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===5.3. Reflection on Reflection===
===5.3. Reflection on Reflection===
<pre>
Let me review the developments that bring me to this point. I began by describing my present inquiry, y0, as an inquiry into inquiry, y.y. Then I focussed on the activities of discussion, d, and formalization, f, as two components of the faculty or the process of inquiry, y >= {d,f}. This led me to the present discussion of formalization, f.d. Considered as classes of activities, the collective instances of formalization, F, appeared to be encompassed by the collective instances of discussion, D, thereby yielding the relationship F c D.
I initially characterized discussion and formalization, in regard to each other, as being an "actively instrumental" versus a "passively objective" aspect, component, or "face" of the inquiry y >= {d,f}. In casting them this way I clearly traded on the ambiguity of " ionized" terms to force the issue a bit. In other words, I used the flexibility that is freely available within their " ionic" construals, as processes or as products, to cast discussion and formalization into sundry molds, drawing out the patent energies that are manifested by the active process of discussion and placing them in contrast with the latent inertias that are immanent in the dormant product of formalization. In this partially arbitrary way, I decided on the one hand to treat discussion in respect of its ongoing process, the only thing that it has any assurance of accomplishing, but I decided on the other hand to treat formalization in respect of its end product, the abstract image or the formal model that constitutes its chief qualification and thus becomes the mark of what it is.
By casting inquiry into the form y >= {d,f}, I made it more likely that my development of its self application, y.y >= {d,f}{d,f}, would first take up the application of discussion to formalization, f.d, and only later get around to the application of formalization to discussion, d.f, that brings the active side of the formalization process into a greater prominence. But the bias that I exploited in these readings does not seem at present to be a property of the incipient algebra that would determine the sense of the applications and the decompositions envisioned here. Thus, if I initially saw a difference between the two presentations {d,f} and {f,d}, then it must have been a purely interpretive and not a substantial one, and the task of giving explicit notice to these interpretive distinctions and working out their algebra or calculus yet remains to be carried out in any sort of convincing fashion.
Still, the casting of discussion and formalization as active and inert, respectively, was not entirely out of character with their distinctive natures, since a process that has an end is more naturally suited to be represented by its result than a process that conceivably never ends. And whereas a "discussion" was allowed to be a form of discourse that does not need to have an end, with the possible exception of itself, a "formalization" was sensed to be a form of discourse that has, needs, seeks, or wants a distinct end, not just any end but a form of product that is preferred to satisfy a general description, and one that most likely resides outside the form of a vacuous vanity that simply refers, in a reflexive but hollow echo, to the entirety of its own proceedings.
In this merely penultimate analysis, and to the extent that the question of ends has been analyzed up to the present, it needs to be noted that more than a bit of ambiguity yet remains. When one speaks of a form of discourse each of whose instances necessarily has an end, does one mean that the definition of the form requires each instance to have an end, and does one then mean that each valid instance actually achieves its end, or does one only mean that each instance of some empirically given class of discourses actually reaches some end or another?
The word "reflection" first entered this discussion in what seemed like a purely incidental and instrumental way, as a part of the definition of a "meditation" as "a discourse intended to express its author's reflections or to guide others in contemplation" (Webster's). I converted this term to my own use as a name for a particular class of activities, describing the class of "meditations", M, as a brand of "measured" and "motivated" discussions that can serve to mediate formalizations within the realm of discussions at large. Thus, I borrowed the term for no better reason than that of interposing a middle term between formalized discussions and discussions in general, thereby yielding the relationship F c M c D.
In this respect, it seems to be instructive that the issue of reflection first arrived on the present scene, quietly enough, under the aegis of a borrowed term, imported without deliberate design among the components and the connotations of its associated sample of discourse, and involved in a process that seeks to negotiate the conflicting claims that arise between formal and casual discourse. In the simplest sense of the word, an activity of reflection implies only that an agent thinks quietly and calmly about a matter, the etymology of the word suggesting the actions of bending, bounding, casting, folding, giving, turning, throwing, or yielding back again, and hence a pause, a return, or a review. In this regard, the word "reflection" barely alludes to the idea that what the agent turns back to is something that involves itself, its own patterns of activity, and thus the word only hints as yet at the complicities of self reference and self application that are involved in an agent turning back to view its past, its present, or its ongoing forms of conduct.
