SUO: Re: ification

[Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>]

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Re: ification SIG,

Just enough time to insert a genealogical note:

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/b/bentham.htm

Bentham's "Theory of Fictions" begat (paraphrastically)
Schönfinkel's "Bausteine" and this begat (independently)
Church's "Lambda Calculus" and this begat (in good time)
McCarthy's "Lisp" and all the rest is AI and IEEE ...

By way of stuffing the e-lectural ballot boxes just a little bit better
I will attach here some bits of an ongoing dialectric that a few of the
denizens of the Peirce List, most especially Tom Gollier and yours truly,
have been carrying on intermittently for quite some time now, regarding
this most atmospheric of all topics of our current concern, to wit, the
question of hypostatic electricity, of how or whether it can ever stick.

This will also serve to throw a new synonym into the mix:  "subjectal abstraction".

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> Subject:  Re: Varieties of Abstraction
>    Date:  Thu, 15 Jun 2000 01:23:31 -0400
>    From:  Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
>      To:  TGollier@aol.com
> 
> Tom Gollier wrote:
> > 
> > Jon,
> > 
> >    I knew there was no sense getting carried away until
> > you'd had a chance to straighten out the context, and your
> > mathematical orientation, which is not foreign to Peirce's
> > either, was clear in our previous exchanges on the list.
> > But I don't think mathematicians are to be trusted in this
> > regard;  not from any moral flaw in their characters but
> > because they're treating this subject of generalization
> > within an abstract realm, and hence they feel no need
> > or compulsion to make a distinction between the two.
> 
> For me, generalization begins in a fairly concrete realm --
> I take "concrete" to mean "grown together", suggesting the
> concrescence of attributes or the fusion of features that
> go to constitute a definite, particulate, and vivid object --
> the action passes through a series of mental affections or
> cognitive impressions -- the only place where such a passage
> is possible without actually destroying the original object --
> toward a conceptual symbol that has a more abstract reference,
> to wit, a selection of the attributes, characters, features,
> marks, or properties that were initially conceived to make up
> the object.  There is a common form to this general direction
> of thought, whether the objects are apples and oranges being
> generalized under the nomen of fruits, or whether the objects
> are numbers under addition and numbers under multiplication
> being generalized under the the nomen of groups.
> 
> Generalization is a relative notion, and there is no more need
> for an absolute ground here than there is for a non-inferential
> perception at the origin of thought.  But the distinction between
> precisive (or prescindive) abstraction and hypostatic (or subjectal)
> abstraction is independent of how abstracted already, how far along
> the continuum or the spectrum of abstraction, happens to be the object
> of thought with which one begins.
> 
> Again, hypostatic abstraction is a two-edged sword -- a "subject"
> is now and henceforth "supposed" to "stand its own ground beneath"
> the flight of sorcery of the nominal property that is prescinded
> by the flightier fancy of generalization.
> 
> This occurs in concrete domains and in vivid realms as much as in the
> other sort, if there is any other sort.  For instance, I do not know
> you as a person, in person, and all I know of you are these signs
> that issue from my computer under your name.  Naturally, I suppose
> that there is a person who stands behind them, someone who is indeed
> responsible for their generation, as their hypothetical perpetrator --
> this is my act of "hypostation", or abstractive hypostasis -- in one of
> its senses, and this is no accident, "hypostasis" = "person", and anyone
> can look it up!  The supposition of a person, an interpretive performer,
> who generates the signs that one passively interprets, indeed, the very
> supposition that there is a person called onself who affords the medium,
> gives a local habitation and a name, and lends a substance to all of the
> signs that constitute the experiences that one calls one's own, well,
> those are acts of "drawing away to stand under" that are fundamental
> to our "under-standing" of ourselves, however fallible, malfeasant,
> and self-deceptive this form of understanding often is.
> 
> Four short paragraphs and I have already put myself to sleep --
> you can supply your own joke about dormitive virtues here --
> I pity the person who finds this stuff in his morning post --
> warning:  do not drive or operate heavy machinery while under
> the influence of this philosophy, or any such stuff as these
> dreams are made on!
> 
> And with that, I bid you adieu ~~~
> zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ...
> 
> Jon

