are possible to spy on the scene of phenomena, and … Rather than trying to maintain a constant appeal to the apparent status of everthing the mind posits and instead of bothering to preserve a continual admonition to remember the frailties of mortal mentality, … When it becomes unwieldy to maintain a constant appeal to appearances and annoying to preserve a continual admonition of past the point of becoming a constant annoyance and a continual nuisance, one can settle on a where the resonances and the resplendences that are set up among the sights and the sounds of the signs that appear all seem to break up the very solidity of the objects themselves — but only seems to do so — it must be an aberration of the medium that makes them seem to shimmer.
Let this cadenza then be descanted: (1) that the necessities of a live interpretation can never be discounted, (2) that the interruptions of a faithful interpreter are never truly out of order, and (3) that to each (a) hint of allegation, (b) mark of appearance, or (c) note of attainder a dutiful interpreter is resoundingly enjoined to adjoin the rejoinders: "Says who?", "Sees who?", or "Cui bono?", respectively.
The rule is often invoked: To make a virtue out of necessity. In the present arena, already ruled over by modes of apparition and allegation, I am obliged to reconstitute apparent necessities as apparent virtues: (1) by examining the very form of rhetorical expediency that appears to be forced on me at this point, (2) by considering the practical lessons that can be drawn from the lines of its force, and (3) by contemplating the possibility that a genuinely valid form of logical argument can in fact be extracted from the raw materials of this and similar examples.
5.2.6. Approaches, Aspects, Exposures, Fronts
A large part of this project is devoted to the construction of various frameworks, as objects that are intended to satisfy a set of abstract requirements or partial specifications.
Over and above the specialized properties that go toward distinguishing the structural and the functional approaches from each other, and apart from the levels of detail that go to make up their particular instances, it is useful to consider the common form of activity that appears to be involved in both approaches, and thus to abstract the form of a “front”. In general, a “front” is an abstract form of organization that appears to embody itself or manages to realize itself in a concrete mass of material activities, and thus to constellate a pattern of action in space and time. This explains how the image of a “front” is relevant to various ways of approaching an object, and thus it indicates the sense of the metaphor, as far as it goes. But when it comes to the kind of a “front” that finds itself configured in a particular way of approaching the construction of an intended object, then there are more specific features that remain to be described.
As a form of activity that possesses a definite direction and perhaps even a deliberate purpose, a front marks the initial organization of an otherwise confused mass of material actions and momentary transits into a moderately coherent movement toward a common end or a shared goal. When a front is regarded as a partial envisioning of its intended object, a prospective view of the possibilities that are being afforded for its construction, and a proximal approach to many critical questions about the object, for instance, whether and how an object that satisfies the intended description can be constructed, then this front is clearly seen to constitute a form of inquiry in its own right.
Regarded as a form of inquiry, a front arrays itself into a gradual succession of agencies, faculties, or processes. Broadly taken, these divide into two parts, which can be personified in the following terms:
- The “van” exposes the generative ideas that come to the fore in shaping a front. In this role, the van is exposed to a host of material instances that it is forced to face with some ambivalence, since they afford not only a field of real opportunities for the advance of the front but also a range of obstructive challenges to its continued viability. The duty of agents in the van is to try to enunciate as clearly as possible the principles that determine the constitution of the front, the virtues of which ideas are in all likelihood responsible for inspiring their allegiance to this front. Actions that belong to the van, in regard to the ways that their logical arrangements, spatial placements, and temporal successions can be put in relationship to each other, are typically found to work best if they can (a) keep to the leading edge of the front, (b) stay as far as possible ahead of the game, (c) finish their part of the work before the main body of activities in the front gets going to cloud the issue, and (d) vest their results on the crest of the wave, where they are the easiest to find in a pinch.
- The “ruck” collects the supporting activities of the front that (a) stand behind its gradual advance, (b) contribute to its incremental development, and (c) maintain the continuity of its automatic functions.
As forms of partial and proximal approach, the structural and functional fronts of inquiry, considered in connection with the trains of supporting activity that stand behind their gradual advance, and taken in light of the waves of successive investigation that are bound to follow in their causal wakes, are constitutionally required to interrogate each other's prerogatives and even prospectively to cover the selfsame jurisdiction. Of course, it is almost inevitable that the persistent advances of these independently principled inquiries will eventually run across each other, since they criss-cross the same regions of concern over and over again. Over time, as these contrasting frontal systems come to meet and start to pass through each other, no matter whether they find themselves in one common accord or whether they are found at cross purposes to each other, no matter whether it is a mutual facilitation or a counterposed reluctance and resistance that their regimes of effrontery induce in one another, they are most likely determined to continue with their separate progressions until, sooner or later, they intersect each other at every point of interest under survey, and accordingly transect their common space in a way that yields a coordinate system for the RIF as a whole.
In the previous paragraph I tried to give a graphic description of how a coordinate system for an area of discussion can arise from conceptual considerations and develop through what are “principally” logical forms of analysis. If the whole development seems a bit obtuse in the beginning, and remains oblique until the very end, when it finally becomes obvious what is already transpiring, then that is just the way it often occurs. It frequently happens that one person, working at one time, presents a formally defined domain, as it appears from one point of view, and then another person, or the same person working at another time, presents a formally different domain, or one that appears from another perspective, and only a bit late does it occur to anyone that the underlying domains referred to are partially the same, or perhaps wholly coincident spaces of objects. Only then, as if an afterthought to this step of synthesis, does it become abundantly clear that inferences comprising a whole new level of implications can derive from the superimposition of the various analytic frameworks, that is, from the fact that these different kinds of properties apply to each and every object in the composite view.
5.2.7. Synthetic A Priori Truths
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Nature, we are told, is only habit. What does that mean? Are there not habits contracted only by force which never do stifle nature? Such, for example, is the habit of the plants whose vertical direction is interfered with. The plant, set free, keeps the inclination it was forced to take. But the sap has not as a result changed its original direction; and if the plant continues to grow, its new growth resumes the vertical direction. |
| Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, [Rou1, 39] |
There is a particular line of thinking, incidental to this construction, that is useful to draw out and to develop for the bearing it has and the perspective it gives on a long standing puzzle, namely, the question of synthetic a priori truths. These are the kinds of truths that usually require considerable efforts of discovery and invention just to realize the truth of, and yet that are commonly felt after the fact to have always been completely destined, evident, foregone, and necessary. It is a matter of controversy in some circles whether truths of this order really exist, or, if truths of any such character do exist, then whether they really fall under the exact terms of the given description. But the “thrill of discovery” that marks their actual experience is real enough in practice, in logic, in mathematics, and in other formal studies, where even the most purely deductive conclusions do not seem so wholly foregone in their ways that one can afford to forgo the joys and the trials of their proofs. Thus, it follows that the persistence of this experience, as felt, needs to be appreciated in itself, no matter what scheme of theory one selects to explain it or else to explain it away.
Let me abstract, for the moment, from the structural and functional axes of the current construction, describing any development along analogous lines as a process of “coordination”, and referring to the form of what results as an “axial coordinating system” (ACS), with axes to be named. What I want to highlight here is the typical progression of experiences that an agent passes through in the process of developing any instance in the form of an ACS, starting from (1) the performance of the separate analyses, working through (2) the synthesis of their combined results, and finally moving on to (3) the derivation of the novel implications on a freshly refurbished stage of inference. Making these abstractions not only yields a clearer view of the relevant structures involved in the process but it also develops a generalized picture of the coordination project that is much more flexible in the present use and increasingly adaptable to future applications.
