ONT Re: Differential Logic -- Series A
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DLOG. Note A15
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Obstacles to Applying the Pragmatic Maxim
No sooner do you get a good idea and try to apply it
than you find that a motley array of obstacles arise.
It would be good if we could in practice more consistently
apply the pragmatic maxim to the purpose for which it was
purportedly intended by its author. That aim would be
the clarification of concepts, that is, intellectual
symbols or mental signs, to the point where their
inherent senses, or their lacks thereof, would
be rendered manifest to suitable interpreters.
There are big obstacles and little obstacles to applying the pragmatic maxim.
In good subgoaling fashion, I will merely mention a few of the bigger blocks,
as if in passing, but not really getting past them, and then I will get down
to the details of the problems that more immediately obstruct our advance.
Obstacle 1. People do not always read the instructions very carefully.
There is a tendency in readers of particular prior persuasions to blow
the problem all out of proportion, to think that the maxim is meant to
reveal the absolutely positive and the totally unique meaning of every
preconception to which they might deign or elect to apply it. Reading
the maxim with an even minimal attention, you can see that it promises
no such finality of unindexed sense, but ties what you conceive to you.
I have lately come to wonder at the tenacity of this misinterpretation.
Perhaps people reckon that nothing less would be worth their attention.
I am not sure. I can only say the achievement of more modest goals is
the sort of thing on which our daily life depends, and there can be no
final end to inquiry nor any ultimate community without a continuation
of life, and that means life on a day to day basis. All of which only
brings me back to the point of persisting with local meantime examples,
because if we can't apply the maxim there, we can't apply it anywhere.
Jon Awbrey
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http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/mighty/history.html
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