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Directory:Jon Awbrey/Papers/Inquiry Driven Systems : Part 5 (view source)
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=====5.1.2.25. The Discursive Universe=====
=====5.1.2.25. The Discursive Universe=====
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Wee sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an chase thee,
Wi murdering pattle!
Robert Burns, To a Mouse,
On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough,
November 1785, [CPW, 131]
This project began with the aim of articulating an aspect of intelligent activity, namely, the inquiry into inquiry that appears to be implied in the very ability to do inquiry, to learn from the impressions of passing experience, and to reason about their indications for future experience. Inspired by the enunciation of these high aims the work proceeds in a top down fashion, though of course the rubble of previous experience is always there to suggest the orders of material to expect at the bottom. This mode of investigation, when it works, amounts to a recursive form of conceptual analysis, starting from the barest conception of its aim, seeking the conditions necessary for the possibility of its actualization, trying to determine the functional components that allow it to operate in principle, undertaking to shore up the practical supports that permit it to prosper in reality, and working to alleviate the practical obstacles that impact on its implementation in adverse ways.
A particular agent does what appears to be necessary at each moment in a succession of moments in order to achieve a particular aim, and hopes that what appears to be necessary to an agent who follows a given path cannot be totally immaterial to what is actually necessary in general. The relationship between apparent necessity and actual necessity is the topic of another discussion later in this work, so I leave it till then. At this point, it only needs to be observed that an apparent necessity constitutes a real force on the agent who observes it, in other words, that it constrains the acts of the agent to whom it appears necessary. Given the freedom of intellect that comes from the reflective criticism of particular developments, a particular agent's particular inquiries are hopefully conceived in such a way as to work toward necessary truths.
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion,
An fellow mortal!
Robert Burns, To a Mouse, [CPW, 131]
Given the nature of particular agency, along with the circumstance that an inquiry must be carried out by a particular agent, an inquiry is apt to proceed in ways that are far from being absolutely necessary, and it is bound to wander on paths that fail to be optimal in the use of time. But this fact — the fact that many departures from necessity are likely to affect the progress of any particular inquiry, and the fact that such contingencies, deficiencies, and facticities are almost sure to apply to one's present inquiry — although its likelihood in general is frequently suspected by a reflective agent and its certainty in theory is probably apparent to a critical agent, its import is usually not clearly "known", not in the detailed sense that its application to the moment in question is available to the agent who needs to act on it, and not in the pressing sense that its bearings on the consequences for experience are apparent to the agent who ought to be concerned about their subsequent effects. But the widespread suspicion that what appears to be necessary is not always actually and absolutely necessary, however much it is likely to verge on the truth, remains completely vague in that form, and it does not conjure up enough of an objection to deter action on what appears to be necessary, not unless a concrete alternative also appears.
In this way one is able to see the form of short term independence, the apparent indifference and the seeming lack of correlation that persists in the meantime, between actual necessities and apparent necessities. The apparent necessity continues to subsist as a facticious matter, no matter how grave it appears to the agent who falls within its orbit and no matter how much it constrains the circumstantial actions of the agent to whom it in fact appears necessary. A lack of actual necessity does not prevent an apparent necessity from continuing to appear just as if it were called for. Conversely, a lack of apparent necessity in no way impedes an actual necessity from continuing to rule the total situation. With all due respect to apparent necessities, the fact of their actual facticity is perfectly capable of holding true, however much these very conditions are able to constrain the actions of the particular agents to whom they appear necessary. Moreover, the facticious nature and the virtual force that are severally attributed to an apparent necessity are just as apparently independent of each other, at least, in medias res. The facticity of an apparent necessity continues to hold in fact, however forcefully it actually succeeds in compelling the activities of an agent. The force of an apparent necessity continues to stay in effect, in spite of its actual facticity, right up until the time when it no longer appears to be necessary.
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma request;
I'll get a blessin wi the lave,
An never miss't!
Robert Burns, To a Mouse, [CPW, 132]
What I hope that my discussion of The LOS leads to is an inkling of the type of dialogue that is capable of taking place between a formal domain and the informal context in which it lives, the world in which it is born, continues to grow, and even forces to evolve along with its development, the setting at times in which it lies dormant, remaining restively inert for years or simply sleeping through the appointed phases of the night, the fold in which it is able to be reborn, to come to a new life, and to arise afresh. The form of this dialogue is one that suggests the name for itself of a "discursion", a word that is coined to carry a wealth of various possibilities: a "dialectic recursion" or a "recursive dialogue", a "recursive analysis" (RA) or a "recursive excursion" (RE), perhaps the very form of "recursive inquiry" (RI) that admits of its decomposition into one or another "recursive undertaking" (RU) and thereby maintains the very form of its own constitution. This array of acronyms serves to stake out a ready field of discursive research and exploration, one that is open in certain directions to unformalized possibilities of experience, in a sense or in essence, to its own future.