With an eye to the generic features of my paradigmatic coordination process, and with the abstract idea of an ACS in hand, let me return to the immediate application. As I indicated, one of the benefits that I hope to extract from a study of this form of emergent coordination, taking in its process and its result, is to clarify the problem of SAP propositions in scientific reasoning, and thus to derive a measure of insight into the forms of sapience that depend on them. Unless the ostensibly fruitful nature of SAP propositions evaporates into thin air with their exposure to the heat of reflection and unless their status as advertised entirely boils away with the resolution of their problematic features, then their analysis can help to rationalize the role of SAP propositions in scientific knowledge, as they arise through inquiry, as they enter into one's compendia of belief or knowledge, and as they contribute to the skills whereby one builds an overall grasp of truth.
I think that the sequence of experiential realizations that I depicted in my reconstruction of a developing faculty for coordination, no matter whether it is regarded as a process or as a result, not only can account for many of the paradoxical features of SAP truths but also can explain the impressions that typically occur in the process of achieving them. First, it explains why the full recognition of the supposedly a priori status does not occur until after the synthetic step is finished, that is, until after the separate analytic perspectives are integrated and after the object domain is reconstituted under their freshly combined views. Further, it explains why this wholly reconstructive and retrospective vision, but one that constitutes a newly coherent mode of perception and a slightly elevated perspective, then appears to look on what was never anything but a pre-established domain. Finally, it explains why the appearance or the apparition of anything non analytic contributing to the mix, the very impression that there were ever any truths beyond the manifestly deductive variety, momentarily fades out of sight in the evanescent manner of a transient illusion, at least, until the need of some exigency calls once again for the power of a synthetic capacity.
In any case, the effects that one typically experiences in going through these steps of coordination and in bringing about the instrumentality of the corresponding ACS are remarkably similar in many of their most puzzling features to those that are involved in the experiential process and the moment of realization that one comes to expect in the discovery of what is commonly called an item of synthetic a priori knowledge.
It is at this point that one is forced to distinguish the order of being from the order of knowing, and once again, within the order of knowing to distinguish the order of discovery from the order of justification. If a recursive analysis leads one only to make explicit an assumption that one has implicitly taken for granted up until that time, then, no matter which way one chooses to proceed from that point, calling that assumption into question or continuing to believe it, the process of explication itself still reflects a measure of progress.
5.2.8. Priorisms of Normative Sciences
Let me start with some questions that continue to puzzle me, in spite of having spent a considerable spell of time pursuing their answers, and not for a lack of listening to the opinions expressed on various sides. I first present these questions as independently of the current context as I possibly can, and then I return to justify their relevance to the present inquiry.
The questions that concern me concern the relationships of identity, necessity, or sufficiency that can be found to hold among three classes of properties or qualities that can be attributed to or possessed by an agent, and conceivably passed from one agent to another. The relevant classes of properties or possessions can be schematized as follows:
- Teachings — learnings, lessons, disciplines, doctrines, dogmas, or things that can be taught and learned, transmitted and received.
- Understandings — articles of knowledge, items of comprehension, bits of potential wisdom that form the possession of knowledge.
- Virtues — aspects of accomplished performance, attainments of demonstrated achievement, qualities of accomplishment, completion, excellence, mastery, maturity, or relative perfection, grits or integrities that form the exercise of art, justice, and wisdom.
The category of teachings, as a whole, can be analyzed and divided into two subcategories:
- There are disciplines, which involve elements of action, behavior, conduct, and instrumental practice in their realization, and thus take on a fully evaluative, normative, prescriptive, or procedural character.
- There are doctrines, which are properly restricted to realms of attitude, belief, conjecture, knowledge, and speculative theory, and thus take on a purely descriptive, factual, logical, or declarative character.
The category of virtues can be subjected to a parallel analysis, but here it is not so much the domain as a whole that gets divided into two subcategories as that each virtue gets viewed in two alternative lights:
- With regard to its qualities of action, execution, and performance.
- As it affects its properties of competence, knowledge, and selection.
The reason for this difference in the sense of the analysis that applies to each is that it is one of the better parts of virtue to bring about a synthesis between action and knowledge in the very actuality of the virtue itself.
At this point one arrives at the general question:
- What is the logical relation of virtues to teachings?
In particular:
- Does one category necesarily imply the other?
- Are the categories mutually exclusive?
- Do they form independent categories?
Are virtues the species and teachings the genus, or perhaps vice versa? Or do virtues and teachings form domains that are essentially distinct? Whether one is a species of the other or whether the two are essentially different, what are the features that apparently distinguish the one from the other?
Let me begin by assuming a situation that is plausibly general enough, that some virtues can be taught, symbolized as \(V \land T\), and that some cannot, symbolized as \(V \land \lnot T\). I am not trying to say yet whether both kinds of cases actually occur, but merely wish to consider what follows from the likely alternatives. Then the question as to what distinguishes virtues from teachings has two senses:
- Among virtues that are special cases of teachings, \(V \land T\), the features that distinguish virtues from teachings are known as specific differences. These qualities serve to mark out virtues for special consideration from amidst the common herd of teachings and tend to distinguish the more exemplary species of virtues from the more inclusive genus of teachings.
- Among virtues that transcend the realm of teachings, \(V \land \lnot T\), the features that distinguish virtues from teachings are aptly called exclusionary exemptions. These properties place the reach of virtues beyond the grasp of what is attainable through any order of teachings and serve to remove the orbit of virtues a discrete pace from the general run of teachings.
In either case it can always be said, though without contributing anything of substance to the understanding of the problem, that it is their very property of virtuosity or their very quality of excellence that distinguishes the virtues from the teachings, whether this character appears to do nothing but add specificity to what can be actualized through learning alone, or solely through teaching, or whether it requires a nature that transcends the level of what can be achieved through any learning or teaching at all. But this sort of answer only begs the question. The real question is whether this mark is apparent or real, and how it ought to be analyzed and construed.
Assuming a tentative understanding of the categories that I indicated in the above terms, the questions that I am worried about are these:
- Did Socrates assert or believe that virtue can be taught, or not?
In symbols, did he assert or believe that \(V \Rightarrow T\), or not? - Did he think that:
- knowledge is virtue, in the sense that \(U \Rightarrow V\)?
- virtue is knowledge, in the sense that \(U \Leftarrow V\)?
- knowledge is virtue, in the sense that \(U \Leftrightarrow V\)?
- Did he teach or try to teach that knowledge can be taught?
In symbols, did he teach or try to teach that \(U \Rightarrow T\)?
My current understanding of the record that is given to us in Plato's Socratic Dialogues can be summarized as follows:
At one point Socrates seems to assume the rule that knowledge can be taught, \(U \Rightarrow T\), but simply in order to pursue the case that virtue is knowledge, \(V \Rightarrow U\), toward the provisional conclusion that virtue can be taught, \(V \Rightarrow T\). This seems straightforward enough, if it were not for the good chance that all of this reasoning is taking place under the logical aegis of an indirect argument, a reduction to absurdity, designed to show just the opposite of what it has assumed for the sake of initiating the argument. The issue is further clouded by the circumstance that the full context of the argument most likely extends over several Dialogues, not all of which survive, and the intended order of which remains in question.
