SUO: Pragmatic Hermeneutics
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The impressions are coming in from so many sides that
I can no longer keep track of what caused me to think
about what. So I will do what I typically do in such
situations, to abduct, to borrow, to create, to forge
a conception to unify the manifold -- the very notion
of trying this tack in itself being a purloined trick
from that "Master of Systems Engineering" (MOSE),
none other than Immanuel Kant.
Catchy subtitles -- Pick the one that fits best for you:
"The OEDipal Complex and Its Cure"
"Analysis: Term-Enabled and Otherwise"
"The Flatlander's Guide to the Babel of Turing"
"None Of The Above (NOTA)"
Let me begin with one of my favorite stories:
| Some years ago, being with a camping party in the mountains,
| I returned from a solitary ramble to find every one engaged in
| a ferocious metaphysical dispute. The 'corpus' of the dispute
| was a squirrel -- a live squirrel supposed to be clinging to one
| side of a tree-trunk; while over against the tree's opposite side
| a human being was imagined to stand. This human witness tries to
| get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly round the tree, but
| no matter how fast he goes, the squirrel moves as fast in the
| opposite direction, and always keeps the tree between himself
| and the man, so that never a glimpse of him is caught.
| The resultant metaphysical problem now is this:
|
| 'Does the man go round the squirrel or not?'
|
| William James, 'Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking'
Moral of the Story: The ambiguity of the phrase "go round" is not likely
to be resolved without the consideration of some "pragmatic definitions",
what we frequently call, in first approximation, "operational definitions".
More on the pragmatic definition of a pragmatic definition, next time.
Jon Awbrey
Doctoral Candide in Systems Engineering,
Oakland Univeristy,
At the Corner of Walton Blvd and Squirrel Road,
Rochester, Michigan, USA
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