Fw: Fw: [xtm-wg] alternative to "real-world"

[Jack Park <jackpark@verticalnet.com>]

I forwarded Bernard's post on this topic to Mary Keeler. She is writing a
chapter for the XTM book regarding the philosophical underpinnings of
inquiry, particularly with respect to Topic Maps.  Here is her reply.

> Pass this on to whomever you see fit, Jack.
>
> I don't know that what I say will be of any help what-so-ever, but let me
> try to explain (too briefly) how Peirce addressed this (very old, very
> deep philosophical) problem.  BTW, I keep putting up philosophy, in this
> context, because the whole point of philosophy is to excavate, analyze,
> and further investigate what most of us merely assume and get carried away
> with.  Most folks just like to do that; philosophers don't.  So don't bear
> with me if you just want to sail on somewhere.
>
> Peirce's philosophy tries to solve the problem of _what is real_,
> pragmatically.  That is, by suggesting as a reasonable hypothesis that we
> might consider reality to be any perceived or conceived _regularity_ or
> resistance in our experience.  The only problem, then, would be to find
> out whether that perceived or conceived regularity corresponds to
> something existent or not, eventually.  I say "eventually," because we all
> know that representation procreates until its regularities (in languages
> as such) "take on a life of their own" and drive our thoughts within their
> prescribed structures of permissible representation.  (We come to think
> what and how they let us think, if we don't remain aware of their power to
> constrain our thoughts).  Reality, then, as only what we _think and say_
> it is, can become ridiculously authoritarian and hopelessly relative to
> human fancies.  So Peirce says we must always think of _existence_ as the
> hypothetical _unknown_ (not the _unknowable_, as Kant conceived it).
> That is, the concept of existence should keep us humble and honest about
> what we think we know is real, but also give hope to press on in learning
> more, because we realize that there is always more to know.
>
> Here's what he says in an unpublished manuscript I've been working on.
>
> By real, I always mean that which is such as it is whatever you or I or
> any generation of men may opine or otherwise think that it is.  There must
> not be any confusion between reality and existential,--that is real which
> is as it is no matter what one may think about it, the existential is that
> which is as it is whatever one may think about anything.  No doubt there
> are grades of reality, meaning that objects of signs may yield with more
> or less resistance to opinion or representation.  According to the
> definition absolute resistance is essential to reality.  But an approach
> to reality, something that is not in the slightest of the nature of a
> pretense is found wherever an object of thought is sufficiently obstinate
> to enable us to say, it has not those characters but it does have these,
> there is already a lesson in logic.  Namely, that one may lay down the
> very best of definitions, going to the very heart of things; and yet there
> will be, as it were, a little living mouse of a quasi exception which will
> find or make a hole to get in when all seemed hermetically closed.  This
> mouse will not be a mere pest to be got rid of and forgotten.  It will be
> a fellow being to be remembered and to be appraised. [MS 498: 32-33]
>
> Now, how can that perspective be helpful to you all?  I'm still working on
> that explanation and must get back to it.  --MK



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