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Only if words actually have "meaning". I don't think they do. The fact that form can change the "meaning" of a symbol or word means that "meaning" isn't a property of the word or symbol.
So it's a brand new word, not a modulated or changed one. Which is then digital either beig spoken or not being spoken. Either 1 or 0.
Yes, we both accept that words don't have inherent meanings, meaning is arbitary. You're being contradictory however. You say that "the "meaning" remains constant if it is visual but cannot as easily if it is auditory." but then accept that it doesn't. Can't you see this contraciction?
So the word love and the word LOVE are two different words? In semiotics, they would be considered two different signs, yes. But two different words?
Only for an individual. Semiotics says that "meaning" is shared. This cannot be. What contradiction?
The word love and the word love have the same "meaning". If you were to whisper "love" and then shout "love" at the top of your lungs, the "meaning" would definitely change. So they are therefore different words.
It's easier if you think of a tonal language like some Chinese dialects, where the same word "means" many different things dependant on how it is said.
It doesn't become a different word in a different context, it changes what it signifies.
Plus the meaning does change for the visual.
A gollywog toy on the tv being valued on the Antiques Roadshow would have a very different meaning to a gollywog toy being handed to a small boy by a member of the KKK at a lynching and would illict a very different response. (well enless you were extremely autistic)
If meaning is not shared in some way, how is communication possible? How is art, literature, poetry, drama, cinema etc possible? As to how it is shared, well i guess we'll have to explore structuralism, something I haven't got the brainpower for at the moment (and no doubt you've never heard of it and will dismiss it as "bollocks" without finding out anything about it). Here's a tip - if you want to discuss philosophy, find out something about it first.
and
So the "meaning" is stored in the individual. Okay. You have hit on what i think is the whole of this. You "illict a very different response". This is what language does. It does not convey "meaning" it gets responses.
This is how "communication" occurs. I shout "fire" and you leave the building. The purpose of communication is not "understanding" it's to get results. Usually to induce a frame of mind in whoever you are talking to.
Because you have learned your responses. As long as a majority have similar responses to the stimuli then the pretense of "understanding" is maintained. If a madman comes along and questions the existence of one of the key "response" words, oh let's say "Britain" then there can be no "meaningful" response. He's just "mad". Why? Because he keeps hitting the trigger that will prevent understanding just by continued use of the word.
Thank you for the tip. I will go and read about "structralism", find the flaw and report back.
So you're denying the existence of meaning now? :eek:
Utter nonsense. Do you actually ever leave your house and talk to people? If you shout fire I wouldn't necesserily leave the building. It would depend on who was shouting it and where. I would look for the meaning in the shout of "fire". If it was one of my mentally unstable clients I wouldn't take it as seriously as if it was my manager. Things do have meaning, they don't just elicit responses. Your understanding is simplistic behaviourist nonsense.
The more I read, the more I think you have autism or a personality disorder. Do you wonder why you have difficulty putting your point across? Have you ever thought its because the majority of people don't actually experience the world in the same simplistic way as you do? Most people do share meaning, most people respond to art, music, literature etc with more than a conditioned response - they respond with feeling, with emotions. These emotions are uinversal across humankind (unless, as I say, you're autistic or have some kind of personality disorder). That's where shared meaning can come from. Yes, the signs and symbols which impart meaning are part of a shared social convention and are different across societies, but this does not mean that meaning isn't shared.
Yes, I think you probably do have a mental health problem if you can't see that people agree on things for convenience sake. You may question the validity of them, but to deny that people do it is, well, rather odd.
Such arrogance! You can't get your head round semiotics and critique that, so how you're going to do it with structuralism I haven't a clue! You're fucking deluded pal.
:eek2:
Just trying to illustrate a point (maybe not very well). We weigh up the meaning of things not merely by conditioned responses but by who says them, the context, what they may have done before etc. That is, things have meaning to us, something that klintock is denying.
Shared meaning.
Funny. I was thinking the same thing.
The fact that you can have this conversation at all?
There is some overlap, I agree. But you are talking about "conversation" and you will "mean" something different than I do. Basically, you are writing in your own private language and I am reading in my own private language and there is no way of telling if they are the same.
Also semiotics states quite clearly that "meaning" is shared between many different individuals then semiotics must be horseshit.
To give an example of what I mean. -
Think of the word confusion -
What did you think of? A sound, a picture, a smell, what sense?
How much of that sense? How loud a sound? How much treble, how much bass> How big a picture and where in space was it? Can you feel heat or cold on your skin? How many pictures?
Do you think that the answers between any two individuals will be the same? Are my answers to those questions going to be the same as yours?
So words and signs cannot have "shared meaning" (unless you go through that process for every word) and therefore semiotics is bollocks.
Yes there is. Imagine in the next room I have placed a bowl containing three balls - a red ball, a blue ball and a green ball. I tell you to go and fetch the blue ball from the bowl. Barring some sort of physical or mental defect, you'll be able to easily identify what it is that I want and bring it back.
http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/semiomean/semio1.html
(italics mine)
Leaving aside the fact that no two eyes see the same way - metamerism.
I do not understand exactly what you mean by "blue ball" until I experience it for myself. Even at this basic level I am misunderstanding you albeit it on certain discrete lines. That may be useful or may not. The important thing is that I respond to your stimulus effectively, not that I take "meaning" from your words.
Blagsta, i will get around to your post when i have ten minutes to spare.
For now though, tell me again how you would prove a "countries" existence under the rules of evidence of a court.
The question has been answered because it has been read.
I will move on when I get a minute.
You believe in "minutes" but not in "countries" (sic)? Weird...
he's right about you though
I have shown repeatedly that they are different.
"conceptualise" how?
I have already shown that a word is a trigger for past experience through the senses. So this is bunnies. Or to put it another way - unspecified referntial index - making a conept how and to who in what way?
No, it's guaranteed that you will think of a different one.
"Sound images" - type of synesthesia otherwise impossible.
All individuals hold different meaning and there can be a group meaning as well. Obviously horseshit. You can have a group response but that isn't meaning.
As long as there is the illusion of agreement due to similar responses then there is no problem. When someone reacts in a different way to the stimulus than his/her fellows then the fact that their is no "meaning" becomes clear.
The rest of it I really can't be bothered demolishing a bit at a time.
Nope I don't believe in UFO's either but I can still use the term. See my earlier post about the nature of time - how it's completely subjective.
Let's bring up a funny point. Despite the knowledge that I have frequently presented reagarding "meaning" Blagsta has never asked me to breakdown mine properly. For all he knows I am talking about what he thinks is confusion. As he has never bothered checking how does he know?
Where did he ask me for my internal representation for meaning?
I missed that entirely.
Which is why semiotics is bullshit. It says "meaning" is shared and you have just shown that is bollocks.