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Inquiry Driven Systems
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3.2. Reflective Inquiry. Note 1
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3.2.1. Integrity and Unity of Inquiry
One of the very first questions that one encounters in
the inquiry into inquiry is one that challenges both the
integrity and the unity of inquiry, a question that asks:
"Is inquiry one or many?" By this one means two things:
1. Concerning the integrity of inquiry: How are the components and
the properties of inquiry, as identified by analysis, integrated
into a whole that is singly and solely responsible for its results,
and as it were, that answers for its answers in one voice? These
qualities of unanimity and univocity are necessary in order to be
able to speak of an inquiry as a coherent entity, whose nature it
is to have and to hold the boundaries one finds in or gives to it,
rather than being an artificial congeries of naturally unrelated
elements and features. In other words, this is required in order
to treat inquiry as a systematic function, that is, as the action,
behavior, conduct, or operation of a system.
2. Concerning the unity of inquiry: Is the form of inquiry that
is needed for reasoning about facts the same form of inquiry
that is needed for reasoning about actions and goals, duties
and goods, feelings and values, guesses and hopes, and so on,
or does each sort of inquiry -- aesthetic, ethical, practical,
speculative, or whatever -- demand and deserve a dedicated and
distinctive form? Although it is clear that some degree of
modulation is needed to carry out different modes of inquiry,
is the adaptation so radical that one justly considers it to
generate different forms, or is the changeover merely a matter
of mildly tweaking the same old tunes and draping new materials
on the same old forms?
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3.2. Reflective Inquiry. Note 2
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3.2.1. Integrity and Unity of Inquiry (concl.)
If one reflects, shares the opinion, or takes the point of view
on experimental grounds that inquiry begins with uncertainty,
then each question about the integrity and the unity of
inquiry can be given a sharper focus if it is re-posed
as a question about the integrity and the unity of
uncertainty, or of its positive counterpart,
information.
Accordingly, one is led to wonder next: Is uncertainty one or many?
Is information one or many? As before, each question raises two more:
one that inquires into the internal composition of its subject, or the
lack thereof, and one that inquires into the external diversity of its
subject, or the lack thereof. This reflection, on the integrity and
the unity, or else the multiplicity, of uncertainty and information,
is the image of the earlier reflection, on the facts of sign use.
Once more, what appears in this reflection is so inconclusive
and so insubstantial that there is nothing else to do at
this point but to back away again from the mirror.
To rephrase the question more concretely: Is uncertainty about
what is true or what is the case the general form that subsumes
every species of uncertainty, or is it possible that uncertainty
about what to do, what to feel, what to hope, and so on constitute
essentially different forms of inquiry among them? The answers to
these questions have a practical bearing in determining how usefully
the presently established or any conceiovable theory of information
can serve as a formal tool in different types of inquiry.
Another way to express these questions is in terms of a distinction between
"form" and "matter". The form is what all inquiries have in common, and the
question is whether it is anything beyond the bare triviality that they all
have to take place in some universe of inquiry or another. The matter is
what concerns each particular inquiry, and the question is whether the
matter warps the form to a shape all its own, one that is peculiar
to this matter to such a degree that it is never interchangeable
with the forms that are proper to other modes of inquiry.
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3.2. Reflective Inquiry. Note 3
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3.2.2. Apparitions and Allegations
Next I consider the preparations for a phenomenology.
This is not yet any style of phenomenology itself but
an effort to grasp the very idea that something appears,
and to grasp it in relation to the something that appears.
I begin by looking at a sample of the language that one
ordinarily uses to talk about appearances, with an eye
to how this medium shapes one's thinking about what
appears. A close inspection reveals that there are
subtleties issuing from this topic that are partly
disclosed and partly obscured by the language that
is commonly used in this connection.
An "apparition", as I adopt the term and adapt its use to this context,
is a property, a quality, or a respect of appearance. That is, it is
an aspect or an attribute of a phenomenon of interest that appears to
arise in a situation and to affect the character of the phenomenal
situation. Apparitions shape themselves in general to any shade
of apperception, assumption, imitation, intimation, perception,
sensation, suspicion, or surmise that is apt or amenable to be
apprehended by an animate agent.
