[Xmca-l] Re: Concerning the origins of writing

[Larry Purss]

Mike,
The concepts *meaning* and *sense* have been discussed as central to CHAT.

Your exploration of literacy as a mode or media showed how literacy
transforms how we think.
In that spirit I offer a translation of *meaning* that may or may not be
helpful as it refers to the history of the concept of *meaning*
When translating the term *hermeneuetai* from ancient Greek to modern
English the term *meaning* is used. In other words *meaning* is a synonym
for interpreting or understanding (as).
Gerald Burns suggests,
"Normally we would not think of using the the word *meaning* as a synonym
for *interpretation* - yet, on reflection, that is exactly what our modern
conception of meaning was made for, namely, to stand in place of
interpretation and, in effect, to OBJECTIFY the way a word or phrase can be
taken by FIGURING it (the way it is taken) AS a textual entity; something
that inhabits a text INDEPENDENTLY rather than in virtue of any
understanding of it. The concept of meaning, after all, is just what is
required as soon as one begins IMAGINING texts AS objects towards which one
is to adopt an analytical attitude." [from The Problem of Figuration in
Antiquity, 1984]

I may again be wandering off topic and just ignore this if it is not
relevant.  I saw a link with the dialectic of meaning and sense.
Bruns is making a case that *meaning* transforms [turns] the *as structure*
[something understood as something else] into an objective *mode* of
knowing as the concept of *meaning*.
It may have some relevance.
Larry








On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 1:22 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:

> Chuck is pointing at the work of Denise Schmandt-Besserat. I agree on its
> central importance and it is included in stuff on my web page.
> The work is not uncontroversial, but I like the story a lot.
>
> For a quick and accessible summary see
>
> http://www.austinchronicle.com/books/1999-12-10/74962/
>
> mike
>