Objectivity and Descriptional Relativities

Abstract

A general representation of the processesof conceptualization, founded upon adescriptional mould drawn from fundamentalquantum mechanics, is outlined. The approach iscalled the method of relativizedconceptualization. This stresses that therepresentation is not researched as a ``neutralstatement of facts'' but, from the start on, asa method subjected to definitedescriptional aims, namely an a prioriexclusion of the emergence of false problems orparadoxes and of any gliding into relativism.The method is characterized by an explicit andsystematic relativization of each descriptionalstep, to all the descriptional elementsinvolved in this step, namely: the epistemicaction by which the object-entity is generated,the object-entity itself, and the epistemicaction by which the object-entity is qualified.Successive steps which complexify progressivelya given initial description, form an unlimitedchain of cells of conceptualization wherethe very first cell, necessarily, is rooted in as yet strictly unconceptualizedphysical factuality while the subsequent cellsconsist of increasingly abstract descriptionsthat are connected hierarchically. The chainsinteract at nodes where they branch, thusgenerating an indefinitely evolving,complexifying web of relativizedconceptualization, free of ambiguities, andwhere each element stays under control.

The method contains the positedassertion of a realism of which a definite sortof minimality follows then inside themethod. This generates a clear distinctionbetween illusory qualifications of``how-a-physical-entity-is-in-itself'', and models of this physical entity. Thereby aworked out connection with philosophicalthinking is incorporated in the method.

The method is shown to entail a critical view concerning classical logic (the deeplyinnovating and unifying influence of themethod of relativized conceptualization, uponlogic and probabilities is thoroughly exposedin another work of which the present one hadbeen the kernel).

The relations between the general method ofrelativized conceptualization and therelativistic approaches in the sense of modernphysics, are specified. These last ones, incontradistinction to the method exposed in thiswork, are shown to concern exclusivelythe ways of constructing qualifiers ofobject-entities so as to insure intersubjectiveconsensus among corresponding classes ofobservers; while the ways of generating theobject-entities which are qualified, and theconsequences entailed by these ways, are notconsidered: like in the classical logic, likein the whole classical thinking, theobject-entities are simply presupposed toalways pre-exist available.

Traditionally, the emergence andelaboration of knowledge has always beenstudied from a point of view founded onpsychological and neurobiological data, and inthe spirit of a ``neutral'' account of thenatural phenomena. The modern cognitivisticapproaches continue this tradition. Theapproach exposed in this work is probably thevery first one in which a systematicrepresentation of the processes of creation ofknowledge is founded on strategic datadrawn from physics, and correlatively, isconstructed from the start on as a method forthe optimization of these processes themselves, accordingly to definite aims.