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Directory:Jon Awbrey/Papers/Inquiry Driven Systems (view source)

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Pronouns qualify as indices because their objective references cannot be traced without recovering further information about their actual context, not just their objective and syntactic contexts but the pragmatic context involved in their actualizing ''situation of use'' (SOU) or their realizing ''instance of use'' (IOU). To fulfill their duty to sense the reading of indices demands to be supplemented by a more determinate indication of their interpreter of reference, the agent that is responsible for putting them into active use at the moment in question.

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Typical examples of indexical signs in programming languages are: (1) ''variables'', signs that need to be bound to a syntactic context or an instantiation frame in order to have a determinate meaning, and (2) ''pointers'', signs that serve particular interpreters operating relative to locally active environments as accessory addresses of modifiable memory contents. In any case something extra - some further information about the objective, syntactic, or interpretive context - must be added to the index in order to tell what it denotes.

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Typical examples of indexical signs in programming languages are: (1) ''variables'', signs that need to be bound to a syntactic context or an instantiation frame in order to have a determinate meaning, and (2) ''pointers'', signs that serve particular interpreters operating relative to locally active environments as accessory addresses of modifiable memory contents. In any case something extra — some further information about the objective, syntactic, or interpretive context — must be added to the index in order to tell what it denotes.

If a real object can be regarded as a generic and permanent property that is shared by all of its specific and momentary instantiations, then it is possible to re-characterize indexical signs in the following terms: An index of an object is a property of an actual instance of that object. It is in this sense that indices are said to have actual but not essential connections to what they denote.

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The form counts as something enduring and therefore more valuable; but the form has merely been invented by us; and however often "the same form is attained", it does not mean that it is the same form - what appears is always something new, and it is only we, who are always comparing, who include the new, to the extent that it is similar to the old, in the unity of the "form". As if a type should be attained and, as it were, was intended by and inherent in the process of formation.

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The form counts as something enduring and therefore more valuable; but the form has merely been invented by us; and however often "the same form is attained", it does not mean that it is the same form — what appears is always something new, and it is only we, who are always comparing, who include the new, to the extent that it is similar to the old, in the unity of the "form". As if a type should be attained and, as it were, was intended by and inherent in the process of formation.

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| align="right" | — Nietzsche, ''The Will to Power'', [Nie, S521, 282]

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A process of interpretation can appear to be working solely and steadily on the signs that occupy a formal context - to emblaze it as an emblem: on an island, in a mirror, and all through the texture of a tapestry - at least, it can appear this way to an insufficiently attentive onlooker. But an agent of interpretation is obliged to keep a private counsel, to maintain a frame that adumbrates the limits of a personal scope, and so an interpreter recurs in addition to a boundary on, a connection to, or an interface with the informal context - returning to the figure blazed: every interloper on the scene silently resorts to the facile musings and the potentially delusive inspirations of looking down the road toward the secret aims of the finished text: its ideal reader, its eventual critique, its imagined interest, its hidden intention, and its ultimate importance. An interpreter keeps at this work within this confine and keeps at this station within this horizon only so long as the counsel that is kept in the depths of the self keeps on appearing as a consistent entity in and of itself and just so long as it comports with continuing to do so.

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A process of interpretation can appear to be working solely and steadily on the signs that occupy a formal context — to emblaze it as an emblem: on an island, in a mirror, and all through the texture of a tapestry — at least, it can appear this way to an insufficiently attentive onlooker. But an agent of interpretation is obliged to keep a private counsel, to maintain a frame that adumbrates the limits of a personal scope, and so an interpreter recurs in addition to a boundary on, a connection to, or an interface with the informal context — returning to the figure blazed: every interloper on the scene silently resorts to the facile musings and the potentially delusive inspirations of looking down the road toward the secret aims of the finished text: its ideal reader, its eventual critique, its imagined interest, its hidden intention, and its ultimate importance. An interpreter keeps at this work within this confine and keeps at this station within this horizon only so long as the counsel that is kept in the depths of the self keeps on appearing as a consistent entity in and of itself and just so long as it comports with continuing to do so.

