SUO: Re: SUOP Topic :> Definition Of Issue
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SUOPT :> Issue. Note 5
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| "And that's the jury-box," thought Alice, "and those twelve creatures,"
| (she was obliged to say "creatures," you see, because some of them were
| animals, and some were birds), "I suppose they are the jurors." She said
| this last word two or three times over to herself, being rather proud of it:
| for she thought, and rightly too, that very few little girls of her age knew
| the meaning of it at all. However, "jury-men" would have done just as well.
|
| http://users.starpower.net/linker/wonderland/
| http://users.starpower.net/linker/wonderland/final/ch11.html
Matthew,
I am going to make a concerted effort to underscore and
throw a more focussed light on the issue that I believe
is the real issue to be raised under this topic heading.
I hear the issue rising when you say something like this:
MW: Yes, in discussions about the Procedures Document when
I use the word "Issue" I mean "A formal issue raised in
accordance with the provision of the Procedures Document".
Curiously enough, the same issue keeps coming up in my occasional
discussions with Robert Kent about "Formal Concept Analysis" (FCA).
Now, I am quite comfortable with the use of technical definitions
that depart in many ways from the usages of common speech, though
not to say common sense of a properly prepared and habitual order.
For example, I am quite conversant with the use of modifiers like
Abstract, Extended, Formal, Generalized, Ideal, Imaginary, Mock,
Virtual, and so on, as used in such nomina as Abstract Algebra,
Formal Power Series, Generalized Functions, Ideal Functions,
Imaginary Numbers, and so on, all of which uses exhibit the
common theme of elevating a formerly established and more
mundane concept to a new order of transcendental form.
But, in all of these cases the whole idea of the new idea
is to capture the very idea of the old idea, its essence
or substance in the Aristotelian sense, its form in the
Platonic sense, and not to concoct something radically
uncouth so far as kinship with the family semblances
of the original idea.
If what you formalize as an Issue lacks essential
qualities of informal garden variety issues, then
it is probably better not to confuse the issue by
using the same word for essentially diverse ideas.
And this brings us round again to the issue that I keep raising:
| Does the being of an issue consist in it's possessing a special
| set of properties, independent of it's being called by that name,
| or does the being of an issue consist solely in it's being named
| as such?
That is the issue.
Another way to raise the issue is to ask the question this way:
| Is one a realist about issues, a real thinker about issues, or
| is one a nominalist about issues, a nominal thinker about them?
And with that issue, we may begin to get the idea
that this discussion really is relevant after all:
John Sowa: http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg11613.html
And with that issue of relevance, initially unsuspected but
ultimately life-and-death relevance, we find ourselves back
at the issue of the following principle:
SUOPT :> Issue Page 2. http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg11645.html
As with many things, from sealing wax to kings, it is the same with
our principles -- they either hang together or they hang separately.
And so the "contingency affecting the effective resolution" (CATER)
of inquiry turns out to be the most indispensable "Big If" of all.
Jon Awbrey
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