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Directory:Jon Awbrey/Papers/Inquiry Driven Systems : Part 7 (view source)
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====7.1.5. Pragmatic Operating Notions====
====7.1.5. Pragmatic Operating Notions====
A form of inquiry inaugurated in the light of the pragmatic critique casts no aspersions on the notion of a rational foundation for each domain of knowledge nor does it bear any odium against the very idea of a foundation for itself. Against these desiderata it directs nothing beyond its innocuous reflections on the likelihood of their fallibility.
Work carried out under the guidance of these reflections does not have anything in principle against finding foundations for content or method. Indeed, it continues to look for intellectual standpoints that can operate as relatively stable dwelling places, and it continues to find solid bodies of knowledge and technique that serve as provisional way stations for more or less extensive periods of time. It merely observes that all such foundations are found to be more or less tenuously tethered at the end of a considerable stretch of inquiry, and thus any hope to requisition an immovable anchor at the site of their launch is bound to be a fond hope indeed. Trying to stake the outcome of investigation on such a requirement is tantamount to a conceptual reversion, mistaking the sense of the effective gradient that drives the actual progress of inquiry.
Though the imaginative figure of a "sky hook" can serve as a regulative metaphor to describe the relation of the end of inquiry to its uncertain present, in actuality there is no substantial reality to this mechanism. This means that there must be intrinsically definable properties of the uncertain situation itself that drive it toward its intentional object.
The pragmatic critique of theories of knowledge issues in a pragmatic theory of inquiry that makes positive suggestions about the nature of the process that leads to knowledge and gives definite advice about the best way to proceed in the pursuit of knowledge. The guidelines that come out of this theory are expressed in a number of maxims amd tenets that I will refer to as "pragmatic operating notions" (PON's). These regulative principles have weathered the test of realistic experience and proven their practical utility on all relevant occasions, but however positive and definite they might be, they remain fallible and revisable.
The pragmatic theory of inquiry, in the version currently delivered, is both the mediating platform and the intermediate product of a particular inquiry into inquiry.
Serving as heuristic hypotheses, as conjectures about adequate means of discovery and as recommendations about optimal ways to direct a course of investigation, each of these working assumptions of pragmatic thought can be expressed in terms of the pragmatic theory of signs.
The only way to judge the clarity of a complex indication on intrinsic grounds alone is if it contains one or more independent kinds of signs that are claimed or supposed in their different ways to denote or intend the same overall object. Thus, in order to assess the clarity of any complex symbol, expression, argument, or text solely on the basis of its internal evidence, it must be possible (1) to compile the complete array of separate indications that are found to be declaimed or presupposed in the form, act, and circumstance of its issuance and (2) to evaluate how well this diversity of facets succeeds in cohering toward the same end. To coin a phrase for future reference, I will call this criterion the "test of coherence" (TOC).
The brand of coherence I have in mind here, one that is capable of meeting and passing the TOC indicated above, is subject to confusion with a sundry array of different marks, altogether posing under several inferior brands of coherence, as each of these is assessed by an easier test or weaker instrument called a "test of reductive coherence" (TORC). To claim that one of these inferior brands is a reasonable facsimile for the genuine brand, and a sufficient substitute for all practical purposes, amounts to a stronger claim about the kinds of coherence worth having.
Each opinion, that seeks to strengthen its claim on coherence by making the TOC amenable to replacement by a weakened form of examination, is known by the TORC that supplies its own light on the matter, and thus taken as issuing in a particular "thesis of reductive coherence" (TORC). A TORC is often found employed in various sorts of rhetorical ploys, exchanged with a valid TOC in a "bait and switch" (BAS) operation that ultimately debases the value of the very currency that it pretends to tender with the highest regard. Because each TORC that is properly called reductive fails to measure up to the authentic TOC in one way or another, I will refer to it as a "fallacy of reductive coherence" (FORC).
