[Inquiry] Re: And Passing Away

[Jon Awbrey]

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APA.  Note 7

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GR = Gary Richmond
JA = Jon Awbrey

Re: APA 4.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-December/003310.html
In: APA.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-December/thread.html#3307

Gary,

Just enough time to begin chipping away
at the surface layers of problematic in
one of the more problematic paragraphs
of this APA-thesis, to wit, this one:

JA: Maybe we should cast an eye or two or three to the self-fullfilling policy
    that says that disciplines cannot be developed through in depth discussions
    in public view, and ask who polices that policy, and why, no matter what gnu
    fangled gee-gaws come down the pike.  Is it not more like that oo deferral of
    responsibility, that same old gambit that renders all questing purely academic?

The first hermeneutic recalcitrance that I notice here is the problem
of what we mean or ought to mean by "policy".  The principal choices
appear to be strung out between the "object" and the "sign" poles.
That is to say, is a policy a signoid thing, at one extreme some
kind of document whose letters are graven on stone tablets, say?
On the other mountain, is a better use of the term "policy" to
indicate a form of conduct, a pattern of action, like a habit?

By way of a dramatic example, if I have to rip one from recent headlines:

Of course, no "leader of a democratic and civil res publica" (LOADACRP)
"holds to" a policy of torture, if by "holds to" one means "owns to" it,
say, for example, by issuing hard documents without the benefit of what
every good LOADACRP has learned to appreciate as "plausible deniability".
Still, the best current evidence, video-graphic even, is that torture in
the name of that LOADACRP happens, the letter and the lithography of the
law notwitstanding.

That should suffice to suggest the locus of the
just-under-the-surface layer of the problematic.

Jon Awbrey

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inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
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