Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Tue, 10 Nov 1992 12:58:20 EST
From:         "Bruce E. Nevin" <bnevin@CCB.BBN.COM>
Subject:      meaningful or less

[From: Bruce Nevin (Tue 921110 12:55:31)]

(penni sibun 921109.1300) --

OK, Penni, I'll try to keep this short.

>i actually don't believe in ``meaning'' very much.  i think it's
>a systematic error that people tend to think actions that involve
>language have meanings and those that don't don't.

I think you're agreeing with what I said, but it seems like you believe
you're disagreeing.  I said:

(Bruce Nevin (Mon 92112 07:38:16 through Fri 92116 14:05:06) ) --

> I would suggest that all perceptions "have" meaning, that is, any given
> perception is linked in associative memory to other perceptions.

Where we differ is this: you would rule meaning out; I urge instead that
meaning is pervasive.  But we apparently mean different things by
"meaning."

You had asked:

   >what does meaning have to do with anything?

In the universe of our perceptions (our only knowable universe), meaning
has to do with everything.  In PCT, meanings are remembered or imagined
perceptions associated with a given perception.  If we are controlling
the given perception, some of these other perceptions arising through
associative memory and imagination may also come to be controlled, and
in this way affect the actions (behavioral outputs) that result from
perceptual control.  Among those actions may be included some that we
call language.

This is really the crux of my response.  If this paragraph is
problematic, I'm afraid the remainder will be productive only of red
herrings.

You went on to ask:

   >						 why can't speech actions
   >be just like other actions, which presumably aren't mediated by
   >``meaning''?

I affirm that "speech actions can be just like other actions" but I deny
your presumption, now that I understand what you mean by "mediated by
meaning" (or I think I do).  Traditional concepts of meaning amount only
to translating from ordinary language into a metalanguage specialized
for the study of semantics (usually with a vocabulary of semantic
features and such, and with syntax adapted from mathematical logic).  I
am not concerned with these concepts and methods, and they have nothing
to do with PCT that I know of.

For example, George Boole's "laws of thought" should more aptly have
been called "laws for thought."  Logic is prescriptive of rigorous
thinking, not descriptive of how people do most of their thinking.
Logic is almost always used after the fact, either properly, to verify
the validity of conclusions reached by other means, or most commonly to
rationalize desired conclusions.  Meaning is not so well understood as
logic because it encompasses the whole universe of one's perceptions.
Other approaches to the study of meaning that I know about are limited
in analogous ways.

It has been a puzzle to reconcile the self-evident meaningfulness of our
experience and actions with the scientictic conclusion that the universe
is deterministic and meaningless.  Understanding that all that we know
and can know is the universe of our perceptions (including those
perceptions constituting our theories and models) resolves this.  PCT
appears to be the first well founded basis for a science of meaning.

	Bruce
	bn@bbn.com
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU