The realm of sense data is the realm of appearance.
This is to say, what appears to us is what we sense.
Sensation is subjective; what I sense and who I am are as inextricable as are what I do and who I am. If we can observe something, there is no ontological separation possible between it and us.
We combine sense-data with our attitudes toward it and produce information. Sense-data is not available to us except as it exists in information. Direct perception, if it exists, is the domain of the mystical, and need not be discussed when the codes of philosophy and particularly of pragmatism are engaged.
The world consists of information; we create it from sense data.
The world is the set of what we take to be.
What we take to be is that which we respond to in our actions, whether consciously or no.
The world is known and manipulated by codes. There is no knowing which is not manipulation, no manipulation which is not knowing, and no being known which is not being.
Nothing that is accessible to perception and conception is other than information.
Information is attitude, is perspective. We take a certain set of attitudes toward an agglomeration of sense data. This process makes information of the data.
Because information is produced through our contact with sense-data, it is subject to the limits of our assumptions.
Pragmatic-space information proposes something about the world; it is that, it is useful that. Aesthetic-space information seeks to resonate with a code.
Pragmatic-space information is subject to validity and utility conditions. The fields of these conditions are success-failure continua. Aesthetic-space information is subject to resonance and feasability conditions.
That which is valid is taken as true.
That which is “true” for me accurately describes my world—my world being my sense data and the set of attitudes I take in response to it.
That which accurately describes a thing is that which, when presented along with the thing, is not observably in conflict with it.
Validity is relative; it is possible, given the same set of sense-data and a variety of interpretations thereon, to take all or none of those interpretations as true. What I take as valid is influenced by my whims, my beliefs, my missions and desires, and by the codes I participate in.
Validity conditions refer to the present or past tenses.
That which is useful is effective in accomplishing an aim; they aim would be more difficult to accomplish without the useful thing.
Utility is relative to the task and to the subject. (There is, it should be noted, a sense in which the task and the subject are inextricable and should be considered a unit.)
Utility conditions refer to the present or future tenses.
Most endeavors are characterized by tension between the possibility of success and the possibility of failure.
That which must be in order for the success or failure of an endeavor is a condition of that success or failure.
All else is frosting.
What we need in evaluating past endeavors and planning new ones is the territory that includes the conditions of success and the conditions of failure.
This territory is polarized and linear, but the events that populate it can be as complex as they want to be. Generally, they are far more complex than we want them to be.
At the center is the threshold, the point beyond which success becomes failure and vice versa.
The closer a fact, possibility, probability, theory, or guess is to the threshold, the more likely it is to be the knowledge that saves us, or the ignorance that damns us. We will not at this point consider the very real concern that some knowledge might damn us, some ignorance save us.
The success-failure continuum is only applicable to problems phrased in binary fashion.
An open question or quest may or may not be composed of successes and failures and the thresholds thereof.
A code is a series of interlocking and semi-interdependent interrogations, informations, practices that are useful and coherent when implemented together.
Codes manipulate the world. That is, they have agency.
Languages, philosophies, cultures, and professions are all codes.
A code-switch is a movement from one code to another.
Juxtaposition occurs when two codes are invoked simultaneously.
Synthesis is a juxtaposition that, through hacks or other means, does not immediately corrupt.
Each code has its aesthetics, customs, etc.
Question: What is the relationship between the code and the code-user? Also, between intersubjective code and particular instances?
What is a boundary between two codes? Is such a thing possible? Is such a thing useful?
What is a person? Who am I? What are we? Etc.?
A person is at the receiving end of the sense data from which information is formed.
A person is a node in the operation of various codes—the codes of language, profession, sociality, physicality, etc.
These codes (in whatever juxtaposition) receive and manipulate information.
To restate, a person is a cluster of thoughts and practices.
Can such a node have agency? What is agency? Agency is responsibility, capability. An agent does, and as such can be held responsible for things that are done or are not done. An agent does not have to be radically free, but neither can an agent be a determined product. The agent exists at least in part as the interaction of codes—but a person can self-codify as well, thus becoming a code.
A node in the operation of various codes is itself a code. A person is a code. Codes have agency. If a person’s codification is an extension of some other codification, the person appears to have no agency, for they appear to be constituted by the other code. This appearance, however, masks the fact that codes are indivisible, that what we see and do is what we are, and that Buber’s basic dichotomizations—I-thou, I-it— obscure the underlying holism.
Am I making a reality claim here? Perhaps. But consider that Buber’s dichotomies rest on an underlying naturalism—that things are a certain way and have always been. The present author is skeptical of such ideas, but is willing to entertain other ideas about the way the world seems to work, ideas which are presented as being potentially (hopefully) useful. I find it useful to view the world holistically, and I see no particular evidence that the viability or utility conditions of Buber’s dichotomies have been fulfilled—from where I sit, at any rate. Presumably Buber would disagree.
Agency is conceived as control of, control over, etc. Control of the self, control of the basic drives that would otherwise control the ne-agent, affective and effective action in the world—and thus control over the events of the world. Control posits Buber’s dichotomies, and cannot exist without them. I am not something I control, I am something I am. Likewise my relationship to the world.