Whereas I dragged the topics of discussion and formalization somewhat arbitrarily and forcibly into the arena of inquiry, the issue of reflection appeared to develop naturally on its own, without significant foresight on my part, and without deliberation or design gradually forced itself on my attention, as if rebounding from contingent obstacles that exist just beyond my current horizon, reflecting the necessary constraints of a natural law, or echoing the bounds of an inherent capacity that I yet know not of.
When one crosses a critical threshold or a threshold of decision, ...
A notion of reflection, in a more authentically "reflexive" sense, was implicitly involved in the application of inquiry to itself, y0 = y.y, and was eventually encountered on a recurring basis in the application of each newly recognized component of inquiry to itself: y.y >= d.d, f.f. In a more substantial role, the option of a capacity for reflection was already noticed as a significant parameter in the constitution of an IF.
Often, an IF is founded and persists in operation long before any participant is able to reflect on its structure or to post a note of its character to the constituting members of the framework. (SS 1.3.3.5, page 14).
More substantially, a notion of reflection was invoked as something necessary ...
In other contexts, something called "reflection" was seen as necessary to avoid certain types of unfortunate outcomes,
To avoid the types of cul de sac (cultist act) encountered above, I am taking some pains to ensure a reflective capacity for the interpretive frameworks I develop in this project. (SS 1.3.3.5, page 15).
A radical form of analysis ... requires interpreters ... to reflect on their own motives and motifs for construing and employing objects in the ways they do, and to deconstruct how their own aims and biases enter into the form and use of objects. (SS 1.3.4.12, page 36).
Thus, the radical project in all of these directions demands forms of interpretation, analysis, synthesis that can reflect a measure of light on the initially unstated assumptions of their prospective agents. (SS 1.3.4.12, page 36).
The relationships among the activities and faculties of discussion, contemplation, formalization, meditation, and reflection need to be explored in more detail. In particular, the relationship between formalization and reflection is especially relevant to the task of constructing a RIF.
Unlike a discussion of discussion, d.d, which is easy to start and hard to put an end to once it gets going, it is difficult for a reflection on reflection, r.r, to get itself going with nothing to reflect on but itself. I have just illustrated one way of doing this, namely, by leading a text to reflect on itself, as long as you understand this figure of speech to mean that it leads its interpreters, its writer and reader, without whose agency there would be no reflection at all, to reflect on how it reflects on itself. But I obviously need other ways than this to demonstrate the functions and properties of reflection in anything like their full variety.
Toward this end, it can also help to illustrate the action of reflection if I find it some material besides itself to reflect off of, in other words, if I supply it with an independently generated and concretely finished text as an argument to exercise its powers of reflection on. Accordingly, in the next part of this discussion I will interleave my text with ...
The preview that follows takes up the first stirrings of many subjects that cannot be meaningfully engaged, much less fully formalized, until much later in the investigation. In many cases the ongoing discussion can afford to pause only long enough to toss a provisional name in the direction of a prospective topic, both the name and the place of which promise an eventual return and revision, if not a recurring visitation. If I were forced to give a formal title to my sketch in reconnaissance of this area, I would call it the "phenomenology of inquiry", but this fine label is already too heavy an emblem for my effort to bear at this point.
This subsection presents a broad overview of the questions raised and the conceptual needs occasioned by the prospects of constructing a RIF. It makes no attempt to completely cover the topics it identifies and does not try to answer the questions it raises or to fill the needs it notices, but it merely points out a selective sample of the most salient concerns that need to be addressed.
The long route which I propose also aspires to carry reflection to the level of an ontology, but it will do so by degrees, following successive investigations into semantics and reflection.
Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, [Ric, 6]
The subject of reflection is first approached in a topical, paraphrastic, or even periphrastic manner. The notion of a capacity for reflection is submitted to a tentative analysis, as treated in a variety of different modes of conception, by listing the duties that are typically demanded of a reflective agent, by compiling and reconciling the properties that are commonly ascribed to the process of reflection, and by contemplating the responsibilities and the results that the faculty of reflection is supposed to have in the many contexts where it is expected to serve.
"Reflection" is a word that is used with a wide variety of meanings in both ordinary language and technical contexts. Some of these uses have little to do with the sorts of inquiry being pursued here. Other uses, though related to inquiry, refer to processes that are fully as complex as inquiry itself. Neither of these extremes of meaning falls within the present focus of discussion.
The task for this project is to identify a coherent set of operations: (1) that fall within the scope of conceptual analysis and computational modeling, (2) that bear a recognizable and illuminating relationship to what is commonly called "reflection", and (3) that make an operational contribution to inquiry, while (4) constituting simpler components of it.
I define "symbol" as any structure of signification in which a direct, primary, literal meaning designates, in addition, another meaning which is indirect, secondary, and figurative and which can be apprehended only through the first.
Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, [Ric, 12]
This types of reflective operations of interest in this work are best approached and analyzed within a sign theoretic setting. ...
Presented in the guise of an allegorical figure, reflection appears as the bailiff or the sergeant at arms who escorts an agent, faculty, or process from the office of power to the dockets of observation, examination, and potential revision. But still, putting all allegory aside, this mode of transport goes nowhere at all, nor travels through any space, but turns on a mere change of views for all that it ushers in. One is perfectly capable of using a power of inquiry of which no account is yet given. But reflection is a part of the inquiry into conduct that gives the conduct in question a description.
He paused and nibbled absentmindedly on his branch for a while, as if gathering his thoughts.
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, [DQ, 11]
If inquiry is viewed as a process of reasoning, then it takes place in thought, and so in the signs that are the public expression of thought. This means that an inquiry into inquiry has the duty to concern itself with thoughts, signs, and the relationship between them. To do this in an appropriate setting, it has to consider thoughts and signs as things taken apart from, but placed in relation to, their own particular objects. Indeed, the task that distinguishes an inquiry into inquiry, the specific difference that sets it apart, both from all of its object inquiries and again from inquiry in general, is the question of how thought is to be conducted if the goals of inquiry are to be met.
In such places (he went on at last), where animals are simply penned up, they are almost always more thoughtful than their cousins in the wild.
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, [DQ, 11]
If one considers the formula that characterizes an inquiry into inquiry, "y0 = y.y", and examines the term y.y that factors y0 along the lines of an ostensible self application, it is evident that any power invoked on the right is instantly echoed on the left and so required to survive the application or else be revoked. If the use of a given power of inquiry, working from the right and serving in the role of an operator, leads to a prospective description of inquiry, worked on the left from the role of an operand to the role of a result, and if the proferred characterization of inquiry is found to be out of accord with significant instances of its actual practice, then either the depiction of inquiry, as it is mediately improvised in progress, or the performance of inquiry, as it is actually conducted in practice, can turn out to be at fault.
This is because even the dimmest of them cannot help but sense that something is very wrong with this style of living.
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, [DQ, 11]
The philosophical point of view called "pragmatism" takes a particular position on the relation of thoughts to signs, and this determines a particular method of approach to the nature of thinking. To preview here what is presented in detail later, the pragmatic point of view involves: (1) an assertion that thoughts are a special case of signs, (2) a theoretical definition of signs in terms of sign relations, and (3) a corresponding approach to the nature of thought as "praxis", in other words, of thinking as a process, or inquiry as a form of conduct.
When I say that they are more thoughtful, I don't mean to imply that they acquire powers of ratiocination.
