Open Letter Part II – Definitions Involved in this Ordered Analysis and a Practical Demonstration of the Types of Judgment Involved in the Use of this Schema.

Dear Michael, 
	             Thanking you for your comments on the first open letter. I can see that I need to spend some time in order to define some of the definitions used in this Scheme or Schema. However, it might be more interesting, after this brief re-introduction, to proceed straight to the second part of this second open letter and find demonstrated not only the six types of judgment involved but the types of judgment involved in our passing to and fro around this hermeneutic circle and also across it by by-passing adjacent orders. These definitions in Part I can then be consulted when the need arises.

	In a brief re-introduction let me outline what I am up to in this elaborate ontology.

	For a start these orders were conceived of as a critical device that, in being used, could help us to make better sense of various distinctions naturally present in language, and more or less already intuitively understood, and, the critical nature of their interrelation and interaction. In their linear format a resonance continuum was proposed as taking place between 30 [pronounced as ‘third order’ and not ‘third degree’] conceptual process and 40 perceptual processes. On either side of this resonance divide (intentional) ‘content’ could be intellectually extrapolated in integrated and non-integrated forms. Hence the other four orders. Because this classificational scheme does not absolutely isolate such products from their process-derivations a resonance continuum could be proposed between all six orders. Let me quickly outline what is meant here.

	From an idea-process a thought-content could be extrapolated. A ‘thought’ had to be integrated otherwise it was more than one thought. In its (relatively) integrated state its essential content ‘contained’ an integration of its pre-essential ‘essential’ components. So a ‘red apple,’ e.g., contains the integration of the pre-essential essential concepts of ‘redness’ and ‘appleness.’ On the other hand the idea of ‘square-circle’ could not be entertained as a thought of a ‘square-circle’ itself could not be entertained beyond its non-integrated first order status. Hence the expression “the thought of a ‘square-circle’” can only be entertained as the name of a pre-essential ‘assemblage’ of essential thoughts that in this case could not be entertained as an essential, integrated thought ‘complex.’

	With respect to perceptual-processes we have factual-like-states in content. In a globally integrated form we have actual facts, facts considered to be effectively confirmed, and possible facts, states of affairs that are considered to be possible but for various reasons are not accepted as facts integrated coherently into our subjective-intersubjective appreciation of a cultural world and all its interrelated dimensions of influence. In this light we consider the ground beneath our feet in a waking state to be real, an actual state of affairs; Julius Caesar to have been a Roman general and a relatively undisputed historical fact; Father Xmas to be a mythological entity even though around Xmas time various people can be seen to be actually simulating this mythical person, etc. All quite simple really.

	With time my thinking shifted from a bi-modal understanding of a resonance continuum to a tri-modal type of arrangement. In my thesis I spent some time looking at the hermeneutic circle in this light. And just recently realized that my ordered analysis could be reconfigured in a circular, tri-modal form and superimposed upon this basic re-understanding of the hermeneutic circle and in the process link up much of my previous work (until then a separate field) on six fundamental, specific types of judgment, etc. With this in mind I decided that the 10 would be the object-pole, the 30 would be the ego-pole and the 50 would be the background-pole or world-pole. Interaction between the object-pole and the ego-pole would give us the second pole, etc.

	These three poles can be considered as underlying the gestalt nature of cognitive thought processes. Suppression of one or two of these poles, for reasons not here discussed, caused our mind to concentrate on a relatively superficial interactions between two of these poles or one of these poles with respect to itself. From this more surface state of affairs, the underlying territory must always be circular, we can generate six types of judgments (and re-constitute at the same time our six orders), namely, in order, essential judgments, aesthetical judgments, ethical judgments, pragmatical judgments, hermeneutical judgments and factual judgments. And, surprise, these distinctive fields of judgmental interest were already pre-developed for me in my ordered analysis from around twenty-five years ago.