An "allegation", in the same manner of speaking, is any description or
depiction, any expression or emulation, in short, any verbal exhalation
or visual emanation that appears to apprehend a characteristic trait or
an illuminating trace of an apparition.
The terms "apparition" and "allegation" serve their purpose in allowing
an observer to focus on the sheer appearance of the apparition itself,
in assisting a listener or a reader to attend to the sheer assertion
of the allegation itself. Their application enables an interpreter
to accept at first glance or to acknowledge at first acquaintance
the reality of each impression as a sign, without being forced to
the point of assuming that there is anything in reality that the
apparition is in fact an appearance of, that there is anything
in reality that the allegation is in deed an adversion to, or,
as people commonly say, that there is anything of substance
"behind" it all.
Ordinarily, when one speaks of the "appearance" of an object, one tends
to assume that there is in reality an object that has this appearance,
but if one speaks about the "apparition" of an object, one leaves more
room for a suspicion whether there is in reality any such object as
there appears to be. In technical terms, however much it is simply
a matter of their common acceptations, the term "appearance" is said
to convey slightly more "existential import" than the term "apparition".
This dimension of existential import is one that enjoys a considerable
development in the sequel.
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3.2. Reflective Inquiry. Note 4
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3.2.2. Apparitions and Allegations (cont.)
If one asks what apparitions and allegations have in common, it seems to be
that they share the character of signs. If one asks what character divides
them, it is said to be that apparitions are more likely to be generated by
an object in and of itself while allegations are more likely to be generated
by an interpreter in reaction to an alleged or apparent object. Nevertheless,
even if one agrees to countenance both apparitions and allegations as a pair
of especially specious species of signs, whose generations are differentially
attributed to objects and to interpreters, respectively, and whose variety
runs through a spectrum of intermediate variations, there remains a number
of subtleties still to be recognized.
For instance, when one speaks of an "appearance" of a sign, then one is
usually talking about a "token" of that type of sign, as it appears in
a particular locus and as it occurs on a particular occasion, all of
which further details can be specified if required. If this common
usage is to be squared with calling apparitions a species of signs,
then talk about an "appearance" of an apparition must have available
to it a like order of interpretation. And thus what looks like
a higher order apparition, in other words, an apparition of an
apparition, is in fact an even more particular occurrence,
specialized appearance, or special case of sign. At this
point I have to let go of the subject for now, since the
general topic of "higher order signs", their variety and
interpretation, is one that occupies a much broader
discussion later on in this work.
Any action that an interpreter takes to detach the presumed actuality of
the sign from the presumed actuality of its object, at least in so far as
the sign appears to present itself as denoting, depicting, or describing
a particular object, remains a viable undertaking and a valuable exercise
to attempt, no matter what hidden agenda, ulterior motive, or intentional
object is conceivably still invested in the apparition or the allegation.
If there is an object, property, or situation in reality that is in fact
denoted or represented by one of these forms of adversion and allusion,
then one says that there is a basis for acting on them, a justification
for believing in them, a motivation for taking them seriously, a reason
for treating them as true, or a foundation that is capable of lending
support to their prima facie evidence.
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3.2. Reflective Inquiry. Note 5
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3.2.2. Apparitions and Allegations (cont.)
Once the dimension of existential import is recognized as a parameter
of interpretation, for example, as it runs through the spectrum of
meanings that the construals of "apparitions" and "appearances"
are differentially scattered across, then there are several
observations that ought to be made about the conceivable
distributions of senses:
1. In principle, the same range of ambiguities and equivocalities
affects both of the words "apparition" and "appearance" to the
same degree, however much their conventional usage tilts their
individual and respective senses one way or the other.
2. Deprived of its existential import, the applicational phrase
"appearance of an object" (AOAO) means something more akin to
the adjectival or analogous phrase "object-like appearance" (OLA).
Can it be that the mere appearance of the preposition "of" in the
application "P of Q" is somehow responsible for the tilt of its
construal toward a more substantial interpretation, one with
a fully existential import?
3. Interpreting any apparition, appearance, phenomenon, or sign
as an "appearance of an object" is tantamount to the formation
of an abductive hypothesis, that is, it entertains the postulation
of an object in an effort to explain the particulars of an appearance.
