Re: memetics-digest V1 #1312

From: Wade T. Smith (wade.t.smith@verizon.net)
Date: Mon 10 Mar 2003 - 12:40:13 GMT

  • Next message: Reed Konsler: "Mean Um Meaning Mean"

    On Sunday, March 9, 2003, at 08:08 PM, memetics-digest wrote:

    > Turn the TV off so that it does not perform its communicative function
    > and tell me what you see.

    I could go to the studio and see it actually performed. I could go into the editing booth and watch it being cut. I could read the script.

    > its
    > meaning/significance is both existent and contingent upon the
    > intentions of its creators

    There is no example of a perfectly complete semantic communication, and meaning and significance are entirely at the disposal of the observer in its own time/space of observation, which is largely also a function of cultural presets.

    Again, there is no possible reason to claim there is any semantic content passing with any force of identity from one person to another through some ghostly medium.

    > a dynamically
    > recursive self-conscious awareness, complete with ideation, intention,
    > will and efficacy, is necessary for specific meanings to be
    > intentionally
    > shared.

    I agree. (You know I really like your definition of consciousness.) I just don't see that 'specific meanings' are necessarily required, or happen, in cultural evolution and the memetic actions that alter the presets of that culture's performance space. Meanings are armchair activities of the culture, instigated by their time/space in that culture. There is no qualia there....

    > It is the method by means of which semantic content, or meaning, is
    > communicated, if writing and speaking and demonstrating are all
    > considered as performances.

    Again, any and all behaviors within the time/space of culture are performances.

    > I have a hard time considering the
    > solitary construction of verbiage spatiotemporally separated from
    > anonymous possible readers to be a performance, except in the loosest
    > sense.

    If by this you mean one person, acting alone, without any possible audience, yes, that is not a performance in the cultural sense, although it is behavior and actions of that person.

    - Wade

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