Changes

The collected images of conduct serve as “codes”, in both the senses of a descriptive datum and a prescriptive emblem.  Both types of code fall subject to being tested in future experience, for their trustworthiness as bodies of observation or recommendation, respectively, with regard to their objects or intentions, as the case may be.  Reviving an old term with just this spectrum of meanings, an encyclopedic corpus of received code can be called a “pandect”.

The collected images of conduct serve as “codes”, in both the senses of a descriptive datum and a prescriptive emblem.  Both types of code fall subject to being tested in future experience, for their trustworthiness as bodies of observation or recommendation, respectively, with regard to their objects or intentions, as the case may be.  Reviving an old term with just this spectrum of meanings, an encyclopedic corpus of received code can be called a “pandect”.

'''Point 19.'''     The power of reflection involves a risk of distortion.

Point 19. The power of reflection involves a risk of distortion.

The quality that separates reflection from introspection is its admission of fallibility.  Although it is often troublesome to undo its distortions, the very fact that it can be in error, can miss its mark, or is by nature defeasible and falsifiable is exactly what makes a reflective image useful as a hypothesis, as an approximation to an infinitely subtler reality and as a simplification of an infinitely more complex and detailed truth, and yet one that retains a sufficient measure of realistic truth to be useful in the meaner times of a mortal existence.

The quality that separates reflection from introspection is its admission of fallibility.  Although it is often troublesome to undo its distortions, the very fact that it can be in error, can miss its mark, or is by nature defeasible and falsifiable is exactly what makes a reflective image useful as a hypothesis, as an approximation to an infinitely subtler reality and as a simplification of an infinitely more complex and detailed truth, and yet one that retains a sufficient measure of realistic truth to be useful in the meaner times of a mortal existence.

The capacity of reflection to create an image in description of an action incurs a liability toward corruption in the image, both before and after its initial form is cast.  The way that an image produced by reflection is designed to act as a sign of the action or permitted to behave as a code of the conduct is bound to be an imperfect device, due in large part to limitations of the media and affected in unaccounted measures by flaws in the mechanisms of reflection.  How these distortions can be undone with repeated reflections, and how this clarification can be achieved without waylaying the conduct that reflection is meant to describe and control, is one of the main technical problems for empirical inquiry.

The capacity of reflection to create an image in description of an action incurs a liability toward corruption in the image, both before and after its initial form is cast.  The way that an image produced by reflection is designed to act as a sign of the action or permitted to behave as a code of the conduct is bound to be an imperfect device, due in large part to limitations of the media and affected in unaccounted measures by flaws in the mechanisms of reflection.  How these distortions can be undone with repeated reflections, and how this clarification can be achieved without waylaying the conduct that reflection is meant to describe and control, is one of the main technical problems for empirical inquiry.

The power of reflection involves a capacity to project false images and thereby to generate distorting perspectives.  The possibilities include: (1) views in which small things seem large and large things seem small, (2) value systems in which the apparent imports of things are reversed in relation to their actual imports, (3) forms of representation in which the places of contents interior and exterior to the surfaces of reflection are exchanged, reversed, or transposed.

The power of reflection involves a capacity to project false images and thereby to generate distorting perspectives.  The possibilities include the following:

 

# Views in which small things seem large and large things seem small,

# Value systems in which the apparent imports of things are reversed in relation to their actual imports,

# Forms of representation in which the places of contents interior and exterior to the surfaces of reflection are exchanged, reversed, or transposed.

There is a positive spin on the fallibility of the reflective imagination.  In terms of its practical bearings on continued experience, the fallibility of reflection involves an ability, not only to make its errors over again in the form of their consequences for experience, but eventually to find its faults recognized as such in a finite order of subsequent reflections.

There is a positive spin on the fallibility of the reflective imagination.  In terms of its practical bearings on continued experience, the fallibility of reflection involves an ability, not only to make its errors over again in the form of their consequences for experience, but eventually to find its faults recognized as such in a finite order of subsequent reflections.

In sum, the feature of reflection that seems to render it most defective, its fallibility, which involves its ability to be recognized as false in the future of reflection, is the main trait that allows it to play a part in the staging of empirical inquiry.

In sum, the feature of reflection that seems to render it most defective, its fallibility, which involves its ability to be recognized as false in the future of reflection, is the main trait that allows it to play a part in the staging of empirical inquiry.

Point 20. The capacity for reflection involves an ability to question one's working assumptions, especially when there is occasion to suspect that they are no longer working as well as they once did.

Point 20. The capacity for reflection involves an ability to question one's working assumptions, especially when there is occasion to suspect that they are no longer working as well as they once did.