tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83110368592267513362024-03-04T22:49:23.197-08:00Diagrammatic Thinking"The question, instead, is that of wondering why thought resembles not only what is called the 'life of the mind', but also reality; and above all of questioning the schematism that regulates this 'strange resemblance'."
— Jacques Derrida and Maurizio Ferraris. Paris, 12 June 1996TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-42250194173617107152019-07-03T10:32:00.000-07:002019-07-03T10:32:11.644-07:00Causes and Forces<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7ykgbszjAiLzIhw-21B-tcm3LZU3zIvGXgmDMO996fr6XlVzv3oaog1QVOZ9F0G47FfWVdLGyDESrONEu4N4X44lFY-k_eDj6NdtVkD2pKgFVjCEcvbBlorYJvpCaUfvt7atVxB7by8g/s1600/mathscience.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="156" data-original-width="522" height="95" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7ykgbszjAiLzIhw-21B-tcm3LZU3zIvGXgmDMO996fr6XlVzv3oaog1QVOZ9F0G47FfWVdLGyDESrONEu4N4X44lFY-k_eDj6NdtVkD2pKgFVjCEcvbBlorYJvpCaUfvt7atVxB7by8g/s320/mathscience.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
In "How to Makes Our Ideas Clear" spends most his time clarifying the concept of <i>force</i> by working on what seem like an <i>a priori</i> explication of the a diagram, a "parallelogram of forces." However, concept of <i>force</i> is tied to our existential experiences of <i>acceleration</i>. This "purpose" guides the applications of the diagram to experience, the structuring of the diagram itself, and the testing of inferred consequences from it.<br />
<br />
He then goes on to say, given his understanding of the concept of <i>force</i>, that:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Whether we ought to say that a force is an acceleration, or that it causes an acceleration, is a mere question of propriety of language, which has no more to do with our real meaning than the difference between the French idiom "<i>Il fait froid</i>" and its English equivalent "<i>It is cold</i>."</blockquote>
But this is doesn't ring true. A mathematical diagram of <i>forces</i> is one thing, and a categorical diagram of <i>causes</i> is another. In fact, it would seem that modern science, among other things, was precisely this turning away from the Aristotelian <i>causes</i> for a mathematical renditions of <i>forces</i>. It was, thus, not a major shift when modern science shifted from causal explanations to statistical ones. It was simply a continuation of the mathematical manipulations of a very different concept, namely <i>force</i>.<br />
<br />
Peirce describes this concept functioning as the basis for modern science:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This leads us to undertake an account of the idea of Force in general. This is the great conception which, developed in the early part of the seventeenth century from the rude idea of a cause, and constantly improved upon since, has shown us how to explain all the changes of motion which bodies experience, and how to think about all physical phenomena; which has given birth to modern science, and changed the face of the globe; and which, aside from its more special uses, has played a principal part in directing the course of modern thought, and in furthering modern social development.</blockquote>
The rudeness of "idea of a cause" is apparently it's more rudimentary diagrammatic representation as Aristotle's four kinds of <i>causes</i> and what can be done with it compared to the mathematical representation of <i>forces</i>.TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-14713263478035009632016-04-30T10:11:00.000-07:002016-04-30T10:16:19.431-07:00Logic of Lying<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPONv8H_6wmIFiAuDpNY_NZNJhyphenhyphen6_cSnBJbHh-KIlpJBEfeMZT9EzCylBbvTeEsVEMr7YCRX5m_Vy_-OC_UaO4Jj2Rhf4WC3Fai15ynXoNBu42w5QpL4r3YtsTYmZOMLgQcjCKpVRyzac/s1600/Fingers+Crossed.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="141" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPONv8H_6wmIFiAuDpNY_NZNJhyphenhyphen6_cSnBJbHh-KIlpJBEfeMZT9EzCylBbvTeEsVEMr7YCRX5m_Vy_-OC_UaO4Jj2Rhf4WC3Fai15ynXoNBu42w5QpL4r3YtsTYmZOMLgQcjCKpVRyzac/s200/Fingers+Crossed.png" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Stephen Toulmin wrote:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Frege, Bertrand Russell, and their colleagues confined logic to the study of <i>formally valid</i> arguments, as discussed in Aristotle's <i>Analytics</i>, and, by the same decision, expelled from logic all consideration of <i>substantively sound </i>arguments, as discussed, for example, in the <i>Topics</i>. ["<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343275?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents" target="_blank">The Construal of Reality</a>," p. 109]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And Toulmin, like Aristotle, would like to leave room for both, formal logic and "substantive" or "dialectical" reasoning when it comes to knowledge. However, Aristotle is clear about how formal logic should work in this context.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It is a 'demonstration', when the premisses from which the reasoning starts are true and primary, or are such that our knowledge of them has originally come through premisses which are primary and true …. Things are 'true' and 'primary' which are believed on the strength not of anything else but of themselves: for in regard to the first principles of science it is improper to ask any further for the why and wherefore of them; each of the first principles should command belief in and by itself. [<a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/topics.1.i.html" target="_blank"><i>Topics</i>, Book 1</a>, §1 translated by W. A. Pickard]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If we begin with a first principle, something true in and of itself, then the rigorous consistency of formal logic insures what follows is true. But if we reject the very idea of first principles, that there can be anything in and of itself known to be true, formal logic can only claim consistency. The first rule of lying is to keep it consistent, and formal logic, without first principles, is an unquestioning accomplice in such efforts.</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-52296041078514145272016-04-10T20:00:00.003-07:002016-04-13T16:49:24.564-07:00Denotation and Reference<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://phil.unlv.edu/faculty.html" target="_blank">Professor Ian Dove</a> gave a talk at UNLV entitled </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtad_j_Ky2P0knUdKdgjNFIhRSyPMSnVhnRZpXqTceqACNkzxTs8UnuTWnj70YEW9kjqs4LNTW-rImtShoxfv8b_8rHmE3VDTK6Fs1DjB2K-bGs0QXQvtAww1R97n7SXd_Y3DACW1B2sw/s1600/Tansey%252C+Derrida+Queries+de+Man.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtad_j_Ky2P0knUdKdgjNFIhRSyPMSnVhnRZpXqTceqACNkzxTs8UnuTWnj70YEW9kjqs4LNTW-rImtShoxfv8b_8rHmE3VDTK6Fs1DjB2K-bGs0QXQvtAww1R97n7SXd_Y3DACW1B2sw/s320/Tansey%252C+Derrida+Queries+de+Man.png" width="209" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"Doing Philosophy through Painting? On Danto and Taylor on Tansey on Art" in which he discussed <a href="http://www.artchive.com/artchive/T/tansey/derrida.jpg.html" target="_blank">Mark Tansey's picture "Derrida Queries de Man</a>". </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I was reminded of a quote from Peirce:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A man's portrait with a man's name written under it is strictly a proposition, although its syntax is not that of speech, and although the portrait itself not only represents, but is, a Hypoicon. But the proper name so nearly approximates to the nature of an Index, that this might suffice to give an idea of an informational Index. [CP 2.320]</span></blockquote>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwiyj4GMTXsgAebf1aWMcytyQpoNYJEZlLjb0gmVKL_NctSeQAtVdVGZ9kSvboglUJCwsDZw5sp4gNrGcoFJAduWkW_K_hnNl2quzlbNgYcWzvJb2P1K4gyDPS1HECo2H4LKhuam7V-iI/s1600/Paget%252C+Death+of+Sherlock+Holmes.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwiyj4GMTXsgAebf1aWMcytyQpoNYJEZlLjb0gmVKL_NctSeQAtVdVGZ9kSvboglUJCwsDZw5sp4gNrGcoFJAduWkW_K_hnNl2quzlbNgYcWzvJb2P1K4gyDPS1HECo2H4LKhuam7V-iI/s320/Paget%252C+Death+of+Sherlock+Holmes.png" width="213" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Perhaps, being more complex, Tansey's painting could provide a better example than the portrait for exploring the nature of propositions and indices.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On the one side, there is a predicate, a Hypoicon, in this case the picture itself. It is a metaphor, based on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Paget" target="_blank">Sydney Paget's illustration, "The Death of Sherlock Holmes"</a>. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The illustration shows Holmes and Moriarty fighting at the Reichenbach Falls, and in </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">the story, "The Final Problem," both of them plunge to their deaths.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> There are no doubt similarities and contrasts I'm unaware of, but there's at least the cliffs which are more prominent, they seem built out of text, and and the two figures appear to be dancing more than struggling in Tansey's painting. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One point that doesn't come out so clearly in Peirce's example of the portrait, is that there are already indices of a sort within the painting. The two figures, if seen closely, look like Derrida and DeMan. The text-filled cliffs perhaps indicate the texts of the two men, or of Deconstruction in general, and perhaps their steepness portrays their rigor or uncompromising nature. But all this is an analytic kind of thought, Peirce's <i>a priori</i> method, contained within the context of the painting</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On the other side, the subject, the title of the work, "Derrida Queries de Man," creates a substantial index. This subject-index works in two ways.