Arlo, Excellent post. Hard to argue against your statement. I agree and thank you for the explaination. -Ron
________________________________ From: Arlo Bensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 11:07:53 AM Subject: Re: [MD] Truth and Language [Ron] Therefore pre-lingual societies DID have notions of truth yet they did not have a universal concept of truth. [Arlo] Have to jump in here, as this touches on something that interests me greatly. I think the use of "pre-lingual" is misleading, and if we substitute instead "pre-semiotic" we'd see that there is no such thing as a "pre-semiotic society", as semiosis itself derives from the inter-subjectivity (or inter-intentionality) of two (or more) biological agents. "Language", although by far the most ubiquitous, is but one form semiosis takes. When we think of "language", most still consider "words" (spoken or written), perhaps some iconography or representational form, but mostly "speaking, reading and/or writing". Many contemporary semioticians (consider Umberto Eco or Michael Agar) instead argue that its better to broaden the totality of semiotic engagements into (what Agar calls) "languaculture", which includes semiosis occuring through art, dance, music, larger cultural metaphors, etc. In other words, while a society can be "pre-lingual" (in the sense of shared mediation via aural "sounds"), it can never be "pre-semiotic" since the very notion of semiosis demands inter-intentionality (something an isolated being simply will never experience). Seen this way, pre-semiotic organisms would not have any "notions of truth", only a vague sense of "betterness" (strictly defined within its biological reality). It was not until (going by Tomasello) the first biological beings deep in pre-history shared an "AHA!" moment when their evolving brains afforded them to recognize the intentionality of "others", and not until that moment did "notions of truth" exist. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
