SUO: Re: Lifecycle Integration Schema
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LIS. Discussion Note 61
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Matthew,
Tracking back to this juncture:
JA: In this connection, I would like to call your attention to some
of the things that C.S. Peirce said about abstractions, in this
case using the old term of art "hypostatic abstraction" to mean
what we would normally call an "abstract object", for example,
egos, numbers, quarks, unicorns.
MW: 1. An ego would be a part of a person,
and so exist in space-time and so
be an individual.
MW: 2. Numbers are abstract, arguably sets of sets.
MW: 3. Quarks also exist in space-time, though tying
them down may be tricky, so are individuals.
MW: 4. Unicorns can be considered to exist in some possible world,
and have a spatio-temporal extent in that possible world.
JA: Let me just throw out this thought: Words and phrases like
"ego", "number", "quark", "unicorn", "Starship Enterprise",
along with all of the rest of the words and phrases that
we use, have no meaning at all outside of some community,
context, or framework of interpretation, so all of their
meanings and all of their specifications on any semantic
or semiotic feature, like "abstract" or "concrete", are
relative to the given community, context, or framework
of interpretation that gives them those meanings and
those specifications.
JA: In particular, the status of any term on any differential dimension
like < abstract | concrete > or < possible | inconsistent > is
"interpretive" and not "absolute".
JA: It is simply not possible to integrate a genuine diversity
of communities, contexts, or frames of interpretation into
a larger whole, whether an IFF or a LOT or whatever turns
out to fit them the best, without a persistent reflection
on this first contingency of the possibility of meaning.
We have up late been looking at a number of words like these:
Absolute, Abstract, Accidental, Actual, Changeable, Concrete,
Embodied, Essential, Extensive, Extension, Existent, Fictional,
General, Imaginary, Individual, Intensive, Intension, Intention,
Interpretive, Invariant, Necessary, Objective, Physical, Possible,
Quality, Real, Relative, Spatial, Temporal, Token, Typical, Variable.
Some of these words are applied to things of any sort,
as they become the objects of noun phrases, and some
of these words are applied only to the special sorts
of things that we call "properties", as they become
expressed by the sorts of verb phrases that we know
as "predicates". Roughly speaking, for the moment.
We have before us the "phenomenon" or the "problem", depending on one's
point of view, of wide-ranging disagreement regarding the application of
these various terms. A month's discussion in this forum -- and of course
the very same discussion, more or less, has been going on a lot longer than
that in many other fora -- with no sign of a resolution in sight, is enough
to force me to consider the possibility that the terms in question make no
absolute or global sense -- and, yes, I have already seen the recursion --
but can at most make a purely interpretive, local, or relative sense,
if indeed they make any sense at all.
By way of a concrete case illustration, consider the precendent
still ongoing of <abstract_object> versus <possible_individual>,
in regard to their applications to the following list of things,
as applied by two randomly chosen judges, undersigned JA and MW.
We have the following data about the situation:
Table 1. Situation Of Uncertainty
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| <thing> | <abstract_object_JA> | <abstract_object_MW> |
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| ego | yes | no |
| number | yes | yes |
| quark | yes | no |
| unicorn | yes | no |
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For the sake of the immediate argument going forward, I will set aside
the issue of whether JA and MW concur or not on the mutually exclusive
jurisdictions of the terms <abstract_object> and <possible_individual>.
The phenomenon in front of us is called a "matter under dispute" (MUD)
or a "situation of uncertainty" (SOU), indifferently for our purposes,
in as much as the two are bound up with each other in their impact on
the instigation of inquiry.
At this point my discontent with the situation has become metacritical.
In other words, I can no longer be content merely to solve the problem
of disconsensus by achieving some facile, factitious form of agreement,
but I am duty bound to seek an explanation of the disagreement itself.
But let us recess, and refresh ourselves ...
Jon Awbrey
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