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- From: POWERS_W%FLC@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU (William T. Powers)
- Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
- Subject: meaning
- Message-ID: <01GR299V0QTE006FKI@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU>
- Date: 12 Nov 92 18:22:31 GMT
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- [From Bill Powers (921112.0900)]
-
- Avery Andrews (921112.1238) --
-
- >>But that objection is based on the idea that there is a "real"
- >>meaning of "The Iliad" that can be objectively established by
- >>experts. All this
-
- >Which there is, sort of, tho `objective' might not be quite the
- >right word for. The real Iliad is whatever Homer dictated to
- >whoever wrote it down, on current conceptions.
-
- The words "The Iliad" are words. They are not a book, nor are they "a
- book." "A book" is the name of the thing you can hold in your hands and
- read. "The Iliad" is a phrase we use to refer to (a) something that we
- have heard or read that Homer dictated to someone, (b) a particular book
- with the marks "The Iliad" printed on the cover, and with printed words
- inside like those that Homer purportedly said, although in most cases
- not the same words (a translation). So "The Iliad" is the name of a
- collection of perceptions, some of which are word-like objects, some of
- which are book-like objects, some of which are memories, and some of
- which are imagined scenes or people.
-
- When we use a word casually, as in the sentence "My wife is upstairs
- with my grandson," we don't distinguish between the words and the
- perceptions that they indicate. The word and its meanings seem
- inseparable. I speak the words "my wife" and I experience at the same
- time a perception (in memory/imagination) of a woman I know very well,
- of memories of other times, of the sound of her voice and the
- expressions on her face. As I speak the words I simultaneously imagine
- the things they are about. Of course I also experience other words:
- "Mary." This is all a sort of silent resonance in memory, with the
- clearest part being, perhaps, the most recent and relevant to what's
- going on today, and with little of it being in words.
-
- That sort of resonance in memory occurs with most words that I speak or
- hear (except for the boilerplate). Seeing the words as separate from
- their meanings is not normal, I suppose. But then seeing actions as
- controlled input is not normal either. Normal is what we have learned.
- We can learn a different way of understanding our experiences of words
- and meanings.
-
- My understanding of the relation between words and meanings began when I
- was in high school and ran across Korzybski. I suppose that the maxim
- "the word is not the object" is taken by a lot of people (judging from
- the way they fail to apply it) as a sort of moral principle. I took it
- as Korzybksi meant it, I think: as a fact. It is simply an obvious truth
- that a word is a word and an object is an object. The link between them
- is invisible. Hearing or seeing the word can make us imagine the object,
- and seeing the object can make us imagine the word, spoken or printed.
- Once the difference is noticed, it's hard to remember not noticing it.
-
- While HPCT was under development, I expanded on the basic idea. Not only
- is the word for an object not the object, but the word for a motion is
- not the motion and the word for an event is not the event. A descriptionof a
- relationship is not the perception of the relationship, and so on
- to saying that the description of a system concept is not the perception
- of the system concept. Most control processes -- outside language itself
- -- are involved with direct control of the perceptions, not control of
- the names or descriptions of perceptions. Words become involved with
- these control processes at the higher levels, above categories and
- sequences. I think that linguists will ultimately be the people who tell
- us just how they are involved. But linguists, too, will have to
- distinguish the word or description from the "object" it means before
- this can come about.
-
- Henry Dodson, or Lewis Carroll, seems to have understood this. I can't
- bring the passage to mind, but perhaps someone can: I think it was the
- Carpenter who proposed to sing a song called X. But it worked out that X
- was only what the song was CALLED; its NAME was Y. But the song whose
- name was Y was actually Z, and the song Z turned out to have a
- completely different title. The word is not the object. Nor is the word
- the meaning of the word.
- -------------------------------------------------------------------
- Bruce Nevin (921112.0915) --
-
- Roger on the line-endings. I have to remember to insert hard carriage
- returns where they aren't supplied.
-
- RE: outcome-based education.
-
- Looks like a good start toward defining the goals of education in terms
- of reference perceptions. There seems to be some attempt to break down
- each one into lower-level reference perceptions, but I think that could
- be made much more explicit.
-
- " Students will possess strong communication skills, including the
- ability to both write and speak clearly and effectively, and will be
- able to use these skills in an appropriate manner when participating
- in group or person-to-person situations."
-
- In order to be perceived as possessing strong communication skills, what
- specific sub-goals must the student achieve?. What are the perceptible
- signs of clearness and effectiveness? What manners are perceived to be
- appropriate? How do we judge appropriateness?
-
- RE: interpersonal organization.
-
- >there does seem to be some supra-individual collective creation
- >that persists over time and is shared across persons.
-
- This has to be a metaphor. Remember that there is no place to stand from
- which to verify that this is so. Each person has an idea of what is
- shared and to what extent it is "collective." We go on the assumption
- that we share a reality. There are limits to our ability to make this
- assumption believable -- the main limit coming from our knowledge that
- it IS an assumption.
-
- >The consensus-perceptions are felt to be different from the private
- >perceptions, and indeed they are unless one happens to agree with the
- >consensus utterly.
-
- How do you know what the consensus is but by perceiving it privately?
- --------------------------------------------------------------------
- Best to all,
-
-
- Bill P.
-