From: POWERS_W%FLC@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU (William T. Powers)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Subject: meaning
Date: 12 Nov 92 18:22:31 GMT
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
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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.
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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?
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Best to all,


Bill P.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU