Reasoning without universals

Halliday has a really nice endnote to his introduction to his Collected Works (Vol 1, p 14) in which he adduces his grandmother who 'spoke unself-consciously in proverbs'. He then characterises a proverb as:

a theory of experience, but ... a commonsense theory, not a designed theory, and so construed in commonsense grammar, as one of a class of instances rather than a higher order abstraction.

To follow through on this would involve studying the place, uses and pedagogies of sententia in ancient rhetoric:

The sententia is an 'infinite' (i.e. not restricted to one individual case) idea, formulated in a sentence as proof or as ornatus. ... The infinite character and demonstrative function of the sententia are due to the fact that it is regarded, in the social milieu of its range of validity and application, as a piece of wisdom with the same authority as a legal judgement or written law, applicable to many concrete ("finite") cases. Sententia lay claim to validity, partly as assessments of situations, partly as statements of duty standards, which may occur as commands or as prohibitions. (Lausberg 388)

Halliday's invented 'snatch of dialogue' conforms perfectly to this schema: his grandmother is arguing that Harry (presumably a suitor) is so bad that Maggie will not be able to change him.

The best place to study this in detail, apart from rhetoric, would be in Common Law and Theology. The reasoning of both depends on invoking and applying 'proverbs' from authoritative texts - Roman law, precedents, the gospels and other church authorities. And of course, Gadamer is precisely the one who has tried to explain the rationality of this form of reasoning, abstraction and application. He calls it hermeneutics. Others call it 'case-based reasoning', 'reflective judgement' (Kant).