At other points Socrates appears to claim that knowledge and virtue are neither learned nor taught, in the strictest senses of these words, but can only be divined, recollected, or remembered, that is, recalled, recognized, or reconstituted from the original acquaintance that a soul, being immortal, already has with the real idea or the essential form of each thing in itself. Still, this leaves open the possibility that one person can help another to guess a truth or to recall what both of them already share in knowing, as if locked away in one or another partially obscured or temporarily forgotten part of their inmost being. And it is just this freer interpretation of learning and teaching, whereby one agent catalyzes not catechizes another, that a liberal imagination would yet come to call education. Therefore, the real issue at stake, both with regard to the aim and as it comes down to the end of this inquiry, is not so much whether knowledge and virtue can be learned and taught as what kind of education is apt to achieve their actualization in the individual and is fit to maintain their realization in the community.
How are these riddles from the origins of intellectual history, whether one finds them far or near and whether one views it as bright or dim, relevant to the present inquiry? There are a number of reasons why I am paying such close attention to these ancient and apparently distant concerns. The classical question as to what virtues are teachable is resurrected in the modern question, material to the present inquiry, as to what functions are computable, indeed, most strikingly in regard to the formal structures that each question engenders. Along with a related question about the nature of the true philosopher, as one hopes to distinguish it from the most sophisticated imitations, all of which is echoed on the present scene in the guise of Turing's test for a humane intelligence, this body of riddles inspires the corpus of most work in artificial intelligence, if not the cognitive and the computer sciences at large.
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Reason alone teaches us to know good and bad. Conscience, which makes us love the former and hate the latter, although independent of reason, cannot therefore be developed without it. Before the age of reason we do good and bad without knowing it, and there is no morality in our actions, although there sometimes is in the sentiment of other's actions which have a relation to us. |
| Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, [Rou_1, 67]. |
Aesthetics, ethics, and logic are categorized as normative sciences because they pursue knowledge about the ways that things ought to be, their objects being beauty, justice, and truth, respectively. It is generally appreciated that there are intricate patterns of deep and subtle interrelationships that exist among these subjects, and among their objects, but different people seem to intuit different patterns, perhaps at different times. At least, it seems that they must be seeing different patterns of interrelation from the different ways that they find to enact their insights and intuitions in customs, methods, and practices. In particular, one's conception of science, indeed, one's whole approach to life, is determined by the priorism or the precedence ordering that one senses among these normative subjects and employs to order their normative objects. This Section considers a sample of the choices that people typically make in building up a personal or a cultural priorism of normative sciences (PONS).
For example, on the modern scene, among people trained to sport all of the modern fashions of scientific reasoning, it is almost a reflex of their modern identities to echo in their doctrines, if not always to follow in their disciplines, those ancients who taught that "knowledge is virtue". This means that to know the truth about anything is to know how to act rightly in regard to it, but more yet, to be compelled to act that way. It is usually understood that this maxim posits a relation between the otherwise independent realms of knowledge and action, where knowledge resides in domains of signs and ideas, and where action presides over domains of objects, states of being, and their changes through time. However, it is not so frequently remembered that this connection cuts both ways, causing the evidence of virtue as exercised in practice to reflect on the presumption of knowledge as possessed in theory, where each defect of virtue necessarily reflects a defect of knowledge.
In other words, converting the rule through its contrapositive yields the equivalent proposition "evil is ignorance", making every fault of conduct traceable to a fault of knowledge. Everyone knows the typical objection to this claim, saying that one often knows better than to do a certain thing while going ahead and doing it anyway, but the axiom is meant to be taken as a new definition of knowledge, ruling overall that if one really, really knows better, then one simply does not do it, by virtue of the definition. This sort of reasoning issues in the setting of priorities, putting knowledge before virtue, theory before practice, beauty and justice after truth, or reason itself before rhyme and right.
It is not that reason sees any reason to disparage the just deserts that it places after or intends to diminish the gratifications that it defers. Indeed, it aims to give these latter values a place of honor by placing them more in the direction of its aims, and it thinks that it can take them up in this order without risking a consequential loss of geniality. According to this rationale, it is the first order of business to know what is true, while purely an afterthought to do what is good.
It is not too surprising that reason assigns a priority to itself in its own lists of aims, goods, values, and virtues, but this only renders its bias, its favor, its preference, and its prejudice all the more evident. And since the patent favoritism that reason displays is itself a reason of the most aesthetic kind, it thus knocks itself out of its first place ranking, the ranking that reason assumes for itself in the first place, by dint of the prerogative that it exercises and in view of the category of excuse that it uses, from then on deferring to beauty, to happiness, or to pleasure, and all that is admirable in and of itself, or desired for its own sake. This self-demotion of reason is one of the unintended consequences of its own argumentation, that leads it down the garden path to a self-deprecation. It is an immediate corollary of reason trying to distinguish itself from the other goods, granting to itself an initially arbitrary distinction, and then reflecting on the unjustified presumption of this self-devotion. This condition, that reason suffers and that reason endures, is one that continues through all of the rest of its argumentations, that is, unless it can find a better reason than the one it gives itself to begin, or until such time as it can show that all good reasons are one and the same.
So the maxim "knowlege is virtue", in its modern interpretation, at least, leads to the following results. It makes just action, right behavior, and virtuous conduct not merely one among many practical tests but the only available criterion of knowledge, reason, and truth. Sufficient criterion? If a conceptual rule is the only available test of some property, then it must be an essential criterion of that property. This conceives the essence of knowledge to lie in a conception of action. This maxim can be taken, by way of its contrapositive, as a pragmatic principle, positing a rule to the effect that any defect of virtue reflects a defect of knowledge. This makes truth the sine qua non of justice, right action, or virtuous conduct, that is, it makes reason the without which not of morality. Since virtuous conduct is distinguished as that action which leads to what we call beauty, beatitude, or happiness, by any other name just that which is admirable in and of itself, desired for its own sake, or sought as an end in itself, whether it is only in the conduct itself or in a distinct product that the beauty is held to abide, this makes logic the sublimest art. (Why be logical? Because it pleases me to be logical.)
It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is. |
| President William Jefferson Clinton, August ?, 1998. |
Of course, there is much that is open to interpretation about the maxim "knowledge is virtue". In particular, does the copula "is" represent a necessary implication (\(\Rightarrow\)), a sufficient reduction ("is only", \(\Leftarrow\)), or a necessary and sufficient identification (\(\Leftrightarrow\))?
5.2.9. Principle of Rational Action
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Knowledge systems are just another level within this same hierarchy, another way to describe a system. … The knowledge level abstracts completely from the internal processing and the internal representation. Thus, all that is left is the content of the representations and the goals toward which that content will be used. As a level, it has a medium, namely, knowledge. It has a law of behavior, namely, if the system wants to attain goal G and knows that to do act A will lead to attaining G, then it will do A. This law is a simple form of rationality — that an agent will operate in its own best interests according to what it knows. |
| Allen Newell, Unified Theories of Cognition, [New, 48–49]. |
How does this ancient issue, concerning the relation of reason, to action, to the good that is overall desired or intended, transform itself through the medium of intellectual history onto the modern scene? In particular, what bearing does it have on the subjects of artificial intelligence and systems theory, and on the object of the present inquiry? As it turns out, in classical cybernetics and in systems theory, and especially in the parts of AI and cognitive science that have to do with heuristic reasoning, the transformations of the problem have tarried so long in the vicinity of a singular triviality that the original form of the question is nearly unmistakable in every modern version. The transposition of the theme \((\text{Reason}, \text{Action}, \text{Good})\) into the mode of \((\text{Intelligence}, \text{Operation}, \text{Goal})\) can make for an interesting variation, but it does not alter the given state of accord or discord among its elements and does nothing to turn the lock into its key.
