ONT Re: Inquiry Driven Systems
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| Document History
|
| Subject: Inquiry Driven Systems: An Inquiry Into Inquiry
| Contact: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
| Version: Draft 8.70
| Created: 23 Jun 1996
| Revised: 06 Jan 2002
| Advisor: M.A. Zohdy
| Setting: Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA
| Excerpt: Section 1.3.4 (Discussion of Formalization: Concrete Examples)
| Excerpt: Subsection 1.3.4.10 (Sundry Problems)
|
| http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/inquiry.htm
1.3.4.10 Sundry Problems
There are moments in the development of an analytic discussion when a
thing initially described as a single object under a single sign needs
to be reformulated as a congeries extending over more determinate objects.
If the usage of the original singular sign is preserved, as it often is,
then the multitude of new instances that one comes to fathom beneath the
old object's superficial appearance gradually serve to reconstitute the
singular sign's denotation in the fashion of a plural reference.
One such moment was reached in the preceding Subsection, where the
topics opened up by indexical signs invited the discussion to begin
addressing much wider areas of concern. Eventually, to account for
the effective operation of indexical signs I will have to invoke the
concept of a "real object" and to pursue the analysis of ostensible
objects in terms of still more objective things. These are the
extended multitudes of increasingly determinate objects that I
will variously refer to as the actualizations, instantiations,
realizations, and so on, of objects, and on occasion, and not
without sufficient reason, the "objects of objects" (OOO's).
Another such moment will arrive when I turn to developing suitable
embodiments of sign relations within dynamically realistic systems.
In coordination with implementing interpreters as state transition
systems, I will be obliged to justify the idea that dynamic states
of dynamical systems are the "real signs" of concern to us and then
proceed to reconstitute the customary types of signs as abstractions
from still more significant tokens. These are the immediate occasions
of sign-using transactions that I tender as "situations of use" (SOU's)
or as "instances of use" (IOU's), plus the states and motions of dynamic
systems that solely are able to realize these uses and to discharge the
obligations that they incur to reality.
In every case, working within the framework of systems theory will lead
this discussion toward systems and conditions of systems as the ultimate
objects of investigation, implicated as the ends of both synthetic and
analytic proceedings. Sign relations, initially formulated as relations
among three arbitrary sets, will gradually have their original substrates
replaced with three systems, the object, sign, and interpretant systems.
Since the roles of a sign relation are formally and pragmatically defined,
they do not depend on the material aspects or the essential attributes of
elements or domains. Therefore, it is conceivable that the very same system
could appear in all three pragmatic roles, and from this possibility arises
much of the ensuing complications of the subject.
A related source of conceptual turbulence stems from the circumstance
that, even though a certain aesthetic dynamics attracts the mind toward
sign relational systems that are capable of reflecting on, commenting on,
and thus controlling ("counter-rolling") their own behavior, it is still
important to distinguish in every active instance the part of the system
that is doing the discussing from the part of the system that is being
discussed. In order to do this, interpretive agents need two things:
1. The senses to discern the essential tensions that typically prevail
between the formal pole and the informal arena of each discussion.
2. The language to articulate, over and above their potential roles,
the moment to moment placement of dynamic elements and systematic
components with regard to this underlying field of polarities.
Jon Awbrey
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