Re: Inquiry Driven Systems

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3.2.  Reflective Inquiry.  Note 9

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3.2.2.  Apparitions and Allegations (concl.)

There is a final question that I have to ask in this preparation for a
phenomenology, though it, too, remains an ultimately recurring inquiry:
What form of reparation is due for the undue distribution of attention
to appearance?  In other words, what form of reform is called on to
repair an unjust disposition, to remedy an inadequate preparation,
or to adjust a partition that is not up to par?  Any attempt to
answer this question has occasion to recur to its preliminary:
What form of information does it take to convince agents that
a reform of their dispositions is due?

As annoying as all of these apparitions and allegations are at first,
it is clear that they arise from an ability to reflect on a scene of
awareness, and thus, aside from the peculiar attitudes that they may
betray from time to time, they advert to an aptitude that amounts to
an inchoate agency of reflection, an incipient faculty of potential
utility that the agent affected with its afflictions is well-advised
to appreciate, develop, nurture, and train, in spite of how insipid
its animadversions are alleged to appear at times.  This marks the
third time now that the subject of reflection has come to the fore.
Paradoxically enough, no increment of charm appears to accrue to
the occasion.

A good part of the work ahead is taken up with considering ways to formalize
the process of reflection.  This is necessary, not just in the interest of
those apparitions that are able to animate reflection, or for the sake of
those allegations that are able to survive reflection, but in order to
devise a regular methodology for articulating, bringing into balance
with each other, and reasoning on the grounds of the various kinds
of reflections that naturally occur, the apparitions that arise
in the incidental context of experience plus the allegations
that get expressed in the informal context of discussion.
Later discussions will advance a particular approach to
reflection, bringing together the work already begun in
previous discussions of "interpretive frameworks" (IF's)
and "objective frameworks" (OF's), and constructing a
compound order or a hybrid species of framework for
arranging, organizing, and supporting reflection.
These tandem structures will be referred to as
"reflective interpretive frameworks" (RIF's).

Before the orders of complexity that are involved in the construction
of a RIF can be entertained, however, it is best to obtain a rudimentary
understanding of just how the issues associated with reflection can in fact
arise in ordinary and unformalized experience.  Proceeding by this path will
allow us to gain, along with a useful array of moderately concrete intuitions,
a relatively stable basis for comprehending the nature of reflection.  For all
of these reasons, the rest of this initial discussion will content itself with
a sample of the more obvious and even superficial properties of reflection as
they develop out of casual and even cursory contexts of discussion, and as
they make themselves available for expression in the terms and in the
structures of a natural language medium.

Jon Awbrey

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