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1. It puts the focus on the two figures in the painting, and it identifies the one, Derrida, as ostensibly questioning de Man. This I would refer to as the <i>denotative</i> aspect, a definition of the </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">indices from within, or in terms of, the predicate-icon</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2. But this subject-index of the title also brings forth information </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">drawn from sources other than the predicate-icon itself</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">. In this case it is the controversy surrounding de Man's collaboration with the Nazis in Belgium from 1940 to 1942, and Derrida's article, "<a href="http://philpapers.org/rec/DERLTS" target="_blank">Like the Sound of the Sea Deep within a Shell: Paul de </a></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://philpapers.org/rec/DERLTS" target="_blank">Man's War</a>" (</span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Critical Inquiry</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> 14 [Spring 1988]: 590-652) trying to minimize those actions. He was "questioning" de Man in a way that was more like dancing with him. Deconstructive methods, what would be the poison to any and all forms of totalitarianism, are being used to justify a collaboration with one the worst of them. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This "collateral" information I would refer to as the <i>reference</i> of the subject-index.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Subject-index and the predicate-icon thereby produce this proposition that </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">these two men are dancing under the guise of one questioning the other in a very precarious place, that their own texts put them in danger of falling, of both of them being discredited.</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-25636070026562629822016-02-14T08:09:00.000-08:002016-02-14T08:09:40.714-08:00Truth in Diagrams<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbeIvoGS-plL4IfK3ZXCZd9mSSFdq2YSrR7i-2C8arXDVT8dlJDJFcNUvKutgw62jERG8gbK0viCwHESjHAFTesr9BxWWNu-pH-KaodMfLW_D3mO9-WkuPLdsGzazBcja4Y2mYBh7Mp3M/s1600/Parallel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbeIvoGS-plL4IfK3ZXCZd9mSSFdq2YSrR7i-2C8arXDVT8dlJDJFcNUvKutgw62jERG8gbK0viCwHESjHAFTesr9BxWWNu-pH-KaodMfLW_D3mO9-WkuPLdsGzazBcja4Y2mYBh7Mp3M/s200/Parallel.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Diagrams are fictions:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The artist introduces a fiction; but it is not an arbitrary one; it exhibits affinities to which the mind accords a certain approval in pronouncing them beautiful, which if it is not exactly the same as saying that the synthesis is true, is something of the same general kind. The geometer draws a diagram, which if not exactly a fiction, is at least a creation, …" [CP 1.383]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So how is it that these fictions can be true or false? To answer that question I think we have to look Peirce's notion of a metaphor which he defined as </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"representing a parallelism in something else" [CP 2.277].</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The diagram is built on an analogy with its object. The diagram runs from that analogy and its applications to the consequences that can be inferred from it; and as a metaphor, if it runs "parallel" to the object and its interactions, the diagram would be true. The parallelism must be maintained in three respects: (1) a realistic analogy, (2) consistent inferences, and (3) corresponding consequences. Something similar, I would venture, is going on with art as well.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Anyway, the catch in all this is the object. Is it the object in all the obscurity of it’s secondness? Or, is it an object constructed, more or less articulated, in thirdness? This is a problem with metaphors in general. If we say “this person’s a wolf” what’s the object we have in mind? The animal in the wild? Or, have we seen one staring blankly at us in a zoo? Or, perhaps, it's a conglomeration of encyclopedia entries, school courses, or fairy tales? We have these denotations and connotations for “wolf,” but most of us have no referent, no direct acquaintance with the animal itself. Thus, the thirdness of those denotations and connotations become the referent, the object, on which our understanding and use of “wolf” is based, and the whole thing becomes an exercise in analytic viruosity. The virtue of science, but not all that calls itself “science”, is that it demands a direct contact with the secondess of the object, both in applying the diagram and in testing its consequences.</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-46693030203731706012015-12-06T08:46:00.000-08:002015-12-07T06:04:19.226-08:00Systems<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If by 'system' is meant — and this is the minimal sense of the word — a sort of consequence, coherence and insistence — a certain gathering together — there is an injunction to the system that I have never renounced, and never wished to. … 'System ', however, in a philosophical sense that is more rigorous, and </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">perhaps more modern, can also be taken to mean a totalization in the configuration, a </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">continuity of all statements, a </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">form</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> of coherence (not coherence itself), involving </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">syllogicity of logic, a certain </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">syn</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> which is no longer simply that of gathering in </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">general, but rather of the assemblage of onto</span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">logical</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> propositions.</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">— Derrida and Ferraris, <i>I Have a Taste for the </i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"></span>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Secret</i>, (Polity Press, 2001), p. 3</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">
</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Diagrammatic thinking, at least as I envision it, is also an effort to get away from the </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"system" as an axiomatic, analytically formal, would-be universal "totalization" and to see it </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">as a particular collection of indices and relationships abstracted from experience on the one side </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and limited in its applications to that kind of experience on the other.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And, such "systems" occur on much simpler levels still. Andrew Whiten's "intervening variable":<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkm67ssuX0v0jgajY7lYpKjbY2fgamPAbKars3LtaIdJipJ2XPKyZI3D1CKsWg2-huzbbXpnnnX05xql8nsXS5vqNWmZmoSJl7iVQJne_eawR_v0BAen-kY2JNGyFsLqmAANJwhNbartk/s1600/Whiten.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkm67ssuX0v0jgajY7lYpKjbY2fgamPAbKars3LtaIdJipJ2XPKyZI3D1CKsWg2-huzbbXpnnnX05xql8nsXS5vqNWmZmoSJl7iVQJne_eawR_v0BAen-kY2JNGyFsLqmAANJwhNbartk/s400/Whiten.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Andrew Whiten, "Triangulation, Intervening Variables, and Experience <br />
Projection," <i>Behavioral and Brain Sciences</i> 21 (1) (1998)<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">:133</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">performs the same mediating function in what he calls the "triangulation" of patterns on the </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">one side with consequences on the other. It really doesn't matter exactly what the intervening </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">variable <i>is</i> — whether it's a word, an image, or a layer of neurons. What matters </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">is that it's operating diagrammatically with "a sort of consequence, coherence and insistence </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">— a certain gathering together."</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-69233930390394987072015-10-29T13:40:00.000-07:002015-10-29T13:43:00.310-07:00Maps, Cameras, and Ideology<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Cooks_Karte_von_Neufundland.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="194" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Cooks_Karte_von_Neufundland.jpg" title=""Cooks Karte von Neufundland" by Michael Lane and James Cook" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maps as diagrams are judged by how well they function, but that functionality, however it's defined, is guaranteed by the precision and accuracy that goes into the map's making. A large part of why Captain James Cook rise from below decks to command of three exploratory expeditions to the South Pacific was his mapmaking abilities, and the maps he made were so precise and accurate, I've heard, that they were still being used in some places at the start of WW II. This emphasis on the accuracy and precision is generally associated with scientific maps.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But there are also persuasive maps. And with these the accuracy and precision, that is, how much of it is really needed, is measured by the function of the map. Like Marx's metaphor of the <i>camera obscura</i>:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside own as in a <i>camera </i><i>obscura</i>, this phenomenon arises just as much for their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: right;">— Karl Marx, </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1614270481/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1614270481&linkCode=as2&tag=diagramthinki-20&linkId=3ZW7YSLDQY6O3HFX">The German Ideology</a></i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: right;">, 1844, </span><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=DujYWG8TPMMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+German+Ideology&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIuNbms8PoyAIVwlY-Ch1KMQmL#v=onepage&q=%22If%20in%20all%20ideology%22&f=false" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: right;">p.47</a></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the process inverts things. Instead of the accuracy and precision of the map being the basis for it's functionality, its functionality is the basis for how much accuracy and precision there needs to be. With science and ideology, or to put it more generally, the inversion is from truth being the basis for acceptance to acceptance being the basis for truth.