But the question remains whether sign bearing agents can act, at least, as if they are able to be aware of their bearing as one component of a coherent, competent, and complete code of conduct, even a form of life. And the question continues how interpreters can acquire their faculties for the conscientious development and the deliberate elaboration of the factors that affect their own interpretive activities, in sum, how they can reflect on the factual contingencies that affect their own sign use, on the facticity of the circumstances that constrain these uses, and on the factors that determine the facility of the conditions that lead up to these uses, and then act on the results of all these reflections to make improvements in all these factors. In this way of broaching the subject of reflection, I am forced to drop it almost immediately, with the aim of starting afresh at another point and approaching the topic again, the next time from another direction.
Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An naething, now, to big a new ane,
O foggage green!
An bleak December's win's ensuin,
Baith snell an keen!
Robert Burns, To a Mouse, [CPW, 132]
At times one enters a state of mind that seems so rich in possibilities, teems with so many avenues of interesting departures, and unlocks such veins of unsuspected wealth in the world of ideas that one wants to be sure to revisit it again, in order to explore the rest of the thoughts that seem likely to unfold from its locus, its nexus, and its treasury. But the only way that one can be sure to return to anything like the same state of mind is to put reminders of it all about, at every other point that one later passes through and in the vicinity of every locus the neighborhood of which one is likely to visit. Now a state that one experiences at a former time is not always possible to experience again, but it may be possible to make nearby passes or to approach arbitrarily close to the essence of the exact experience at a host of future times. Then consider a manifold of possible states of mind as forming a space that possesses its conceivable extension. And so one gets these ideas: (1) of a manifold that is suffused with the idea of a manifold that is suffused just so, (2) of a manifold that is suffused with more or less accurate ideas of itself, and (3) of a manifold that is suffused with its own idea just far enough that it can serve to maintain the orbits of the agents that pass through it in suffusion with the very idea of doing so.
If the writer can din the reader into an awareness that the repetition of a word does not imply the repetition of a thought, that the repetition of a sign does not imply the repetition of any idea, that the repetition of a state does not mean its repetition forever, then this repetition serves its purpose, however close it verges on absurdity.
The discussion arrives at the question of signs and texts that signify, beyond their ostensible denotations and their obvious connotations, the characters of their authors, the features of their intended readers, and much more besides about the nature of their joint adventures, whatever their levels of participation in them, the processes of communication.
If the question of the interpreter that is signified by a sign reduces to the question of the interpretation that is signified by that sign, and if this reduces to the question of the interpretant that is signified by the sign, then one arrives at the circumstance of sign that relates to its interpretant along several paths.
"effective descriptions and finite texts" (EDAFT's)
Thou saw the fields laid bare an waste,
An weary winter comin fast,
An cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro thy cell.
Robert Burns, To a Mouse, [CPW, 132]
At this juncture the discussion comes face to face with a type of text, many of whose signs are subject to different levels of interpretation. Besides denoting characters and creatures of legend and myth that form at first sight the subjects of the text, describing their features, and depicting their various adventures, they also appear to be amenable to recursive or self referent interpretations or to suggest an extra sense for themselves. Indeed, they seem designed to serve an added intention of their author, namely, to say something about the aims of the author, the attributes of the audience, whether hoped or feared, and the nature of the whole attempt to communicate.
Just to indicate the types of self reference that are being contemplated, it helps to introduce a number of informal definitions. Let any suitable set of entities {writer, sign, reader} be called a "linkage" of the sign in question, and let any suitable set of entities {writer, text, reader} be called a "linkage" of the text in question. In either of these uses, let the subset of entities {writer, reader} be called the "link" of that linkage, and let the elements of a link be called its "ends" or "termini". At present, the situations of interest are those in which all of the signs in a text, at least, those that denote anything at all, are considered to share the very same link, which they all bear in common with their text. From now on, this condition is taken for granted unless it is otherwise expressly noted. Given a sign within a text, the union of their linkages is a set of entities {writer, sign, text, reader} that is useful to call a "nocking" of the sign. Together with the specification of a sign relation that suits a particular condition of interpretation, these constructs go toward defining a "communication situation", an "interpretive setting", or a "pragmatic frame" for the sign or the text in question.
