Informal logic

There are multiple layers of knowledge and meaning, corresponding more or less to the "zoom level" at which we are looking at something. This means that the definition of a unit may have multiple contradictory elements of knowledge.

For example, we read data from a file. But wait - the file has to be open first! So we read data from an open file, and we write data to an open file, right? Well, but to write to a file, we have to have opened it in write mode.

See what I mean? There are multiple layers of rough approximation that humans effortlessly sort though in order to gloss over unimportant detail during the early stages of a solution, then to retrieve it only when it becomes necessary.

This can sometimes have bad effects - garden-path solutions where we find that our solution is no solution because of some irritating detail we forgot until just now. I wonder if one characteristic of genius is to retrieve those details more quickly than others. At any rate, even a genius would quickly become bogged down in extraneous detail without this zooming-in mechanism.

I think of this as "informal logic". In formal logic, if I state "P", then P holds. Period. In informal logic, I may state "P", then later say, "Well, except for in this case." The same is true of open files - it's true that I can write to a file, but there are caveats. The question is, at what stage do those caveats get retrieved in order to contribute to a solution?

I suspect the answer lies in the syntactic expression mechanism, at least in part. When I sit down to write real code to write something to a file, that's when I remember that I have to signal the write mode during the file-open command, and that's because I have that knowledge connected to the actual syntax (along with some background knowledge that I have about how file I/O works).