4. The positing of objects to explain apparitions, appearances, phenomena,
or signs, to be practical on a regular basis, requires the preparatory
establishment of an "interpretive framework" (IF) and the concurrent
facilitation of an "objective framework" (OF). Teamed up together,
these two frameworks assist in organizing the data of signs and
the impressions of ideas in connection with the hypotheses of
objects, and thus they make it feasible to examine each
"object-like appearance" and to convert each one that
is suitable into an "appearance of an object".
At this point it ought to be clear that the pragmatic theory of signs
permits the "whole of phenomenal reality" (WOPR) to be taken as a sign,
perhaps of itself as an object, and perhaps to itself as an interpretant.
The articulation of the exact sign relation that exists is the business of
inquiry into a particular universe, and this is a world whose existence,
development, and completion are partially contingent on the character,
direction, and end of that very inquiry.
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3.2. Reflective Inquiry. Note 6
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3.2.2. Apparitions and Allegations (cont.)
The next step to take in preparing a style of phenomenology, that is,
in acquiring a paradigm for addressing apparitions or in producing an
apparatus for dealing with appearances, is to partition the space of
conceivable phenomena in accord with several forms of classification,
drawing whatever parallel and incidental lines appear suitable to the
purpose of oganizing phenomena into a sensible array, in particular,
separating out the kinds of appearances that one is prepared to pay
attention to, and thus deciding the kinds of experiences that one
is ready to partake in, while paring away the sorts of apparitions
that one is prepared to ignore.
It may be thought that a phenomenology has no need of preparation or partition,
that the idea is to remain openly indiscriminate and patently neutral to all
that appears, that all of its classifications are purely descriptive, and
that all of them put together are intended to cover the entire range of
what can possibly show up in experience. But attention is a precious
resource, bounded in scope and exhausted in detail, while the time
and the trouble that are available to spend on the free and the
unclouded observation of phenomena are much more limited still,
at least, in so far as it concerns finite agents and mortal
creatures, and thus even the most liberal phenomenology is
forced to act on implicit guidelines or to put forward
explicit recommendations of an evaluative, a normative,
or a prescriptive character, saying in effect that if
one acts in certain ways, in particular, that if one
expends an undue quantity of attention on the "wrong"
kinds of appearances, then one is bound to pay the
price, in other words, to experience unpleasant
experiences as a consequence or else to suffer
other sorts of adverse results.
This observation draws attention to the general form of constraint
that comes into play at this point. Let me then ask the following
question: What is the most general form of preparation, partition,
or reparation, of whatever sort of disposition or structure, that
I can imagine as applying to the whole situation, that I can see
as characterizing its experiential totality, and that I can grasp
as contributing to its ultimate result? For my own part, in the
present situation, the answer appears to be largely as follows.
As far as I know, all styles of phenomenology and all notions of science,
whether general or special, either begin by adopting an implicit recipe
for what makes an apparition worthy of note or else begin their advance
by developing an explicit prescription for a "worthwhile" appearance,
a rule that presumes to dictate what phenomena are worthy of attention.
This recipe or prescription amounts to a critique of phenomena, a rule
that has an evaluative or a normative force. As a piece of advice, it
can be taken as a "tentative rule of mental presentation" (TROMP) for
all that appears or shows itself, since it sets the bar for admitting
phenomena to anything more than a passing regard, marks the threshold
of abiding concern and the level of recurring interest, formulates
a precedence ordering to be imposed on the spectra of apparitions
and appearances, and is tantamount to a recommendation about what
kinds of phenomena are worth paying attention to and what kinds
of shows are not worth the ticket -- in a manner of speaking
saying that the latter do not repay the price of admission
to consciousness and do not earn a continuing regard.
The issue of a TROMP ("tentative rule of mental presentation") can appear
to be a wholly trivial commonplace or a totally unnecessary extravagance,
but realizing that a choice of this order has to be made, that it has to
be made at a point of development where no form of justification of any
prior logical order can be adduced, and thus that the choice is always
partly arbitrary and always partly based on aesthetic considerations,
ethical constraints, and practical consequences -- all of this says
something important about the sort of meaning that the choice can
have, and it opens up a degree of freedom that was obscured by
thinking that a phenomenology has to exhaust all apparitions,
or that a science has to be anchored wholly in bedrock.
