[Air-l] conceptual lexicon

[David Low]

At 06:55 AM 29/07/2006, eg wrote:
>Again, I agree with these two sentences, but not the implication. We should
>indeed focus on the "real", and move beyond invididualism. But that doesn't
>mean that "analyzing the collective" requires aggregate measures.
>Descriptions and observations should proceed from case instances. We can
>thus analyze a collective (whatever it's called - network, community,
>nation, Frank, etc.) as the multitude of observed interactions (is the
>network of talk dense or sparse, tight or loose?) without extrapolating that
>the collective is something more or other than those observed interactions.
>Analyzing a collective, devoid of descriptions of case instances, is less
>profound (and much farther from "real") than individualism.

If the collection refers to 'completed experiences', one can analyse 
this kind of collection in an infinite number of ways.  If we are 
referring to the realm of the possible, one can also use a collection 
of completed experiences as a starting point for an infinite number 
of speculations, each relying on knowledge of completed experiences, 
and each more profound than individual descriptions of single 
cases.  Is the question whether the merely possible is real?  We 
could take that as a hypothesis and see how it works out.
D.