Page 149 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

140 Geoffrey Sykes

APPLICATION OF METHODS

The contemporary relevance of such specified and mathematical methods,
allied to media forms, can be apparent in consideration of forms of intuitive
and informal logic involved in web browsing, or so called navigation or
―surfing‖. The search engine of Google uses complex ―nearest‖ neighbour and
other associative logics to guide a user through a vast array or list of associated
terms, sites, topics, videos or persons. ―Navigational‖ logic might seem
imprecise compared to the rigour sought in statutory or legal reasoning, yet it
is possible that forms of informal logic could take a place in a gamut of legal
tools, indeed that the more predictive tools of legal reasoning could, in
mediated forms, be layered on the open format of associative or fuzzy logic.
There could even be domains, such as client services, ‗people‘s courts‘ or
education, for example in mandatory counselling in family law courts, where
more experimental comparison between a case at hand and others could be
beneficial. The process of mathematicising the search and comparison of cases
could be a means of auditing or checking the particular process of formal
decisions, and a means generally of making decision transparent. Further, as
searches of multi media web sites demonstrate, any traditional opposition of
mathematical or scientific methods, and natural language or realist modes,
must be re-examined. In a site like You-tube, associative logic is used to
enable links and lists of videos from a vast field of submissions – a billion or
more in number.
Peirce expresses this supplementary ―relative‖ logic, of abduction, as a
form of supplementary, not separate, action, as a doubling of the functions of
logic. He would later call this logic‘s ‗second intention‘ [Peirce, 2.368]. The
icon, sourced within the defining function of indexical argument, is doubled
and complexified, in the development of Peirce‘s own theory as well as
generally, to become the basis of Firstness, of sign objects in self. Smallest
increments and changes of behaviour can be mapped in their repetition in a
process he termed Firstness. The algorithmic equivalent of such doubling is
recursion, where tokens or immediate values are manipulated and cross-
referenced to produce supplementary intermediate values. Kort‘s example
becomes a paradigm for what Kress calls ―the role distribution among the
different semiotics.‖ The intermediate value (iv) is inserted between the
purposeful preliminary and final values, in an ―application‖ or action that
suspends and doubles the linear, purposeful sign action of court discourse.
Within this abductive supplement the facts and habits of jurisdictional
practice can be represented and even created. A multi-modal, multi-logic