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And, the camera metaphor also holds up when we consider accuracy and precision in relation to functionless maps hanging on a wall or illustrating a book. Perhaps the exactness has an aesthetic quality to it, but like the digital accuracy of the universe of photographs now being stored online, it has been rendered inane.</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-46824501901298940332015-10-14T08:39:00.000-07:002015-10-15T06:42:27.304-07:00Image or Diagram<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJCGBmh07oPbgItxUmITe9Us4D4XCt4GAqgWa7mJFjMTk_AhFcfnd7ulmSkky_R7cCNg-Gfs61pPMIhx7Yy8Yr91UdvPy3XFr-e0SdOP-cE55BwD52L42kPLNFqlSYL0bFToyn-A1qt90/s1600/Mercator+Map.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJCGBmh07oPbgItxUmITe9Us4D4XCt4GAqgWa7mJFjMTk_AhFcfnd7ulmSkky_R7cCNg-Gfs61pPMIhx7Yy8Yr91UdvPy3XFr-e0SdOP-cE55BwD52L42kPLNFqlSYL0bFToyn-A1qt90/s200/Mercator+Map.png" width="200" /></span></a></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>The Mercator map developed in 1569 was well-suited for seafaring. A course plotted anywhere on the map matches up with the bearing the ship needs to take in getting from one place to another. To be truly useful the Mercator map needed to be supplemented by a marine chronometer and a knowledge of the magnetic versus geographical poles, but as a diagram the consequences drawn from its applications were verified and refined by countless navigators. However, as a result of its success, the Mercator projection of the world came to represent the world for virtually everyone. The diagram used by sailors became the image in books and classrooms everywhere.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>The basis for accepting or rejecting an image is the connection between it and the object it represents. The map, as an image, should be a precise and accurate representation of that object. It can be criticized for distorting what it represents, as the Mercator map has been for distorting distances and sizes. It can be admonished for embellishing or channelling what it represents with subliminal messages regarding other things. It can be argued that the connection between a map and its object should be more inclusive and exact like a camera or more exclusive and ambiguous like art. The map as a diagram is also based on an analogy to the object it represents, and that analogy can also be critically assessed; but it, and its analogy, are accepted or rejected on the basis of their functionality. Diagrams, unlike images, answer to what can be done with them, to how well they work in subsequent applications of it, not to their derivation from, or representation of, the object.</span></span></div>
TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-75691077337967204972014-10-29T09:54:00.001-07:002014-10-29T09:57:04.354-07:00Truth and Facts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghwfjEF2C97GAvbvsd-1PDTZT1GJ2yEO2EBaLWJSDb4oo6Mb-0s1ji9OiIz0-DhWHc6xrcLkRgbSdtTrfXVWczNosDTLzKjoaELEVbwQZgcJ9EhDQa1CHRhAuEeUWJEqEqI6D2N3yeeYA/s1600/Weaving.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghwfjEF2C97GAvbvsd-1PDTZT1GJ2yEO2EBaLWJSDb4oo6Mb-0s1ji9OiIz0-DhWHc6xrcLkRgbSdtTrfXVWczNosDTLzKjoaELEVbwQZgcJ9EhDQa1CHRhAuEeUWJEqEqI6D2N3yeeYA/s1600/Weaving.jpg" height="151" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">When science turned our epistemo<span id="goog_1171174606"></span><span id="goog_1171174607"></span>logical world from arguments to explanations, facts, the starting point of those explanations and crucible upon which they are tested, took on a certain sanctity. They have tended to become truth itself, the only truth we can know directly, and hence all but synonymous with truth for many. They have come stand on their own, taken as truth apart from all but their bare, literal expression.<br /><br />Against this view:<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Truth and facts are woven together."</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">This is a quote attributed Shannon L. Adler, an LDS writer. I'm not sure where she was going with it — I can't find a reference to the source — but for me it nails that <i>Dragnet</i> mentality of "the facts ma'am, just the facts."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">On the one hand, facts are the result of diagrammatically abstracting certain indices and relationships from experience. If not totally the product of the diagram, these abstractions reduce experience to just what will serve the diagram. On the other hand, facts are the focal points for testing the consequences inferred from the diagram. If a general law or principle is used to infer and/or explain a fact, that general law is not itself a fact. It is a principle defined within and warranted by the diagram. Those facts on either side of a diagram may be true or false, in a sense, but only within the context of being defined and employed by that diagram.<br /><br />Facts are abstracted with a resemblance to experience and submitted to the ratification of experience using a "diagram, which if not exactly a fiction, is at least a creation" [CP1.383]. Not only are truth and fact interwoven, it is only in the interweaving of them into one consistent fabric that we have something that, if not true, is at least trustworthy.</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-7411756702641073872014-09-01T07:48:00.000-07:002014-09-01T07:48:45.174-07:00Explanations<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpevuQfRW8_a0zgNpGnvj-G4CCKa0aNHvDD0Z3M6tqe107qHryL3K-05olS1UYRiMdDVEuvPODitTdb4S4eKQcn1M8GilHBlk4bU2nDXADivZlwza89G3-BIe0FACCthTJolmCVNa6OXk/s1600/sd.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpevuQfRW8_a0zgNpGnvj-G4CCKa0aNHvDD0Z3M6tqe107qHryL3K-05olS1UYRiMdDVEuvPODitTdb4S4eKQcn1M8GilHBlk4bU2nDXADivZlwza89G3-BIe0FACCthTJolmCVNa6OXk/s1600/sd.gif" height="188" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Basing explanation on deduction, or "covering laws," within the context of formal logical is misleading in several ways.<br /> </span><br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>The <i>explanans</i> involves a universal scientific law.</b> Not only do explanations extend far beyond science, but it's unlikely that any scientific law is universal. It is better to say that explanations include a "substantive generalization," what Toulmin called a "warrant," where "substantive" means it is generally true. It is precisely the truth or falsity of the explanatory generalizations that is obscured by limiting them to universals.<br /> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>Explanation is a matter of making the <i>explanandum</i> rationally acceptable. </b>With an explanation we already know the <i>explanandum</i> is true, so there's no need to justify or prove it. With a plausible explanation the <i>explanans</i> and <i>explanandum</i> are logically consistent, nothing more.<br /> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>The logical consistency of an explanation is a matter of deduction. </b> The premises of a deduction, 'if x then y' and 'x', are actually equivalent to the conjunction, 'x and y'. It is this conjunction of the <i>explanans</i> and the <i>explanandum</i> (all of them being true) that creates a plausible explanation. Thus, narratives, absent any generalizations, can constitute explanations on the same logical ground as deductions using generalizations.</span></li>
</ol>
TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-9655770290395922902014-08-03T08:09:00.002-07:002014-08-03T08:14:16.204-07:00Not Mechanistic<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXwwjSphWiqNizdcT_MHPnLR521FeB_FFyjznK-EFE7U68bSwNzIGYrq9POg9jb6HCHp5BxEHL8AXYOq0skgazzRM8jIp1RfrTwiF6dQPEgXEQM6EkiiuOTQnmZVGy-VgPNfRlIxVdKOQ/s1600/Innards+of+Watch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXwwjSphWiqNizdcT_MHPnLR521FeB_FFyjznK-EFE7U68bSwNzIGYrq9POg9jb6HCHp5BxEHL8AXYOq0skgazzRM8jIp1RfrTwiF6dQPEgXEQM6EkiiuOTQnmZVGy-VgPNfRlIxVdKOQ/s1600/Innards+of+Watch.jpg" height="165" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">A diagrammatic approach to thinking, at first glance, might seem overly mechanistic. The diagram of a machine is certainly as mechanical as the machine itself. And many diagrams attempt this kind of rigorous consistency. Using them is an instrumental matter of making calculations. Formal logic, holding itself aloof from its applications, is like this. But while all diagrams, and hence diagrammatic thinking in general, relies on consistency, not all diagrams display the rigor of a mechanical device or formal logic.<br /><br />In fact, most diagrams just aren't that rigorous. They employ rules or generalizations with qualifications and exceptions, and they are judged by their functionality, not the mechanistic precision of the diagram itself. Even the rigorous consistency of formal logic has to be taken with a grain of salt when it comes to actually using it. Any general assertion we make about experience, scientific laws included, is going to have qualifications and exceptions.<br /><br />More important, though, applying any kind of diagram, rigorous or less so, is not a mechanical process either. Take for instance a moral question like pulling the plug:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidNbUThzEIMdUouw0xjkXX5hmpGknONj4oEciNHFLv6W5OXi220XLgCgSgyUaX6Dnnv5qC6fb58zPk-jzP0uHktpFnEouW1YF21DyGk7TY1G2c8jb5BtmUHSQ8hYJ7-SN5KpHQ4ubqI7Q/s1600/Different+Diagrams.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidNbUThzEIMdUouw0xjkXX5hmpGknONj4oEciNHFLv6W5OXi220XLgCgSgyUaX6Dnnv5qC6fb58zPk-jzP0uHktpFnEouW1YF21DyGk7TY1G2c8jb5BtmUHSQ8hYJ7-SN5KpHQ4ubqI7Q/s1600/Different+Diagrams.png" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Illustration and example from Richard Arthur </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Mercadante, <a href="http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/3245/" target="_blank">"The Persistence of Casuistry"</a> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The question is not the result given by any one of these diagrams — although that can be a question in its own right. The question is which particular diagram — utilitarian principles, <i>Torah</i>, human compassion, professional ethics, financial concerns, case precedents, Christian scripture, Canon Law , or other unlisted diagram </span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">— </span>should be applied or take precedence. Even if each of these diagrams are as rigorous in their inferences as formal logic, the decision as to which one should be applied is hardly a mechanical process.<br /><br />Diagrammatic thinking mediates thought with consistency, but it is not limited to a mechanistic approach because of that.</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-27888172417660662512014-07-05T16:59:00.002-07:002014-07-05T16:59:36.321-07:00Image, Diagram, and Metaphor<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGtUzKy89owiIYIGPIJpC6gAMP_SJ1SOozcPp_eXwfEHUqmtw4m3Vuz6jIh_3v9veiOR4zlxe_gN9a-CGmtfDQ3IgTas4J4YYUgLl6AbtySXFUdIywvDSRU_hAzZO7R0hDl6b8Hu6QBJQ/s1600/Globe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGtUzKy89owiIYIGPIJpC6gAMP_SJ1SOozcPp_eXwfEHUqmtw4m3Vuz6jIh_3v9veiOR4zlxe_gN9a-CGmtfDQ3IgTas4J4YYUgLl6AbtySXFUdIywvDSRU_hAzZO7R0hDl6b8Hu6QBJQ/s1600/Globe.jpg" height="185" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Peirce asserts a triad of what he calls "hypoicons.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Hypoicons may be roughly divided according to the mode of Firstness of which they partake. Those which partake of simple qualities, or First Firstnesses, are <i>images</i>; those which represent the relations, mainly dyadic, or so regarded, of the parts of one thing by analogous relations in their own parts, are <i>diagrams</i>; those which represent the representative character of a representamen by representing a parallelism in something else, are <i>metaphors</i>. [CP2.277]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Following this organization then, if there is a diagrammatic thinking, or thinking with diagrams, there must also be a thinking with metaphors and a thinking with images.<br /><br />Thorstein Veblen [<a href="http://emergentpublications.com/ECO/ECO_other/Issue_12_2_6_CP.pdf" target="_blank">"Why is Economics Not an Evolutionary Science"</a>] brings out the problems of thinking metaphorically, at least when it comes to a science of economics.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But it is precisely in this use of figurative terms for the formulation of theory that the classical normality still lives in its attenuated life in modern economics; and it is this facile recourse to inscrutable figures of speech as the ultimate terms of theory that has saved the economists from being dragooned into the ranks of modern science. [p. 383]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">A metaphor works by
comparing (setting in "parallel") the system to be known with one that
is already known (in the sense we are acquainted with it). It allows us
to understand things we cannot specify in detail, so that while
metaphors are effective and satisfying, even exhilarating, and both
metaphors and diagrams are human creations (aka "fictions"), the
metaphors do not provide the detailed specifications, the "exactitude,"
of a diagram. </span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUIW2PNbaHf8xB_b1zwOeZKDPt6y_Z2_X0ItICFXqzkcmgemHczDs8uw-VZWoy_douFC3KHU17JRXM6ImpSV5KrM5qVLEuyYEhPV8gSJxcENl9fp9jRH5KMQG_ASMCwdZhCACAFVcQWM4/s1600/Map.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUIW2PNbaHf8xB_b1zwOeZKDPt6y_Z2_X0ItICFXqzkcmgemHczDs8uw-VZWoy_douFC3KHU17JRXM6ImpSV5KrM5qVLEuyYEhPV8gSJxcENl9fp9jRH5KMQG_ASMCwdZhCACAFVcQWM4/s1600/Map.png" height="93" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvCdv3l-2wpGocUl6QJTi-v_20nc9mn894K9O0pR3IwyAwtPuhfCzUaJwUmpci-8xkbBock-Lebik9wOyr72jel1mbFiuOycJYDaQi_A9OTMLxSF23l2YcSJI4fZShSV4jrxylNr3k52A/s1600/Sales.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvCdv3l-2wpGocUl6QJTi-v_20nc9mn894K9O0pR3IwyAwtPuhfCzUaJwUmpci-8xkbBock-Lebik9wOyr72jel1mbFiuOycJYDaQi_A9OTMLxSF23l2YcSJI4fZShSV4jrxylNr3k52A/s1600/Sales.png" height="91" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">As for imagery, we might compare a sales graph with a map. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The indices and relationships of the map (on the right) allow inferences of new indices and relationships within that map — I can locate my house on it — whereas
the abstractions of the graph allow only extrapolations from its fixity. I can
draw any number of conclusions from such a graph, or a photograph or a work of art, but
those conclusions will have a subjective inventiveness, external to the image. Images
are also a way of abstracting from experience; of thinking, knowing, even explaining; of drawing consequences, but they are neither diagrammatic nor metaphorical.</span> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-45836671218667435232014-06-07T16:58:00.002-07:002014-06-07T16:58:37.900-07:00To Be Universal<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC3ccIWcx4omiGaoCAVwmEIRhyxBpwwEGmUlQpguvrb7yKlpq6BwXYmKZuvoc-jjL7daqz5I6qdpD0QRyr41ZiZCSiQtRhw9jwb0Ix1N24Tpwphz8J_zKLNxJXRAHuBRsc8ZOPsE-swNg/s1600/Universal.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC3ccIWcx4omiGaoCAVwmEIRhyxBpwwEGmUlQpguvrb7yKlpq6BwXYmKZuvoc-jjL7daqz5I6qdpD0QRyr41ZiZCSiQtRhw9jwb0Ix1N24Tpwphz8J_zKLNxJXRAHuBRsc8ZOPsE-swNg/s1600/Universal.png" height="215" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Alvin Gouldner [in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0816492751/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0816492751&linkCode=as2&tag=diagramthinki-20&linkId=GLMQAZ3IAL437CAT"><i>The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology</i></a>] writes:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To revert and reiterate: ideologies are partly legitimated by their claim to represent the whole. It is precisely in this way that ideology also constitutes itself as a moral discourse. [p. 282]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The scam of every ideology, the definition of an ideology:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Ideology, we have said, redefined the private interest in terms of the public, the part in terms of the whole. It thereby transforms political action into moral conduct. [p. 283]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">is putting a partial interest forward as the whole. By claiming a universality of one sort or another, an ideology fallaciously avoids considering both whether it does in fact apply — since it applies everywhere — and the consequences it produces — since there are no alternatives to them.<br /><br />But perhaps this relationship between ideologies and universality is not just the one-way implication of ideologies claiming universality. Can't we also say that any theory or conceptual system that claims universality is thereby an ideology? Euclid's geometry was an ideology — there was no question of its applicability nor its consequences — for the centuries until that supposed universality was put into question? And, what did it gain during those centuries by th<i>e</i> claim to be universal? Its functionality was, and is, the same. The extent of its applications has not changed, the reliability of its consequences remains what it was. And what did we gain, besides the illusion that a universality of thought was possible?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-30391963960569123282014-05-12T10:03:00.002-07:002014-05-12T10:03:14.750-07:00Dialectic and Denotation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqsD52Ig7Yeb-4BpHe6zBVOeSawNtYYJmzZLhucsLavf1XktFNZeipYzDRLbje4AUi1vU_GpvtYmWgtr2cwnOJpILKnOxgOlQ-G54_8OfTAhuS0udG77rT2FKh3VkN0YnZk_z0hL8wfNw/s1600/Polarities.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqsD52Ig7Yeb-4BpHe6zBVOeSawNtYYJmzZLhucsLavf1XktFNZeipYzDRLbje4AUi1vU_GpvtYmWgtr2cwnOJpILKnOxgOlQ-G54_8OfTAhuS0udG77rT2FKh3VkN0YnZk_z0hL8wfNw/s1600/Polarities.png" height="200" width="181" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />Hannah Arendt [in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143104810/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0143104810&linkCode=as2&tag=diagramthinki-20&linkId=GOTFOAYBOON2S7YF"><i>Between Past and Future</i></a>] writes:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">… [T]he life in a polis was designed to distinguish the Greek from the barbarian and the free man from the slave. The distinction was that Greeks, living together in a polis, conducted their affairs by means of speech, through persuasion and not by means of violence, through mute coercion. Hence, when free men obeyed their government, or the laws of the polis, their obedience was called …, a word which indicates clearly that obedience was obtained by persuasion and not by force. [p. 22]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">This passage makes a forceful distinction between conducting our "affairs by means of violence" and "by means of speech." But, as compelling as this dialectic is, Arendt is making it in an <a href="http://diagrammaticthinking.blogspot.com/2014/04/ideology-and-denotations.html">ideological fashion</a>, solely in the realm of connotations.<br /><br />If we look as to what is denoted, the contrast is not so focused. Surely, all Greeks did not rule by persuasion rather than violence. A lack of detailed and specific knowledge shows itself quickly when the discussion turns to what is actually being referred to, but it seems to me that the Spartans, for one, were more on the side of governing by violence. And if "Greeks" really only refers to Athenians here, I can't quite believe that all Athenians accepted the conclusions of the court as willingly as Socrates drank his hemlock. In fact, it would seem that no society would fall under either of these extremes, and these polarities, speech and violence, are abstract, non-existent idealizations.<br /><br />Even more, though, the failure to consider what is denoted, to apply this proposed opposition to different situations, produces a facile acceptance of what is really a unbalanced set of opposites. Speech and violence are both different actions, but speech is only one of many kinds of actions that might be opposed to the force of violence. The opposition characterizing obedience more generally would seem to be more between forcing obedience on the one side and giving it on the other. Speech, then, like all the various means of trying to force obedience and ostensibly show allegiance, would play out between these two abstract, but functional, poles of the human predicament.