If it appears to my reader that my notion of what makes a worthwhile
appearance is tied up with what I can actually allege to appear, and
is therefore constrained by the medium of my language and the limits
of my lexicon, then I am making the intended impression. One of the
reasons that I find for accepting these bounds is that I am decidedly
less concerned with those aspects of experience that appear in one
inconsistent and transient fashion after another, and I am steadily
more interested in those aspects of experience that appear on abiding,
insistent, periodic, recurring, and stable bases. Since I am trying to
demonstrate how inquiry takes place in the context of a sign relation,
the ultimate reasons for this restriction have to do with the nature
of inquiry and the limited capacities of signs to convey information.
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3.2. Reflective Inquiry. Note 7
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3.2.2. Apparitions and Allegations (cont.)
Inquiry into reality has to do with experiential phenomena that recur,
with states that appear and that promise or threaten to appear again,
and with the actions that agents can take to affect these recurrences.
This is true for two reasons: First, a state that does not appear or
does not recur cannot be regarded as constituting any sort of problem.
Second, only states that appear and recur are subject to the tactics of
learning and teaching, or become amenable to the methods of reasoning.
There is a catch, of course, to such a blithe statement, and it is this:
How does an agent know whether a state is going to appear, is bound to
recur, or not? To be sure, there are hypothetically conceivable states
that constitute obvious problems for an agent, independently of whether
an instance of them already appears in experience or not. This is the
question that inaugurates the theoretical issue of signs in full force,
raises the practical stakes that are associated with their actual notice,
and constellates the aspect of a promise or a threat that appears above.
Accordingly, the vital utility of signs is tied up with questions about
persistent appearances, predictable phenomena, contingently recurrent
states of systems, and ultimately patterned forms of real existence
that are able to integrate activity with appearance.
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3.2. Reflective Inquiry. Note 8
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3.2.2. Apparitions and Allegations (cont.)
In asking questions about integral patterns of activity and appearance,
where the category of action and the category of affect are mixed up in
a moderately complicated congeries with each other and stirred together
in a complex brew, it is helpful on a first approximation to "fudge" the
issue of the agent a bit, in other words, to "dodge", "fuzz", or "hedge"
any questions about the precise nature of the agent that appears to be
involved in the activities and to whom the appearances actually appear.
This intention is served by using the word "agency" in a systematically
ambiguous way, namely, to mean either an individual agent, a community
of agents, or any of the actions thereof. In this vein, the following
sorts of questions can be asked:
1. What appearances can be recognized by what agencies to occur
on a recurring basis? In other words, what appearances can
be noted by what agencies to fall under sets of rules that
describe their ultimate patterns of activity and appearance?
2. What appearances can be shared among agents and communities that are
distributed through dimensions of culture, language, space, and time?
3. What appearances can be brought under the active control of what agencies
by observing additional and alternative appearances that are associated
with them, that is, by acquiring and exploiting an acquaintance with
the larger patterns of activity and appearance that apply?
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3.2. Reflective Inquiry. Note 9
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3.2.2. Apparitions and Allegations (concl.)
There is a final question that I have to ask in this preparation for a
phenomenology, though it, too, remains an ultimately recurring inquiry:
What form of reparation is due for the undue distribution of attention
to appearance? In other words, what form of reform is called on to
repair an unjust disposition, to remedy an inadequate preparation,
or to adjust a partition that is not up to par? Any attempt to
answer this question has occasion to recur to its preliminary:
What form of information does it take to convince agents that
a reform of their dispositions is due?
As annoying as all of these apparitions and allegations are at first,
it is clear that they arise from an ability to reflect on a scene of
awareness, and thus, aside from the peculiar attitudes that they may
betray from time to time, they advert to an aptitude that amounts to
an inchoate agency of reflection, an incipient faculty of potential
utility that the agent affected with its afflictions is well-advised
to appreciate, develop, nurture, and train, in spite of how insipid
its animadversions are alleged to appear at times. This marks the
third time now that the subject of reflection has come to the fore.
Paradoxically enough, no increment of charm appears to accrue to
the occasion.