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, [DQ, 11]
The way that reflection turns action into depiction and description, how it gives a sign to the act and provides a code for its future conduct, is the chief mystery of the whole process of reflection. Expressed in the substantive fashion that the " ionized" character of "reflection" permits, this riddle arises from wondering how a reflection on the action can be transubstantiated as a sign of the action and resurrect itself in a code of the conduct. In other words, how does a signification calling for an interpretation arise from the very interruption of its full transmission, the comical section of its secular extension, the transient abdication of its permanent tradition, ..., or the discrete truncation of a continuous conduction?
But the tiger you see madly pacing its cage is nevertheless preoccupied with something that a human would certainly recognize as a thought.
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, [DQ, 11]
The way that inquiry obstructs itself, or that each inquiry interferes with every other, is a phenomenon that constitutes a principal target of this investigation. At times it seems as if the present construction is always the main obstruction to the intentions that are embodied in it, forestalling every chance of change, every hope of growth, and every possibility of progress into the future. How do the very processes of analysis, inquiry, and reflection come to have their aims so distorted, their airs so polluted, and their purposes so perverted that the very bodies of their own past effects become the blocks to their moving on?
And this thought is a question: Why?
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, [DQ, 11]
An inquiry into inquiry can start out so close to the start of its subject that it finds its subject inquiry in a state of inchoate incipience, one where no hint of reflection is yet to be discerned. But once the action of reflection is suspected to lie beneath the manifest activity of the subject inquiry, from the effects of reflection that are discovered to issue from the inquiry in question, the analysis of this reflection can take its charge to such outrageous extremes, breaking down the actual process of reflection to its most inert levels of miniscule details, breaking up the living continuity that is appropriate to a realistic depiction, incrementally revealing the fragments of reflection that are revealed by this analysis, omitting every sense of connection and surgically excising every ligament of extenuating context, or that are incrementally and inspecting revealed by this analysis with such a myopic scope, that no trace of the overriding imagination appears among the pieces that remain, the original aspect of reflection is lost among the residual debris.
When it comes to understanding a living activity, like reflection, or inquiry, or analysis itself for that matter, there are forms of analysis that go too far in their favored or particular directions while failing to take into account the workings of significant "ligaments", or connective factors, that help to constitute and coordinate both their subjects and themselves, and on which the integrity of both depends. In particular, the purely syntactic analysis of a reflective narrative is liable to be carried to the bounds of such extremities that no trace of reflection is evident within the functional structures of the parts that are obtained or appears beneath the few points of light that the analysis yet throws. At this point, the instrument of reflection is broken so utterly, into so many pieces, and of such a small size that neither a close nor a distant inspection of any fraction of their number reveals any longer the aspect of reflection for which their matter was originally prized and pried into. When this state of analysis is reached, the medium of reflection, though it is still reflective in a certain sense, scatters the ambient light of nature that remains to it and disperses its sense through an evanescent void that presents nothing more illuminating to the imagination than the shimmering opacity of an opalescent haze.
The way that reflection, in adjunction to conduct, leads that conduct to a description of itself, not only in the sense of begetting an image but also in the sense of encountering a design, needs itself to have a name. I dub this turn of reflection, through which it converts the conduct of experience into an experience of conduct, by the name "metamorphism". The way that a reflection of the action is a sign of the action needs to be investigated further, and is pursued through the rest of this work. An apology is due for continuing to harp on this point, but it remains a crucial point for the whole method of reflection, if it is to be a method.
"Why, why, why, why, why, why?" the tiger asks itself hour after hour, day after day, year after year, as it treads its endless path behind the bars of its cage.
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, [DQ, 11]
Returning to the formula of an inquiry into inquiry, y0 = y.y, it is possible to derive a few of its consequences for the character of the operation that is to be called "reflection". In general, a formula like f = g.h constitutes a movement of conceptual reorganization, one whose resultant syntactic structure may or may not reflect an objective form of being, that is, an aspect of structure in the being that constitutes its object. If there is a similarity of structure to be found between the formula and the object, then one has what is called an "iconic formula", but this is not always the case, and even this special situation requires the proper interpretation to tell in exactly what respect the form of the sign and the form of the object are alike. Whatever the case, the role of the formula as a sign should not be confused with the role of the object in reality, no matter how similar their forms may be.
