ONT Re: All Ways Lead To Inquiry
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Note 2
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1.4.1.1 Inquiry as Conduct
First of all, inquiry is conceived to be a form of conduct.
This invokes the technical term "conduct", referring to the
species of prototypically human action that is both dynamic
and deliberate, or conceived to fall under a form of purposeful
control, usually conscious but possibly not. For the sake of
clarity, it helps to seek a more formal definition of conduct,
one that expresses the concept in terms of abstract features
rather than trying to suggest it by means of typical examples.
Conduct is action with respect to an object. The distinction between
action and conduct, reduced to the level of the most abstract formal
relations that are involved, can be described in the following manner.
Action is a matter of going from A to B, whereas conduct is matter of
going from A to B in relation to C. In describing particular cases and
types of conduct, the phrase "in relation to" can be filled out in more
detail as "on account of", "in the cause of", "in order to bring about",
"for the sake of", "in the interests of", or in many other ways. Thus,
action by itself has a dyadic character, involving transitions through
pairs of states, while conduct has a triadic character, involving the
kinds of transactions between states that relate throughout to an object.
With regard to this distinction, notice that "action" is used inclusively,
to name the genus of which "conduct" names a species, and thus depicts
whatever has the aspect of action, even if it is actually more complex.
This creates the difficulty that the reputed "genus" is less than fully
"generative", "generic", "genetic", or even "genuine" -- and so it is
necessary to remain on guard against this source of misunderstanding.
What does this definition of conduct say about the temporal ordering of
the object with respect to the states? The states are conceived to be
ordered in time, but so far nothing has been said to pin down where in
relation to these states the object must be conceived to fall in time.
Nor does the definition make any particular specification necessary.
This makes the question of relative time a secular parameter of the
definition, allowing the consideration of the following options:
1. If the object is thought to precede the action of the conduct,
then it tends to be regarded as a creative act, an initial
intention, an original stimulus, a principal cause, or
a prime mover.
2. If the object is thought to succeed the action of the conduct,
then it tends to be regarded as an end, a goal, or a purpose,
in other words, a state envisioned to be fulfilled.
3. If the object is thought to be concurrent, immanent, or transcendent
throughout the action of the conduct, then it tends to be regarded as
falling under one of the following possibilities: a prevailing value,
a controlling parameter, a universal system of effective forces,
a pervasive field of potentials, a ruling law, or
a governing principle.
A prevailing value or a controlling parameter, which guides the temporal
development of a system, is a term that fits into a law or a principle,
which governs the system at a higher level. The existence of a value
or a law that rules a system, and the information that an agent of the
system has about its parameters and its principles, are two different
matters. Indeed, a major task of development for an inquiring agent
is to inform itself about the values and the laws that form its own
system. Thus, one of the objects of the conduct of inquiry is
a description in terms of laws and values of the rules that
govern and guide inquiry.
The elaboration of an object in terms of this rich vocabulary -- as
a cause, end, field, force, goal, intention, law, parameter, principle,
purpose, system, or value -- adds colorful detail and concrete sensation
to the account, and it helps to establish connections with the arrays of
terminology that are widely used to discuss these issues. From a formal
and relational point of view, however, all of these concepts are simply
different ways of describing, at possibly different levels of generality,
the object of a form of conduct. With that in mind, I find it useful to
return to the simpler form of description as often as possible.
This account of conduct brings to the fore a number of issues, some of
them new and some of them familiar, but each of them allowing itself to
be approached from a fresh direction by treating it as an implication of
a critical thesis just laid down. I next examine these issues in accord
with the tenets from which they stem.
1. Inquiry is a form of conduct.
This makes inquiry into inquiry a special case of inquiry into conduct.
Certainly, it must be possible to reason about conduct in general,
especially if forms of conduct need to be learned, examined,
modified, and improved.
Placing the subject of inquiry within the subject of conduct and making
the inquiry into inquiry a subordinate part of the inquiry into conduct
does not automatically further the investigation, especially if it turns
out that the general subject of conduct is more difficult to understand
than the specialized subject of inquiry. But in those realms of inquiry
where it is feasible to proceed hypothetically and recursively, stretching
the appropriate sort of hypothesis over a wider subject area can act to
prime the pump of mathematical induction all the more generously, and
actually increase the power of the recursion. Of course, the use of
a recursive strategy comes at the expense of having to establish
a more extended result at the base.
2. The existence of an object that rules a form of conduct
and the information that an agent of the conduct has
about the object are two different matters.
This means that the exact specification of the object can demand an order of
information that the agent does not have available, at least, not for use in
reflective action, or even require an amount of information that the agent
lacks the capacity to store. No matter how true it is that the actual
course of the agent's conduct exactly reflects the influence of the
object, and thus, in a sense, represents the object exactly, the
question is whether the agent possesses the equivalent of this
information in any kind of accessible, exploitable, reflective,
surveyable, or usable form of representation, in effect, in any
mode of information that the agent can use to forsee, to modify,
or to temper its own temporal course.
This issue may seem familiar as a repetition of the "meta" question.
Once again, there is a distinction between (a) the properties of an
action, agent, conduct, or system, as expressible by the agent that
is engaged in the conduct, or as representable within the system
that is undergoing the action, and (b) the properties of the
same entities, as evident from an "external viewpoint", or
as statable by the equivalent of an "outside observer".
3. Reflection is a part of inquiry.
Reflection is a form of conduct.
The task of reflection on conduct is to pass from a purely interior view
of one's own conduct to an outlook that is, effectively, an exterior view.
What is sought is a wider perspective, one that is able to incorporate the
sort of information that might be available to an outside observer, that
ought to be evident from an external vantage point, or that one reasonably
imagines might be obvious from an independent viewpoint. I am tempted to
refer to such a view as a "quasi-objective perspective", but only so long
as it possible to keep in mind that there is no such thing as a "completely
outside perspective", at least, not one that a finite and mortal agent can
hope to achieve, nor one that a reasonably socialized member of a community
can wish to take up as a permanent station in life.
With these qualifications, reflection is a form of conduct that can serve
inquiry into conduct. Inquiry and its component reflection, applied to
a form of conduct, are intended to provide information that can be used
to develop the conduct in question. The "reflective development" that
occurs depends on the nature of the case. It can be the continuation,
the correction, or the complete cessation of the conduct in question.
If it is to have the properties that it is commonly thought to have, then
reflection must be capable of running in parallel, and not interfering too
severely, with the conduct on which it reflects. If this turns out to be
an illusion of reflection that is not really possible in actuality, then
reflection must be capable, at the very least, of reviewing the memory
record of the conduct in question, in ways that appear concurrent with
a replay of its action. But these are the abilities that reflection
is "pre-reflectively" thought to have, that is, before the reflection
on reflection can get under way. If reflection is truly a form of
conduct, then it becomes conceivable as a project to reflect on
reflection itself, and this reflection can even lead to the
conclusion that reflection does not have all of the powers
that it is commonly portrayed to have.
Jon Awbrey
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