Representation taketh and interpretation giveth

(...the most natural sense of 'to be measured' is, I take it, that some form or quantity be imposed accidentally and extrinsically--as in a river.)

Train of association: measurement in units...substance (e.g., this man or this horse) as the unitary.

A unit or yardstick of measurement brought to bear on the river is, as a physical object, extrinsic to the river, but shares with it an aspect whereby one forms a selectively abstractive representation of the river. In that selective abstraction is the reductiveness for which some chide measurement, yet which measurement shares with formations of representations more generally from life -- reductions not to the substance of, say the river, but instead to that which happens to be essential to the abstractive purpose. Often it includes smoothing and rounding off.

To someone in an agragrian society, such as Heraclitus, it would be evident that many things are changing imperceptibly: crops are growing, but we notice the change only if we look on widely separated days; animals grow, but we never see one growing; felled trees decay, but we may notice that they are rotted through only if our foot happens to fall through when we step on them. Change is exactly what one intelligently 'discerns' by paying close attention; imperceptible change is not something contradicted by experience.

Witness the transition from an idea of discernment, high-resolution focus, to an idea of interpretation, extrapolation, interpolation. It seems quite natural.

Where representation from life reduces, interpretation augments. Interpretation is a kind of representation, representation in a culminal phase (such that the resolutional or settlemental phase is some sort of verification or legitimation). By "representation from life" I mean something which more generally is formation of a representation not as an interpretation but as something to be interpreted. It's somewhat a question of viewpoint, like the question of whether something is an encoding or a decoding. Every representation is already an interpretation in some sense or other.

What, in representation from life, is the cognitive ability which gives over to representation, just as discernment gives over to interpretation? As representation from life and interpretation are each other's inverse in respect of reducing and augmenting, likewise should be the respective cognitive acts which give over to them. Discernment involves high-resolution focus. So: low-resolution focus, estimation of overall relative positions and motions, proportions, tendencies.

Representation from life is judgment. By judgment one forms an opinion or belief. Interpretation is interpretive inference -- calculation, curve-fitting, arriving at a percept, concept, etc. By interpretation one arrives at an understanding.

We also associate these acts with certain time-oriented cognitive modes.

Expectation (future).	Estimation of relative motion, positions, proportions, etc.	Judgment. Belief, opinion.
Noticing (fresh present).	Discernment.	Interpretive inference. Understanding.

Oddly, though correlated to noticing, interpretation concerns a kind of futurity; it arrives at a meaning or ramification, albeit conditioned as just coming to light, unverified, yet such that the mind feels that it will likely become ready to act upon it. Meanwhile judgment, though correlated to expectation, concerns a kind of present; as a representation, it arrives at a kind of seeming, not yet further interpreted or acted-upon, yet such that the mind feels ready to act upon it under circumstances as they currently appear.

I'll likely discuss the extension of these pattern to two more sets of terms, involving conceptions, objectifications, etc., and verifications, inferences to judgments, etc. - posted by The Tetrast, initially @ 2/24/2007 04:40:00 PM [top of post] [top of page] Copyright © BenjaminðA.ðUde11.