How do these questions bear on the present inquiry? Suppose that one is trying to understand something like an agency of life, a capacity for inquiry, a faculty of intelligence, or a power of learning and reasoning. For starters, something like is a little vague, so let me suggest calling the target class of agencies, capacities, faculties, or powers that most hold my interest here by the name of virtues, thereby invoking as an offstage direction the classical concepts of anima and arete that seem to prompt them all. What all of these virtues have in common is their appearance, whether it strikes one on first impression or only develops in one's appreciation through a continuing acquaintance over time, of transcending or rising infinitely far beyond all of one's attempts to construct them from or reduce them to the sorts of instrumentalities that are much more basic, familiar, mundane, ordinary, simpler, in short, the kinds of abilities that one already understands well enough and is granted to have well under one's command or control. For convenience, I dub this class of abilities, that a particular agent has a thorough understanding of and a complete competency in, as the resources of that agent.
The language of virtues and resources gives me a way to express the main problem of this inquiry, indeed, the overriding challenge that is engaged in every round of effective analysis and functional modeling. I emphasized the apparent transcendence of virtues because the hope is often precisely that this appearance will turn out to be false, not that the virtue is false in any of the properties that it seems to have, but that the awesome aspect of its unapproachability can be diminished, and that a way opens up to acquire this virtue by means of the kinds of gradual steps that are available to a fallible and a finite agent.
If I had my own choice in the matter I would proceed by using the words knowledge and understanding as synonyms, deploying them in ways that make them refer to one and the same resource, roughly corresponding the Greek episteme, and thus guaranteeing that the faculty they denote is teachable. But others use these terms in ways that make one or the other of them suggest a transcendental aptitude more akin to wisdom, and thus amounting to a virtue extending in the intellectual direction whose very teachability is open to question. Keeping this variety of senses and understandings in mind, it is advisable to be flexible in one's usage.
Virtue involves, not just knowing what is the case and knowing what can be done in each case, but knowing how to do each thing that can be done, knowing which is the best to do in a given case, and finally, having the willingness to do it.
What are the features that are really at stake in the examination of these admittedly paradigmatic and even parabolic examples? There are two ways that virtues appear to transcend the limitations of effectively finite and empirically rational resources and thus appear to distinguish themselves from teachings and understandings, that is, from the orders of disciplined conduct and doctrinal knowledge that bind themselves too severely to the merely mechanical ritual and the purely rote recitation.
- In their qualitative aspect, virtues appear to combine characters of act and will that appear to be lacking in the simple imputations of knowledge alone. In particular, virtues appear to display qualities of persistent action, efficient volition, the will to actually do the right thing, and the willingness to keep on doing the right thing on each occasion that arises. Thus, virtues appear to possess a live performance value that is not guaranteed by simply knowing the right thing to do and to say, indeed, they appear to have a unique and irreproducible mix of qualities that goes beyond the facts circumscribed by any name and thus that goes missing from the ordinary interpretation of its meaning.
- In their quantitative aspect, virtues appear to be infinitely far beyond the grasp of discrete, finite, and even rational resources.
5.2.10. The Pragmatic Cosmos
This Section outlines the general idea of a priorism of normative sciences (PONS) and it presents the particular PONS that I will refer to as the pragmatic cosmos. This is the precedence ordering for the normative sciences that best accords with the pragmatic approach to inquiry, incidentally framing and introducing the order of normative sciences that I plan to deploy throughout the rest of this work. From this point on, whenever I mention a PONS without further qualification, it will always be one or another version of a pragmatic PONS that I mean to invoke, all the while taking into consideration the circumstance that its underlying theme still leaves a lot of room for variation in the carrying out of its live interpretation.
Roughly speaking, in regard to the forms of human aspiration that are exercised in normative practices and studied in the normative sciences, the study of states or things that satisfy agents is called aesthetics, the study of actions that lead agents toward these goals or these goods is called ethics, and the study of signs that indicate these actions is called logic. Understood this way, logic involves the enumeration and the analysis of signs with regard to their truth, a property that only makes sense in the light of the actions that are indicated and the objects that are desired. In other words, logic evaluates signs with regard to the trustworthiness of the actions that they indicate, and this means with respect to the utility that these indications exhibit in a mediate relationship to their objects. As an appreciative study, logic prizes the properties of signs that allow them to collect the scattered actions of agents into coherent forms of conduct and that permit them to indicate the general courses of conduct that are most likely to lead agents toward their objects.
From this "pragmatic" point of view, logic is a special case of ethics, one that is concerned with the conduct of signs, and ethics is a special case of aesthetics, one that is interested in the good of actual conduct. Another way to approach this perspective is to start with the good of anything and to work back through the maze of actions and indications that lead to it. An action that leads to the good is a good action, and this puts the questions of ethics among the questions of aesthetics, as the ones that contemplate the goods of actions. A sign that indicates a good action, that shows a good way to act, is a good sign, and this puts the domain of logic squarely within the domain of aesthetics. Moreover, thinking is a sign process that moves from signs to interpretant signs, and this makes thinking a special kind of action. In sum, the questions that logic takes up in its critique of good signs and good thinking are properly seen as special cases of aesthetic and ethical considerations.
The circumstance that the domain of logic is set within the domain of ethics, which is further set within the domain of aesthetics, does not keep each realm from rising to such a height in another dimension that each keeps a watch over all of the domains that it is set within. In sum, the image is that of three cylinders standing on their concentric bases, telescopically extending to a succession of heights, with the narrowest the highest and the broadest the lowest, rising to the contemplation of the point that virtually completes their perspective, just as if wholly sheltered by the envelope of the cone that they jointly support, no matter what its ultimate case may be, whether imaginary or real, rational or transcendental.
Logic has a monitory function with respect to ethics and aesthetics, while ethics has a monitory function solely with respect to aesthetics. By way of definition, a monitory function is a duty, a role, or a task that one discipline has to watch over the practice of another discipline, checking the feasibility of its intentions and its proposed operations, evaluating the conformity of its performed operations to its intentions, and, when called for, reforming the faith, the feasance, or the fidelity of its acts in accord with its aims. A definite attitude and particular perspective are prerequisites for an agent to exercise a monitory role with any hope or measure of success. The necessary station arises from the observation that not all things are possible, at least, not at once, and especially that not all ends are achievable by a fallible creature within a finite creation. Accordingly, the agent of a monitory faculty needs to help the agency that is involved in the effort or the endeavor it monitors to observe the due limits of its proper arena, the higher considerations, and the inherent constraints that force a fallible and finite agent to choose among the available truths, acts, and aims.
To recapitulate the pragmatic priorism of normative sciences (PONS):
Logic, ethics, and aesthetics, in that order, cannot succeed in any of their aims, whether they turn to contemplating the natures of the true, the just, and the beautiful, respectively, for their own sakes, whether they turn to speculating on the certificates, the semblances, or the more species tokens of these goods, as they might be utilized toward a divergent conception of their values, or whether they convert from the one forum to the other market, and back again, in an endless series of exchanges, that is, unless their prospective agents possess the initial capital that can only be supplied by competencies at the corresponding intellectual virtues, and until they are willing to risk the stakes of adequately generous overhead investments, on orders that are demanded to fund the performance of the associated practical disciplines, namely, those that are appropriate to the good of signs, the good of acts, and the good of aims in themselves. In sum, the domains and the disciplines of logic, ethics, and aesthetics, in that order, are placed so aptly in regard to one another that each one waits on the order of its watch and each one maintains its own proper monitory function with respect to all of the ones that follow on after it.
