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====4.2.1. The Field of Observation====
====4.2.1. The Field of Observation====
My discussion of these questions will be organized in the following way. I use the term "pragmatic object" to describe any form of conduct or any pattern of activity that attracts one's attention and that comes to form the focus of a deliberate consideration. This usage is intended to reflect the meaning of the Greek word "pragma", that covers the sphere of senses from objects and objectives to purposes, issues, and concerns. In fact, I consistently use the word "object" in precisely this sense, regarding even the ordinary sorts of physical objects as special cases of processes that appear to be going on in the external world and that seem to demand the specialized activities of orientation on the part of their observers. The forms of conduct that commonly and spontaneously attract one's interest are considered to take place within a catch all setting that I call the "informal context". This name simply reflects the fact that most of the things that come to one's attention are capable of attracting one's interest long before one is capable of understanding them or even carefully describing them.
Whenever one reflects on a form of conduct or observes a pattern of activity in the informal context, and is successfully motivated to articulate one's reflections and observations, then one generates a description, a text or an image that depicts something going on in the world. Depending on the angle of approach, the attitude of observation, the point of view, or the line of sight that one takes up with respect to a pragmatic object, one will be able to observe different aspects of it. Of course, I am using this visual terminology in ways that are partly metaphorical, and there are times when it will be necessary to reflect on whether this style of spectator language is leading us into illusions.
Operating on the tacit assumption that one is able to articulate one's observations and reflections, the end of the process of observation or reflection is to generate a description of the object under consideration. This description represents a first step toward a formalization of the conduct in question, and so I can place the end result of this entire process within a conceptual area that I call the "formal context". From this point on, it is convenient to use the name "formalization" to sum up all of the effects of observation, reflection, articulation, and description that produce an image in the formal context. A number of signficant features of this situation need to be noted at this point.
The line between the formal context and the informal context is not intended to be hard and fast. It merely marks a relative difference in the character of a description.
The formal context is wholly contained within the informal context. Remember, I did call the informal context a "catch all" setting. Thus, the acts of demarcation that one uses to distinguish the formal context, along with the acts of formalization that lead into it, are just the kinds of intentional activities that are likely to form the most interesting sorts of pragmatic objects.
Descriptions are necessarily partial. This statement is conditioned on the fact that the typical object of interest is most likely well beyond anyone's capacity to describe completely, at least, while I continue to talk about finite agents and mortal observers. This means that different observers, or the same observers under different conditions, are likely to end up describing different aspects of the same activity.
At the level of communities these differences and partialities tend to become embodied and institutionalized into specialized disciplines, represented by areas within the formal context that I describe as "formal arenas". A typical formal arena is dedicated to a particular angle of approach or a special attitude of observation toward whatever activities in the informal context happen to fall under its purview. Participants in a formal arena devote themselves to sharpening their view of the aspect in question. In time, a formal arena will usually develop a specialized language, and even a peculiar interpretation of selected terms in the common language, all the better to focus on its chosen aspect of the activity in question.
At first for reasons of simple efficiency, and later by dint of inveterate and unreflective habits, formal arenas gradually develop the structures of bunkers, duck blinds, ivory towers, and silos, with opaque barriers coming to grow up or being erected around its perimeter that obstruct the view of the informal context from other directions than along their favorite and habitual lines of vision. When the relationship between a formal arena and the informal context reaches this stage of development, the boundaries are no longer permeable but appear to be cast in stone.
Analysis has acquired a privileged role in this process of differentiation. But if it succeeds to the throne of knowledge and comes to dominate the field of observation, it is only by default, on account of the absence of a balanced attention being accorded to the process of integration, due to the notion that synthesis can be left to the last, and justified by the fond hope that all disharmonies that are generated in the meantime can be atoned for in the end. It is a feature of modernism that it produces an overemphasis on the analytic aspect of the process of description while marginalizing or trivializing the synthetic component.
Out of this problematic situation one can see emerging three important issues. The first arises as a simplifying assumption but hardens into the character of a dogmatic thesis, the "triviality of integration" hypothesis. The next concerns the tension between the informal context and the formal context, along with the tensions that develop among the various formal arenas. The last is the problematic of communication that is created by differing styles of mental models and preserved through a lack of appreciation for how the several aspects of representation are themselves meant to be integrated into a coherent and competent whole.
In the attempt to reflect on our own theories of knowledge, to inquire into the nature of inquiry, and to form a coherent theory that serves as a competent guide for how to improve our performance in learning and reasoning, we encounter a couple of extremely bewildering difficulties: One problem threatens to keep us from getting started in any sensible direction at all. The other problem finds us in the middle of a mass of indications, that we typically collect in the meantime, and leaves us at a loss about how to sum up and how to draw even a tentative conclusion.
It is necessary to distinguish these skeptical questions of methodology from the more substantive issues that I described at the outset of this discussion. Because these problems of process are so elusive, defeating even the attempt to give them initial names or to find them final terms, I resort to calling them the "alpha problem" and the "omega problem", respectively. The first can be roughly characterized as involving a problem of reflection, while the last can be roughly characterized as involving a problem of reconstruction. In essence, each problem is more like a generic source of problems, or a general problem area from which a multitude of further difficulties can be found to arise. Each of these problem areas contains an especially acute instance, that I abstractly refer to as the "initial dilemma" and the "final dilemma", respectively.
The initial dilemma can be recognized as a dilemma of reflective inquiry. It is typically resolved only by making a plausible hypothesis and then moving on from there to see how one's guesses fare. The final dilemma can be described as a dilemma of critical democracy. It arises from a confrontation between two persistent factors, opposing one of the most favored notions of the modern point of view with the sheer unlikelihood that it is really true. The notion underlying the dilemma is the same "triviality of integration" hypothesis that modernism received from its classical foundations and extended with little change of direction up to the present time. The unlikelihood of its truth that is becoming more apparent, forces us to find ways, not simply of denying it in principle, but of generating constructive and livable alternative to its habitual structures, those that are built into our present cultural institutions. These problems and dilemmas are discussed in the next two subsections, after which I return to the main concern, namely, to remedy the consequences of the long held notion that integration is trivial.
====4.2.2. The Problem of Reflection====
====4.2.2. The Problem of Reflection====
====4.2.6. Problems of Representation and Communication====
====4.2.6. Problems of Representation and Communication====
===4.3. The Conduct of Inquiry===
===4.3. The Conduct of Inquiry===
