Re: Concept Maps? Re: [port-peer-review] reviews
On Wed, 26 Jun 2002, Jack Park wrote: (01)
> Given that PORT is about finding the right mix of technologies (my
> interpretation) with which to complete collaborative tasks, I must ask
> what's not to like about concept maps? (02)
Jack, (03)
Your question is extremely important in the whole matter of why and how KR
is expected to work, as Philippe has been so well trying to explain based
on Chris's provocations. I am sure that even John Sowa has not yet been
able to explain the matter carefully enough that all of us can understand,
such as in his "neaties vs scruffies" approach. The crux of the matter is
so simple that I'm sure it's too obvious for most of us to see and too
assumed for the rest of us to realize that it is not seen. But that's
what logic is about: what is too simple for us to be aware of. (04)
Something that simple is also very difficult to explain, but I am making
some attempt in that manuscript I sent you (The Evolution of Inquiry), but
you probably have not had time to read it, and it does take some
concentration. Let me just try something, here, by asking a question.
(I'm sure that others can explain the heart of this matter better than I!) (05)
What if you were not able to represent clearly whether something was and
was not classified as something else, according to your experience? What
if you could not say, "apples are red, but apples are not blue," as a
judgment about your experience in identifying apples? And what if
*everything* in your experience had to be represented as one giant network
structure of supposedly positively related things (even if it were a giant
tree)? That's the limit of what hypertext (and its succeeding
generations) gives us, and the representational "burden" on us is worse
than that of the poor bugger in _Gulliver's Travels_, who decided he had
to carry everything he wanted to refer to around on his back. It's worse
because the nominalistic burden it creates is killing us in shallow
representations that we too easily mistake as "maps for the
territory"--the territory we need to keep learning about, not simply
imagining that we _know_ it because we have indexed it conveniently. We
need a much better (more powerful) mechanism than that. (06)
"Packing things on your back" or "stringing links among words" does not
help you genuinely represent or learn about the apparently limitless
_relations that are possible among things_. It only fools you into
thinking that your elaborate labeled forms simply re-present actual
relationships (which we should never consider known for certain, and
should always be checking as best we can). One serious question we all
need to ask ourselves is just what we expect our maps to represent, and
how should we be using them? Formalisms of any kind are fine, as long as
they are used as _a reference_ and are understood to be such. Then, the
better of the formalism, the more use it is _as a reference_, to consider
what we thought we knew before we discovered more! How else would we know
that we know more and what it is that we learned? What was the positive
becomes the negative in some respect that we must carefully contrast, or
else we might "throw the baby out with the bathwater." We must be able to
minutely criticize our representations as references to our experience as
it evolves, for conintuity in learning. (07)
In remarks ending part of a chapter on the Scientific Method, Peirce says
the following, in which he describes that "evil situation" (of having
nothing, in fact, but a bunch of simple hypotheses of relations, not
leading us to reliable knowledge). First, I quote a paragraph that
stresses the need to _contrast_ old with new (familiar with unexpected) in
the experience of discovery. Just how precisely we can perform that
function (which almost certainly begins with simple indexing) is what
determines the quality of the scientific situation. Logic is the tool
that can give us that precision of function in reasoning, when we need it.
Let's get to the bottom of this issue? I am only fumbling for the words.
--MK (08)
[In CP Volume 7, "Scientific Method" (in this work, he critiques several
newly invented forms of diagramming reasoning processes, such as Venn's).
Would be good to research this material for how it might apply to the
current plethora of such "mapping" inventions?).] (09)
188. Perhaps there will here be no harm in indulging in a little
diagrammatic psychology after the manner of the old writers' discussions
concerning the primum cognitum; for however worthless it may be as
psychology, it is not a bad way to get orientated in our logic. No man can
recall the time when he had not yet begun a theory of the universe, when
any particular course of things was so little expected that nothing could
surprise him, even though it startled him. The first surprise would
naturally be the first thing that would offer sufficient handle for memory
to draw it forth from the general background. It was something new. Of
course, nothing can appear as definitely new without being contrasted with
a background of the old. At this, the infantile scientific impulse, --
what becomes developed later into various kinds of intelligence, but we
will call it the scientific impulse because it is science that we are now
endeavoring to get a general notion of, -- this infantile scientific
impulse must strive to reconcile the new to the old. The first new feature
of this first surprise is, for example, that it is a surprise; and the
only way of accounting for that is that there had been before an
expectation. Thus it is that all knowledge begins by the discovery that
there has been an erroneous expectation of which we had before hardly been
conscious. Each branch of science begins with a new phenomenon which
violates a sort of negative subconscious expectation, like the frog's legs
of Signore Galvani.
. . .