Why do things have to be this way? Why is it necessary to impose a PONS, much less a pragmatic PONS, on the array of goods and quests? If everyone who reflects on the issue for a sufficient spell of time seems to agree that the Beautiful, the Just, and the True are one and the same in the End, then why is any PONS necessary? Its necessity is apparently relative to a certain contingency affecting the typical agent, namely, the contingency of being a fallible and finite creature. Perhaps from a God's Eye View (GEV), Beauty, Justice, and Truth all amount to a single Good, the only Good there is. But the imperfect creature is not given this view as its realized actuality and cannot contain its vision within the point of view (POV) that is proper to it. Even if it sees the possibility of this unity, it cannot actualize what it sees at once, at best being driven to work toward its realization measure by measure, and that is only if the agent is capable of reason and reflection at all.
The imperfect agent lives in a world of seeming beauty, seeming justice, and seeming truth. Fortunately, the symmetry of this seeming insipidity can break up in relation to itself, and with the loss of the objective world's equipoise and indifference goes all the equanimity and most of the insouciance of the agent in question. It happens like this: Among the number of apparent goods and amid the manifold of good appearances, one soon discovers that not all seeming goods are alike. Seeming beauty is the most seemly and the least deceptive, since it does not vitiate its own intention in merely seeming to achieve it, and does not destroy what it reaches for in merely seeming to grasp it.
Monitory functions, as a rule, tend to shade off in extreme directions, on the one hand becoming a bit too prescriptive before the act, whether the hopeful effects are hortatory or prohibitory, and on the other hand becoming much too reactionary after the fact, whether the tardy effects are exculpatory or recriminatory. In the midst of these extremes, that is, within the scheme of monitory functions at large, it is possible to distinguish subtler variations in the nuances of their action that work toward the accomplishment the same general purpose, but that achieve it with a form of such gentle urging all throughout the continuing process of gaining a good, that affect a promise of such laudatory rewards, and that afford an array of incidental senses of such ongoing satisfaction, even before, while, and after the aimed for good is effected, that this class of moderate measures is aptly known as advisory functions (AFs).
In the process of noticing what is necessary and what is impossible, and in distinguishing itself from the general run of monitory functions, an AF is able to adapt itself to get a better grip on what is possible, to the point that it is eventually able to make constructive suggestions to the agent that it monitors, and thus to give advice that is both apt and applicable, positive and practical, or usable and useful. If this is beginning to sound familiar, then it is not entirely an accident. As I see it, it is from these very grounds that the facility for abductive simile or the faculty of abductive synthesis (AS) first arises, to wit, just on the horizon of monitory observation and just on the advent of advisory contemplation that an agent of inquiry, learning, and reasoning first acquires the quasi ability to regard one thing just as if it were construed to be another and to consider each thing just inasmuch as it haps to be like another.
In the abode of the monitor I thus discover the first clues I can grasp as to how the abductive bearing (AB) of hypothetical reasoning can be bound together from the primitive elements of the most uncertain states that the mind can ever know. To my way of thinking, this derivation of ABs from the general conduct of monitory duties and the specific ethos of advisory roles, all as pursuant to the PONS, seems to strike a chord with the heart of wonder beating at the core of every agent of inquiry, and accordingly to fashion an answer to the central query, in the words of William Shakespeare: "Where is fancy bred?" Beyond the responsibility to continue driving the cycle of inquiry and to keep on circulating the fresh communication of provisional answers, this form of speculation on the origin of the AB points out at least one way whence these faculties of guessing widely but guessing well can lead me from the conditions of amazement, bewilderment, and consternation that the start of an inquiry all but constantly finds me in.
The anchoring or the inauguration of an abductive bearing (AB) within the operations of an advisory function (AF), and the ensconcement or the installation of this positively constructive advisory, in its turn,within the office of an irreducibly negative monitory function, one that watches over the active, aesthetic, and affective aspects of experience with an eye to the circumstance that not all goods can be actualized at once — this array of inferences from the apical structure of the PONS ought to suffice to remind each agent of inquiry of how it all hinges on the affective values that one feels and the effective acts that one does.
In principle, therefore, logic assumes a purely ancillary role in regard to the ethics of active conduct and the aesthetics of affective values. On balance, however, logic can achieve heights of abstraction, points of perspective, and summits of reflection that are otherwise unavailable to a mind embroiled in the tangle of its continuing actions and immersed in the flow of its current passions. By rising above this plain immersion in the dementias swept out by action and passion, logic can acquire the status of a handle, something an agent can use in its situation to avoid being swept along with the tide of affairs, something that keeps it from being swept up with all that the times press on it to sweep out of mind. By means of this instrument, logic affords the mind an ability to survey the passing scene in ways that it cannot hope to imagine while engaged in the engrossing business of keeping its gnosis to the grindstone, and so it becomes apt to adopt the attitude that it needs in order to become capable of reflecting on its very own actions, affects, and axioms.
5.2.11. Reflective Interpretive Frameworks
Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face? No, Cassius, for the eye sees not itself But by reflection, by some other things. 'Tis just; And it is very much lamented, Brutus, That you have no such mirrors as will turn Your hidden worthiness into your eye, That you might see your shadow. ... Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius, That you would have me seek into myself For that which is not in me? Therefor, good Brutus, be prepared to hear. And since you know you cannot see yourself So well as by reflection, I, your glass, Will modestly discover to yourself That of yourself which you yet know not of. Julius Caesar: 1.2.53-72 The rest of this Section ???, continuing the discussion of formalization in terms of concrete examples and extending over the next 50 ??? Subsections ???, details the construction of a "reflective interpretive framework" (RIF). This is a special type of sign theoretic setting, illustrated in the present case as based on the sign relations A and B, but intended more generally to constitute a fully developed environment of objective and interpretive resources, in the likes of which an "inquiry into inquiry" can reasonably be expected to find its home. An inquiry into inquiry necessarily involves itself in various forms of self application and self reference. Even when the "inquiree" and the "inquirer", the operand inquiry and the operant inquiry, are conceived to be separately instituted and disjointly embodied in material activity, they still must share a common form and enjoy a collection of definitive characteristics, or else the use of a common term for both sides of the application is equivocal and hardly justified. But this depiction of an inquiry into inquiry, if it is imagined to be valid, raises a couple of difficult issues, of how a form of activity like inquiry can be said to apply and to refer to itself, and of how a general form of activity can be materialized in concretely different processes, that is, represented in the parametrically diverse instantiations of its own generic principles. Before these problems can be clarified to any degree it is necessary to develop a suitable framework of discussion, along with a requisite array of conceptual tools. This is where the construction of a RIF comes in. And now the investigation itself is under investigation. President Clinton, August 17, 1998 The task of building a RIF is here approached on two fronts, structural and functional. The structural approach looks to the formal constitution of the framework itself, with an eye to the static logical relationships that potentially exist among its objective and its interpretive elements, that is, the abstract relations that can be permitted through the medium of its use to be brought to light, to be recognized on future occasions, and to be signified to a community of observant and interpretive agents. The functional approach looks to the dynamic and effective conduct of a typical reflective interpreter, with an eye to the medium of operational resources that support its activity, and it seeks to discover amid this defrayal the workings of the act of reflection that makes it all possible. I was, at that time, in Germany, whither the wars, which have not yet finished there, had called me, and as I was returning from the coronation of the Emperor to join the army, the onset of winter held me up in quarters in which, finding no company to distract me, and having, fortunately, no cares or passions to disturb me, I spent the whole day shut up in a room heated by an enclosed stove, where I had complete leisure to meditate on my own thoughts. Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method, [Des1, 35]
5.2.11.1. Principals vs. Principals
5.2.11.2. The Initial Description of Inquiry
5.2.11.3. An Early Description of Interpretation
5.2.11.4. Descriptions of the Mind
5.2.11.5. Of Signs and the Mind
5.2.11.6. Questions of Justification
5.2.11.7. The Experience of Satisfaction
5.2.11.8. An Organizational Difficulty
5.2.11.9. Pragmatic Certainties
5.2.11.10. Problems and Methods
5.3. Reflection on Reflection
Before this discussion can proceed any further I need to introduce a technical vocabulary that is specifically designed to articulate the relation of thought to action and the relation of conduct to purpose. This terminology makes use of a classical distinction between action, as simply taken, and conduct, as fully considered in the light of its means, its ways, and its ends. To the extent that affects, motivations, and purposes are bound up with one another, the objects that lie within the reach of this language that are able to be grasped by means of its concepts provide a form of cognitive handle on the complex arrays of affective impulsions and the unruly masses of emotional obstructions that serve both to drive and to block the effective performance of inquiry.