The valid consideration of coherence needs to be carefully distinguished from the pervasive "fallacy of reductive coherence" (FORC) that bedevils every attempt to achieve a proper understanding of reality and truth. The FORC has two branches, dividing on the issue of which fragmentary aspect of complete coherence is emphasized at the expense of the other.
# The "denotative", "objective", or "semantic" branch of the fallacy ...
# The "connotative", "interpretive", or "syntactic" branch of the fallacy would have one believe that a so called "true" expression indicates nothing more than a conformal opinion, in other words, the sort of belief that remains incapable of being distinguished from a comforting illusion or a convenient fiction. Because this form of reductive coherence can be examined solely within the syntactic projection or connotative component of a sign relation, valorizing this aspect of coherence leads one to profess that "truth", as a preferential attribute of everything from signs to theories, breaks down under interrogation to nothing more noble than the expedient form of solidarity that lies in having enough people keep their stories straight for a long enough time.
These two branches of the FORC are nearly able to split up between them the whole enterprise toward authentic types of coherence, simply by deploying, ineptly but exhaustively, the axiomatic instruments they hone from the spurious matter of this manifestly false dichotomy. Paradoxically enough, the lead in to the whole question of coherence is typically posed in such a way that it seems to constitute a dilemma, appearing to force a choice between objective and interpretive concerns, as if there could be any hope of a sensible response to be found within this vein of inquiry.
The partial insights afforded under each single view are revealing as far as they go, and the glamor of each little bit of knowledge that it promises its adherents is fascinating to the point of being captivating, but any light so partial is ultimately deceptive, and if the facts it favors are pursued to the exclusion of the other perspective, then the resulting one sightedness can be damaging to the prospects of ever being able to consolidate a more comprehensive coherence.
As a surrogate criterion for the truth of signs to their objects in reality, the branches of the FORC suggest a battery of alternative tests, each of which mimics the style of truth measured by the TOC, though obscured in a forced and degenerate fashion, and the passing of these tests is often confused with the full coherence of truth to reality, but only within the confines of the various forms of shadow play that an excessive dependence on projective media is bound to limit the mind to.
Various types of reductive coherence, as found to be observable in its dyadic projections, are admirable and interesting qualities for a sign relation to enjoy, and it is probably true that these aspects of coherence are practically necessary properties for the kinds of sign relations that are found to be prevailing in successful inquiries. But reductive coherence is not a sufficient test of useful sign relations, especially when it comes to genuine symbols, and thus the light afforded by the TORC turns out to be inadequate to show the whole truth of the matter.
It needs to be appreciated that the only type of coherence worth having as the end of inquiry is the three dimensional integrity of the unified objective and interpretive situation as embodied in a sign relation. Given this understanding, it should be clear that the various types of reductive coherence that show up in lower dimensional projections are admirable properties of sign relations but are not sufficient to pass the TOC described above.
Degenerate cases:
# Purely objective coherence, the unreflective copy of things.
# Purely interpretive coherence, the unrealistic collusion of signs.
Reductive coherence in a sign relation is an admirable and practically indispensable property of expression but not a sufficient test for the qualities of a sign true to a real object that together comprise the object of inquiry.
In spite of the number of times that oracular pronouncements have served as a stimulus to scientific and mathematical inquiry, ...
To suggest that conformal opinion or convenient fiction that the end of inquiry lies in the kind of solidarity that consists merely in having everybody keep their stories straight in every interrogation.
A truly general understanding of a phenomenon or process is both genuine and generative. It implies that one understands the means whereby a phenomenon or result is produced, and if the means happen to fall under one's command, in a way that is controlled, selective, and discriminating enough, then all the variations of the phenomenon can be produced at will. Accordingly, one proof of this kind of understanding, not an absolute test but one that remains contingent on the means being available, is that it enables the conversion of a spectrum of objective possibilities into a repertoire of intentional objectives.