A good part of the work ahead is taken up with considering ways to formalize
the process of reflection. This is necessary, not just in the interest of
those apparitions that are able to animate reflection, or for the sake of
those allegations that are able to survive reflection, but in order to
devise a regular methodology for articulating, bringing into balance
with each other, and reasoning on the grounds of the various kinds
of reflections that naturally occur, the apparitions that arise
in the incidental context of experience plus the allegations
that get expressed in the informal context of discussion.
Later discussions will advance a particular approach to
reflection, bringing together the work already begun in
previous discussions of "interpretive frameworks" (IF's)
and "objective frameworks" (OF's), and constructing a
compound order or a hybrid species of framework for
arranging, organizing, and supporting reflection.
These tandem structures will be referred to as
"reflective interpretive frameworks" (RIF's).
Before the orders of complexity that are involved in the construction
of a RIF can be entertained, however, it is best to obtain a rudimentary
understanding of just how the issues associated with reflection can in fact
arise in ordinary and unformalized experience. Proceeding by this path will
allow us to gain, along with a useful array of moderately concrete intuitions,
a relatively stable basis for comprehending the nature of reflection. For all
of these reasons, the rest of this initial discussion will content itself with
a sample of the more obvious and even superficial properties of reflection as
they develop out of casual and even cursory contexts of discussion, and as
they make themselves available for expression in the terms and in the
structures of a natural language medium.
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3.2. Reflective Inquiry. Note 10
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3.2.3. A Reflective Heuristic
In a first attempt to state explicitly the principles by which reflection
operates, it helps to notice a few of the tasks that reflection performs.
In the process of doing this it is useful to keep this figure of speech,
where the anthropomorphic "reflection" is interpreted in the figure of
its personification, in other words, as a hypostatic reference that
personifies the reflective faculty of an agent.
One of the things that reflection does is to look for common patterns
as they appear in diverse materials. Another thing that reflection
does is to look for variations in familiar and recognized patterns.
These ideas lead to the statement of two aesthetic guidelines or
heuristic suggestions as to how the process of reflection can
be duly carried out:
Try to reduce the number of primitive notions.
Try to vary what has been held to be constant.
These are a couple of "aesthetic imperatives" or "founding principles"
that I first noticed as underlying motives in the work of C.S. Peirce,
informing the style of thinking that is found throughout his endeavors
(Awbrey & Awbrey, 1989). It ought to be recognized that this pair of
imperatives operate in antagonism or work in conflict with each other,
each recommending a course that strives against the aims of the other.
The circumstances of this opposition appear to suggest a mythological
derivation for the faculty of reflection that is being personified in
this figure, as if it were possible to inquire into the background of
reflection so deeply as to reach that original pair of sibling rivals:
Epimetheus, Defender of the Same; Prometheus, Sponsor of the Different.
Aesthetic slogans and practical maxims do not have to be consistent in all
of the exact and universal ways that are required of logical principles,
since their applications to each particular matter can be adjusted in
a differential and a discriminating manner, taking into account the
points of their pertinence, the qualities of their relevance, and
the times of their salience. Nevertheless, the use of these
heuristic principles can have a bearing on the practice of
logic, especially when it comes to the forms of logical
expression and argumentation that are available for
use in a particular language, specialized calculus,
or other formal system. Although one's initial
formulations of logical reasoning, in the shapes
that are seized on by fallible and finite creatures,
can be as arbitrary and as idiosyntactic as particular
persons and parochial paradigms are likely to make them,
a dedicated and persistent application of these two heuristic
rudiments, whether in team, in tandem, or in tournament with each
other, is capable of leading in time to forms that subtilize and
universalize, at the same time, the forms initially taken by thought.