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-79987345717249547362014-04-30T17:30:00.002-07:002014-04-30T17:30:35.335-07:00The 'a Priori' Method<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUcRFBuJ-iOnsswyDJmxsLHxKk8cn9unH0rtSMZwmKQ_-qauPJdTXTuTtCjeHhPjEQXB76yeI6FyX0ZCBvDM-IKphOkDKe7w-RfFDi1pVezz0nVQGE7t2hGm3ifcfPzYLGOFRyy0MaxcQ/s1600/Sports+Book.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUcRFBuJ-iOnsswyDJmxsLHxKk8cn9unH0rtSMZwmKQ_-qauPJdTXTuTtCjeHhPjEQXB76yeI6FyX0ZCBvDM-IKphOkDKe7w-RfFDi1pVezz0nVQGE7t2hGm3ifcfPzYLGOFRyy0MaxcQ/s1600/Sports+Book.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Peirce present four methods for fixing beliefs ["Fixation of Belief," 1876]. One of these, the <i>a priori</i> method:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Let the action of natural preferences be unimpeded, then, and under their influence let men, conversing together and regarding matters in different lights, gradually develop beliefs in harmony with natural causes. … Systems of this sort have not usually rested upon any observed facts, at least not in any great degree. They have been chiefly adopted because their fundamental propositions seemed "agreeable to reason."[CP 5.382]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">gets short shrift in leading up to the scientific method and its concern with truth and falsity, but it is hard to see just how "conversing together" is necessarily <i>a priori </i>in this undervalued sense.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It would be <i>a priori</i> in this sense if we are conversing about things like logic, mathematics, or even metaphysics, since then there is little or no reference to "observed facts" and not much concern with truth or falsity. It would also <i>a priori</i> in this sense if we are conversing analytically about and within the linguistic system of a science. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The ultimate goal of a positive science is the development of a "theory" or "hypothesis" that yields valid and meaningful (i.e., not truistic) predictions about phenomena not yet observed. Such a theory is, in general, a complex intermixture of two elements. In part, it is a "language" designed to promote "systematic and organized methods of reasoning." ["<a href="http://members.shaw.ca/compilerpress1/Anno%20Friedman%20Positive.htm">The Methodology of Positive Economics</a>," p. 6]</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">But such sciences are also:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In part, it is a body of substantive hypotheses designed to abstract essential features of complex reality. [Ibid.]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">and if our conversation were to wander over into this second part, it would be based upon "observed facts," and it would also, <a href="http://diagrammaticthinking.blogspot.com/2013/10/louis-althusser-writes-peculiarity-of.html">ostensibly</a>, be concerned with truth and falsity.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">But let's say we're "conversing together" in a sports book, because we want to bet on which team is going to win the NBA Playoffs this year. Our conversation would clearly be based on observed facts — it could be full of detailed statistics and intricate arguments — and there would be a definite concern with truth or falsity — which team is going to win (actually, which team's odds of winning are better than the payoffs being given). This conversing might be <i>a priori</i> in the sense we don't know which team will actually win, and we can't know until it's too late, but it doesn't come down to whatever is "agreeable to reason." And, as a method, it makes up a lot more of our day-to-day reasoning, including virtually all major decisions, than does experimental science.</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-46625184121225299612014-04-20T08:35:00.001-07:002014-05-12T10:07:58.521-07:00Ideology and Denotations<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://uploads0.wikipaintings.org/images/steve-wheeler/young-man-talking-to-his-mother-in-law-1950.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://uploads0.wikipaintings.org/images/steve-wheeler/young-man-talking-to-his-mother-in-law-1950.jpg" height="257" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Steve Wheeler, "Young Man Talking to His Mother-in-Law"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A Socratic preference for the <i>spoken word</i>, and a corresponding rejection of writing, is inherently nonideological. [Alvin W. Gouldner, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0816492751/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0816492751&linkCode=as2&tag=diagramthinki-20&linkId=GLMQAZ3IAL437CAT" target="_blank"><i>The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology</i></a>, p. 80]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Ideologies, I think, depend upon ignoring the denotations, and thereby the truth or falsity, of what is being said. And writing, even the one-sided "spoken word" of a broadcast, cannot depend upon the denotations of what is being said. The experiences of all the readers and/or listeners are too diverse to rely on how the terms and phrases will track to back to those experiences. Writing, along with all manner of broadcast communications, must operate within a context of <a href="http://ideologyandcognition.com/" target="_blank">"cascading"</a> connotations.<br /><br />Face-to-face conversations, on the other hand, are a different breed, an endangered species in this postmodern world, but one where denotations are naturally shared and tested as the words are spoken. In an example from Peirce:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Two men meet on a country road. One says to the other, "that house is on fire." "What house?" "Why, the house about a mile to my right." … It is not the language alone, with its mere associations of similarity, but the language taken in connection with the auditor's own experiential associations of contiguity, which determines for him what house is meant. [CP 3.419]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Face-to-face conversations employ those "experiential associations of contiguity" that the writer and broadcaster cannot presume and that the ideologue willfully ignores.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It's not that the denotations cannot be reconstructed by those of us who are willing to do so. In the text omitted above, Peirce writes:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Let this speech be taken down and shown to anybody in the neighboring village, and it will appear that the language by itself does not fix the house. But the person addressed sees where the speaker is standing, recognises his right hand side (a word having a most singular mode of signification) estimates a mile (a length having no geometrical properties different from other lengths), and looking there, sees a house. [<i>Ibid.</i>]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">But such reconstructions require a lot of effort, an effort that will be a waste of time if those denotations where intentionally ignored, obscured, or distorted in the first place.</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-43089139148765788302014-04-03T20:15:00.006-07:002014-04-05T08:04:04.226-07:00Born Again<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2_cg9KWIy3PBupScwZtIrOjsTX8EzP1ENYElMp5dL3xlyEid_wtojkgwVeUJ9exJTmAwmVcUwGGzbY9XLJsg1Y1vyIDN6tP4V0k4TAOcb92aty7DhhKSfGw1VUXTd4_jfmzRssbHvyAk/s1600/Born-Again.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2_cg9KWIy3PBupScwZtIrOjsTX8EzP1ENYElMp5dL3xlyEid_wtojkgwVeUJ9exJTmAwmVcUwGGzbY9XLJsg1Y1vyIDN6tP4V0k4TAOcb92aty7DhhKSfGw1VUXTd4_jfmzRssbHvyAk/s1600/Born-Again.jpg" height="194" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We are each born with our own diagrammatic conceptual system, that we build, nurture and develop to some degree, that is essentially monadic, sealed off from others in its own consistency. We interact with others in ways that can modify both us and them, but we remain different and separate from them. <br /><br />But we can also internalize objective diagrams by accepting the indexical roles and relationships of that foreign diagram as our own. We initially like to pretend we take on the roles and play at the relationships while we maintain our own subjectivity. But we can also — and being really good at a game demands that we — choose one of these objective systems, qualify for admission to it, internalize it completely, and make it our one and only. That foreign diagram becomes us; the captain <i>is</i> the ship. I would refer to this as a "living death," as a loss of one's soul. However, the many, many who have done this, both materially and spiritually, are decisively animated about the virtues of it. They refer to it as a new life, as being "born again."</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-87737989929126982482014-03-01T08:45:00.002-08:002014-03-01T08:46:36.982-08:00Inductive Rigor<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlrzbouh8JfKZioYl1VZfz8c_yTMt0L1yS8MrfntcRvV0T5b-iml6pLJDA-UBTJGZiJSZf3HArOR7kztgV7sLhupW8fR1aYIFAmTjuXrI5b9VHjdYVrJeIxIyb_6k5VxX6JfnOCvICKu4/s1600/Induction.JPEG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlrzbouh8JfKZioYl1VZfz8c_yTMt0L1yS8MrfntcRvV0T5b-iml6pLJDA-UBTJGZiJSZf3HArOR7kztgV7sLhupW8fR1aYIFAmTjuXrI5b9VHjdYVrJeIxIyb_6k5VxX6JfnOCvICKu4/s1600/Induction.JPEG" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Marx's second "<a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm" target="_blank">Theses on Feuerbach</a>": </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice, …"</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">is echoed, I think, in the difference between the pragmatism of James (truth is what works) and that of Peirce (truth is what inductively prevails). Since diagrams are essentially fictions and all kinds of fictions — illusions, wishful thinking, etc. — may work but hardly comply with our notion of truth, it is hard to say the Jamesian sort of pragmatism works. But with Peirce's sort of pragmatism what is true must not only work, it must continue to work through different applications. A diagram or theory must "prove" its "reality and power … in practice."