on generalities, deductive and inductive, the hinge

page 290

Triangular co-ordinates then which can be expressed in terms of ratios. Rational inference. The rudiments and elements of generalization and equivalence. The beginnings of a logical language: verbal and symbolical.

The term "fish" doesn't carry us much further forward: it is a catchall for use when definition is less important than convenience. Nevertheless, we cannot imagine language without popular or common epithets; they lend colour, graphicness, flow and descriptive value. They do not properly belong in a logical context, a cause for muddle and gross error. I am not a stickler. We shall muddle through.

Linear rationality must hinge. We can factor in four co-ordinates, make the system progressive, worm-like, rotating about an axis; and ther is the hinge, the axis, triangulation leads us on. Regularly patterned at this stage. Generality and equivalence.

When we reach for a generality we unthinkingly grasp a substantive noun: apple, fruit, furniture, truth. Substantive in grammatical usage, concrete or abstract. There is nothing substantial or concrete about the generality: it groups things, clasps them in its inductive or synthetic embrace, just short of inference or entirely within it. A mental act.

Almost anything can be general, that is, given to include particulars under its umbrella. A particular can be a part or a member. Cases, examples, instances may be members. A limb is a member, a particular member. We deal with body as a generality.

Is an element or an incident a member? Don't get ahead of yourself. What does it have in common with those that stand under the term? We begin there. Generalities are not all of a piece. They have a lot to do. Comprehending reality.

"Ordinary individual", a type. An individual is a one-of, grouped to belong to a class. Not a trick -- well, a logical sleight-of-hand, perfectly acceptable.You see logic isn't at all logical; the hand is faster than the eye because your attention is elsewhere. And where that great brawling turbulence assailing our manifold senses is concerned any sound arrangement will do, it doesn't have to be foolproof. Fools eradicate themselves, no matter what the precautions.

Picture a residential court with private living units, a habitat which is the fixed general address of the tenants. Knowing the general address doesn't give you the tenants. You look them up. Pry them from their general status. They are individuals apart from where they live. The address is what they hold in common. An induction, not simple, elaborated. Involved. The residents may change, the general address does not. They may move on. Out of the circle.

Imagine now a left-luggage office at a railway station. As once was. People come and they go, travellers; they leave their belongings at the window and take their identity with them. An address like general delivery or poste restante. Not an address at all. For what do we address, the identity or their belongings? What they possess, the clothes they wear, their walk, their conversation as well as their luggage pertain to them. Balances them out, like a child filling in the outline of a face with crayons, or dressing up a cardboard doll with paper clothes taken from a cut-out book passing as a wardrobe or a chest of drawers.

The fulcrum is the hinge or axis. Like a pendulum. A balance about a centre. Identity = what belongs to the identity.

Parts, particulars, identities, individuals, members, incidents, elements, cases, instances: aren't these a shade nearer to existence, to being real? Entities. We can probably apply them.

We must resist turning incorporeal ideas into existences. How attractive sometimes! The genius, the spirit of place turned into a nymph with rather substantial attributes. Echo personified. The Graces. Torn from their conditions. Given shape. So with John Bull. Standing in for. Easier to remember. Or the Government. Improper generalization. We go further: schizophrenia, depression, the Depression, realism. Taken at random. Apply particulars. Be very cautious about applying general ideas. They may bite you.

We produce a straight line but induce a circle because it curves into itself (comparison by similarity).

A.

B.

A, same things compose a whole; B, different things compose a whole. Any one of a represents A; altogether stand under B as individuals (a, b, c, d)

on generality (predicables)

A can develop in quantity; B in variety, that is, different elements. B indeed can form a general identity, or identity. Particular things belong to the identity. Their association is not by resemblance. The predicate the thing itself. We could call them predicables, attributes, or even properties. I prefer characteristics. Even if they are parts or members, they are characteristics. Whatever the term, they do not exist apart from the identity. Anything we name can be an identity, as anything can be a generality. They may originate in reality or be posited by the imagination. Which is real and which is imaginary may be debatable: Robin Hood, a myth (probably), the Man in the Moon (certainly), George the Fifth, now departed, knowledge of whom must be by report. Identities, nonetheless. And may be developed.

