Directory:Jon Awbrey/Papers/Inquiry Driven Systems : Part 8

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• Contents • Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 • Part 7 • Part 8 • Appendices • References • Document History •

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8. Overview of the Domain : Interpretive Inquiry

Interpretive Stance, Initial Theory, Concrete Examples

8.1. Interpretive Bearings : Conceptual and Descriptive Frameworks

In this section I review the conceptual and descriptive frameworks that I will deploy throughout this work. In passing, I explain my overall attitude toward the use of any theoretical outlook (scaffold or catwalk), namely, that it needs to be as flexible and as reflective as possible.

8.1.1. Catwalks : Flexible Frameworks and Peripatetic Categories

In order to have a term that expresses both the conceptual and the descriptive aspects of these perspective standpoints, I have chosen to call them "interpretive frameworks". When analyzed in depth and fully formalized they might be recognized as "theoretical frameworks". But not every manner of intuition (or slant on the world) can survive the reflective process and persist under examination as a viable style of interpretation. And I need a term to underscore the fact that these heuristic frameworks are already in operation, shunting attention and shifting selection on an automatic and informal basis, long before anyone thinks to articulate their axioms in theory or to criticize their biases in action.

The reason I refer to interpretive frameworks rather than "ontologies" is to emphasize that many of the categories listed in these systems are inclusive or overlapping in their scopes. Thus, the circumstance that the same object can be contemplated under several different headings of the framework is not of necessity intended to say anything substantive about the object itself.

The reason I refer to interpretive frameworks rather than "hierarchies", even though I will often settle on a standard sequence for considering the attributes of a contemplated object, is that there is in general no uniquely best order for taking up these properties.

This may seem like a trivial point, taken for granted by everyone as a part of understanding the use of language, but it serves to highlight an important issue, one still lacking in universal agreement.

I will say that a logical distinction is "interpretive" to mean that it depends on the choice of an interpreter to determine how anything is classified with respect to it. This does not mean that every option of consideration will always be found equally fitting, but only that it is possible to contemplate the alternatives in a form of mental experiment.

As much as possible I will try to exploit the available degrees of interpretive freedom to view all conceptual and descriptive distinctions as being in relation to a framework of interpretation. For ease of discussion, if not for any more substantive reason, interpretive frameworks are often depicted as enacted by interpretive agents or embodied by interpretive communities, all of which conditions of practice can be summed up in a parametric reference to a single "interpreter".

8.1.1.1. Eponymous Ancestors : The Precursors of Abstraction?

As one application of the flexible attitude just proposed, consider the following issue.

An important problem in the evolution or development of intelligence is the question how genuine concepts (categorical abstractions and hypothetical constructions) can be derived from particular percepts. The gap between individual acquaintance and comprehensive description always seems too vast to explain how incipient minds can vault it with any sense of security.

In formal language theory, this distinction corresponds to the difference between "terminal" and "non terminal" symbols in a formal grammar. That is, it signifies the contrast between lexical items with narrowly defined extensions and atomic instances as opposed to grammatical categories with infinite extensions and complex constituencies. Asking the question in this setting: How does a burgeoning language facility make the transition from finite state grammars, where terminals yield handles on non terminal symbols that obviate the need for a parser to backtrack, to higher level grammars, where a strategy of hypothetical trial and error is inevitable?

One way of visualizing a continuity in this transformation is by supposing that the potential to serve as an abstract sign is already available to interpreters in the flexible use of concrete signs. This suggests that generative categories and genuine hypotheses may arise by degrees in a gradual turning of phrases from fixed meanings to functional roles. Thus, authentic concepts can be derived from the interpretive recycling of individual names and nominal idioms into paradigmatic and schematic senses.

Peripatetically speaking, this illustrates a way that fledgling interpreters might pace themselves itself through the steps of this jump (the leap of abstraction) and trace a smooth progress over the intervening space: first, let them reposition discrete names in paradigmatic and schematic senses; then, allow them enough sense to recapture terminal and formulaic stereotypes as newly productive archetypes.

8.1.1.2. Reticles : Interpretive Flexibility as a Design Issue

As separate objects and independent constructs in and of themselves, interpretive frameworks are like the templates that observers impose on the scenes viewed through a reticle. Outside the slim chance of a pre-established harmony among them, there is no guarantee that the forms of intuition permitted by these instruments are essentially designed to fit the objects surveyed. Any notion of the world is a compromise between the specious and the factitious and yet supplies the mind with its only available grasp on reality.

The artifactual nature of the mind's handle on things is a commonplace observation of most philosophies, but there is a job here that remains to be carried out. Descriptively, the task that falls to this project is to consider how computational models of interpretive systems can be designed to take this factor into explicit account. Instrumentally, it is a design goal of this project to reflect this aspect of interpretive frameworks in the implementation of their supporting software, and thus to recognize and incorporate a feature in the artifact that seems unavoidable in the natural case.

Later, in making use of formal calculi, I will propose that the distinction between constants and variables can be treated as interpretive and need not be a fixture of the syntactic specification. This means it will be part of the meaning that is left up to the interpreter which symbols have fixed interpretations and which are taken as surrogates for a variety of substitutions.

8.4. Discussion and Development of Objectives

8.4.3. Objective 1c : Interpretation and Authority

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• Contents • Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 • Part 7 • Part 8 • Appendices • References • Document History •

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