	But wait, there is more! One of the most vexing type of questions in philosophical is ‘how is it possible to go from one of these judgment types to the next, as the hermeneutic circle itself would demand, or, indeed, to go straight to another order that is not adjacent?’ So the underlying hermeneutic circle would seem to demand that on a less superficial level we should be able to move from one of these distinction to some other with involving ourselves in a fallacious argument provided we abided by the correct transformation rules that would allows to make such transitions. For example, how do we go from a quantitative, first order type of assessment to a second order type of qualitative assessment, and/or vice versa? How do we go from a second order aesthetic type of reflection to one with a more fourth order pragmatic style, e.g., in moving from the particular beauty a painting appears to possess to the possible suggestion of a message apparently meant to be conveyed by that work of art at the same time? This sort of dance is something the everyday person does all the time, and usually does quite well, but, about which, the philosopher inevitably stumbles when they have to consider that reality often ‘walks’ with more than just one leg (and how could you walk with just one leg) and often down the other side of the street at the same time so to speak!

	In the second half of this open letter let me briefly address this ‘problem.’

1.   Some Definitions of Terms Used in our Ordered Analysis

The six orders in our now circular, non-linear format, are: 

10 (read “first order”) Distinction of the Pre-Essential concerning essential 
distinctions,
20 Distinction of the Essential concerning aesthetical distinctions,
30 Distinction of the Conceptual concerning ethical distinctions,
40 Distinction of the Perceptual concerning pragmatical distinctions,
50 Distinction of the Potential (Possible) concerning hermeneutical distinctions,
60 Distinction of the Factual (Actual) concerning facts considered as confirmed.

Essential distinctions are internally coherent conceptual components in the (‘subsistant’) content of (‘existant’) integrated idea-complexes and non-integrated idea-assemblages.

The distinction of the pre-essential concerns the content of conceptual ideas under a non-integrated aspect. Basically we are in a fundamental phenomenologically-reduced state of phenomenological analysis where all other forms of judgment (e.g., the aesthetical, the ethical, etc., are in a state of phenomenological suspension). Moreover, though processes of eidetic reflection, or the pre-acceptance of the same, we concentrate on the simplicity of an essential state of affairs like for example the general concept of ‘pinkness,’ ‘triangularity,’ ‘size,’ etc., and not, e.g., on a particularly ‘large, pink-triangle’ as seen painted on a wall… The essentially integrated nature of that type of configuration as a thought would be considered in our next distinction. In pre-essential considerations we are focusing on the archetypal ‘object qua object’ or ‘object to object’ type of relationship.

Aesthetical judgment concerns the degree and manner of resolved re-integrated coherence achieved in (subsistant) thought content in an idea-complex (itself as a thought translation of another thought or some other state as perceived ‘in the world,’ e.g., a painting, a piece of music, etc). This second ordered fact is achieved by virtue of the harmonization of content components hence the implication of an aesthetic aspect or order. Moreover, the aesthetical is centered in the general (or archetypal) relationship between an ‘object and ego’ (by virtue of the fact that the integrity of the object(-state-)complex is conducted by reference to the integrity of our own sense of self/selves).

The distinction of the essential concerns the degree and manner of resolved re-integrated coherence achieved by thought content in an idea-complex with respect to its (subsistant) content. In effect invoking an aesthetic dimension through the process of resolution wherein pre-integrated thought content is harmonically integrated through processes of ongoing resolution. Hence the identification of the second order with the sense of the aesthetic.

The distinction of the conceptual concerns the third order (i.e. ideas and their non-integrated/integrated existant thought processes).

Ethical judgment (as the ‘ego to ego’ relationship between some aspect of the ego and some other aspect of the same ego or some other ego, or ego-like representative, e.g., institution, one’s country, etc.) concerns the archetypal relationship of ideas to themselves, and, to themselves considered as a whole, i.e, as a collective body experienced by our sense of self, hence the ethical implication and identification of this aspect of our research with the third order.

The third order distinction of the perceptual concerns the perceptual processes at work on this level of the Cognitive.

Pragmatical judgment, as the archetypal relationship between ‘ego and world’, operates from a practical perceptual point of view - as that seen to be effective or not effective to some degree or other; it being considered more useful to work with what is known, rather ‘seen’, that with what is relatively unknown. Hence this implication of the pragamatical in a fourth order frame of reference (in the coursing of the ego through the world).

The distinction of the potential (possible) concerns ‘facts’ whose meaning have been hermeneutically determined as to sense but not to their individually historically considered actuality. Archetypally this is a ‘world to world’ type of relationship. 

Hermeneutical judgment as a possibility of sense hence implicate a fifth order of examination (and therein a fifth type of ‘existence’ as articulated in this ordered analysis).

On the other hand the distinction of the factual (actual) concerns ‘facts’ that are both fifth order and historically accepted on a sixth order as actual factuals. To reach this level of factual truth we must be able to move from the first order to the sixth without any form of interruption. Here, it should be noted, that the archetypal relationship herein invoked is between the ‘world and object’. Moreover, the nature of the hermeneutical circle implies that this relationship should also work in reverse, i.e., from the sixth order to the first, and, from the sixth directly to the first order, and v.v., hence the circular treatment of these six orders (that originally were given a linear format of exposition).

So how do we go from a sixth order actual factual to a non-integrated pre-essential thought? By considering the fact that the furniture of the mind is primarily found for us in the furniture of the world as articulated through a language-community, etc. And by these ‘constraints’ the ‘sense’ and its ‘position’ in our linguistic world is controlled by experience of those constraints directly or indirectly. With this sense of an actual world as inventoried. The significance of possibility being primarily derived from actuality and not v.v. as considered in the Aristotelian privileging of the potential even though our orders invoke this Aristotelian prejudice in running from the potential to the actual; as in e.g., 1-6, 5-6, etc. ). The natural constitution of our embodied psyche, in the collective interaction of a linguistic community, mapping this aspect of sense and the manner how its content falls together within various domains (as in, e.g., the empirical object-state, mathematical fields, ‘factual’ histories, interpretations of history, etc.). In this regard our mapping of pre-essential features in effect forms a psychic mapping of this life-world as lived in by this linguistic community as reflected upon by its individuals, from their point of view, etc., etc. (in turn reinforcing, shifting, transforming, re-accommodating, etc., the mapping of the distinctive ontological structures dealt with by that linguistic community).

The phenomenologically distinctive nature of a distinction is as such on a more superficial level of reflective analysis but must on a deeper phenomenological level of experience be accommodated (as in the hermeneutical circle, etc.) in order to account for the relative degree of integrity displayed by the individual. Hence we can add the following procedural-distinctions to our list of distinctions and accommodations: operations (conducted within a distinction and/or accommodation), transformations between distinctions (which can be relatively horizontal (as, e.g., in the movement of our focal interest between our Cognitive Orders) or vertical, or emergent (as in e.g., moving between a cognitive level and a trans-cognitive, judgmental level of epistemological organization). Hence our indirect invocation, in turn, of pre-essential ‘essential’ types of judgment, essential ‘aesthetical’ types of judgement, ‘ethical’ forms of judgment, ‘pragmatical’ forms of practical judgment, ‘hermeneutical’ forms of judgment and historical forms of ‘factual’ judgment (as six moments anchored within, and overlaid upon, our ‘tri-modal’ hermeneutic circle). But, let me develop, in a third letter, an integrated theory of truth to account for the fact that I can treat these different forms of judgment as possessing one, and only one, transcendental form of truth determination (based upon my understanding of the gestalt nature of fields, the resolute nature of harmony, the integrated role that different types of repetition play in this transcendentally oriented machinery, etc., as implicated in my understanding of the nature of an archetypal act of judgment).

