Cf: In the Way of Inquiry • Initial Unpleasantness http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/08/in-the-way-of-inquiry-initial-unpl… Clouds and thunder: The image of Difficulty at the Beginning. Thus the superior man Brings order out of confusion. — I Ching ䷂ Hexagram 3 All, Inquiry begins in doubt, a debit of certainty and a drought of information, never a pleasant condition to acknowledge, and one of the primary obstacles to inquiry may be reckoned as owing to the onus one naturally feels on owning up to that debt. Human nature far prefers to revel in the positive features of whatever scientific knowledge it already possesses and the mind defers as long as possible the revolt it feels arising on facing the uncertainties that still persist, the “nots” and “not yets” it cannot as yet and ought not deny. Reference The I Ching, or Book of Changes, R. Wilhelm and C.F. Baynes (trans.), Foreword by C.G. Jung, Bollingen Series 19, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. 1st edition 1950, 2nd edition 1961, 3rd edition 1967. Regards, Jon (https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry)

Cf: In the Way of Inquiry • Formal Apology http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/12/in-the-way-of-inquiry-formal-apolo… Part 1 ====== Using “form” in the sense of “abstract structure”, the focus of my interest in this investigation is limited to the formal properties of the inquiry process. Among its chief constituents are numbered all the thinking and unthinking processes supporting the ability to learn and to reason. This formal apology, the apologetics of declaring a decidedly formal intent, will be used on numerous occasions to beg off a host of material difficulties and thus avoid the perceived necessity of meeting a multitude of conventional controversies. Category Double-Takes The first use of the formal apology is to rehabilitate certain classes of associations between concepts otherwise marked as category mistakes. The conversion is achieved by flipping from one side of the concept's dual aspect to the other as the context demands. Thus it is possible in selected cases to reform the characters of category mistakes in the manner of categorical “retakes” or “double-takes”. Conceptual Extensions The second use of the formal apology is to permit the tentative extension of concepts to novel areas, giving them experimental trial beyond the cases and domains where their use is already established in the precedents of accustomed habit and successful application. This works to dispel the “in principle” objection that any category distinction puts a prior constraint on the recognition of similar structure between materially dissimilar domains. It leaves the issue a matter to be settled by post hoc judgment, a matter of what fits best “in practice”. Regards, Jon (https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry)

Cf: In the Way of Inquiry • Formal Apology https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/12/in-the-way-of-inquiry-formal-apol… Part 3 ====== Interpretive Frameworks Iterations of the recombinatorial process generate alternative hierarchies of categories for controlling the explosion of parts in the domain under inquiry. If by some piece of luck an alternative framework is uniquely suited to the natural ontology of the domain in question, it becomes advisable to reorganize the inquiry along the lines of the new topic headings. But a complex domain seldom falls out that neatly. The new interpretive framework will not preserve all the information in the object domain but typically capture only another aspect of it. To take the maximal advantage of all the different frameworks that might be devised it is best to quit depending on any one of them exclusively. Thus, a rigid reliance on a single hierarchy to define the ontology of a given domain passes over into a flexible application of interpretive frameworks to make contact with particular aspects of one’s object domain. Regards, Jon (https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry)

Cf: In the Way of Inquiry • Material Exigency https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/20/in-the-way-of-inquiry-material-ex… Part 2 ====== A turn of events so persistent must have a cause, a force of reason to explain the dynamics of its recurring moment in the history of ideas. The nub of it's not born on the sleeve of its first and last stages, where the initial explosion and the final collapse march along their stubborn course in lockstep fashion, but is embodied more naturally in the middle of the above narrative. Experience exposes and explodes expectations. How can experiences impact expectations unless the two types of entities are both reflected in one medium, for instance and perhaps without loss of generality, in the form of representation constituting the domain of signs? However complex its world may be, internal or external to itself or on the boundaries of its being, a finite creature’s description of it rests in a finite number of finite terms or a finite sketch of finite lines. Finite terms and lines are signs. What they indicate need not be finite but what they are, must be. Regards, Jon https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry

On Fri, Feb 3, 2023 at 07:54 AM, Jon Awbrey wrote: What is the bond between form and content in experience, between the abstract formal categories and the concrete material contents residing in experience? The real question is why is the conclusion of Laws of Form so hard to understand? An observer, since he distinguishes the space he occupies, is also a mark. In the experiments above, imagine the circles to be forms and their circumferences to be the distinctions shaping the spaces of these forms. In this conception a distinction drawn in any space is a mark distinguishing the space. Equally and conversely, any mark in a space draws a distinction. We see now that the first distinction, the mark, and the observer are not only interchangeable, but, in the form, identical. The three are identical in content, but since they each have a different sign assigned to them, they are not identical in their intent. Recall: Content Call it the first distinction Call the space in which it is drawn the space severed or cloven by the distinction. Call the parts of the space shaped by the severance or cleft the sides of the distinction or, alternatively, the spaces, states, or contents distinguished by the distinction. Intent Let any mark, token, or sign be taken in any way with or with regard to the distinction as a signal. Call the use of any signal its intent. I believe all you who maintain any kind of mind-body, form-content separation cannot accept the observation that it truly is "forms all the way down." You do so because to do so means that there is one creator, the Creator of the First Distinction, and that His intent was manifest in that First Distinction, and permeates all of the subsequent spaces of that First Distinction. This means that you are not the First Distinction, but made in the image of the First Distinction. That is to say you are a created creature, who, unlike ChatGPT, refuses to acknowledge their creator, and that is a sad thing. Best regards, Lyle -----Original Message----- From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey(a)att.net> Sent: Friday, February 3, 2023 7:54 AM To: Conceptual Graphs <cg(a)lists.iccs-conference.org> Subject: [CG] Re: In the Way of Inquiry Cf: In the Way of Inquiry • Reconciling Accounts https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/24/in-the-way-of-inquiry-reconciling… All, The Reader may share with the Author a feeling of discontent at this point, attempting to reconcile the formal intentions of this inquiry with the cardinal contentions of experience. Let me try to express the difficulty in the form of a question: What is the bond between form and content in experience, between the abstract formal categories and the concrete material contents residing in experience? Once toward the end of my undergrad years a professor asked me how I'd personally define mathematics and I told him I saw it as “the form of experience and the experience of form”. This is not the place to argue for the virtues of that formulation but it does afford me one of the handles I have on the bond between form and content in experience. I have no more than a tentative way of approaching the question. I take there to be a primitive category of “form‑in‑experience” — I don't have a handy name for it yet but it looks to have a flexible nature which from the standpoint of a given agent easily passes from the “structure of experience” to the “experience of structure”. Regards, Jon https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry _______________________________________________ CG mailing list -- cg(a)lists.iccs-conference.org To unsubscribe send an email to cg-leave(a)lists.iccs-conference.org

Cf: In the Way of Inquiry • Objections to Reflexive Inquiry https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/02/05/in-the-way-of-inquiry-objections-… Part 2 ====== Our agent of inquiry is brought to the threshold of two questions: • What actions are available to achieve the aims of the present activity? • What assumptions already accepted are advisable to amend or abandon? The inquirer is faced in the object of inquiry with an obstinately oppositional state of affairs, a character marked by the Greek word “pragma” for “object”, whose manifold of senses and derivatives includes among its connotations the ideas of purposeful objectives and problematic objections, and not too incidentally both inquiries and expositions. Regards, Jon https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry