Cheerskep wrote:
Michael writes:
What does our "receiving apparatus" receive?
As usual, there are no perfect words for what I was tryng to convey.
I have occasionally used the word 'processing'. And at least once I
used "receiving and processing". When we encounter the occasion for
sense data, factors like acuity of hearing and of sight come into
play. If Jones is color-blind, the sensation he "receives" will be
different from yours because your two receiving apparatuses are
different.
But if you and Jones are reading, chances are you and he will be
"seeing the same thing". The same "words" will be ushered into your
two different brains, but there they will be processed differently.
I don't mean simply because you each have different acquired
knowledge -- e.g. Jones "knows" Serbo-Croatian and you don't. I mean
the pre-knowledge, pre-training "wiring" is different in your two
heads. That's why as a teacher you've observed two very different
students with very similar backgrounds. And why as a teacher you've
looked at a willing and not stupid student who you nevertheless
judged would never be a worthy "creative artist".
Ah, but in your long reply you did not tell us what the apparatus
received, besides using the word "'word'" in quotation marks to
indicate (I infer) its provisional or dubious utility. You answer at
great length how different individuals can interpret or respond to the
same stimulus differently, but that deals with their responses, not
with what they received.
You tacitly assume I and others grasp what is signified by "you and
Jones are reading"--that we know what is reading is and what is being
read. It's probably not a piece of a brick wall or the trunk lid of
your car. You say the "same 'words' will be ushered into your two
different brains." I have no quarrel with the metaphor "ushered," but
I am intrigued by what is being ushered? The visual perceptions of
squiggles, dark on light, typically in rows of other closely spaced
squiggles? Are those your "words"? What if the "words," i.e., the
squiggles, are of a different shape or form from what you and Jones
are familiar? What is ushered into your brains? Mere squiggles? How is
it that an Arabic speaker form some kind of "meaning" when he sees
Arabic squiggles, but I can't? How is it that two or more Arabic
speakers can form very similar "meanings" when they look at the same
squiggles? Aren't those squiggles *intentionally made*? And doesn't
that constitute evidence that there is some kind of inherent
"meaningful structure or form" in the squiggles?
You have made it clear in other comments that you do not agree that
anything inheres (the term I used previously) in any formal way in the
written squiggles, which I believe participate in "meaning." You, as I
understand your position, deny that any part of "meaning" exists
outside the brains of the maker and receiver of messages. I think you
are wrong in this.
BTW, of the three principal definitions of "mean," two are derived
from the same source. One definition is "intend to convey"; the other
is a mathematical ratio (arithmetic mean, harmonic mean, etc.). All
come to English from Dutch and German from an Indo-European root word
related to "mind."
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Michael Brady
[email protected]