<br /><br />But let's take this a step further and hypothesize that it is this inductive rigor — not mathematics, empiricism, or even experimentation per se — that constitutes the truth and objectivity of science. This opens all kinds of diagrammatic thinking, even philosophy, to the possibilities of science. There may be problems with exactness, expanding the range of applications, or maintaining a community of investigators, but all diagrammatic thinking can submit itself to further applications, assess the consequences of doing so, and adapt itself to the results.</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-87192510127617202222014-01-22T11:33:00.002-08:002014-08-01T16:47:40.027-07:00More on Ideology<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE6Qr8_MbJEvDpsWGnVd6nr7w-3dnK6RtwfFDtL4XQWqaPFVI-Lw5ReC6XaEpgJoojrOx4u9iwcp5i8KXHfdRjzdXNx2ReKtZ0orGFtA1-n0wcY4WNQFxVFAGTvvoHR8qWb4sDGjpU1W4/s1600/Merchant's+Study.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE6Qr8_MbJEvDpsWGnVd6nr7w-3dnK6RtwfFDtL4XQWqaPFVI-Lw5ReC6XaEpgJoojrOx4u9iwcp5i8KXHfdRjzdXNx2ReKtZ0orGFtA1-n0wcY4WNQFxVFAGTvvoHR8qWb4sDGjpU1W4/s1600/Merchant's+Study.gif" height="208" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Any diagram (or conceptual system) is, "if not exactly a fiction, is at least a creation" [<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=vtgPAQAAIAAJ" target="_blank">CP 1.383</a>] and what distinguishes an ideology, or ideological thinking, from other forms of diagrammatic thinking is that it is a fiction being employed without any regard for (1) the situations of it applications and (2) the consequences of its inferences.<br /><br />Thus, on the one side, Marcus Rediker (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143114255/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0143114255&linkCode=as2&tag=diagramthinki-20">The Slave Ship: A Human History</a>) quotes the Liverpool merchant discussing their slave trade with his son in Barry Unsworth's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393311147/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0393311147&linkCode=as2&tag=diagramthinki-20">Sacred Hunger</a>.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"To function efficiently — to function at all — we must concentrate our effects. Picturing things is bad for business, it is undynamic. It can choke the mind with horror if persisted in. We have graphs and tables and balance sheets and statement of corporate philosophy to help us remain busily and safely in the realm of the abstract and comfort us with a sense of lawful endeavor and lawful profit. And we have maps." [<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143114255/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0143114255&linkCode=as2&tag=diagramthinki-20">The Slave Ship: A Human History</a>, p. 12]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The merchant is making an ideology out of his business model by willfully ignoring the situation of its application. On the other side, Hannah Arendt refers to the ruthless logicality of both Hitler and Stalin.</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">They took them [their ideologies] dead seriously, took pride the one in his supreme gift for "ice cold reasoning" [Hitler] and the other in the "mercilessness of his dialectics" [Stalin] and proceeded to drive ideological implications into extremes of logical consistency … [<a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1405171?uid=3739824&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103315024057" target="_blank">"Ideology and Terror"</a>]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">that made it a matter of pride to carry out their inferences regardless of their consequences.<br /><br />But, a diagram or theory being employed without regard for any particular situation or for the consequences of what is inferred is also the nature of mathematics and logic. Like many ideologies, these fictions ignore the import of particular situations by claiming universality, and they look only to their own internal consistency for assessing their inferences. Not only are mathematics and logic ideologies in this sense, but seeing them thus links all the various manifestations of ideology back to the Greek roots of that term and Destutt de Tracy's coining of it as a "science of ideas."</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-14674298146599958862013-10-13T16:54:00.001-07:002013-10-13T17:03:13.202-07:00Peculiarities of Ideology<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi52R6UaGhbn2XuFZWPsbKhyfmHH5H8WDV3rQzWAPWvV6aarKMucr-8bC4O_6NnEt8xuMvd0bZzicE7l_h7NS0DC4EYXyM8SP0LrEaSCLNlxbEWXsd1g0-L4pxNKTqg2QOJI1F0W0F3Hzg/s1600/Moving+On.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi52R6UaGhbn2XuFZWPsbKhyfmHH5H8WDV3rQzWAPWvV6aarKMucr-8bC4O_6NnEt8xuMvd0bZzicE7l_h7NS0DC4EYXyM8SP0LrEaSCLNlxbEWXsd1g0-L4pxNKTqg2QOJI1F0W0F3Hzg/s320/Moving+On.png" width="266" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Louis Althusser writes:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[T]he peculiarity of ideology is that it is endowed with a structure and a functioning such as to make it a non-historical reality, i.e. an <i>omni-historical</i> reality, in the sense in which that structure and functioning are immutable, present in the same form throughout what we can call history, in the sense in which the <i>Communist Manifesto</i> defines history as the history of class struggles, i.e. the history of class societies. [Louis Althusser, <a href="http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm" target="_blank">"On Ideology"</a>]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">A "peculiarity of ideologies," in contrast with other kinds of diagrammatic thinking, is their "non-historical" or "omni-historical reality." What does this mean? How does it work?<br /><br />Milton Friedman claims that positive economics is, in one part, a "set of tautologies".</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Viewed as a language, theory has no substantive content; it is a set of tautologies. Its function is to serve as a filing system for organizing empirical material and facilitating our understanding of it; and the criteria by which it is to be judged are those appropriate to a filing system. [Milton Friedman, <a href="http://members.shaw.ca/compilerpress1/Anno%20Friedman%20Positive.htm" target="_blank">"The Methodology of Positive Economics"</a>]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We can certainly see a bid for a "non-historical" status in the use of tautologies; however, in its second part, positive economics consists of "substantive hypotheses".</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Viewed as a body of substantive hypotheses, theory is to be judged by its predictive power for the class of phenomena which it is intended to "explain." Only factual evidence can show whether it is "right" or "wrong" or, better, tentatively "accepted" as valid or "rejected." <a href="http://members.shaw.ca/compilerpress1/Anno%20Friedman%20Positive.htm" target="_blank">[</a><a href="http://ibid./"></a><a href="http://members.shaw.ca/compilerpress1/Anno%20Friedman%20Positive.htm" target="_blank"><i>Ibid</i></a>.]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">These should tie the theory back to the particularity of history by means of specific predictions answering, despite being made in a language of tautologies, to experience.<br /><br />If the predictions prove correct, they are, subject to certain other considerations, accepted as part of the theory. But what happens if they do not prove correct? The theory, as a a tautologous language and particular hypotheses, is deemed inapplicable to this kind of situation. Friedman uses the example of supply and demand that work well with regard to consumer goods but do not work so well with speculative markets. Apparently, the theory can continue unabated in those areas where it does work while ignoring those where it does not. Althusser's example of communism seems similar. When a hypothesis drawn in terms of the communist theory fails to explain some historical situation, it is not the theory or the hypotheses that is questioned or falsified. The particular historical situation is simply excluded from the ongoing theory's domain.<br /><br />A key element of a theory being tested by its predictions is that the theory specify up front where and to what it applies. The success of its predictions then reflect back on the theory itself, as both a tautologous language and substantive hypotheses. But an ideology, it would seem, only determines if it applies at all by whether its predictions prove successful or not. In this way, the theory is never questioned, only its applications, and it, as a theory, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">persists non-historically impervious to</span> its failures.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-50869314595082619182013-08-01T19:02:00.001-07:002013-08-01T19:08:12.304-07:00Image, Diagram, and Metaphor<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPgY89wEBYzjVoR-XkHKPKBcV194f71WrvwsWoEm38ay6SgpqOhjjf90-HOJiMQkAhe5gHUK7S5ok93vxnqdj9kg248wKQdkkR8R71obAXUZfxKAxhaAwJQtToucyIyaq5-AwaDz7LbrY/s1600/Dubai.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPgY89wEBYzjVoR-XkHKPKBcV194f71WrvwsWoEm38ay6SgpqOhjjf90-HOJiMQkAhe5gHUK7S5ok93vxnqdj9kg248wKQdkkR8R71obAXUZfxKAxhaAwJQtToucyIyaq5-AwaDz7LbrY/s320/Dubai.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Diagrammatic thinking is looking at the thing to be understood as a mediating system:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">a system in which a multiplicity of factors may weigh in at once, not just in a line and one at a time; a system, then, in which our feeling, for example, that "Robert is prompt," will proceed from our understanding of the totality of his nature, rather than from a coded set of properties pried from his personality; … [William H. Gass, "<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/40548611" target="_blank">The Story of the State of Nature</a>," p. 134]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">"Robert being prompt" is a consequence "caused" by various particular inputs, as the system sees or defines them, and a system of rules or linkages that produce given consequences from those particular inputs. The key to explaining why Robert is prompt in some particular case is a matter of laying out, as best we can, the system of connections that Robert is such that given certain circumstances we can predict that he would be be prompt.<br /><br />According to Peirce, however, this is only one of three possibilities. Besides seeing Robert being prompt diagrammatically, we could see it in terms of an image. This is what Gass calls "a coded set of properties" attaching to him as various external characteristics. Such external characteristics could be "pried from his personality;" others could be photographed; the key is that they are external characteristics of Robert. The system of such properties or relationships can be represented diagrammatically, but Robert an opaque node or a dimensionless point, a empty terminus of some and not others of those relationships.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />The third possibility, which is <a href="http://diagrammaticthinking.blogspot.com/2013/03/metaphors-and-diagrams.html" target="_blank">historically probably the first and epistemologically the most common</a>, is <a href="http://diagrammaticthinking.blogspot.com/2012/11/diagrams-and-metaphors.html" target="_blank">to understand Robert metaphorically</a>. If we can find a system that is similar to Robert, that as Peirce puts it runs "parallel" with Robert, we can use that to explain things like Robert being prompt. For instance, I might compare Jack to a Prussian officer, or to the Pony Express where promptness was a virtue. The biggest problem with metaphors is a lack of acquaintance with what is supposed to be the known side of the metaphor. Comparing Jack to a Prussian officer does me no good for the simple reason I don't know any Prussian officers. To remedy this, I might even compare him to myself. But to the extent I can discover increasing similarities with something I do know, I come to an increased understanding of Jack.<br /><br />Gass overall, I think, is lamenting the demise of metaphorical understanding, of art. I, in turn, would lament the demise of diagrammatic thinking. We live, at least publicly, in an age of images, where the system of external relationships is the reality and the human being is no more than an empty point of reference in different images. We can still think diagrammatically and metaphorically in private, through </span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">philosophy</span> and art such as it is these days, but then that privacy is increasingly under siege as well.</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-26623506504573618292013-06-09T08:47:00.003-07:002013-06-09T09:31:42.525-07:00An Analytic Approach<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXFx1wx_GOKxx0cs4ASk-eNhhgvO42iIo-PxipUjjDRjY6ShESraijJRrsmrnU7I4vVtW8ebnlGLMEV8hv50bZFL0KDhRkLKgki8ywZunyIFPNNeKz-jLlvUHAhiWAxk2RySCcC1iUpFw/s1600/analytical-intuitive.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXFx1wx_GOKxx0cs4ASk-eNhhgvO42iIo-PxipUjjDRjY6ShESraijJRrsmrnU7I4vVtW8ebnlGLMEV8hv50bZFL0KDhRkLKgki8ywZunyIFPNNeKz-jLlvUHAhiWAxk2RySCcC1iUpFw/s320/analytical-intuitive.jpg" title="From "The Jury Room" @ http://keenetrial.com/blog/2012/05/11/simple-jury-persuasion-analytic-or-intuitive/" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">William H. Gass gives a succinct characterization of analytic statements:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Actually, as Plato argued, analytic judgments refer to an organized system of concepts, and analytic judgments are true when they reflect that system correctly. ["<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465026257/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0465026257&linkCode=as2&tag=diagramthinki-20">Carrots, Noses, Snow, Rose, Roses</a>," p. 738]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And he goes on to describe literary art as:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In any case, literary language, rather than empty as analytic formulations are sometimes said to be, is so full, so overdetermined, so inevitable in its order, … [<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465026257/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0465026257&linkCode=as2&tag=diagramthinki-20"><i>Ibid</i></a>.]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">as the most analytic, or the fullest ("thickest" as Gass puts it elsewhere) form of analytic exposition.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">First, it makes me ask why art would occur within the diagram itself, like logic or mathematics. Do the artists insist upon the universality of analyticity for themselves and/or their work? Their right to work in the ether of pure language, if not thought. Or, do we, as readers and consumers of that art, demand that the references and consequences be us left to us?<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And second, while this analytic approach makes for great writers, logicians, and mathematicians, is it right? Is that the way it should be? Should diagrams, even those of logic and mathematics, be created and understood apart from their references and consequences?</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-9138048526676044562013-05-19T08:59:00.003-07:002013-05-27T18:19:26.487-07:00Interacting Diagrams<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2zD-DNj7Lsa_rwuVCIUpxrjPn90wphervQDbWqpHwZHhdV84fyOB_5RFt49q5ryeJTXBTiw7M5cr0OpgAKbNFhXzuDU4DbG1h76yQkMz3OJ-4AtlVSlL-WigNqwExWddJa-hvAQ-0H5U/s1600/Stock+Market.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2zD-DNj7Lsa_rwuVCIUpxrjPn90wphervQDbWqpHwZHhdV84fyOB_5RFt49q5ryeJTXBTiw7M5cr0OpgAKbNFhXzuDU4DbG1h76yQkMz3OJ-4AtlVSlL-WigNqwExWddJa-hvAQ-0H5U/s320/Stock+Market.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I like to dabble in the stock market. And there is no end to the diagrammatic understandings of the market — from various rules of thumb to intricate and complex mathematical representations — offering me help. Except for occasional flashes, those of divine mathematical complexity and proprietary secrecy, seem to work well enough, but I have never found any within the range of my understanding that are all that helpful. What I need to know is just what all these diagrams seem to methodologically exclude; that is, the subjectivity of <i>who</i> is buying, <i>who</i> is selling, and why.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The single diagram is made up of indices and relationships, analogous to the subject matter, such that certain consequences follow and inferences can be made from them. Being an abstract reduction of the subject matter, the overall purpose of the diagram also has a bearing on its construction and viability. But when more than one diagram is involved the elements needed to represent this kind of situation change. The indices become actors, things to be diagrammatically understood in their own right, and the relationships between them are interactions that touch rather than connect them. It is no longer a question of the overall purpose of one diagram but rather of a number of individual purposes interacting through time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is not to say a diagram of the market as a whole, in a mechanistic sense of how it is set up and how it works, is not still not in play. However, much like geography at play in geo-politics, it is the board upon which the game is played. It can force outcomes now and then, and it definitely sets up currents and trends affecting the results, but it is not the game itself. The game is played between the subjects within the situation, subjects who have their own indices and relationships, drawn from their own analogies and based upon their own motives, such that certain consequences follow and they make certain inferences. Not only do these actors change, or evolve, in the course of these interactions; the board itself can change, evolve as it were, as result of what these actors do and how they try to do it. Interacting diagrams require a novelist's narrative that incorporates diagrammatic understandings of all involved. And, while working with a single diagram may be science, or capable of being a science, once more than one diagram are put in motion interacting with each other, understanding what is going to be an art.</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-26600803210225639552013-05-04T08:21:00.001-07:002013-05-04T08:21:41.516-07:00Man versus Machine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOlCy22RsbYM_gcXOiu8VPSpgjlr95-t3ozT4LTNx3cxNO0e9LT7kfhTOE6xeUg7x_MQVowcP0TPYctpBvgO94UGaejEXAfp1R_PXQ9HTpQPAjf2JZuqcgbzRpF0ewqZ4TW3IMEws5QKk/s1600/Deep+Blue.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOlCy22RsbYM_gcXOiu8VPSpgjlr95-t3ozT4LTNx3cxNO0e9LT7kfhTOE6xeUg7x_MQVowcP0TPYctpBvgO94UGaejEXAfp1R_PXQ9HTpQPAjf2JZuqcgbzRpF0ewqZ4TW3IMEws5QKk/s200/Deep+Blue.png" width="143" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Nate Silver has a chapter dealing with the chess match between Gary Kasparov and IBM's chess-playing program Deep Blue in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159420411X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=159420411X&linkCode=as2&tag=diagramthinki-20">The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail but Some Don't</a>. The match was billed as a man-versus-machine confrontation. The machine working mechanistically, diagrammatically as it were, was matched against a human whose thought is more general and all-encompassing in a, perhaps, non-diagrammatic kind of way.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But computer chess programs can't always see the bigger picture and think strategically. They are very good at calculating the tactics to achieve some near-term objective but not very strong at determining which of these objectives are most important in the grander scheme of the game. [p. 247]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Kasparov himself felt, after he won Game 1, that Deep Blue had seen only the near-term tactical considerations not longer-term strategic ones.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Typical computer weakness," Kasparov later said. "I'm sure it was very pleased with the position, but the consequences were too deep for it to judge the position correctly." [p. 249]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">But is this really two different kinds of thinking, one diagrammatic and the other not?<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Or, is this one kind of diagram, a tactical understanding of atomistic indices in precise relationships, versus another kind of diagram, a strategic understanding with vague indices and less specific kinds of relationships? We could even see the strategic diagram as encompassing and moving beyond the tactical (<i>à la</i> Hegel's <i>aufheben</i> or Kuhn's paradigm shift). But maybe even this is too much. Kasparov began to doubt his assessment of Deep Blue's capabilities during this game when Deep Blue made what was for him and his second an inexplicable move:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To see twenty moves ahead in a game as complex as chess was once thought to be impossible for both human beings and computers. Kasparov’s proudest moment, he once claimed, had come in a match in the Netherlands in 1999, when he had visualized a winning position some fifteen moves in advance. Deep Blue was thought to be limited to a range of six to eight moves ahead in most cases. Kasparov and Friedel were not exactly sure what was going on, but what had seemed to casual observers like a random and inexplicable blunder instead seemed to them to reveal great wisdom. [p. 251]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It was his undoing — "Kasparov would never defeat Deep Blue again" [p. 251] — but the distinction between "tactics" and "strategy" seems to amount to no more than the number of moves ahead being considered. Limits in calculative abilities may require different diagrams, or approaches, but at bottom the diagrams have a quantitative basis. Silver, in fact, refers to what have to be strategic considerations in Game 2 offering a "three-tenths of a pawn" [fn 36, p. 252] advantage.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">One difference between man and machine, however, does stand out in Silver's account. Kasparov was clearly assessing Deep Blue's capabilities, the diagram it was employing, and trying to take advantage of any shortcomings he could find. Deep Blue, on the other hand, was not attempting to do anything like that. The programmers, being the humans they are, did design Deep Blue with Kasparov in mind [p. 256], but so far as we know Deep Blue, as a computer program, was not making those kinds of assessments. Considering how an opponent sees the situation, how it draws its inferences, and what purposes might be guiding it does seem to be a peculiarly human characteristic. And, it also seems classically human that such an advantage be ironically rich enough to be their undoing as well.</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-15793317784546917802013-03-31T08:16:00.000-07:002013-03-31T08:16:05.892-07:00Metaphors and Diagrams<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj71FohjgZqjD49LP2IHmy7jDuQRVRQJFZWe3yzuxCxXKMVAW28bqnrdYmI1FMpPMSxtE5g0zwJErXbuRXTPY4QZsWEtWTqYguY8mv9o7RQFUHe4h49da_l_ooIy9i-H2ZCeR_vnYK9js/s1600/Spiral.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj71FohjgZqjD49LP2IHmy7jDuQRVRQJFZWe3yzuxCxXKMVAW28bqnrdYmI1FMpPMSxtE5g0zwJErXbuRXTPY4QZsWEtWTqYguY8mv9o7RQFUHe4h49da_l_ooIy9i-H2ZCeR_vnYK9js/s320/Spiral.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Peirce delineates his triad of image, diagram, and metaphor in the following passage.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Hypoicons may be roughly divided according to the mode of Firstness of which they partake. Those which partake of simple qualities, or First Firstnesses, are images; those which represent the relations, mainly dyadic, or so regarded, of the parts of one thing by analogous relations in their own parts, are diagrams; those which represent the representative character of a representamen by representing a parallelism in something else, are metaphors. [<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=vtgPAQAAIAAJ" target="_blank">CP 2.277</a>] </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And where he goes on in other places to fill out what he meant by images and diagrams, this is pretty much it for metaphors. They run in parallel, a somewhat mystifying metaphor in its own right.<br /><br />But Giambattista Vico says something interesting about metaphors that might help.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[120] By its nature, the human mind is indeterminate; hence, when man is sunk in ignorance, he makes himself the measure of the universe. [<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140435697/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0140435697&linkCode=as2&tag=diagramthinki-20"><i>New Science</i></a>, trans. by David Marsh, Element 1]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In other words, we make a metaphor of one system we know, the "vehicle" of our own selves, with another system, the "tenor" in question. The tenor is seen as working in "parallel" with how things work within us. Although the vehicle is not always ourselves, I think it's fair to say, with Vico, that the initial approach to any unknown thing is metaphorical correlation with something we do know.<br /><br />But Vico goes on to say, looking at these metaphors marbled into culture as "poetic truth":</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[205] … Indeed, if we consider the question carefully, poetic truth is metaphysical truth; and any physical truth which does not conform to it must be judged false. [<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140435697/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0140435697&linkCode=as2&tag=diagramthinki-20"><i>Ibid</i>.</a>, 47]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Human knowledge first turns to metaphor, to poetic truth, and then, only later, fills in the systemic details of the tenor diagrammatically. What's more, according to Vico, that physical truth must "conform to" the poetic truth. This seems questionable in the sense that any metaphorical understanding would surely be undone by different applications and delineations of rendering it diagrammatically. But then the metaphorical understanding could be expected to evolve as well. Perhaps it is a tandem unfolding of concepts in this way that <a href="http://diagrammaticthinking.blogspot.com/2013/03/conceptual-evolution.html" target="_blank">Blumenberg</a> is taking advantage of when he traces the historical evolution of concepts of like "progress" or "truth" metaphorically.</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8311036859226751336.post-2571182033665379922013-03-02T08:06:00.001-08:002013-03-02T08:09:11.661-08:00Conceptual Evolution<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgms0B_kedl5ghMTOlXbI1VjHUUCIRztxnqqawC0jTAiD82mtipTjrGx_JSR0Ju0l6DVOqH9bfaTNwrZuYA1JAmDDcvMa4A8doEvMGyzkAHnHz4x7is93DwjkgQFiBIl8YopGMcdemPa90/s1600/Copernicus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgms0B_kedl5ghMTOlXbI1VjHUUCIRztxnqqawC0jTAiD82mtipTjrGx_JSR0Ju0l6DVOqH9bfaTNwrZuYA1JAmDDcvMa4A8doEvMGyzkAHnHz4x7is93DwjkgQFiBIl8YopGMcdemPa90/s320/Copernicus.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Hans Blumenberg, in <a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40970167?uid=3739824&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101835018877" target="_blank">"On a Lineage of the Idea of Progress"</a> traces the notion of <i>progress</i> in astronomy back to Hipparchus and his star catalog:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">… said to have listed 1,022 stars according to position and brightness, [that] was laid down as an instrument for future comparisons. [p. 9]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">This revolutionary notion introduced a "coordinative relation between the quantum of time and the quality of achievement" [p. 6], the idea of postponing or deferring present assertions of knowledge until the necessary data and accuracy could be accumulated and realized in the future.<br /><br />Copernicus, according to Blumenberg, built on Hipparchus' data but looked at where he fit into this notion of <i>progress</i> differently.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For all the time it takes, the theory of the universe struck him as a finite task ending with him. [p. 18]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">While recognizing himself as a beneficiary of the time that had passed since Ptolemy, he gives no sign of sharing the ancient astronomers' sense of a vast future time as a continuing astronomical need. [p. 19]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">If this seems a bit hubristic, it is at this point where astronomy, and the sciences more generally, took off. Bruno, following Copernicus, seems to have looked at <i>progress</i> the same way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Copernicus must not be judged by things whose accomplishment was beyond him; after all, he had been no more than the dawn that precedes the sunrise of true philosophy – by which Bruno meant none other than his own. [p. 24]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The evolution of science seems to have really gotten underway as a Hegelian progression where each new conceptualization, after correcting flaws in previous ones, takes itself as the "absolute," final, consistent and complete encompassing of the matter.<br /><br />With Galileo, however, this hubris came to be publicly tempered. As Blumenberg puts it:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We must not state that the Copernican doctrine is true, but for this very reason we may continue our intensive research into the objects it refers to. Progress is merely the by-product of this enforced uncertainty, and of the corresponding effort in which we refuse to admit to ourselves that it is as futile as it is declared to be. [p. 26]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">This recalls Peirce's insistence on fallibility, and seems common enough today, but what I find interesting is that, despite the professed uncertainty, "we refuse to admit to ourselves that it is as futile as it is declared to be." If concepts are to evolve, perhaps it is essential that each, in its heart of hearts, see itself as absolute.</span>TomGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16146088152890068896noreply@blogger.com0