From: Chris Lofting (chrislofting@ozemail.com.au)
Date: Sat 17 Jun 2006 - 11:56:57 GMT
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk] On Behalf
> Of Robin Faichney
> Sent: Saturday, 17 June 2006 9:09 PM
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: What Meaning Means (was: RE: presentation)
>
> I think I'm basically in agreement with Tim on this, but would put it
> slightly differently.
>
> Meaning has a subjective component and therefore, strictly speaking,
> has no place within memetics.
>
> I follow Wittgenstein in viewing the meaning of language as its use in
> a given context. You know what a word means if and only if you know
> how to use it.
>
Words are representations of feelings. The basic feelings are genetic such
that we all have a sense of 'wholeness' but what it is applied to is up to
personal and/or collective preferences.
It is possible to communicate with others without speaking the same language
in that as species-members we all have the core meanings as these qualities.
Thus given a novel context any member of the species can guess what is being
communicated based on the 'hard coded' set of meanings we all share.
This gets into the differences of primate emotions vs those derived from a
developed sense of self (starting about 24 months after birth). As such, we
may have problems communicating using derived emotions but will find it easy
using genetically-determined emotions.
We still depend on over 50% of communication being none verbal and operating
holistically (in parallel). That form of communication may be 'vague' when
compared the precision of our serial forms of communication but it is still
communication and contains universal elements and so not related to local
context.
Since the qualities of meaning are sourced in patterns of self-referencing,
and the universe demonstrates properties of self-referencing, so the
universe can be found to be 'meaningful' without there being any agent of
communication present other than the perception of that universe by
individual consciousness.
Since context can push instincts/habits so it can push 'meaning' without the
individual consciousness actually 'knowing' what is going on; the
species-nature reacts as the consciousness-nature is still trying to
interpret things; IOW there are cause-effect dynamics going on that relate
to 'purpose' without the individual realising that dynamic.
This moves into the singular/particular-general differences where the
singular is driven to interpret and so comes up with specialist perspectives
that create a 'new' language to describe something already described in some
other form(at).
Included in the realm of the singular is the creation of specialist
languages that rely on existing, unconscious, qualities as the foundations
for language creation through application of labels. These basic qualities
are universals in that they are context-insensitive. Thus all specialist
languages are relabelling of these universals and it is the universals that
allow for translations etc.
Specialisations, and so specialist languages, be they of the individual,
general collective (e.g. English), or some specialist discipline (e.g.
physics), all have a common base that allows for one specialisation to be
used as a source of analogy/metaphor in describing some other.
Children, when first learning what to associate the inbuilt qualities with
the local labels have no idea what the word means, they just associate it
with intuitive qualities of wholeness, partness, etc and develop from there
using heuristics.
Thus the local universals such as the word 'house' are associated with the
general qualities (objects/relationships) and work by rote. THEN comes finer
details analysis and the recognition of abstract terms as well as concrete
terms.
The hard coding of meanings allow for customisation to make one's own
language and so communicating with self - this is common in psychosis as it
is in general singular development (fundamentalism leads into new 'language'
developments to sharply differentiate the particular collective from all
others).
Given the studies on other neuron-dependent life forms so feelings equate
with meaning derivation - and so there is no need for words per se where
words are serial communication and can be precise and so refine parallel
communication where words are no longer necessary ;-)
Emotional communication is by resonance where it is the only method that
allows us to share the same space with another - where empathy/sympathy
operates, where mirroring operates, where mime operates. No words necessary.
Chris.
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat 17 Jun 2006 - 12:17:23 GMT