It cannot analyze the question or elaborate on it.
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, [DQ, 11]
If one reads the form "y.y" according to the convention adopted, where a latently but actively instrumentalized inquiry on the right applies to a patently but patiently objectified inquiry on the left, almost as if they were two distinct agencies, faculties, or processes, then it is clear that an inquiry into inquiry can begin with little more than a nominal object, taking the name of "inquiry" in its sights to yield a clue in name only, while it can reserve all the power of an established capacity for inquiry to conduct its review, of which no account, no prescribed code, nor any catalog of procedure has to be given at the outset of its investigation.
If you were somehow able to ask the creature, "Why what?" it would be unable to answer you.
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, [DQ, 11]
But it is important to remember that the full intention of this factious formulation is more analogous to an interpretive doubling of vision, an amplification of resolving power and a coordination of perspectives, than it is to an objective division of being, a substantial disconnection of essentials or a disintegration of being. Even when the factions of the term "y.y" are conceived in practice to be implemented by substantially different parts of the same agency, constitutionally they embody but a single power.
Before long I too began to ask myself why.
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, [DQ, 11]
The form of inquiry into inquiry, y.y, requires that any power assumed on the part of the right is open to be indicted on the part of the left. This entails that any power arrogated for the ends of inquiry has to be given a name, not only under which it is invoked as an executive power, but also by which it is entered on the agenda of issues to inquire into, and finally through which it is indicted for submission to all the powers of inquiry that be. This combination of "appellation" and "supplication", or "nomination for" and "submission to" the jurisdiction of a reflexive application, makes up a large part of what is usually called "reflection".
Being neurologically far in advance of the tiger, I was able to examine what I meant by the question, at least in a rudimentary way.
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, [DQ, 11]
Many times, otherwise unrelated uses of the word "reflection" in the physical sciences can be suggestive. For example, reflection is one of the ways that a continuous appearing phenomenon can be brought into a form of interaction with itself and thereby to exhibit its nature as a pattern of activity with definite features and discrete characteristics. But metaphors like these can be kept from spinning out misleading clues only if the keys to understanding them as analogies can be found.
I remembered a different sort of life, which was, for those who lived it, interesting and pleasant.
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, [DQ, 11-12]
With respect to the present project, that peers into its own appearances for the sake of seeing what logic lies in the rawness of experience, the analogous question is: How can the continuation of experience be conducted in such a way as to reveal within experience itself the conditions that connect its unconducted to its conducted course?
By contrast, this life was agonizingly boring and never pleasant.
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, [DQ, 12]
This motion, the kind of movement just put in question or the form of development just wondered about, occurs throughout the whole field of inquiry, making it convenient to find a name for it. Because it steps across a boundary in a state space while keeping its eye on both sides of the displayed distinction, it can be called a "circumspect transition" or, more dramatically, a "peripeteic strophe". At times it appears in lights that earn it the titles of the "yoke of knowing existence" (YOKE), the "conduct of subjectivity" (COS), or just the "junctive element" (JE). It is pertinent in this connection that I am treating the condition of subjectivity as a special case of pragmatic objectivity, as it appears in this instance, one that involves an element of reflection.
Thus, in asking why, I was trying to puzzle out why life should be divided in this way, half of it interesting and pleasant and half of it boring and unpleasant.
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, [DQ, 12]
So let me dispense for the moment, even if this dispensation has to be carried out for now in the flippant manner and the fugal mannerisms of the foregoing counterpoint of discussion, with what I earnestly desire, all in good time and by means of well tempered arguments, to dispense with once and for all: The notion that individual words, sentences, paragraphs, articles, and so on up the scale can be anything like the final arbiters of thought and anything approaching the units of thought of ultimate interest to inquiry. But I want to do this without giving up the spirit of analysis altogether, merely by looking for forms of analysis that are fit to address the "text of inquiry" (TOI) in its full integrity.