Once the differentiation between sheer activity and deliberate conduct is comprehended on informal grounds and motivated by intuitive illustrations, the formal capabilities of their logical distinction can be sharpened up and turned to instrumental advantage in accomplishing two further aims:
- To elucidate the precise nature of the relation between action and conduct.
- To facilitate a study of the whole variety of contingent relations that are possible and maintained between action and conduct.
When the relations among these categories are described and analyzed in greater detail, it becomes possible forge their separate links together, and thus to integrate their several lines of information into a fuller comprehension of the relations among thought, the purposes of thought, and the purposes of action in general.
It is possible to introduce the needed vocabulary, while at the same time advancing a number of concurrent goals of this project, by resorting to the following strategy. I inject into this discussion a selected set of passages from the work of C.S. Peirce, chosen with a certain multiplicity of aims in mind.
- These excerpts are taken from Peirce's most thoughtful definitions and discussions of pragmatism. Thus, the general tenor of their advice is pertinent to the long-term guidance of this project.
- With regard to the target vocabulary, these texts are especially acute in their ability to make all the right distinctions in all the right places, and so they serve to illustrate the requisite concepts in the context of their most appropriate uses.
- Aside from their content being crucial to the scope of the present inquiry, their form, manner, sequence, and interrelations supply the kind of material needed to illustrate an important array of issues involved in the topic of reflection.
- Finally, my reflections on these passages are designed to illustrate the variety of relations that occur between the POV of a writer, especially as it develops through time, and the POV of a reader, in the light of the ways that it deflects its own echoes through a text in order to detect the POV of the writer that led to its being formed in that manner.
The first excerpt appears in the form of a dictionary entry, intended as a definition of pragmatism.
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Pragmatism. The opinion that metaphysics is to be largely cleared up by the application of the following maxim for attaining clearness of apprehension: "Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object." |
| (Peirce, CP 5.2, 1878/1902). |
The second excerpt presents another version of the pragmatic maxim, a recommendation about a way of clarifying meaning that can be taken to stake out the general POV of pragmatism.
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Pragmaticism was originally enounced in the form of a maxim, as follows: Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object. |
| (Peirce, CP 5.438, 1878/1905). |
Over time, Peirce tried to express the basic idea contained in the pragmatic maxim (PM) in numerous different ways. In the remainder of this work, the gist of the pragmatic maxim, the logical content that appropriates its general intention over a variety of particular contexts, the common denominator of all of its versionary approximations, can be referred to with maximal simplicity as “PM”. Otherwise, subscripts can be used in contexts where it is necessary to mention a particular form, for instance, referring to the versions just given as “PM1” and “PM2”, respectively.
Considered side by side like this, any perceptible differences between PM1 and PM2 appear to be trivial and insignificant, lacking in every conceivable practical consequence, as indeed would be the case if both statements were properly understood. One would like to say that both variants belong to the same pragmatic equivalence class (PEC), where all of the peculiarities of their individual expressions are absorbed into the effective synonymy of a single operational maxim of conduct. Unfortunately, no matter how well this represents the ideal, it does not describe the present state of understanding with respect to the pragmatic maxim, and this is the situation that my work is given to address.
I am taking the trouble to recite both of these very close variants of the pragmatic maxim because I want to examine how their subsequent interpretations have tended to diverge over time and to analyze why the traditions of interpretation that stem from them are likely to develop in such a way that they eventually come to be at cross-purposes to each other.
There is a version of the pragmatic maxim, more commonly cited, that uses we and our instead of you and your. At first sight, this appears to confer a number of clear advantages on the expression of the maxim. The second person is ambiguous with regard to number, and it can be read as both singular and plural, since the …
Unfortunately, people have a tendency to translate our concept of the object into the meaning of a concept. This displacement of the genuine article from the object to the meaning obliterates the contingently indefinite commonality of our manner of thinking and replaces it with the absolutely definite pretension to the unique truth of the matter // changing the emphasis from common conception to unique intention. This apparently causes them to read the whole of our conception as the whole meaning of a conception … // from thee and thy to the and our //
The pragmatic maxim, taking the form of an injunctive prescription, a piece of advice, or a practical recommendation, provides an operational description of a certain philosophical outlook or frame of reference. This is the general POV that is called pragmatism, or pragmaticism, as Peirce later renamed it when he wanted more pointedly to emphasize the principles that distinguish his own particular POV from the general run of its appropriations, interpretations, and common misconstruals. Thus the pragmatic maxim, in a way that is deliberately consistent with the principles of the POV to which it leads, enunciates a practical idea and provides a truly pragmatic definition of that very same POV.
I am quoting a version of the pragmatic maxim whose form of address to the reader exemplifies a second person POV on the part of the writer. In spite of the fact that this particular variation does not appear in print until a later date, my own sense of the matter leads me to think that it actually recaptures the original form of the pragmatic insight. My reasons for believing this are connected with Peirce's early notion of tuity, the second person character of the mind's dialogue with nature and with other minds, and a topic to be addressed in detail at a later point in this discussion.
By way of a piece of evidence for this impression, one that is internal to the texts, both versions begin with the second person POV that is implied by their imperative mood.
Just as the sign in a sign relation addresses the interpretant intended in the mind of its interpreter, PM2 is addressed to an interpretant or effect intended in the mind of its reader.
The third excerpt puts a gloss on the meaning of a practical bearing and provides an alternative statement of the pragmatic maxim (PM3).
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Such reasonings and all reasonings turn upon the idea that if one exerts certain kinds of volition, one will undergo in return certain compulsory perceptions. Now this sort of consideration, namely, that certain lines of conduct will entail certain kinds of inevitable experiences is what is called a "practical consideration". Hence is justified the maxim, belief in which constitutes pragmatism; namely, In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception one should consider what practical consequences might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception; and the sum of these consequences will constitute the entire meaning of the conception. |
| (Peirce, CP 5.9, 1905). |
The fourth excerpt illustrates one of Peirce's many attempts to get the sense of the pragmatic POV across by rephrasing the pragmatic maxim in an alternative way (PM4). In introducing this version, he addresses an order of prospective critics who do not deem a simple heuristic maxim, much less one that concerns itself with a routine matter of logical procedure, as forming a sufficient basis for a whole philosophy.
