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Directory:Jon Awbrey/Papers/Inquiry Driven Systems : Part 5 (view source)
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=====5.2.11.1. Principals vs. Principals=====
=====5.2.11.1. Principals vs. Principals=====
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So it is that these old cities which, originally only villages, have become, through the passage of time, great towns, are usually so badly proportioned in comparison with those orderly towns which an engineer designs at will on some plain that, although the buildings, taken separately, often display as much art as those of the planned towns or even more, nevertheless, seeing how they are placed, with a big one here, a small one there, and how they cause the streets to bend and to be at different levels, one has the impression that they are more the product of chance than that of a human will operating according to reason.
Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method, [Des1, 35]
Once this much is said and done, one comes to a realization of the fact that a principle, as a point of logic, is not always a principal in the orders of causes, prizes, rights, or times. Even if the word "principly", coined to mean "in principle", is well formed in principle to serve that purpose, even if it is quickly struck from a readily available syntactic material, strikes true to the types of an adjective or an adverb, easily fills in for a much more cumbersome prepositional phrase, and fills out a formerly empty slot in the language, and even if tenders itself in print as the gentler equal to impress its point, still, it clangs in speech to the point that it is likely to be irrevocably confused with the sound of the already established word "principally", and so, by dint of a certain "phonological exclusion principle" (PEP), the expression of its intention in this way is subject to being excised from the language, bowing out in preference to the accidental antecedents that it arrives to find already prevailing on the scene. In sum, an essentially abstract idea can be inhibited from a particular manner of elaboration on what are purely contingent, developmental, evolutionary, and historical grounds.
Here is a problem that vies with the question of the chicken or the egg, asking which of these firsts comes first: the principal or the principle. Without being able to say which first comes to mind, it may be possible to tell, in point of time, which first entered the lists of language or came to express itself in speech, at least, on the assumption that the PEP has import for this case, and that the first item to enter the lexicon blocks the full inflection of the later entry.
From this case of a broken analogy, this example of a missing point of symmetry, or this paradigm of a defective paradigm, in short, from the mere fact that the noun "principle" fails in its distribution of uses to fill out the available patterns and to become as fully inflected as the noun "principal", it is possible to draw a surprising number of lessons:
1. It happens that "accidents" of personal, cultural, or evolutionary history can abrade the facility with which one reflects on "essences". Accidental properties of one's linguistic and mental constitution can supply the array of means that one has available to approach the most extreme questions, those concerned with original and ultimate meanings. Accidents of history operate to shape and polish, to impair and repair the faculties of reflection, the instruments of language and mind that one uses to reflect on questions of abstract, eternal, formal, ideal, or invariant form, to contemplate general schemes of categories for objects, and to consider matters of fundamental principle. For good or ill, an accumulation of accidents impacts on the character of one's reflection, innately marking or marring the equanimity with which one thinks about the arrays of otherwise indifferent and equally likely alternatives.
2. A phonological exclusion principle need not apply in syntactic cases or pragmatic situations where interpreters are reliably discerning enough to adequately resolve the textual, verbal, and vocal ambiguities. For instance, it would not matter that the physical signals represented by the words "principally" and "principly" fail to be discriminated by the "ear" of the interpreter if the "mind" of the interpreter, informed by the practical and the syntactic contexts of their sundry utterances, and guided by the innate sense of what makes sense in each situation, could be relied on to chose the proper interpretation.
3. This example of a broken analogy or a defective paradigm, and the problem of converting it to instructive uses and positive advantages, brings up the related but more general puzzle that is commonly known as the "problem of learning from negative examples". By this is meant, not just being informed by defective or imperfect examples, or learning from examples that are associated with negatively valued consequences, but inducing the laws that apply to a situation from the events that never occur within it.
Returning to the topic of reflection, as approached on the "structural" and "functional" fronts, ...
Progress on the "functional" or the "operational" front can be made by taking up once again the informal calculus of applicational operators that I used at the beginning of the current chapter to annotate the analysis of inquiry, by taking further steps toward formalizing this calculus, and by representing the operation of reflection within it. Progress on the structural front can be made by ...