Naturally, these constructions require a lot more information about the details of a given interpretation in a given situation in order to pin them down exactly, but this is enough to rough out their general ideas. Their main use in the current setting is simply to provide a ready way of talking about the properties of certain kinds of complex texts, as they are become subject to certain kinds of "loopy", "recursive", or "self referent" interpretations.
If a sign within a text is interpreted as making any kind of denotative reference to its own nocking, namely, to the appropriate set of entities {writer, sign, text, reader}, its elements, or its properties, then it is useful to consider this sign and this text as being self referent in the broad sense that they refer to accessory or instrumental aspects of the pragmatic frame itself, and thus can be said to have an "internal aim". This can happen whether or not a sign within a text denotes any object beyond its nocking, and thus can be said to have an "external aim".
That wee bit heap o leaves an stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An cranreuch cauld!
Robert Burns, To a Mouse, [CPW, 132]
In the pragmatic theory of signs it is often said that: "The question of the interpreter reduces to the question of the interpretant". If this is true then it means that questions about the special interpreters that are designated to serve as the writer and the reader of a text are reducible to questions about the particular sign relations that independently and jointly define these two interpreters and their process of communication. The assumptions and the implications that are involved in this maxim are best explained by retracing the analysis that leads to this reduction, setting it out in the following stages:
1. By way of setting up the question of the interpreter, it needs to be noted that it can be asked in any one of several modalities. These are commonly referred to under a variety of different names, for instance:
a. What may be: the "prospective" or the "imaginative";
also: the contingent, inquisitive, interrogative, optional, provisional, speculative, or "possible on some condition".
b. What is: the "descriptive" or the "indicative";
also: the actual, apparent, definite, empirical, existential, experiential, factual, phenomenal, or "evident at some time".
c. What must be: the "prescriptive" or the "imperative";
also: the injunctive, intentional, normative, obligatory, optative, prerequisite, or "necessary to some purpose".
It is important to recognize that these lists refer to modes of judgment, not the results of the judgments themselves. Accordingly, they conflate under single headings the particular issues that remain to be sorted out through the performance of the appropriate judgments, for instance, the difference between an apparent fact and a genuine fact. In general, it is a difficult question what sorts of relationships exist among these modalities and what sorts of orderings are logically or naturally the best for organizing them in the mind. Here, they are given in one of the possible types of logical ordering, based on the idea that a thing must be possible before it can become actual, and that it must become actual (at some point in time) in order to qualify as being necessary. That is, being necessary implies being actual at some time or another, and being actual implies being possible in the first place. This amounts to thinking that something must be added to a condition of possibility in order to achieve a state of actuality, and that something must be added to a state of actuality in order to acquire a status of necessity.
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o mice an men
Gang aft agley,
An lea'e us nought but grief an pain,
For promis'd joy!
Robert Burns, To a Mouse, [CPW, 132]
All of this notwithstanding, it needs to be recognized that other types of logical arrangement can be motivated on other grounds. For example, there are good reasons to think that all of one's notions of possibility are in fact abstracted from one's actual experiences, making actuality prior in some empirically natural sense to the predicates of possibility. Since a plausible heuristic organization is all that is needed for now, this is one of those questions that can be left open until a later time.
2. Taking this setting as sufficientaly well understood and keeping these modalities of inquiry in mind, the analysis proper can begin. Any question about the character of the interpreter that is acting in a situation can be identified with a question about the nature of the process of interpretation that is taking place under the corresponding conditions.
3. Any question about the nature of the process of interpretation that is taking place can be identified with a question about the properties of the interpretant that follows on a given sign. This is a question about the interpretant that is associated with a sign, in one of several modalities and as contingent on the total context.
In summary: The question of the interpreter that is signified to act reduces to the question of the interpretation that is signified to occur, and thus to the question of the interpretant that is signified to follow the given sign under the given conditions. Expanding over the various modalities: The question of the interpreter reduces to the question of the interpretation that is determined, designed, or depicted to occur, and this in turn reduces to the question of the interpretant that is indicated, intended, or imagined to be associated with the given sign.
To follow this reduction in stages, the character of the interpreter that can be signified in some modality to be acting in a situation is identified with the nature of the process of interpretation that can be signified in that same modality to be taking place in that same situation, and this is the matter of the kind of interpretant that can be signified in that same modality to be following on the sign that is given in that same situation.
Still thou art blest, compar'd wi me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An forward, tho I canna see,
I guess an fear!
Robert Burns, To a Mouse, [CPW, 132]
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=====5.1.2.26. (7)=====
=====5.1.2.26. (7)=====