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On their side, one of the faults that I think they might find with me is that I make pragmatism to be a mere maxim of logic instead of a sublime principle of speculative philosophy. In order to be admitted to better philosophical standing I have endeavored to put pragmatism as I understand it into the same form of a philosophical theorem. I have not succeeded any better than this: Pragmatism is the principle that every theoretical judgment expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood is a confused form of thought whose only meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to enforce a corresponding practical maxim expressible as a conditional sentence having its apodosis in the imperative mood. |
| (Peirce, CP 5.18, 1903). |
I am including Peirce's preamble to his restatement of the principle because I think that the note of irony and the foreshadowing of comedy intimated by it are important to understanding the gist of what follows. In this rendition the statement of the principle of pragmatism is recast in a partially self-referent fashion, and since it is itself delivered as a "theoretical judgment expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood" the full content of its own deeper meaning is something that remains to be unwrapped, precisely through a self-application to its own expression of the very principle it expresses. To wit, this statement, the form of whose phrasing is forced by conventional biases to take on the style of a declarative judgment, describes itself as a "confused form of thought", in need of being amended, converted, and translated into its operational interpretant, that is to say, its viable pragmatic equivalent.
The fifth excerpt, PM5, is useful by way of additional clarification, and was aimed to correct a variety of historical misunderstandings that arose over time with regard to the intended meaning of the pragmatic POV.
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The doctrine appears to assume that the end of man is action — a stoical axiom which, to the present writer at the age of sixty, does not recommend itself so forcibly as it did at thirty. If it be admitted, on the contrary, that action wants an end, and that that end must be something of a general description, then the spirit of the maxim itself, which is that we must look to the upshot of our concepts in order rightly to apprehend them, would direct us towards something different from practical facts, namely, to general ideas, as the true interpreters of our thought. |
| (Peirce, CP 5.3, 1902). |
If anyone thinks that an explanation on this order, whatever degree of directness and explicitness one perceives it to have, ought to be enough to correct any amount of residual confusion, then one is failing to take into consideration the persistence of a particulate interpretation, that is, a favored, isolated, and partial interpretation, once it has taken or mistaken its moment.
A sixth excerpt, PM6, is useful in stating the bearing of the pragmatic maxim on the topic of reflection, namely, that it makes all of pragmatism boil down to nothing more or less than a method of reflection.
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The study of philosophy consists, therefore, in reflexion, and pragmatism is that method of reflexion which is guided by constantly holding in view its purpose and the purpose of the ideas it analyzes, whether these ends be of the nature and uses of action or of thought. … It will be seen that pragmatism is not a Weltanschauung but is a method of reflexion having for its purpose to render ideas clear. |
| (Peirce, CP 5.13 note 1, 1902). |
The seventh excerpt is a late reflection on the reception of pragmatism. With a sense of exasperation that is almost palpable, this comment tries to justify the maxim of pragmatism and to reconstruct its misreadings by pinpointing a number of false impressions that the intervening years have piled on it, and it attempts once more to correct the deleterious effects of these mistakes. Recalling the very conception and birth of pragmatism, it reviews its initial promise and its intended lot in the light of its subsequent vicissitudes and its apparent fate. Adopting the style of a post mortem analysis, it presents a veritable autopsy of the ways that the main truth of pragmatism, for all its practicality, can be murdered by a host of misdissecting disciplinarians, by its most devoted followers. This doleful but dutiful undertaking is presented next.
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This employment five times over of derivates of concipere must then have had a purpose. In point of fact it had two. One was to show that I was speaking of meaning in no other sense than that of intellectual purport. The other was to avoid all danger of being understood as attempting to explain a concept by percepts, images, schemata, or by anything but concepts. I did not, therefore, mean to say that acts, which are more strictly singular than anything, could constitute the purport, or adequate proper interpretation, of any symbol. I compared action to the finale of the symphony of thought, belief being a demicadence. Nobody conceives that the few bars at the end of a musical movement are the purpose of the movement. They may be called its upshot. |
| (Peirce, CP 5.402 note 3, 1906). |
There are notes of emotion ranging from apology to pique to be detected in this eulogy of pragmatism, and all the manner of a pensive elegy that affects the tone of its contemplation. It recounts the various ways that the good of the best among our maxims is "oft interrèd with their bones", how the aim of the pragmatic maxim to clarify thought gets clouded over with the dust of recalcitrant prepossessions, drowned in the drift of antediluvian predilections, lost in the clamor of prevailing trends and the shuffle of assorted novelties, and even buried with the fractious contentions that it can tend on occasion to inspire. It details the evils that are apt to be done in the name of this précis of pragmatism if ever it is construed beyond its ambition, and sought to be elevated from a working POV to the imperial status of a Weltanshauung.
The next three elaborations of this POV are bound to sound mysterious at this point, but they are necessary to the integrity of the whole work. In any case, it is a good thing to assemble all these pieces in one place, for future reference if nothing else.
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When we come to study the great principle of continuity and see how all is fluid and every point directly partakes the being of every other, it will appear that individualism and falsity are one and the same. Meantime, we know that man is not whole as long as he is single, that he is essentially a possible member of society. Especially, one man's experience is nothing, if it stands alone. If he sees what others cannot, we call it hallucination. It is not "my" experience, but "our" experience that has to be thought of; and this "us" has indefinite possibilities. |
| (Peirce, CP 5.402 note 2, 1893). |
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Nevertheless, the maxim has approved itself to the writer, after many years of trial, as of great utility in leading to a relatively high grade of clearness of thought. He would venture to suggest that it should always be put into practice with conscientious thoroughness, but that, when that has been done, and not before, a still higher grade of clearness of thought can be attained by remembering that the only ultimate good which the practical facts to which it directs attention can subserve is to further the development of concrete reasonableness; so that the meaning of the concept does not lie in any individual reactions at all, but in the manner in which those reactions contribute to that development. … Almost everybody will now agree that the ultimate good lies in the evolutionary process in some way. If so, it is not in individual reactions in their segregation, but in something general or continuous. Synechism is founded on the notion that the coalescence, the becoming continuous, the becoming governed by laws, the becoming instinct with general ideas, are but phases of one and the same process of the growth of reasonableness. |
| (Peirce, CP 5.3, 1902). |
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No doubt, Pragmaticism makes thought ultimately apply to action exclusively — to conceived action. But between admitting that and either saying that it makes thought, in the sense of the purport of symbols, to consist in acts, or saying that the true ultimate purpose of thinking is action, there is much the same difference as there is between saying that the artist-painter's living art is applied to dabbing paint upon canvas, and saying that that art-life consists in dabbing paint, or that its ultimate aim is dabbing paint. Pragmaticism makes thinking to consist in the living inferential metaboly of symbols whose purport lies in conditional general resolutions to act. |
| (Peirce, CP 5.402 note 3, 1906). |
The final excerpt touches on a what can appear as a quibbling triviality or a significant problem, depending on one's POV. It mostly arises when sophisticated mentalities make a point of trying to apply the pragmatic maxim in the most absurd possible ways they can think of. I apologize for quoting such a long passage, but the full impact of Peirce's point only develops over an extended argument.
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There can, of course, be no question that a man will act in accordance with his belief so far as his belief has any practical consequences. The only doubt is whether this is all that belief is, whether belief is a mere nullity so far as it does not influence conduct. What possible effect upon conduct can it have, for example, to believe that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with the side? … The proposition that the diagonal is incommensurable has stood in the textbooks from time immemorial without ever being assailed and I am sure that the most modern type of mathematician holds to it most decidedly. Yet it seems quite absurd to say that there is any objective practical difference between commensurable and incommensurable. Of course you can say if you like that the act of expressing a quantity as a rational fraction is a piece of conduct and that it is in itself a practical difference that one kind of quantity can be so expressed and the other not. But a thinker must be shallow indeed if he does not see that to admit a species of practicality that consists in one's conduct about words and modes of expression is at once to break down all the bars against the nonsense that pragmatism is designed to exclude. What the pragmatist has his pragmatism for is to be able to say: here is a definition and it does not differ at all from your confusedly apprehended conception because there is no practical difference. But what is to prevent his opponent from replying that there is a practical difference which consists in his recognizing one as his conception and not the other? That is, one is expressible in a way in which the other is not expressible. Pragmatism is completely volatilized if you admit that sort of practicality. |
| (Peirce, CP 5.32–33, 1903). |
Let me just state what I think are the three main issues at stake in this passage, leaving a fuller consideration of their implications to a later stage of this work.