192. In order to define the circumstances under which a scientific
explanation is really needed, the best way is to ask in what way
explanation subserves the purpose of science. We shall then see what the
evil situation is which it remedies, or what the need is which it may be
expected to supply. Now what an explanation of a phenomenon does is to
supply a proposition which, if it had been known to be true before the
phenomenon presented itself, would have rendered that phenomenon
predictable, if not with certainty, at least as something very likely to
occur. It thus renders that phenomenon rational, -- that is, makes it a
logical consequence, necessary or probable. Consequently, if without any
particular explanation, a phenomenon is such as must have occurred, there
is no room at all for explanation. If the phenomenon is such as need not
have occurred on the special occasion, but must occur on occasions
differing in no discoverable and exactly assignable pertinent respect from
the special occasion on which the phenomenon in question actually occurs,
still there is nothing for explanation to do, until it is ascertained in
what respects, if any, the individual occasion differs from those other
occasions. For example, I throw a die, and it turns up ace. Now I know
already that this die will turn up ace once in six times; and I am
persuaded that it would be hopeless to attempt, at present, to find any
pertinent conditions fulfilled on this occasion which are not fulfilled
every time the die is thrown. Hence, no proposed explanation of the die's
turning up an ace can be in order, unless we can discover some peculiar
and pertinent feature about the present occasion. Why should my
lottery-ticket have drawn a blank, and somebody else's a prize? No
explanation is called for. The question is silly. (010)
193. Let us now pass to the case of a phenomenon in which, apart
from a particular explanation, there was antecedently no reason for
expecting it, and as little for expecting it not to happen. Suppose, for
example, that on the day of the Lisbon earthquake the brightest new star
had appeared in the heavens. There might possibly have been some
explanation for this; but there would have been no motive for searching
for one. To have done so would, indeed, have been a foolish proceeding,
for reasons we need not now consider. (011)
194. Thus, the only case in which this method of investigation,
namely, by the study of how an explanation can further the purpose of
science, leads to the conclusion that an explanation is positively called
for, is the case in which a phenomenon presents itself which, without some
special explanation, there would be reason to expect would not present
itself; and the logical demand for an explanation is the greater, the
stronger the reason for expecting it not to occur was. (012)
195. Since it is never prudent to rely upon reasoning that is
largely deductive, without a check upon its accuracy, especially where the
conclusion is disputed, as this is, I will select a few examples
calculated to refute it, if it is to be refuted; and examine its
application to them. First, suppose the phenomenon observed consists
simply in irregularity; then, if there were no ground for anticipating any
particular regularity, there is simply nothing to explain (irregularity
being the prevailing character of experience generally). This agrees with
our natural judgment. But if we anticipate a regularity, and find simple
irregularity, but no breach of regularity, -- as for example if we were to
expect that an attentive observation of a forest would show something like
a pattern, then there is nothing to explain except the singular fact that
we should have anticipated something that has not been realized. Here, by
our theory, there is need of an explanation, not of an objective, but of a
subjective phenomenon (pardon the jargon, -- slang jargon, at that). This
again agrees with our natural judgment; for in such a case we straightway
commence reviewing our logic to find how our error is to be explained.
. . . (013)
[This sect
201. I think I have now said enough to show that my theory -- that
that which makes the need, in science, of an explanation, or in general of
any rationalization of any fact, is that without such rationalization the
contrary of the fact would be anticipated, so that reason and experience
would be at variance, contrary to the purpose of science -- [that this
theory] is correct, or as nearly so as we can make any theory of the
matter at present. I will add, however, one more argument. Mr. Venn has
felt the need of accounting for that desire of getting rid of isolated
facts, to which he attributes the demand for an explanation; and he does
so by remarking that isolated facts are dangerous. Now how, I should be
glad to know, are isolated facts dangerous? The only way in which they
would appear to be so, and it is the only way which Mr. Venn points out,
is that in their presence we do not know what to expect. But if this is
so, getting rid of the isolation of facts is not, after all, the ultimate
motive of seeking an explanation; but on the contrary, an ulterior purpose
has reference to expectation. And what is this condition described as
being full of risk, of not knowing what to expect? It is not a mere
negation of all expectation, -- the state of mind in which a man takes his
Sunday afternoon's stroll. It is a state in which a man seems to have
ground for expecting certain things, and yet has evidence that those
expectations may be falsified. Now this precisely describes the conditions
under which according to my theory rationalization is called for. It may,
however, be objected that if we are to go back to the ultimate motive for
explanation, I should have asked what the danger is to which error would
expose us. I reply that were I investigating the practical logic of the
individual man, then, as I have already remarked, the question of pure
ethics would have to be taken up, namely, the question 'What can a man
deliberately accept as his ultimate purpose?' But restricting myself, as I
do, to scientific reasoning, I need not go behind the recognized purpose
of science, which stops at knowledge. (014)