A recursive quest can lead in many different directions as it develops. It can lead agents to resources that they set out without knowing that they bring to the task, to abilities that they start out unaware even of having or stay oblivious to ever having, and to skills that they possess, whether they exercise them or not, but do not really know themselves to be in possession of, at least at first but perhaps forever, though they automatically, instinctively, and intuitively employ all the appropriate aptitudes whenever the occasion calls for them. This happens especially when learning is first occurring and agents are developing a particular type of skill, picking it up almost in passing, in conjunction with the actions that they are learning to exercise on special types of objects. In a related pattern of development, a recursive quest can lead agents to resources that they already think they have in their power but that they are hard pressed to account for when they ask themselves exactly how they accomplish the corresponding performances.

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In stepping back from a "formally engaged existence" (FEE) to reflect on the activities that normally take place within its formal arena, in stepping away from the peculiar concerns that normally take precedence within its jurisdiction to those that prevail in more ordinary contexts - and unless one is empowered by some miracle of discursive transport to jump from one charmed circle of discussion to another without entailing the usual repercussions: of causing a considerable loss of continuity, or of suffering a significant shock of dissociation - then one commonly enters on, as an intervening stage of discourse, and passes through, as a transitional phase of discussion, a context that is convenient to call a "higher order level of discourse" (HOLOD). This new level of discussion allows for a fresh supply of signs and ideas that can serve to reinforce an agent's inherent but transient capacity for reflection, qualifying an observant agent as a deliberate interpreter of the events under survey.

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In stepping back from a "formally engaged existence" (FEE) to reflect on the activities that normally take place within its formal arena, in stepping away from the peculiar concerns that normally take precedence within its jurisdiction to those that prevail in more ordinary contexts — and unless one is empowered by some miracle of discursive transport to jump from one charmed circle of discussion to another without entailing the usual repercussions: of causing a considerable loss of continuity, or of suffering a significant shock of dissociation — then one commonly enters on, as an intervening stage of discourse, and passes through, as a transitional phase of discussion, a context that is convenient to call a "higher order level of discourse" (HOLOD). This new level of discussion allows for a fresh supply of signs and ideas that can serve to reinforce an agent's inherent but transient capacity for reflection, qualifying an observant agent as a deliberate interpreter of the events under survey.

Opening up a HOLOD affords an agent an almost blank book, constituted within the boundless contents of the informal context, for noting what appears in the formal arena that formally incited its initial formation. This actuates a barely biased count and a basically broader context for keeping track of what goes on in a target domain. In other words that can be used to hint at its potential, it provides an uncarved block and an ungraven image, an unsullied field and an untrod plain, an unfilled frame and an unsigned space, a grander sphere and a greater unity, a higher and a wider plateau, all in all, just the kind of global staging ground that is needed for reflection on the initial arena of discourse. It comes already equipped with a "higher order level of syntax" (HOLOS) that is needed for referring to the objects and the procedures of many different formal arenas, at least, it presents a generative promise of creating enough signs and articulating enough expressions to denote the more important aspects of the formal businesses that it is responsible for reflecting on, and it generally has all the other accoutrements that are appropriate to an expanded context of interpretation or an elevated level of discourse.

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Unless a text calls for some sort of action on the part of the interpreter then the appearance of an ostensible recursion or a syntactic repetition also has little import for action, with the possible exception of making the reading a bit redundant or imparting a rhyme to its reverberations. Taken fully in the light that a general freedom of interpretation sheds on the subject of recursion, a syntactic resonance could just as easily be read to announce the occasion of a break from an automatic routine, to afford a rest from rote repetition, rather than heralding the advent of yet another ritual compulsion to repeat. This is the form of recall, the kind of recognition or recollection of the self, that is always patent amid the potential confusion of the reflected image, that is always open to the intelligent interpreter.