A RIF is intended to formally allow for a specific area of reflection on experience. I want to use reflection as a bona fide form of observation, in the dual sense that one reflects on happenings in the outside world and again on a range of experiences in one's inner world. Moreover, I want to treat reflection as a genuinely empirical form of observation, perfectly capable of making mistakes in the data and the descriptions it provides, but provisionally able to supply the materials that are needed for building up true theories about the reflected domains of experience.
In historical perspective, there is an array of contentious issues that generally arises in this connection to obstruct the carrying out of any such intention. At times the liberty of reflection is simply proscribed as being out of bounds for the aims of empirical and objective science, at least, if it continues to form a source of data and ideas, then the custom is never to credit the source. At times the region of reflection obtrudes so far from within the preserve of a purely private interest to impose on the realm of a properly public concern that little remains to be seen of the world outside, and no room is left over for the forum of concrete reason to proceed in its own right according to its own lights. Since the next subsection, dedicated to the phenomenology of reflection, takes up this host of issues in great detail, a brief discussion of their bearing on the task of building a RIF is all that is needed at this point.
In order to constitute a RIF as an empirical framework, in other words, as a formal apparatus that can serve to facilitate experiential inquiry, it is necessary to rehabilitate the operation of reflection as a genuine form of experiential observation, one that is capable of generating contingent, defeasible, falsifiable, or hypothetical descriptions of what it reflects on, where the field of view for reflection encompasses everything it is given or gains a power to reflect on, including activities in the external world, affective impressions and motivational impulses that arise in the realm of feeling and drives, and the more or less controlled conduct of reflection itself. To do this, it is necessary, in turn, to achieve a resolution of and to reach an understanding on two points:
1. First, one needs to recognize that "empirical" necessarily implies "experiential" and "experimental", but that none of these terms is limited of necessity to implying "external", at least, not in the sense of an externality that is exclusive of all felt experience.
2. Finally, one needs to separate the practice of reflection from the herd of "incorrigibles" it is liable to be confounded with on the modern scene, to sort it out from the "bad company" of its former associates and all their pretensions to (a) immediacy of inference, (b) impeccability of insight, (c) infallibility of introspection, (d) unimpeachability of intuition, and (e) incognizability of reality.
If the reader reflects that I seem to be trying to make reflection out to be a curious sort of hybrid creation, akin on the one side to primitive forms of observation, but akin on the other side to sophisticated forms of contemplation, and that this makes it the main constitutional problem of its temperament to control its own hybris in such a way that it can keep itself from weening over to excessive degrees in either direction, then the reader reflects correctly. If reflection keeps to this middle course, then, whatever its natural disposition or original inclination might be, it can still enjoy the effective qualities and formal virtues that belong to both realms of experience, mediating between the real and the rational, and joining the sensory to the intellectual.
A historical perspective also shows that the task of arrogating modest powers to reflection without reaching over into insupportable realms of imagination is apparently a difficult balancing act for the human mind to maintain. For reasons that will soon become obvious, I find it useful to describe this as the "cartesian polarity" problem.
Whereas other operations of mental life have to be forced to the point of examining their own conduct, even tricked into it, it is almost the reflex of reflection to reflect once again on its own action, at least, to reflect on whatever array of intermediate insights or whatever sample of partial results it finds itself able to pin down in memorable signs and texts. And yet, aside from the statement of this vacuity, it seems pointless for reflection to personify itself, often to the point of impersonating itself, and difficult for it to find anything interesting to say, without bringing in something else, some other matter to reflect on. Thus, I do not want to fall into the narcissistic trap of thinking that internal reflection, or introspection, is the only source of knowledge that is certain and true, but neither do I want to vanish in the echoistic dissipation of clinging to external reflection, or reflectances, as the only source of inspiration.
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=====5.2.11.2. The Initial Description of Inquiry=====
=====5.2.11.2. The Initial Description of Inquiry=====