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> Subject:  Re: Varieties of Abstraction
>    Date:  Mon, 19 Jun 2000 23:07:04 -0400
>    From:  Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
>      To:  TGollier@aol.com
> 
> CP 4.332  [Subjectal Abstraction = Hypostatic Abstraction]
> 
> | ... The logical term 'subjectal abstraction' here requires a word
> | of explanation;  for there are few treatises on logic which notice
> | subjectal abstraction under any name, except so far as to confuse
> | it with precisive abstraction which is an entirely different logical
> | function.  When we say that the Columbia library building is 'large',
> | this remark is a result of precisive abstraction by which the man who
> | makes the remark leaves out of account all the other features of his
> | image of the building, and takes [to represent the size] the word
> | "large" which is entirely unlike that image -- and when I say the
> | word is unlike the image, I mean that the general signification
> | of the word is utterly disparate from the image, which involves
> | no predicates at all.  Such is 'precisive abstraction'.  But now
> | if this man goes on to remark that the largeness of the building is
> | very impressive, he converts the applicability of that predicate from
> | being a way of thinking about the building to being itself a subject
> | of thought, and that operation is 'subjectal abstraction'.  (CP 4.332).
> 
> I think that the relation between 'hypostation', that mode of mental operation
> that passes from a verb in action to a noun in stasis, that turn or that style
> of thoughtful conduct that converts a "way of thinking" (WOT) about some thing
> into a "subject of thought" (SOT) itself, and 'reflection', that "bending back"
> and "folding over" of thought on itself, is strikingly clear in this depiction.
> 
> I will be away from home tomorrow,
> 
> Jon

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> Subject:  Re: Varieties of Abstraction
>    Date:  Thu, 22 Jun 2000 00:24:07 -0400
>    From:  Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
>      To:  TGollier@aol.com
> 
> <...>
> 
> Tom,
> 
> Now, this is where I came in -- that is, it is just the point that I had reached
> in my thinking at the end of last year when I decided to take a little break from
> my day to day mental grind to see what sorts of diversion I might find on the web.
> Little did I know how the play would play out!  But the place in question, where
> a peculiar form of reflexive complication found itself tied and once again begins
> to tighten, is the place where one rises from an ongoing activity, whatever it is,
> to reflect on what one is doing, perhaps with a critical eye, and this is where the
> activity that one was cast into, thrown into, willy nilly, and not entirely awarely,
> begins to appear, by virtue of the reflective image that is formed by the reflection,
> like an object, that is, an objective form of conduct, like a chess game, that one
> can choose to play or not, and even consider how to generalize and how to transform.
> 
> Not too coincidentally, this is the place where the mental operations that implement
> precisive and subjectal abstraction, namely, selection and reflection, respectively,
> begin to highlight the importance that Dewey placed on a favorite couple of words of
> his, namely, "activity" and "reflection".  An ongoing activity gradually acquires an
> activity of reflection as a parallel rider, then the activity of reflection is turned,
> chiasmatically, into a reflection on activity.  As far as I am concerned, this is the
> true significance of hypostatic abstraction, that takes us from a point in medias res,
> of an action that engages us, to a stance that is just a little bit outside the action,
> a change of attitude or a shift of status toward the activity that is marked by our
> ability to name the action or the state of becoming by means of an abstract noun.
> 
> In my case, it is the activity of inquiry that I am wondering how and thus beginning
> to reflect on, and this reflection is a critical component of the inquiry into inquiry.
> That is a very nice description, I think, so far as it goes, but how can I teach this
> skill of reflection to a rock, of the sort that we mine from silicon valley?
> 
> Like I said, this is where I came in, and I seem to be leaving by the very same door
> that I entered.
> 
> And so it goes,
> 
> Jon

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Previously under this skein, a sampler:

http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg00739.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg00792.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg00815.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg00828.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg00829.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg00836.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg00892.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg00893.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg00894.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg00933.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg00977.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg00979.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg00980.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01010.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01011.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01680.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01684.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01687.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01689.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01707.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01791.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01837.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01842.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01845.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01858.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01870.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01890.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01891.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01901.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01902.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01931.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01940.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01955.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01964.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01965.html
http://ltsc.ieee.org/logs/suo/msg01968.html

References cited:

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/Reification.html
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/SYSTEM.html

http://www.bestweb.net/~sowa/ontology/
http://www.bestweb.net/~sowa/ontology/causal.htm
http://www.bestweb.net/~sowa/ontology/mthworld.gif

http://www.iso18876.org/
http://www.nist.gov/sc4/
http://www.iso18876.org/iso18876/
http://www.iso18876.org/architecture/index.html
http://www.pdtsolutions.co.uk/standard/wg10/n307/wg10n307.pdf

http://www.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/L75/L75.htm

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/generality/generality.html
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/generality/node1.html
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/generality/node2.html
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/generality/node3.html
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/generality/node4.html
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/generality/node5.html
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/generality/node6.html
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/generality/node7.html

http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva/guarana/docs/design-html/design.html
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva/guarana/docs/design-html/node1.html
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva/guarana/docs/design-html/node2.html
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva/guarana/docs/design-html/node3.html
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva/guarana/docs/design-html/node4.html
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva/guarana/docs/design-html/node5.html
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva/guarana/docs/design-html/node6.html
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva/guarana/docs/design-html/node15.html
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva/guarana/docs/design-html/node16.html
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva/guarana/docs/design-html/node17.html
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva/guarana/docs/design-html/node18.html

http://blather.newdream.net/r/reification.html

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/b/bentham.htm

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