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If one can establish the suggestion that an intelligent interpreter does not have to follow the suggestions of a text - establish it in the sense that most people recognize this principle of freedom in their own action, however stinting they are in granting it to their fellow interpreters and however skeptical they remain in extending the scope of its application to machines - then one is likely to feel more free to pursue the signs that a text spells out and to explore the actions that they suggest.

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If one can establish the suggestion that an intelligent interpreter does not have to follow the suggestions of a text — establish it in the sense that most people recognize this principle of freedom in their own action, however stinting they are in granting it to their fellow interpreters and however skeptical they remain in extending the scope of its application to machines — then one is likely to feel more free to pursue the signs that a text spells out and to explore the actions that they suggest.

Now there is a form of conduct or a pattern of activity that naturally accompanies a text, no matter how inert its images may be, and this is the action of reading. If the act of reading can be led to induce work on a larger scale, then reading becomes akin to heeding. In the medium of an active interpretation a reading can inspire a form of performance, and legislative declarations acquire the executive force that is needed to constitute commands, injunctions, instructions, prescriptions, recipes, and programs. Under these conditions an ostensible recursion, the mere repetition of a sign in a context subordinate to its initial appearance, as in a title role, can serve to codify a perpetual process, a potential infinitude of action, all in a finite text, where only the details of a determinate application and the discretion of an individual interpreter can bring the perennating roots of life to bear fruit in a finite time.

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As it happens, many a text in literature or science that concerns itself with hypothetical creatures, mythical entities, or speculative figures, that contents itself with idealized models of actual situations, indulges itself with idle idylls that barely allude to the serious threats against human peace and social well-being that they betray, or satisfies itself with romantic images of real enough but unknown perils of the soul - none of these would hold the level of interest that it actually has if it did not make itself available to many different levels of interpretation, readings that go far beyond the levels of discourse where it ostensibly presents itself at first sight.

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As it happens, many a text in literature or science that concerns itself with hypothetical creatures, mythical entities, or speculative figures, that contents itself with idealized models of actual situations, indulges itself with idle idylls that barely allude to the serious threats against human peace and social well-being that they betray, or satisfies itself with romantic images of real enough but unknown perils of the soul — none of these would hold the level of interest that it actually has if it did not make itself available to many different levels of interpretation, readings that go far beyond the levels of discourse where it ostensibly presents itself at first sight.

Although it is easy to pick out examples of sign relations that are already completely formalized, and thus to study them as combinatorial objects of a more or less independent interest, this tactic makes it all the more difficult to see what ties these impoverished examples to the kinds of sign relations that freely develop in the unformed environment and that inform all the more natural problems that one might encounter. Thus, in this section I make an effort to catch the formalization process in its very first steps, as it begins to dehisce the very seeds of its future development from the security of their enveloping integuments.

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The form of initiatory task that a certain turn of mind arrives at only toward the end of its quest is not so much to describe the tensions that exist among contexts - those between the formal arenas, bowers, courts and the informal context that surrounds them all - as it is to exhibit these forces in action and to bear up under their influences on inquiry. The task is not so much to talk about the informal context, to the point of trying to exhaust it with words, as it is to anchor one's activity in the infinitudes of its unclaimed resources, to the depth that it allows this importunity, and to buoy the significant points of one's discussion, its channels, shallows, shoals, and shores, for the time that the tide permits this opportunity.

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The form of initiatory task that a certain turn of mind arrives at only toward the end of its quest is not so much to describe the tensions that exist among contexts — those between the formal arenas, bowers, courts and the informal context that surrounds them all — as it is to exhibit these forces in action and to bear up under their influences on inquiry. The task is not so much to talk about the informal context, to the point of trying to exhaust it with words, as it is to anchor one's activity in the infinitudes of its unclaimed resources, to the depth that it allows this importunity, and to buoy the significant points of one's discussion, its channels, shallows, shoals, and shores, for the time that the tide permits this opportunity.

=====1.3.9.2. The Epitext=====

Jon Awbrey

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