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 1.3.4.11 (Review & Prospect)
|
| http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/inquiry.htm
1.3.4.11 Review & Prospect
What has been learned from the foregoing study of icons and indices?
The import of this examination can be sized up in two stages, at first,
by reflecting on the action of both the formal and the casual signs that
were found to be operating in and around the discussion of A and B, and
then, by taking up the lessons of this radically circumscribed arena
as a paradigm for future investigation.
In order to explain the operation of sign relations corresponding to the
iconic signs and the indexical signs in the A and B example, it becomes
necessary to refer to potential objects of thought that are located,
if they exist at all, outside the realm of the initial object set,
that is, lying beyond the objects of thought that are present at
the outset of the discussion and that one initially recognizes
as objects of formally identified signs. In particular, it is
incumbent on a satisfying explanation to invoke the abstract
properties of objects and the actual instances of objects,
where these properties and instances are normally assumed
to be new objects of thought that are distinct from the
objects to which they refer.
In the pragmatic account of things, thoughts are just signs in the mind
of their thinker, so every object of a thought is the object of a sign,
though perhaps in a sign relation that has yet to be fully formalized.
Considered on these grounds, the search for a satisfactory context
wherein to explain the actions and the effects of signs turns into
a recursive process that potentially calls on ever higher levels
of properties and ever deeper levels of instances that are found
to stem from whatever objects initially instigated the search.
To make it serve as a paradigm for future developments, I will
reiterate the basic pattern that has just been observed, but with
a slightly different emphasis. In order to explain the operation
of icons and indices in a particular discussion, it is necessary to
invoke the abstract properties of objects and the actual instances of
objects, where by this mention of "objects" one initially comprehends
a limited collection of objects of thought under discussion. If these
properties and instances are themselves regarded as potential objects
of thought, and if they are conceived to be definitively other than
the objects whose properties and instances they happen to be, then
every initial collection of objects is forced to expand on further
consideration, in this way pointing to a world of objects of thought
that extends in two directions beyond the original frame of discussion.
Can this manner of recursively searching for explanation be established
as well-founded? In order to organize the expanding circle of thoughts
and the growing wealth of objects that are envisioned within its scheme,
it helps to introduce a set of organizing conceptions. Doing this will
be the business of the next four Subsections.
Jon Awbrey
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