It was in puzzling out such small matters as these that my interior life began — quite unnoticed.
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael, [DQ, 12]
In the process of elucidating the pragmatic point of view and applying it to the present array of problems, it soon becomes useful to examine the very notion of a "point of view" (POV). As reflections on the idea of a POV gradually mount up, the analysis of the general conception of a POV begins not only to take on a definite shape for itself, that is, with respect to the conditions it needs for its continued progress, but also to give a determinate, if slightly schematic, form to its object. Eventually, a sufficient confidence in the accumulated developments of the concept of a POV can lead this analysis to the point of suggesting provisional definitions and even to the point of attempting a specific formalization of POV's in general. This series of developments occurs concurrently throughout the construction of the current or any RIF, the necessity of which ought to be clear from the fact that the sequence of POV's from which one reflects is critical to the result and the success of any process of reflection.
A child hears it said that the stove is hot. But it is not, he says; and, indeed, that central body is not touching it, and only what that touches is hot or cold. But he touches it, and finds the testimony confirmed in a striking way. Thus, he becomes aware of ignorance, and it is necessary to suppose a self in which this ignorance can inhere. ...
In short, error appears, and it can be explained only by supposing a self which is fallible.
Ignorance and error are all that distinguish our private selves from the absolute ego of pure apperception.
(Peirce, CP 5.233 235).
Peirce makes the point that one's first awareness of a personal existence arises in reaction to the brute impact of experience and is ultimately compounded by way of reflection on its imports. Taking this to echo the exchange between Brutus and Cassius, I have the points that I need to stake out and to sound out a significant portion of the RIF that I intend to discuss.
Before passing over the subject of the JE, in order to continue with a sketch of reflection, it is useful to notice a couple of features that affect this style of movement, as recapitulated in this strophe, and that determine the prospective turns of events, as predicated on its action. In one sense the motion is reversible, since the boundary in the basic state space, once crossed, is easily crossed again. In another sense the transition is irreversible, since what is learned from a single crossing, assuming the agent is capable of acquiring knowledge in the process, is neither so quickly forgotten nor so easily lost.
It is the usual thing, in contemplating the forms of development that are epitomized by the figure of the JE, to find the images of winding gyres and helical ascents coming to mind, in other words, the trajectories of open curves in an extended space that project onto closed curves in a more basic space. In anticipation of later developments, I propose to attribute the "basic" and the "extended" aspects of this strophic segue to its "dynamic" and its "symbolic" components, respectively.
If it is important, at first sight, to recognize the JE as an irreducible primitive, inscribing its expression of its own being in the self signed tokens of a uniquely traced but perfectly typical autograph, all along personalizing its form of possession with an irrepressible panache, and leaving its legacy in an otherwise irreproducible style of paraph, it is just as important, on second thought, to try various schemes of analysis on it, with the aim, however artificially, of articulating, approximating, or explaining its form.
A number of questions arise at this point, concerning the justification of these moves, not just to justify the initial JE but to rationalize all of the ensuing action that is predicated on it. Just to name a few:
1. What justifies a particular way of leading experience to reflect on itself?
2. What justifies a particular way of causing reflection to comment on itself?
If it is asked, with respect to the legitimacy of all such questions, what is the justification for imposing extraneous ventures and superimposing foreign notions on the otherwise natural course of things, the answer has to be that, otherwise, it could not be articulated at all, and that, once reflected, the naturalness of expression that affected the original intention cannot be recovered without some risk of artificiality.
The object example of a strophic transition is the action of inquiry itself. For instance, if an inquiry is something that strives to move from a state of uncertainty toward a state of certainty about its object, then an inquiry into inquiry is something that proposes to move from a state of uncertainty toward a state of certainty about the identifiable elements and features of inquiry itself, including the natures of doubt and certainty, and of the distinction or the relationship between them. Distributing the terms a bit, this means that an inquiry into inquiry tries to move from a state of doubt about doubt toward a state of knowing about doubt.
