ONT Re: Inquiry Driven Systems
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This next patch is going to be a bit rough. I'll be trying to
outline the general framework of ideas that I use to think about
the experiences of agents, including their expectations and their
intentions, how these experiences get expressed in the worlds of
signs and ideas, and how all of these impressions and expressions
relate to things in the world, things like objects and objectives
and so on. I will go ahead and present this stuff in the way that
I last wrote it up a couple of years ago, making what improvements
in clarity and detail that I can see to make on the fly, but I am
in the middle of rethinking how this whole bit needs to be thought
and said. The basic construct of an "objective framework" (OF) is
one that I actually converged on from three different directions at
three different times, only realizing after the thought that it was
the same thing along each line of looking at it. As a result, the
necessary synthesis -- synthetic necessity? -- is still incomplete
in my mind, and there is a lot of overlipping redundant language
that needs to be sorted out and simplified. Also, I will try
to draw out the more pointedly ontological applications and
implications as I go.
| 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 1.3.4.12 (Objective Plans & Levels)
|
| http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/inquiry.htm
1.3.4.12 Objective Plans & Levels
In accounting for the special characters of icons and indices
that arose in previous discussions, it was necessary to open
the domain of objects coming under formal consideration to
include unspecified numbers of properties and instances of
whatever objects were initially set down. This is a general
phenomenon, affecting every motion toward explanation whether
pursued by analytic or by synthetic means. What it calls for
in practice is a way of organizing growing domains of objects,
without having to specify in advance all the objects there are.
This Subsection presents the "objective project" (OP) that I plan to
take up for investigating the forms of sign relations, and it outlines
three "objective levels" (OL's) of formulation that guide the analytic
and the synthetic studies of interpretive structure and that regulate
the prospective stages of implementing this plan in particular cases.
The main purpose of these schematic conceptions is organizational,
to provide a conceptual architecture for the burgeoning hierarchies
of objects that arise in the generative processes of inquiry.
In the immediate context the objective project and the three levels of
objective description are presented in broad terms. In the process of
surveying a variety of problems that serve to instigate efforts in this
general direction, I explore the prospects of a particular "organon", or
"instrumental scheme for the analysis and synthesis of objects", that is
intended to address these issues, and I give an overview of its design.
In interpreting the sense of the word "objective" as it is used in this
application, it may help to regard this objective project in the light
of a telescopic analogy, with an "objective" being "a lens or a system
of lenses that forms an image of an object" (Webster's).
In the next three Subsections after this one the focus returns to the
separate levels of object structure, starting with the highest level of
specification and treating the supporting levels in order of increasing
detail. At each stage, the developing tools are applied to the analysis
of concrete problems that arise in trying to clarify the structure and
function of sign relations. For the present task, elaborations of this
perspective are kept within the bounds of what is essential to deal with
the example of A and B.
At this point, I need to apologize in advance for a introducing
a certain difficulty of terminology, but the underlying issue it
raises can no longer be avoided. To wit, I am forced to use the
word "objective" in a way that conflicts with several traditions
of interpretation, going so seriously against the grain of a few
prevailing connotations that it will probably sound like a joke
to many readers. It is a definite "motive of consistency" (MOC)
that requires me to do this, as I will try to justify in the end.
As always, my use of the word "object" derives from the stock of the
Greek root "pragma", which captures all of the senses needed to suggest
the stability of concern and the dedication to purpose that are forever
bound up in the constitution of objects and the institution of objectives.
What it implies is that every object, objective, or objectivity is always
somebody's object, objective, or objectivity.
In other words, objectivity is always a matter of interpretation.
It is concerned with and quantified by the magnitude of the consensus
that a matter is bound to have at the end of inquiry, but in no way does
this diminish or dismiss the fact that the fated determination is something
on which any particular collection of current opinions are granted to differ.
In principle, there begins to be a degree of objectivity as soon as something
becomes an object to somebody, and the issue of whether this objective waxes
or wanes in time is bound up with the number of observers that are destined
to concur on it.
The critical question is not whether a thing is an object of thought and
discussion, but what sort of thought and discussion it is an object of.
How does one determine the character of this thought and discussion?
And should this query be construed as a task of finding or of making?
Whether it appeals to arts of acquisition, production, or discernment,
and however one expects to decide or decode the conduct it requires,
the character of the thought and discussion in view is sized up and
riddled out in turn by looking at the whole domain of objects and
the pattern of relations among them that it actively charts and
encompasses. This makes what is usually called "subjectivity"
a special case of what I must call "objectivity", since the
interpretive and the perspectival elements are 'ab initio'
operative and cannot be eliminated from any conceivable
form of discernment, including their own.
Consequently, analyses of objects and syntheses of objects are always
analyses and syntheses to somebody. Both of these modes of approaching
the constitutions of objects lead to the sorts of approximation that are
appropriate to particular agents and that are able to be appropriated by
whole communities of interpretation. By way of relief, on occasions when
this motive of consistency hobbles discussion too severely, I will resort
to using chimeras like "object-analytic" and "object-synthetic", paying the
price of biasing the constitution of objects in one direction or the other.
In this project I would like to treat the distinction of direction between
construction and deconstruction as being more or less synonymous with the
contrast between synthesis and analysis. However, doing this without the
introduction of too much distortion requires the intervention of a further
distinction. Therefore, let it be recognized that all orientations to the
constitutions of objects can be pursued in both "regimented" and "radical"
fashions.
In the weaker senses of the terms, analysis and synthesis work within
a preset and limited regime of objects, construing each object as being
composed from a fixed inventory of stock constituents. In the stronger
senses, contracting for the application of these terms places a more
strenuous demand on the would-be construer.
1. A radical form of analysis, in order to discern the contrasting
intentions in everything construed as an object, obliges agents
to leave or at least to re-place objects within the contexts of
their live acquaintance, to reflect on their prevailing motives
or their underlying motifs for construing and employing objects
in the ways that they do, and to deconstruct how their own aims
and biases enter into the form and the use of objects.
2. A radical form of synthesis, in order to integrate ideas and information
devolving from entirely different "frameworks of interpretation" (FOI's),
requires interpreters to reconstruct isolated concepts and descriptions
on a mutually compatible basis and to use means of composition that can
constitute a medium for common sensibilities.
Thus, the radical project in all of these directions demands
forms of interpretation, analysis, synthesis that can reflect
a measure of light on the initially unstated assumptions of
their prospective agents.
Jon Awbrey
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