SUO: *Date 12 Mar 2002 -- Belief In Spells
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| Spoiler. An air deflector on the front or
| on the rear deck of an automobile and esp.
| a racer to reduce the tendency to lift off
| the road at high speeds. (Webster's).
I return to my study of systemtic errors in ontology,
this time trying to trace the interconnections among
many of the foils, and using material from a variety
of recent discussions to exemplfy their applications.
| Systematic Errors Affecting Ontological Projects
|
| 1. Insufficient Reality Testing
|
| 1.1. Lack of respect for the complexity
| of the phenomenon or the problem
| that one is addressing.
|
| 1.1.1. Procrustean Monadomania.
| Trying to force relational realities
| into non-relative monadic categories.
|
| 1.1.1.1. Absolutism
| 1.1.1.2. Essentialism
| 1.1.1.3. Invariantism
| 1.1.1.4. Objectivism
| 1.1.1.5. Universalism
|
| 1.1.2. Flatlander Dyadomania.
| Projecting 3-adic relational realities
| on 2-dimensional conceptual frameworks.
|
| 1.1.2.1. Flatlander Semantics
| 1.1.2.2. Flatlander Semiotics
| 1.1.2.3. Flatlander Totem Poles
| 1.1.2.4. Flatlander Tower of Babel
|
| 2. Illusions Of Perspective
|
| 2.1. Plastic Condensations
|
| 2.2. Projective Distortions
|
| 2.2.1. Animism
| 2.2.2. Anthropomorphism
| 2.2.3. Belief in Spells
| 2.2.4. Word Magic
I want now to focus on one particular effect that appears to involve
the collusion of many different factors from this map of misreadings,
namely, the way that casting the lower-dimensional shadows of higher
dimensional phenomena onto conceptual schemes that are inadequate to
receive them can lead to certain types of superstitious beliefs, say,
the belief that signs, mere spellings, are quite literally possessed
with some inner magic say of their own in what they do manage to say.
To illustrate, let me begin with this not-so-hypnotic suggestion I made:
JA: The suggestion is this: If you find that you and your
colleagues having been arguing for an excessively long
time and without success about the nature of "what is",
then maybe it is time to back off from the fixation on
being, just a step or two, and start to look, with new
deliberation and due reflection, at the many different
categories of things that people say about "what is".
Here is a practical, no-nonsense question that I asked of the
particpants in one of these perennial, go-nowhere discussions:
| Can you tell me in operational, practical, realistic terms:
|
| 1. How you would tell what a sign actually signifies?
|
| 2. How you would tell the difference between a sign
| that signifies a singular individual and a sign
| that signifies a plural general or universal?
|
| When I say "actually" I mean what a word really does,
| and not just merely what a word is "supposed" to do.
And to relieve the rigors of the exercise,
I offered up the following hint of a hint:
| Signs do not do anything at all in and of themselves.
| Whether "Beer" denotes X number of bottles on the wall,
| decrementally varying through time t, and all depending
| on which of all possible parallel omnibusses you happen
| to be on, or whether it denotes a historically situated
| individual also known as "Stafford", all depends on your
| friendly local neighborhood public or private community
| of interpretation.
|
| http://www.staffordbeer.com
| http://www.dsl.org/faq/beer
Well, if experience is any guide, the players of this language game,
no matter how tyresome they pretend to reguard it, will most likely
opt to stick to the accustomized options, the familiar routine, and
the habitual ritual before they take a chance on stopping the wheel.
But those who are really, really tyred of it may find a measure of
salvation in the semiotic grounds that afford just enough traction
to give back the feel of the road to the driver, all the better to
regain a modicum of control over the onracing interpretive process.
So we consider logic to be a very special sort of semiotic study,
not the most general of all possible studies, not by a long shot,
for "general" is the meaning of "special" to be not, and we view
the multitude of logical systems with respect, but comparatively,
like so many varieties of religious expression.
Peirce gave definition to logic this way:
| the science of the general conditions
| of the relations of symbols to objects.
|
| CSP, CE 1, page 280.
Now some people seem to think that the reference of syntax
to objective reality is exactly what semantics is all about.
And maybe semantics was meant to be that, but that is just
not what formal semantics has become in contemporary times.
Formal semantics, in its currently popular renditions,
is no substitute for a theory of objective reference.
Of course, when I say "no substitute",
what I mean is "no 'good' substitute".
In fact, formal semantics, in its present rendings,
is just another exercise in semiconscious semiosis.
Well, there's more, of course, but that's enough for one day.
Jon Awbrey
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