To deal with the relationship between the dynamic and the symbolic aspects of the JE, I try a couple of strategies, ranging in character from the casual to the formal.
1. To start, I adapt an informal distinction between the "matter" of a thought and the "manner" of thinking it. For example, in the effort to think about uncertainty one hopes to develop a certain concept of it. So, even though one continues to think about uncertainty, one hopes to become fairly certain about it. Here, the matter or content of one's thinking is fixed on uncertainty while the manner or conduct of one's thinking is hoped to change from the dubious to the certain.
2. Eventually, it is necessary to develop a formal concept and even a mathematical model of this relationship. To do this, I adopt the intuitive notions of a "point of view" (POV) and its "point of development" (POD), gradually turning them into formal concepts of a very general character. This requires distinguishing between two kinds of propositions that are associated with POV's and POD's, namely: (a) the propositions that are "attached to" or "contained in" them, and (b) the propositions that are "applied to" or "maintained about" them.
Just to give a rough idea of how these two distinctions relate to each other, the matter of a thought corresponds to an "attached" proposition, "in" a POV or "at" a POD, while the manner of a thought corresponds to an "applied" proposition, "on" a POV or "about" a POD. Employing this language to describe the case of an inquiry successfully self applied, one can say the following things. An agent of inquiry has a POV that changes from one POD to the next in a series of developments, and this can be a POV that concerns itself with the question of inquiry, among other things, and thus with the topics of uncertainty and certainty, or doubt and belief. In such a case, as the POV moves from an initial POD to a terminal POD, a part of its matter stays fixed on "doubt", while its whole manner is transformed from one of "doubt" toward one of "belief".
It is not always necessary to distinguish a POV from each of its POD's, except when one needs to emphasize the dynamic aspect of these ideas, especially the fact that a single POV can pass through or incorporate many different POD's in the course of its development. It is legitimate to say that the POV is present at each of its POD's, or that the POD's are incorporated in their overall POV. Accordingly, it is not always necessary to lose sight of the successive POD's in a series, so long as they are amenable to being incorporated in the last POD, or final POV.
When one says that a POV is associated with a particular proposition, whether containing it or instancing it, one always means a POV as it exists at a particular POD, or through a particular range of its POD's. For example, if I say that "J thinks K is smarter than L", then I am implicating a POV that J has at a particular POD, assumed to be capable of specification. Moreover, I am relying on the specific information inherent in this POD to index the particular persons named "K" and "L" that I am assuming J has in mind at that POD. In technical terms, this requires the "intentional context" that is signaled by the verb "thinks", normally "opaque" to all distributions of contextual information from any point outside its frame, to be treated as "transparent" to the packet of information that is assumed to be represented by the POD in question.
In the application of mediate interest to this project, a POV corresponds to a computational system, while a POD corresponds to one of its states. It is desirable to have a way of referring to the system as a whole, but in ways that are implicitly quantified by the relevant classes of states. For example, I want to have a system of interpretation in place where it is possible to write "j : x = y" to mean that "j sets x equal to y", to read this as a statement about a system j and two of its stores x and y, and to understand this as a statement that implicitly refers to a set of states that makes it true. Further, I want to recognize this statement as the "active" voice, "attributed" account, or "authorized" version of the more familiar, but "passive", "anonymous", or "unavowed" species of assignment statement "x := y".
The rudimentary parallels between these different distinctions should not be treated too rigidly, as a number of finer points about their true relationship remain to be sorted out. The next few remarks are given just to provide a hint of what is involved.