- Reflective agents, as a price for their extra powers of reflection, fall prey to a new class of errors and liabilities, any one of which might be diagnosed as a reflective illusion or a delusion of reflection (DOR). There is one type of DOR that is especially easy for reflective agents to fall into, and they must constantly monitor its swings in order to guard the integrity of their reflective processes against the variety of false images that it admits and the diversity of misleading pathways that it leads onto. This DOR turns on thinking that objects of a nature to be reflected on by an agent must have a nature that is identical to the nature of the agent that reflects on them.
An agent acts under many different kinds of constraints, whether by choice of method, compulsion of nature, or the mere chance of looking outward in a given direction and henceforth taking up a fixed outlook. The fact that one is constrained to reason in a particular manner, whether one is predisposed to cognitive, computational, conceptual, or creative terms, and whether one is restrained to finitary, imaginary, rational, or transcendental expressions, does not mean that one is bound to consider only the sorts of objects that fall into the corresponding lot. It only forces the issue of just how literally or figuratively one is able to grasp the matter in view.
To imagine that the nature of the object is bound to be the same as the nature of the sign, or to think that the law that determines the object's matter has to be the same as the rule that codifies the agent's manner, are tantamount to special cases of those reflective illusions whose form of diagnosis I just outlined. For example, it is the delusion of a purely cognitive and rational psychology, on seeing the necessity of proceeding in a cognitive and rational manner, to imagine that its subject is also purely cognitive and rational, and to think that this abstraction of the matter has any kind of coherence when considered against the integrity of its object.
- The general rule of pragmatism to seek the difference that makes a difference has its corollaries in numerous principles of indifference. Not every difference in the meantime makes a difference in the end. That is, not every difference of circumstance that momentarily impacts on the trajectory of a system nor every difference of eventuality that transiently develops within its course makes a difference in its ultimate result, and this is true no matter whether one considers the history of intertwined conduct and experience that belongs to a single agent or whether it pertains to a whole community of agents. Furthermore, not every difference makes a difference of consequence with respect to every conception or purpose that seeks to include it under its "sum". Finally, not every difference makes the same sort of difference with regard to each of the intellectual concepts or purported outcomes that it has a bearing on.
To express the issue in a modern idiom, this is the question of whether a concept has a definition that is path-dependent or path-invariant, that is, when the essence of that abstract conception is reduced to a construct that employs only operational terms. It is because of this issue that most notions of much import, like mass, meaning, momentum, and number, are defined in terms of the appropriate equivalence classes and operationalized relative to their proper frames of reference.
- The persistent application of the pragmatic maxim, especially in mathematics, eventually brings it to bear on one rather ancient question. The issue is over the reality of conceptual objects, including mathematical "objects" and Platonic "forms" or "ideas". In this context, the adjective "real" means nothing other than "having properties", but the import of this "having" has to be grasped in the same moment of understanding that this old schematic of thought loads the verb "to have" with one of its strongest connotations, namely, that nothing has a property in the proper sense of the word unless it has that property in its own right, without regard to what anybody thinks about it. In other words, to say that an object has a property is to say that it has that property independently, if not of necessity exclusively, of what anybody may think about the matter. But what can it mean for one to say that a mathematical object is "real", that it has the properties that it has independently of what anybody thinks of it, when all that one has of this object are but signs of it, and when the only access that one has to this object is by means of thinking, a process of shuffling, sifting, and sorting through nothing more real or more ideal than signs in the mind?
The acuteness of this question can be made clear if one pursues the accountability of the pragmatic maxim into higher orders of infinity. Consider the number of "effects" that form the "whole" of a conception in PM1, or else the number of "consequences" that fall under the "sum" in PM2. What happens when it is possible to conceive of an infinity of practical consequences as falling among the consequential effects or the effective consequences of an intellectual conception? The point of this question is not to require that all of the items of practical bearing be surveyed in a single glance, that all of these effects and consequences be enumerated at once, but only that the cardinal number of conceivable practical bearings, or effects and consequences, be infinite.
Recognizing the fact that "conception" is an "-ionized" term, and so can denote an ongoing process as well as a finished result, it is possible to ask the cardinal question of conceptual accountability in another way:
What is one's conception of the practical consequences that result by necessity from a case where the "conception" of practical consequences that result by necessity from the truth of a conception constitutes an infinite process, that is, from a case where the conceptual process of generating these consequences is capable of exceeding any finite bound that one can conceive?
It is may be helpful to append at this point a few additional comments that Peirce made with respect to the concept of reality in general.
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And what do we mean by the real? It is a conception which we must first have had when we discovered that there was an unreal, an illusion; that is, when we first corrected ourselves. Now the distinction for which alone this fact logically called, was between an ens relative to private inward determinations, to the negations belonging to idiosyncrasy, and an ens such as would stand in the long run. The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge. |
| (Peirce, CP 5.311, 1868). |
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The real is that which is not whatever we happen to think it, but is unaffected by what we may think of it. |
| (Peirce, CE 2:467, 1871). |
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Thus we may define the real as that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be. |
| (Peirce, CP 5.405, 1878). |
Having read these exhibits into evidence, if not yet to the point of self-evidence, and considered them to some degree for the individual lights they throw on the subject, let me now examine the relationships that can be found among them.
These excerpts are significant not only for what they say, but for how they say it. What they say, their matter, is crucial to the whole course the present inquiry. How they say it, their manner, is itself the matter of numerous further discussions, a few of which, carried out by Peirce himself, are already included in the sample presented.
Depending on the reader's POV, this sequence of excerpts can appear to reflect anything from a radical change and a serious correction of the underlying POV to a mere clarification and a natural development of it, all maintaining the very same spirit as the original expression of it. Whatever the case, let these three groups of excerpts be recognized as forming three successive levels of reflection (LORs) on the series of POVs in question, regardless of whether one sees them as disconnected, as ostensibly related, or else as inherently the very same POV in spirit.
From my own POV, that strives to share this spirit in some measure, it appears that the whole variety of statements, no matter what their dates of original composition, initial publication, or subsequent revision, only serve to illustrate different LOR's on what is essentially and practically a single and coherent POV, one that can be drawn on as a unified frame of reference and henceforward referred to as the pragmatic POV or as just plain pragmatism.
There is a case to be made for the ultimate inseparability of all of the issues that are brought up in the foregoing sample of excerpts, but an interval of time and a tide of text are likely to come and go before there can be any sense of an end to the period of questioning, before all of the issues that these texts betide can begin to be settled, before there can be a due measure of conviction on what they charge inquiry with, and before the repercussions of the whole sequence of reflections they lead into can be brought to a point of closure. If one accepts the idea that all of these excerpts are expressions of one and the same POV, but considered at different points of development, as enunciated, as reviewed, and as revised over an interval of many years, then they can be taken to illustrate the diverse kinds of changes that occur in the formulation, the development, and the clarification of a continuing POV.
• Contents • Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Appendices • References • Document History •
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