From: BrettMan35@webtv.net (Brett Robertson) Date sent: Thu, 20 May 1999 20:56:00 -0500 (EST) To: virus@lucifer.com Subject: RE: virus: pop quiz #14 Send reply to: virus@lucifer.com
> Prescriptive is to Descriptive as Normative is to....
>
> iconographic
>
> The differences between what is abstract, ideal, essential, symbolic,
> archetypal, and/ or what relates to an image or idol-- as well as what
> is iconographic-- is subtle.
>
> What you MIGHT be saying is:
>
> How is the essential nature of a thing restated, within a systems
> representation that might include it, such that the abstraction of it
> (what is prescriptive) describes a SIMILAR quality to the symbolization
> of it (what is descriptive). These two qualities (the abstraction and
> the symbolic representation) MAY be referred to as the normative image
> and the phenomenal image (meaning "the one which names" it and "the one
> which expresses it"); though, this characterization doesn't address a
> different essential nature in the two cases.
>
Abstraction IS a description (which must be symbolically
represented to be expressed at all), but a type description rather
than a token description. It describes the characteristics of a
typical chair, rather than describing a particular chair. Images,
being particular, are as a rule descriptive rather than prescriptive.
An ideal is another matter entirely (these are two different species
of PROTOTYPE); the difference (following George Lakoff) can be
seen when we think about the difference between the ideal
husband or wife and the typical one. To abstract does NOT
prescribe, or say how a certain class of things SHOULD BE; rather
it describes how a certain class of things TYPICALLY IS. Since
your purported premise definitions are already so horribly flawed,
there is no reason for me to proceed to debunk the balance of your
word salad.
>
> It may be shown that what is expressed is DIFFERENT from what is named
> (and thus that each refers to one of two potentially distinct essential
> natures-- for example, the "justification" which is named and the
> "truth" which is expressed). To indicate this, one must suggest that
> what is named refers to a static system (which is averaged to a point
> and so becomes crystallized by the naming of it, and /or which refers,
> then, to the [self] justification for it); and that the image which is
> expressed refers to a viable system (such that by simply restating the
> essential nature of the system one can not indicate the potential
> contained within it).
>
> In such cases: The "icon" (which is descriptive) is distinct from the
> "idol" (which is prescriptive): The idol, then, refers to what is
> normative. This is in contrast to the icon-- though the icon ALSO
> refers to what is normative. What is iconographic, however, further
> suggests that the essential nature of the normative abstraction MAY
> refer merely to what is justified... while the normative symbol-- the
> icon suggests-- essentially refers to what is true.
>
> Brett Lane Robertson
> Indiana, USA
> http://www.window.to/mindrec
> MindRecreation Metaphysical Assn.
> BIO: http://members.theglobe.com/bretthay
> ...........
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>