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Inquiry Driven Systems -- Ontology List
3.2. Reflective Inquiry
3.2.1. Integrity and Unity of Inquiry
01. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg05520.html
02. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg05521.html
3.2.2. Apparitions and Allegations
03. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg05522.html
04. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg05523.html
05. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg05524.html
06. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg05525.html
07. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg05526.html
08. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg05527.html
09. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg05528.html
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Inquiry Driven Systems -- Inquiry List
3.2. Reflective Inquiry
3.2.1. Integrity and Unity of Inquiry
01. http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-April/001328.html
02. http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-April/001329.html
3.2.2. Apparitions and Allegations
03. http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-April/001330.html
04. http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-April/001331.html
05. http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-April/001332.html
06. http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-April/001333.html
07. http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-April/001334.html
08. http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-April/001335.html
09. http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-April/001336.html
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Work Area 2
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Priorisms of Normative Sciences
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| Document History
|
| Subject: Inquiry Driven Systems: An Inquiry Into Inquiry
| Contact: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
| Version: Draft 8.75
| Created: 23 Jun 1996
| Revised: 10 Jun 2002
| Advisor: M.A. Zohdy
| Setting: Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA
| Excerpt: 3.2.8 (Priorisms of Normative Sciences)
|
| http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/inquiry.htm
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Note 1
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3.2.8. Priorisms of Normative Sciences
Let me start with some questions that continue to puzzle me,
in spite of having spent a considerable spell of time pursuing
their answers, and not for a lack of listening to the opinions
expressed on various sides. I first present these questions as
independently of the current context as I possibly can, and then
I return to justify their relevance to the present inquiry.
The questions that concern me concern the relationships of identity, necessity,
or sufficiency that can be found to hold among three classes of properties or
qualities that can be attributed to or possessed by an agent, and conceivably
passed from one agent to another. The relevant classes of properties or
possessions can be schematized as follows:
T. "Teachings", learnings, lessons, disciplines, doctrines, dogmas,
or things that can be taught and learned, transmitted and received.
U. "Understandings", articles of knowledge, items of comprehension,
bits of potential wisdom that form the possession of knowledge.
V. "Virtues", aspects of accomplished performance, attainments of
demonstrated achievement, qualities of accomplishment, completion,
excellence, mastery, maturity, or relative perfection, "grits" or
integrities that form the exercise of art, justice, and wisdom.
The category of "teachings", as a whole, can be
analyzed and divided into two subcategories:
1. There are "disciplines", which involve elements of action, behavior,
conduct, and instrumental practice in their realization, and thus take
on a fully evaluative, normative, prescriptive, or procedural character.
2. There are "doctrines", which are properly restricted to realms of attitude,
belief, conjecture, knowledge, and speculative theory, and thus take on
a purely descriptive, factual, logical, or declarative character.
The category of "virtues" can be subjected to a parallel analysis, but here it is
not so much the domain as a whole that gets divided into two subcategories as that
each virtue gets viewed in two alternative lights:
1. With regard to its qualities of action, execution, and performance.
2. As it affects its properties of competence, knowledge, and selection.
The reason for this difference in the sense of the analysis that applies
to each is that it is one of the better parts of virtue to bring about
a synthesis between action and knowledge in the very actuality of
the virtue itself.
At this point one arrives at the general question:
What is the logical relation of virtues to teachings?
In particular:
a. Does one category necesarily imply the other?
b. Are the categories mutually exclusive?
c. Do they form independent categories?
Are virtues the species and teachings the genus, or perhaps vice versa?
Or do virtues and teachings form domains that are essentially distinct?
Whether one is a species of the other or whether the two are essentially
different, what are the features that apparently distiguish the one from
the other?
Let me begin by assuming a situation that is plausibly general enough,
that some virtues can be taught, V & T, and that some cannot, V & ~T.
I am not trying to say yet whether both kinds of cases actually occur,
but merely wish to consider what follows from the likely alternatives.
Then the question as to what distinguishes virtues from teachings has
two senses:
1. Among virtues that are special cases of teachings, V & T,
the features that distinguish virtues from teachings are
known as "specific differences". These qualities serve to
mark out virtues for special consideration from amidst the
common herd of teachings and tend to distinguish the more
exemplary species of virtues from the more inclusive genus
of teachings.
2. Among virtues that transcend the realm of teachings, V & ~T,
the features that distinguish virtues from teachings are aptly
called "exclusionary exemptions". These properties place the
reach of virtues beyond the grasp of what is attainable through
any order of teachings and serve to remove the orbit of virtues
a discrete pace from the general run of teachings.
In either case it can always be said, though without contributing anything of
substance to the understanding of the problem, that it is their very property
of "virtuosity" or their very quality of "excellence" that distinguishes the
virtues from the teachings, whether this character appears to do nothing but
add specificity to what can be actualized through learning alone, or solely
through teaching, or whether it requires a nature that transcends the level
of what can be achieved through any learning or teaching at all. But this
sort of answer only begs the question. The real question is whether this
mark is apparent or real, and how it ought to be analyzed and construed.