2.   A Rough Demonstration of this Ordered Schema

1.	The thought of a ‘green-noise’ cannot be thought in an integrated form. Hence it can only be entertained as a non-integrated set containing the pre-essential elements of ‘greenness’ and ‘noiseness’, i.e., with a 1o status.
2. 	On the other hand the thought of a ‘white-nose’ can be entertained with a 2o status because ‘whiteness’ is entertained in a metaphorical-like fashion to implicate a spectrum of sounds making a hissing-like sound, which, from experience, we know to be called a ‘white noise’. Hence its ability to be entertained, when and where appropriate, through out the other five orders. 
3.	The idea of a ‘three-sided-triangle’ can be entertained as 3o product/process. But not a four-sided one which can only be entertained in the form of an empty set contained the conflicting elements of three-sidedness and four-sidedness in a non-integrated format of the 1o.
4.	An equilateral triangle can not only be entertained as an idea but also projected into an imaginary visual field – hence its fourth order status. Moreover, because it can be visualized in as a possible state of affairs in a visual field hence its 5o status as a possible fact.
5.	I can imagine Caesar marching across the Rubicon as a possible state of affairs and I could imagine the Buddha also being able to do likewise. However, my historical understanding of the Buddha precludes me from giving this 5o possible state of affairs an actual historical 6o status. On the other hand I accept the 6o historical fact that Caesar did indeed march across a bridge on the same river (with the historical significance accompanying that fact for his re-integration of the Roman Empire).

	What might seem trivial here has important ramifications for a critical theory of how we treat various categories (ontologies) of epistemological states of affairs. Hopefully, not only mirroring how the mind appears to work but also giving us a critical tool for diffusing various types of possible confusion, e.g., as would be engendered in our indiscriminate epistemological entertainment of 1o and 2o entities, etc. 

	Moreover, most philosophical controversies are either over scoping conflicting claims and forms of privilege, or, confusion of relatively non-commensurate forms of judgment. E.g, between the 2o beauty of an art-work and any message it might have in a 4o pragmatical sphere of influence. Or, that type of ethical controversy operative between 3o de-ontological forms of ethical expression and relatively non-commensurate 4o pragmatical forms of ethical appraisal. Or, that between a descriptive 1o interpretation (or a factual 60) and a 3o (or 4o)of prescriptive interpretation as occurs in the naturalistic fallacy.

	As argued elsewhere I have argued that the transcendental machinery of judgment on a deeper basis is the same for all superficial forms of judgment, but, in order to show how forms of accommodation are possible these distinctive differences must first be taken into account before we can account for an accommodation of their relatively deeper non-differences.

3.   The Usefulness of Our Ordered Analysis

	To conclude let me say that this scholastic style of analysis was envisaged in order to account for the different types of ontological entities we can entertain and to account for the fact that certain types of ‘entities’ could not be projected into an integrated conceptual field let alone a perceptual field. So we can talk about square-circles, e.g., we cannot think them in the form of an integrated thought. On the other hand the thought of a ‘blue coloured square’ could be entertained both as an integrated thought and the same as entertained in as an idea. Moreover, we could imagine our perceiving a blue square, treating it as a possible state of affairs in the world of facts, and, in a certain painting, say by Moudrian, our actually finding a blue square painted thereon. 

	So, in this critical calculus, we could phenomenologically determine the order of that under investigation and phenomenologically clarify the nature of the cognitive phenomenon in such a manner so as not to philosophically confuse it with other ordered aspects, etc. This device acting both as critical philosophical tool and as an explanation of the genesis of our thoughts in order to show how some intentional objects(-states) can be entertained in certain epistemological-ontological states and not in others (with the implication that our thinking processes are hierarchically organized in a similar fashion). In these phenomenological acts of transformation, etc., also accounting for the degree of integration experienced both in the transformation of our thoughts and in our emergent sense of self/selves therein also entertained.

In the process giving us a critical philosophical tool par excellence to deal with a number of otherwise intractable disputes and controversies!

		Wishing you all the very best in life and much success in your research,

      Noël Tointon, Sydney, 25.3.02