Intersubjectivity has two aspects, one viable-useful and one inviable-useless. The former is, intersubjectivity tells what appears to be an isolated person that he or she is not all there is. The latter is, intersubjectivity tells what appears to be an isolated person that he or she is an isolated person.
We have defined knowing as finite and not-knowing as infinite…so it is unwise for us to make abstract knowledge claims; rather, we must make utilitarian knowledge claims. Not, “I know that…” but “I know enough to…”
All information should be interrogated thoroughly.
Interrogation takes a piece of information, ascertains the proposition it makes, then inquires after the conditions of its accuracy and utility—what are they? Have they been fulfilled?
All interrogation should be interrogated thoroughly, except inasmuch as this becomes infeasible due to recursion.
Any piece of information, if interrogated thoroughly, reveals the enormity of its own limitations.
Any interrogation, if interrogated thoroughly, reveals the enormity of its own limitations, and, by implications, those of its issuer.
If there is any doubt as to the extent of the limitations of our abilities, simply recall that our ignorance is not finite, while our knowledge is. Education, research, science, philosophy—we build piers on an ocean that lacks a farther shore.
There are two routes to understanding when performing or confronting research—either a large sample can help you by providing you with massive iterations for comparison’s sake, or a very small sample can be known exceedingly well. The problem with each path (as practiced by others) is that researchers are not especially intelligent as a class.
Research is an attempt to manipulate the world. It tries any or all of the following: Expand the world (by producing more information (by acquiring more sense-data, by producing more attitudes in relation to it), organize the world (by dividing information into useful categories), evaluate the world (determine the utility, feasibility, and viability conditions of information), reduce the world (by eliminating information through the falsification of its conditions).
Research is interrogation.
Living consists of research and art. Also accident and habit.
Research, art, life, etc. represent codification.
Intelligence is a behavior; to be intelligent is to be affective/effective/adaptive/creative. It is to succeed or to engage in endless, targeted evolution until success is achieved.
Wisdom is knowing which success to pursue in the first place.
Intuition is critical. We always know more than we think we know. As circumstances dictate, intuition should be followed by either interrogation or action, or both. Sometimes, of course, it is impossible to pursue that which we suspect to be true.
Intuition, however, is limited. There are assumptions which underlie, constitute, and surround it. It is important to respect the intuition of others (who will have different assumptions). It is also important to respect the skepticism of all parties, and, intimidating as it may be, massive quantities of data (of whatever kind) can reveal truths obscured by assumption, missed by intuition, and unaddressed by intelligently fashioned interrogations that probe for the perceived hearts of matters. Dumb, brute epistemological force is sometimes required.
Success, failure, and utilitarian information inhabit pragmatic (read: ethical) space.
Images, themes, etc. inhabit aesthetic/dream/myth space.
Which leaves open the question of religion, metaphysics, etc.
Codes organize information, and information can be pragmatic and aesthetic. Codes can use information in either of these capacities, or in both.
Pragmatic space houses the interrogation. The aesthetic does not; the riff is not an interrogation. An image or a theme is not subject to success-failure conditions, and the interrogation explicitly seeks these. Rather, with images we explore, test, iterate. The interrogation asks, “What is necessary that…” and the riff asks, “How about if…”
Everything in the human universe can be viewed in terms of interactions and structures of success-failure continua referring to validity and/or utility.
An image, a theme, a rhyme—these need not make assertions about the world. Aesthetic objects and tools have feasibility and sometimes utility conditions, but not validity conditions.
What is the primary SF condition of an image? Does the image have SFCs other than feasability? If not, how can a code have its own aesthetic? Is the aesthetic SFC a matter of resonance? Resonance conditions?
That which genuinely fulfills the resonance conditions of my code will haunt me, may remake or destroy me.
An image or a theme is a connection between bits of experience. Cf. Weil’s metaxu?
A piece of information need not be about the assertion it makes regarding the world. This is probably a question of attitude.
This is a mysterious field; an aesthetic is a difficult thing to pin down.
This document does not make validity claims not relative to itself; that is, it would like to be consistent but it does not seek to be “true.”
This document was intended to be useful in the context of performing and evaluating research.
A counter-note: “The culture of schools has attuned most professionals to respond even to relatively innocent new ideas reflexively, immediately building a list of reasons why the new idea won’t work. On more than one occasion, I found myself ‘falling behind’ the staff as it encountered a new idea because I had stopped to begin building that list while the staff had pushed on to a consideration of how to realize the idea. The power unleashed in a school that seldom asks why it shouldn’t do something is formidable.” (Gregory, 1992, p. 16-17)
I am reminded of my conversation with Dara about optimism and pessimism as they relate to change. There are dangers to each approach; where is the balance?
How do we ascertain the threshold? We can enumerate the characteristics of succeeding and failing schools, but we can never issue a complete description, and we can never know precisely what conditions, combination of conditions, alternative sets of combinations of conditions, etc., are all and only the ones necessary to swing the endeavor one way or the other.
Surprises are instructive. When we should expect failure and find success, when we should expect success and find failure, it should be easier to pin down threshold conditions.