SUO: *Date 15 Mar 2002 -- Obstacles To Integration
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| Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?
|
| No, Cassius, for the eye sees not itself
| But by reflection, by some other things.
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| Shakespeare, 'Julius Caesar', 1.2.53-55.
Obstacles To Integration
One of the heuristics that I always have trouble remembering
in time is the one that I know as "Analyzing the Resistance".
It goes like this: When you find yourself having persistent
difficulties making progress on a problem, then maybe it is
time to take the load off the accelerator and take a look at
the obstacles or other impedances that might be opposing your
forward motion.
In that spirit, I would like to look at some of the obstructions
to inter-communication and inter-operation tasks, which for ease
of discussion I cross-index under the rubricon of "integration".
In order to bring a focus to these thoughts, I will restrain myself to
a single sector of integration tasks, namely, that of coordinating what
we might call the "empirical" and the "rational" approaches to any given
domain of phenomenal puzzles or practical problems, and for the point of
application I will concentrate on the general class of "dictionary tasks".
I believe that the dictionary task is badly misconceived in many present
efforts, and the reasons for this lie not so much in the problem domains
proper as in ourselves, to be specific, in the lack of integration that
we achieve between our various "cognitive styles". Most acutely in the
present focus, this amounts to a less than optimal coordination between
the "empirical", or data-driven, and the "rational", or concept-driven,
modes of cognitive specialization or other means of habitual operation.
What do you see when look through a dictionary?
If you see definitions, then recognize your "rational" face.
If you see usage data, then recognize your "empirical" face.
If you see no way to see both faces in a single moment then
see the gaps it shows you gaping in your stereoscopic sight.
Jon Awbrey
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