ONT Re: OCA: inquiry
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Stan Salthe wrote (SS):
Jon Awbrey wrote (JA):
SS: I am developing a general theory of development, applicable to all
material systems because it is cast in very general (thermodynamic,
information theoretic) terms. The canonical mode of development is from
more vague to more definite; from hot to cool.
JA: I have occasionally used the term "differentiation" for this process:
| What is inquiry and how is it related to the theory of signs?
|
| We examine the structure of inquiry as articulated by Peirce and Dewey. In this model,
| inquiry begins with a surprising phenomenon or a problematic situation. Whether felt as
| pleasant wonderment or as painful bewilderment, we feel driven to some activity that will
| return us to our prior equilibrium. This may issue in a search for explanation that reduces
| the surprise or for a plan of action that resolves the problem. The ensuing activities share
| a common form, the differentiation of a pattern. In our consternation, we recognize a variety
| of features, some of which can be varied as part of our capacity for free choice. The problem
| or surprise is present because of its difference from something. As a surprise, what happens
| is different from what we habitually expect. As a problem, what happens is different from
| what we hopefully intend. To change the systematic expectation against which background
| a surprising phenomenon originally figured, we must discover some freedom to change what
| generated that expectation, and so to modify our personal model of the world.
|
| Jon Awbrey & Susan Awbrey,
|"Interpretation as Action: The Risk of Inquiry",
|'Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines",
| Volume 15, Number 1 (Autumn 1995), Pages 40-52.
|
| http://www.chss.montclair.edu/inquiry/fall95/awbrey.html
SS: Yes, this is unavoidable since the creation of subclasses by increasng
specification (the basic model of development) necessarily generates
trees because of coordinate subclasses emerging out of potentiality.
Differentiation ensues if more than one subclass survives (and
continues in each as long as a lineage of subsubclasses
continues to survve).
The paragraph that I cited from Sue's amd my paper was the residue
of a much longer discussion that was cut down due to space limits,
but the sense of it was, insofar as I can remember it all, just
a bit different from your description of an autonomous external
system. You see, I am mediately and ultimately concerned with
how we each determine our own conduct, as agents immersed in
streams of half-congealed, half-dissolved activity, trying
to reflect and to critique as best we can the nearity of
our previous approximations to some eternally cherished
ideal. And so my sense of statistics is very personal,
like the Savage Mind that I am. Out of the confusion
that we face on a moment of inquiry's birth, or even
conception, we must discern some hint of a form that
tells us which way might just be the best way to go.
That is what I mean by "differentiation", the third
art, the art of distinction, elsewise yclept as the
art of discretion, the highest partitioner of value
that makes its case between those other two arts,
the art of acquisition and the art of production.
JA: Roughly, "general" is extensional while "vague" is intensional.
SS: An interesting point. This allows 'vague' to be generative by
incorporating more descriptors into its sentence as further and
further qualifiers. In contrast, 'general' can but extend its
hegemony.
JA: Yes, I think so, at least, provisionally. It was with (lack of exhaustive) respect
for these dual notions, dichotomies and dualities being anathematic to Peirce, and so
with trying to compound their synthesis or to discern their tertium quid that Peirce
first came to the shores of what he named the "Theory of Information" (TOI), around
about 1865, by the evidence of his Harvard University and Lowell Institute Lectures.
SS: Cool on "Theory of Information", since the process of subclass generation
is the reduction of informational constraints (emerged from vagueness) to
information neat (as in NPI).
I did not understand this sentence much.
Is "cool" good or bad? What is NPI?
SS: I note further that 'general' can only extend its hegemony IF 'vagueness' differentiated
more plentifully into a bigger tree. So it is not so dichotomous with 'vagueness' as
one might think. It is its backward projection.
I am not sure if we are talking about the same things by means of these words.
Is backward projection the same thing as inverse projection, id est, a fiber?
Jon Awbrey
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