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Directory:Jon Awbrey/Papers/Inquiry Driven Systems : Part 8 (view source)
Revision as of 15:30, 20 August 2011
, 15:30, 20 August 2011→8.1.1.1. Eponymous Ancestors : The Precursors of Abstraction?: + text
=====8.1.1.1. Eponymous Ancestors : The Precursors of Abstraction?=====
=====8.1.1.1. Eponymous Ancestors : The Precursors of Abstraction?=====
As one application of the flexible attitude just proposed, consider the following issue.
An important problem in the evolution or development of intelligence is the question how genuine concepts (categorical abstractions and hypothetical constructions) can be derived from particular percepts. The gap between individual acquaintance and comprehensive description always seems too vast to explain how incipient minds can vault it with any sense of security.
In formal language theory, this distinction corresponds to the difference between "terminal" and "non terminal" symbols in a formal grammar. That is, it signifies the contrast between lexical items with narrowly defined extensions and atomic instances as opposed to grammatical categories with infinite extensions and complex constituencies. Asking the question in this setting: How does a burgeoning language facility make the transition from finite state grammars, where terminals yield handles on non terminal symbols that obviate the need for a parser to backtrack, to higher level grammars, where a strategy of hypothetical trial and error is inevitable?
One way of visualizing a continuity in this transformation is by supposing that the potential to serve as an abstract sign is already available to interpreters in the flexible use of concrete signs. This suggests that generative categories and genuine hypotheses may arise by degrees in a gradual turning of phrases from fixed meanings to functional roles. Thus, authentic concepts can be derived from the interpretive recycling of individual names and nominal idioms into paradigmatic and schematic senses.
Peripatetically speaking, this illustrates a way that fledgling interpreters might pace themselves itself through the steps of this jump (the leap of abstraction) and trace a smooth progress over the intervening space: first, let them reposition discrete names in paradigmatic and schematic senses; then, allow them enough sense to recapture terminal and formulaic stereotypes as newly productive archetypes.
=====8.1.1.2. Reticles : Interpretive Flexibility as a Design Issue=====
=====8.1.1.2. Reticles : Interpretive Flexibility as a Design Issue=====