Assuming a tentative understanding of the categories that I indicated
in the above terms, the questions that I am worried about are these:
1. Did Socrates assert or believe that virtue can be taught, or not?
In symbols, did he assert or believe that V => T, or not?
2. Did he think that:
a. knowledge is virtue, in the sense that U => V ?
b. virtue is knowledge, in the sense that U <= V ?
c. knowledge is virtue, in the sense that U <=> V ?
3. Did he teach or try to teach that knowledge can be taught?
In symbols, did he teach or try to teach that U => T ?
My current understanding of the record that is given to us
in Plato's Socratic Dialogues can be summarized as follows:
At one point Socrates seems to assume the rule that
knowledge can be taught (U => T), but simply in order
to pursue the case that virtue is knowledge (V => U)
toward the provisional conclusion that virtue can be
taught (V => T). This seems straightforward enough,
if it were not for the good chance that all of this
reasoning is taking place under the logical aegis
of an indirect argument, a reduction to absurdity,
designed to show just the opposite of what it has
assumed for the sake of initiating the argument.
The issue is further clouded by the circumstance
that the full context of the argument most likely
extends over several Dialogues, not all of which
survive, and the intended order of which remains
in question.
At other points Socrates appears to claim that knowledge and virtue are
neither learned nor taught, in the strictest senses of these words, but
can only be "divined", "recollected", or "remembered", that is, recalled,
recognized, or reconstituted from the original acquaintance that a soul,
being immortal, already has with the real idea or the essential form of
each thing in itself. Still, this leaves open the possibility that one
person can help another to guess a truth or to recall what both of them
already share in knowing, as if locked away in one or another partially
obscured or temporarily forgotten part of their inmost being. And it is
just this freer interpretation of "learning" and "teaching", whereby one
agent catalyzes not catechizes another, that a liberal imagination would
yet come to call "education". Therefore, the real issue at stake, both
with regard to the aim and as it comes down to the end of this inquiry,
is not so much whether knowledge and virtue can be learned and taught
as what kind of education is apt to achieve their actualization in the
individual and is fit to maintain their realization in the community.
How are these riddles from the origins of intellectual history, whether
one finds them far or near and whether one views it as bright or dim,
relevant to the present inquiry? There are a number of reasons why
I am paying such close attention to these ancient and apparently
distant concerns. The classical question as to what virtues are
teachable is resurrected in the modern question, material to the
present inquiry, as to what functions are computable, indeed,
most strikingly in regard to the formal structures that each
question engenders. Along with a related question about the
nature of the true philosopher, as one hopes to distinguish
it from the most sophisticated imitations, all of which is
echoed on the present scene in the guise of Turing's test
for a humane intelligence, this body of riddles inspires
the corpus of most work in AI, if not the cognitive and
the computer sciences at large.
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Note 2
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3.2.8. Priorisms of Normative Sciences (cont.)
| Reason alone teaches us to know good and bad.
| Conscience, which makes us love the former and
| hate the latter, although independent of reason,
| cannot therefore be developed without it. Before
| the age of reason we do good and bad without knowing
| it, and there is no morality in our actions, although
| there sometimes is in the sentiment of other's actions
| which have a relation to us.
|
| Rousseau, 'Emile', or 'On Education', [Rou_1, 67].
Aesthetics, ethics, and logic are categorized as "normative sciences"
because they pursue knowledge about the ways that things ought to be,
their objects being beauty, justice, and truth, respectively. It is
generally appreciated that there are intricate patterns of deep and
subtle interrelationships that exist among these subjects, and among
their objects, but different people seem to intuit different patterns,
perhaps at different times. At least, it seems that they must be seeing
different patterns of interrelation from the different ways that they find
to enact their insights and intuitions in customs, methods, and practices.
In particular, one's conception of science, indeed, one's whole approach
to life, is determined by the "priorism" or the "precedence ordering"
that one senses among these normative subjects and employs to order
their normative objects. This Section considers a sample of the
choices that people typically make in building up a personal or
a cultural "priorism of normative sciences" (PONS).
