On Jul 21, 2010, at 5:33 PM, [email protected] wrote: > 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.
1. I must have been misreading the phosphors on my screen in messages with your name on them, or at least I must have conjured up the wrong associations. I understood your position to be that "meaning" does not reside in the object but in the thoughts of the person perceiving the object, i.e., that the "meaning" was an array or series of some-such in the activities of your brain when stimulated by the "meaningful" artifact. 2. Not everything one can think is image-able, that is, not everything can be rendered internally as an image. The artifact may trigger something that is not an image, such as an if-then relationship or a conditional. Squiggles on the page or glowing phosphors can produce a subjunctive kind of mental construct. (But, truth be told, when I read or hear a logical argument, frequently I "see" it in my head, mentally, not perfectly and not in some visual-symbolic way, but I grasp the logical relationships spatially, if you get my meaning. Kinda hard to describe.) | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