A generality may be like a law that depends on cases, individual instances that have been embraced, made progressive, a pattern, the same but not quite the same, exceptions having been tested and included. Varying between inclusion, closed except to uniform applicants; or open to re-statement as a principle. Similarities only; some differences accepted. Closed; open.

"Ordinary" is not an identity, not in the usual way of things, though it can be: the "ordinary man". Though a type, he can be considered as one of a kind. A slip of logic we allow because it is useful. As a type, ordinary can cover a number or group of instances:"ordinary numbers". If you remark that your home is ordinary, you include it in a class of others, in a general way, alike because they have no special features, a common lot. Yours is the one instance cited, we assume there are others, making an unspecified comparison. It carries. We believe we know what you mean, generalizing comes readily to our heads.

We could define ordinary as no unusual distinguishing marks. Of the ruck. (or off the rack) But something must lodge in our minds: four walls, a roof and a door. Doesn't every ordinary house have that? We don't mean, nothing at all. A blank. We mean, so uniform there's no individuality. Absolute space, that between heavenly bodies, isn't even uniform. Nothing there to be thought similar. Nothing to point at and name. Just a void. We can name that. But no inductions, no deductions. No particulars. Wait a bit, how do we find our bearings? Nothing to locate! Stars? No stars in this immensity. Logic is at a loss. Rationality won't serve. No net big enough.

Until we've been through we don't know where we are. With knowledge, where there's a gap, a dearth of information, you rely on where you came from as a guide. You venture out as an exception departing the rule, but you hold on to your uniformity.

generality, individuality, motions and feeling

Like a wayfaring mariner toiling through uncharted seas you continue on your voyage of discovery, your hope the reward of insight yet withheld, no forwarding address, contact through poste restante, home base.

Suppose that void was written off as "unknown". A waste. We had no eyes to see or ears to hear, it spoke a language we had yet to learn. A gap in our knowledge, that in retrospect becomes as familiar as the back of our hands. How well do we know the back of our hands? We've looked at them often with eyes unseeing. Ordinary.

Ordinariness is individuality trapped. With a quick-realease catch if we look for it. What may seem uniform, too damned similar, may be different. Different by comparison. Sounds odd, doesn't it? Alike in one sense, different in another, yet still contained within the group. When you think of it, that's how things are.

What we confront is not a fish, it is an identity determined. Before, we saw it as scales, fins, fluked tail, swimming in the river. We understood it as a fish because we had been told or knew the general description, a few abstract features. Now we recognize a salmon. The shape emerging from the void. As simply a fish it lacked particular difference. As ordinary as the back of the hand. Lost in fishness. Waiting to be rediscovered. Our fish is recovering its individual identity. By degrees of classification. And features. We catch it by angling. An identity. Larger than life when represented in our fish story.

You must have heard Dr. Johnson's putdown of anglers: a rod with a worm at one end and a fool at the other. Hingeing on humour. A nudge to our feelings. Often our insights hinge on feeling. We rarely think our adventures in hypotheses through, like inferences scrawled on a blackboard. We jump the connections. When we walk we don't say, "Stand steady on the right foot, swing forward the left foot, establish that..." and so on. From particular to particular to particular. Nah, we feel what we do, feel it through, get into the swing and the rhythm. From moments to momentum, obeying the habit which is a generalized response that needs guidance. A directed activity. A motion in progress. Hypotheses are frozen motions or actions. A flowing motion. And a flow is a feeling. What else can it be? Continual self-regulated deductions.? Quantum particulars? The linear wave? Pendular synchronicity? Sounds fishy. Think back to how you learned. By trial and error. Then Eureka! You were doing it. The thrill of accomplishment. Insight obtained. That's a salmon. A sockeye, essaying the falls. Try after try. Failure after failure. Then it's gone! Vanished. Upstream. Pursuing a feeling. A habit. A triangulated inference. Home base! Instinct or intuition? I shrug. It's a matter of insight and timing.

©Laurie Ashton, 1999
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