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Revision as of 14:26, 18 August 2011
, 14:26, 18 August 2011→7.1.3. Defect Analysis: + text
====7.1.3. Defect Analysis====
====7.1.3. Defect Analysis====
The various threads of discussion taken up here can be sorted out as follows. Considered with respect to the larger scale of involvement and the longer term of investigation, I continue to be engaged in analyzing the task of inquiry from a pragmatic point of view. Pursuant to this broader purpose, I am more immediately concerned with illustrating the process of interpretation by detailing the structures of sign relations, in particular the examples A and B. It is clear that both of these aims are only partly satisfied at this point, and this leads me to contemplate what remains to be done. In terms of analytic procedure, this is a case of "analyzing the remainder", or of detailing the defects of the present state of knowledge with regard to the intended state of understanding.
Defect 1. There is no reason to think that even the possibility of an integral relationship between inquiry and interpretation is thoroughly understood at this point.
Defect 2. The bare fragments of sign relational structure and the pale shadows of their objective and interpretive potentials presented so far suggest no more than a glimmer of how a static sign relation can give rise to an actual dynamic process, much less generate and regulate a motivated process like inquiry.
Therefore, in continuing to analyze the task of inquiry as it presents itself in practical terms, and in continuing to illustrate the process of interpretation by means of concrete sign relations, more attention needs to be directed to the relationship between these two components.
In order to learn the most that is possible from examples that are deliberately chosen to approach the least amount of complexity and the fewest properties of interest, I will need a way of reflecting on their evident deficiencies in a constructively critical fashion. Inaugurating this method of reflection requires me to draw on the available clarity, the ambient light and the tenuous knowledge that makes apparent what little I can already discern, however dimly in the offing, both about the general phenomenon of interpretation under review and also about the ideal process of inquiry at stake.
As I attempt to treat the objective defects of these examples and the rhetorical defects of their presentation, it brings me to a general reflection on the role that examples are meant to serve, not just in presenting an exposition but in the very process of discovery itself. What develops in the sequel is that a suitable form of reflection on impoverished examples can serve a double purpose. Persistent operation as a reflective investigator demands that I, more or less intermittently, keep awake to the opportunities and the duties that lie on both sides of this task, and to realize that a dual pair of procedural descriptions can often be realized in one and the same process.
These reflections on the double duties of discursive processes have an immediate bearing on the conduct of the critiques to be taken up here. Namely, a discussion that presents my analysis of defects in my current choice of examples is also a discussion that exemplifies my choice of methods for analyzing my current presentation. Depending on how the abstract form of this procedure manages to get itself interpreted in concrete actions, the presentation of analytic results can appear to be interlaced with specific illustrations of a particular method of analysis. This general method, called "defect analysis" (DA), is designed to extract a maximal amount of information from deficient examples, and it has close affinities with the types of differential analysis that are used to form iterative series of approximations to mathematical objects and functions.
One way to derive the maximum benefit of instruction from even the sparest examples and roughest approximations that are essayed toward a general concept is to thoroughly analyze the deficiencies of each attempt in relation to a prospectively ideal illustration of the intended idea. Because of its analogy to iterative methods of approximation, this mode of analyzing declinations from a target idea or intended object can be regarded as a logical form of differential analysis. Even without an exact idea of the general concept being addressed, and long before the notion of distance between ideas, rough or refined, can be made precise, it is nevertheless possible to use one's casual intuitions about a concept and one's sense of direction toward the final idea to search out ways of improving each trial or draft of the paradigm.
====7.1.4. The Pragmatic Critique====
====7.1.4. The Pragmatic Critique====