For example, on the modern scene, among people trained to sport
all of the modern fashions of scientific reasoning, it is almost
a reflex of their modern identities to echo in their doctrines,
if not always to follow in their disciplines, those ancients who
taught that "knowledge is virtue". This means that to know the
truth about anything is to know how to act rightly in regard to
it, but more yet, to be compelled to act that way. It is usually
understood that this maxim posits a relation between the otherwise
independent realms of knowledge and action, where knowledge resides
in domains of signs and ideas, and where action presides over domains
of objects, states of being, and their changes through time. However,
it is not so frequently remembered that this connection cuts both ways,
causing the evidence of virtue as exercised in practice to reflect on
the presumption of knowledge as possessed in theory, where each defect
of virtue necessarily reflects a defect of knowledge.
In other words, converting the rule through its contrapositive yields
the equivalent proposition "evil is ignorance", making every fault of
conduct traceable to a fault of knowledge. Everyone knows the typical
objection to this claim, saying that one often knows better than to do
a certain thing while going ahead and doing it anyway, but the axiom is
meant to be taken as a new definition of knowledge, ruling overall that
if one really, really knows better, then one simply does not do it, by
virtue of the definition. This sort of reasoning issues in the setting
of priorities, putting knowledge before virtue, theory before practice,
beauty and justice after truth, or reason itself before rhyme and right.
It is not that reason sees any reason to disparage the just deserts that
it places after or intends to diminish the gratifications that it defers.
Indeed, it aims to give these latter values a place of honor by placing
them more in the direction of its aims, and it thinks that it can take
them up in this order without risking a consequential loss of geniality.
According to this rationale, it is the first order of business to know
what is true, while purely an afterthought to do what is good.
It is not too surprising that reason assigns a priority to itself in its
own lists of aims, goods, values, and virtues, but this only renders its
bias, its favor, its preference, and its prejudice all the more evident.
And since the patent favoritism that reason displays is itself a reason
of the most aesthetic kind, it thus knocks itself out of its first place
ranking, the ranking that reason assumes for itself in the first place,
by dint of the prerogative that it exercises and in view of the category
of excuse that it uses, from then on deferring to beauty, to happiness,
or to pleasure, and all that is admirable in and of itself, or desired
for its own sake. This self-demotion of reason is one of the unintended
consequences of its own argumentation, that leads it down the garden path
to a self-deprecation. It is an immediate corollary of reason trying to
distinguish itself from the other goods, granting to itself an initially
arbitrary distinction, and then reflecting on the unjustified presumption
of this self-devotion. This condition, that reason suffers and that reason
endures, is one that continues through all of the rest of its argumentations,
that is, unless it can find a better reason than the one it gives itself to
begin, or until such time as it can show that all good reasons are one and
the same.
So the maxim "knowlege is virtue", in its modern interpretation,
at least, leads to the following results. It makes just action,
right behavior, and virtuous conduct not merely one among many
practical tests but the only available criterion of knowledge,
reason, and truth. Sufficient criterion? If a conceptual rule
is the only available test of some property, then it must be an
essential criterion of that property. This conceives the essence
of knowledge to lie in a conception of action. This maxim can
be taken, by way of its contrapositive, as a pragmatic principle,
positing a rule to the effect that any defect of virtue reflects
a defect of knowledge. This makes truth the "sine qua non" of
justice, right action, or virtuous conduct, that is, it makes
reason the "without which not" of morality. Since virtuous
conduct is distinguished as that action which leads to what
we call "beauty", "beatitude", or "happiness", by any other
name just that which is admirable in and of itself, desired
for its own sake, or sought as an end in itself, whether it
is only in the conduct itself or in a distinct product that
the beauty is held to abide, this makes logic the sublimest
art. (Why be logical? Becuase it pleases me to be logical.)
| It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is.
|
| President William Jefferson Clinton, August ?, 1998
Of course, there is much that is open to interpretation about the maxim
"knowledge is virtue". In particular, does the copula "is" represent a
necessary implication ("=>"), a sufficient reduction ("is only", "<="),
or a necessary and sufficient identification ("<=>")?
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Priorisms of Normative Sciences
01. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg04264.html
02. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg04265.html
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