The distinction between matter and manner of thought is correlated with the distinction between object and sign, so long as these are recognized as distinctions of momentary use and not as distinctions of fixed nature. In the beginning, these distinctions also coincide with the distinction between dynamic and symbolic aspects of inquiry. A typical instance of this is when a change of physical configuration is needed to carry out an experiment, while what is learned as a result of that experience is tantamount to a change in the organization of one's thought, and where this includes changes in the signs, texts, and other sorts of records that form one's knowledge base as well as changes in the ideas, or signs in the mind, that make up one's mental configuration.
Nevertheless, it is important to appreciate that all of these distinctions can become increasingly and divergently relativized as higher orders of reflection on the initial domain of objects turn wider circles of signs around it and heap higher towers of ideas upon it. When this happens, any initial portion of the objective and lower order syntactic domains can form the matter of a thought, while any final portion of the higher order syntactic domains can embody the manner of a thought.
Here is the critical point. A conceptual distinction is not absolute, but relative to the POV that sees it, makes it, draws it, or uses it. Indeed, one of the reasons for introducing the concept of a POV is to formalize this general insight and thereby to permit reflection on specific POV's. But the intention of this move is to include any distinction that can be made in the process of an inquiry and found essential to its progress. Accordingly, the aim of this insight marks an intention to comprehend, not just the distinctions between previously identified predicates, like the attributes "dubious" and "certain" already mentioned, but also any future distinctions that might be discovered as necessary to inquiry. Almost immediately, for instance, the distinction just made by way of formalizing the concept of a POV, between the "propositions at" and the "propositions about" a POV, falls into the category of distinctions in question, at least, put under examination for the purposes of a review.
Consciousness is a movement which continually annihilates its starting point and can guarantee itself only at the end. In other words, it is something that has meaning only in later figures, since the meaning of a given figure is deferred until the appearance of a new figure.
Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, [Ric, 113]
In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows: for details are swallowed up in principles. The details of knowledge which are important will be picked up ad hoc in each avocation of life, but the habit of the active utilisation of well understood principles is the final possession of wisdom.
A.N. Whitehead, The Aims of Education, [ANW, 46]
cited in S.R. Covey, First Things First, [CMM, 71]
If I reflect on my own POV, it becomes evident that the critical focus and main interest of this inquiry is on the kinds of inquiry that cross a certain threshold, that of becoming deliberately conducted and critically controlled. But in order to remain critical and reflective I have to be interested in both sides of this distinction. This is the usual pattern of the circumspect transition that I just personified in the form of the JE. But here it seems to lead to the disconcerting conclusion that reason is founded on unreason, and that this reason is justified by the end that it leads to, not by the state that it starts in. This sounds ominous and dangerous, but I think that the difficulties it raises are partly verbal, the fault of ambiguities that are quick to right themselves on reflection, but more seriously, partly due to misleading theory of what constitutes a foundation, a theory that tends to be applied on the modern scene as an uncritical reflex of that very same and everyday modern POV.
The general problem encountered here can be expressed in the question: How can reason rationally address its other, the real irrationality of unreason that it finds in its experience, not only in and of the world but at the beginnings of its own being? If reason addresses unreason as its founder, then it seems to founder in its justification of itself. This is how the question and its puzzing echo first present themselves, but in order to approach a genuine answer it seems more likely that a transformation of the question is demanded, perhaps recasting it so: How can one form of reason rationally address another, whether it is wholly and radically other or complementary to and continuous with its own being? Other versions of this question, and other attempts to respond to it, appear throughout the remainder of this work.
One thing is apparent: If reflective inquiry, based on the rationality of the intellectual share of reason, addresses instinctive inquiry, based on the sensibility of the affective, emotional, and motivational portion, as something wholly other, indeed, as its logical opposite, then it obstructs the eventuality and even precludes the possibility of discovering their compatibilities and continuities, and it interferes with the chances of seeing how each form of inquiry completes and extends the other.
Thus we can understand that "the entire sensible world and all the beings with which we have dealings sometimes appear to us as a text to be deciphered".
Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, [Ric, 222],
quoting Jean Nabert, Elements for an Ethic, [Nab, 77].
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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.
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.