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Directory:Jon Awbrey/Papers/Inquiry Driven Systems : Part 5 (view source)
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====5.2.5. Apparent, Occasional, and Practical Necessity====
====5.2.5. Apparent, Occasional, and Practical Necessity====
<pre>
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 assonaces 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 superflous 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 mementoes 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 abberation 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.
</pre>
====5.2.6. Approaches, Aspects, Exposures, Fronts====
====5.2.6. Approaches, Aspects, Exposures, Fronts====