In theoretical inquiry, one is concerned with the ways that a general understanding of a phenomenon or process can be expressed in signs. A conventional name for a phenomenon neither invokes the actuality of its process nor evokes its intended result, but provides the vaguest indication of its object, and instills perhaps the slightest impulse to inquire further into its nature. Even a formula that turns out to be perfectly accurate in the end can find its expression making so obscure a first impression, as regarded on the face of immediate insight, that it supplies the barest inkling of what it portrays and provokes little more than the most inchoate motive toward its own eventual clarification.
A general understanding of a domain of phenomena expresses itself in a "theoretical framework" (TF). The nature of this association is such that a growing understanding both issues in successive stages of a TF's growth and finds itself supported by the TF's structures and resources. This makes it futile to seek any kind of foundational relationship that goes between the form of understanding and the style of its expression. There is no permanent basis, prevailing throughout their long term mutual development, that would serve to assign a generative priority to any fraction of the potentials existing here, in the "chicken and egg" sort of relationship that exists between these two factors.
The TF is intended to combine into an integrated utility the kinds of features and services that were discussed earlier in connection with interpretive and objective frameworks. Toward the expression of this understanding a TF contributes a "medium of description" (MOD), that is, a formal language of descriptive predicates, constrained by logical axioms and regulated by a suitable inference system, that is positively rife with all the ready made terms, propositions, and arguments that are required to form comprehensive theories of specialized phenomena.
A truly general theory of a specialized domain of phenomena, contingent on its being supplemented with the appropriate parameters, ought to be able to generate a proper explanation for any particular phenomenon within its domain, no matter how surprising initially the fact of its happening appears. It does this by providing a suitable collection of "middle terms" that fill out the medium of description and are capable of moderating, through their interventions in the forms of explanations, the degrees of surprise that are initially, and forever otherwise, found to be affecting these happenings.
One of the major problems in the evolutionary and developmental study of individual TF's is how each of their MOD's is able to grow over time under the pressure of assimilating and accommodating novel events, how it differentiates and extends its "mesoderm" or "intemediate germ layer" of middle terms, thereby adapting the supply of interpretive mediators to meet the challenge of newly noticed phenomena, problematic impasses, and apparently irresolvable surprises that inevitably and constantly arise as it progresses in its particular form of life.
Against this general background of ideal prospects it is now time to consider how and why the complementary motif of partiality figures in. It happens due to the fact that a "finite and discrete" (FAD) sign is limited in its power to determine (identify or establish) a real object, and thus that the TF's whose syntactic domains are compounded of such FAD components are restricted in their scope and grasp of the realities that lie beyond, in both objective and intellectual directions. As a result, a "finitely informed creature" (FIC) seeking the ideal of a genuine understanding of phenomena has to rest content with partial satisfactions and elliptic realizations of this goal. The theories of information and computability could in large measure be developed out of logical considerations about sign relations simply by imposing a FAD mode of operation and by taking into account the partial determination properties of finite signs and interpreters.
Just as the relation between a genus and a species is reflected in a "specific difference" that distinguishes the species, and just as the relation between a species and an individual is reflected in all the "individual differences" that distinguish the individual, one finds the relation between a general entity and a partial entity is reflected in the "partial differences" that distinguish that form of partial example.
It is often the case that various kinds of ideal examples are imagined to represent their supervening types in an ideal manner, in other words, to belong to each of their natural classes in an especially, particularly, or uniquely exemplary way. In language that is sometimes used, people speak of an actual or imaginary "prototype" that represents the generic or abstract "archetype". Provided an ideal prototype is conceivable, the relation between a general entity and a partial entity can be described as a defect, deficiency, or departure that differentiates the particular.
Depending on whether the exemplary development of the general idea is regarded as achieving its fullness in an order of time or as maintaining its eminence on a scale of quality, examining the relation of general ideas to partial instances will involve looking at relations of successors to predecessors or relations of ends to means, respectively, plus the mixed relations of effects to causes.
====7.1.6. Defects of Presentation====
====7.1.6. Defects of Presentation====