Signifier -signified though basic to the construction of what you call meaning is merely a binary - the real issue here is when we learn or allow these signifiers to modify the signified and as such moving beyond the associative and into the synthetic and analytic
On 7/21/10 5:33 PM, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote: I still owe Boris and Imago responses, but Michael Brady's latest will take much less time, l so I bump it to the head of queue. I very much hope to get Boris's and Imago's soon. Michael Brady writes: > Cheerskep, > > Here's a story in the UK Mail about how scientists have used sophisticated > computer programs to decipher ancient scripts by "mapping" unknown > characters > and glyphs onto known contemporaneous scripts, such as Ugaritic and > Hebrew. > > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1296214/Computer-program-tra > ns > lates-ancient-language.html > > This has ramifications for our on-going discussion of whether any part, > aspect, feature, or other element of meaning adheres to, persists in, > remains > in, or partakes of the physical object, writing in this case. > > After much controverting between you and me, I believe that (a) it's the > humans who produce the meaning in their thought process, but that (b) > there is > a durable form in the object that preserves the triggers or stimuli that > produce the meaning, and thus that preserves the meaning by proxy. In > other > words, meaning exists in a potential state in the object. > Recall: It's my position that we "connect", associate, certain sounds and visual images -- like utterances and scriptions (i.e. written "words") -- with other bits of consciousness in our mind when they are juxtaposed enough. When my son was young and we'd see a horse, and I'd say "Horsey!" repeatedly, he did not say to himself, "Ah -- I get it: 'Horsey' MEANS that big animal over there." He had no concept of "means". His mind simply forged an association between the sound in his mind, and the horse-image in his mind. Came a point when I'd point at a horse and say, "Doggie!" and he'd correct me. Every aspect of that correction can be explained in terms of associated notions, without ever using the word 'means/meaning'. Michael, every usage by you of the word 'meaning" above can be replaced by one of the terms we call a bit of consciousness -- 'notion', 'image', sound', etc. For example, when you say, "the triggers or stimuli that produce the meaning", I'd argue they "trigger" a notion of some related image. Let's agree the object observed -- like the noise when I say "horsey", and the physical horse -- is outside the mind, but it's the apparatus in my head that simultaneously "hears" and "sees" and consequently associates the sound and the sight. The next time my son heard "Horsey!" he'd look around for a horse because his mind had associated the sound of my word with the image of the animal. To say in kitchen English that 'horsey' "means" a horse is harmless enough, but when we get into philosophy of language and mind it's troublesome. The computer described above does not discern that a certain scription "means" another similar scription in another language (or that they both "mean" "the same thing"). In loose terms we can say the first glyph "reminds" the computer of the second glyph because they look somewhat alike -- i.e. they have similar visual parts. Ancient languages often used scriptions that visually resemble an object. I have vague memories of Asian scriptions that look like a house or a tree etc. This calls to my mind onomatopoeic words that sound somewhat like the object they are designed to call to an auditor's mind -- words like 'buzz' and 'frog'. (Yes, I'm aware that the French consider 'grenouille' to be onomatopoeic.) In sum, I find the translating computer interesting, but I can construe it as fitting perfectly with my theory that there are no non-notional "meanings". (Incidentally, the sidebar that suggests the only Etruscan words that have been translated with any surety are the numbers one through six -- is wrong. In a script I've been at, I horse around with the known Etruscan word 'hister' -- 'actor' -- and the Latin word 'hyster' -- 'uterus'. 'Hister' is the source of our word 'histrionic', and 'hyster' lies behind 'hysterectomy'.) --
