[Xmca-l] Re: The Stuff of Words

[David Kellogg]

Greg:

(As usual, I don't see the problem. I usually don't see these problems
until the tide is well and truly over my head.)

Meaning is simply another word for organization. Organization is always
present and never separable from matter: it's a property of matter, the way
that the internet is a property of a computer. Sometimes this organization
is brought about without any human intervention (if you are religious, you
will say that it brought about divinely, and if you are Spinozan, by
nature: it amounts to the same thing, because "Deus Sive Natura").
Sometimes it is brought about by human ingenuity (but of course if you are
religious you will say that it is the divine in humans at work, and if you
are Spinozan you will say that humans are simply that part of nature which
has become conscious of itself: once again, Ii think it amounts to the same
thing). So of course there are not two kinds of substance, res cogitans vs
res extensa, only one substance and different ways of organizing it (which
in the end amount to the same thing).

You say that discourse particles like "Guess what?" and "so there" and
"because" and "irregardless" and "what you say to the contrary
notwithstanding" are "indexical". I agree, insofar as they depend on their
relationship to the context of situation for their meaning. You say that a
Southern drawl is indexical, and that the relationship of jazz or blues or
hiphop to blackness is indexical. I agree, insofar as they satisfy the
condition I just mentioned. But "because" is also a symbol, and a
Southerner still sounds like a Southerner when he/she moves to New York
City (and in fact you can argue they sound more so). In Africa, jazz and
blues and hiphop in Africa are related to Americanness and not to
blackness.

So your division of signs into just three categories is too simple, Greg.
In fact, if you really read your Peirce, you will discover that there are
tens of thousands of categories, but they are generated from three
ineffable primitives ("firstness", "secondness", and "thirdness"). So for
example all words are symbols insofar as you have to know English in order
to understand "Guess what?" or "because". But some words are
symbol-indices, symbols that function as indexes, because they depend
on the context of situation for their meaning. Without the symbolic
gateway, they cannot function as indices. My wife, for example, cannot tell
a Southerner from a more general American accent, and I myself still have
trouble figuring out who is an Australian and who is an FOB bloody pom.
Similarly, my wife doesn't see the blackness in hiphop--it sounds like
K-pop to her.

I don't actually think that any signs are associative or "prehensive"; I
think that they are all different ways of looking or apprehending. So for
example you can apprehend a wording as a symbol: a way of organizing sound
stuff so that it "stands for" a way of organizing other stuff (sometimes
lunchboxes and backpacks, actual categories of objects and sometimes the
abstract models-in-the-making that Andy calls "projects"). You can also
look at wording as index: not as something that is "associated" to the lips
and tongue by juxtaposition or proximity or even continguity but rather
something that has a necessary relation to the vocal tract (which is itself
not a physiological organ, but something brought about by human
organization). But when I look at sound waves on my Praat spectrograph and
think of the shelving sea, what I am trying to get at is the sound stuff,
the noise, the firstness of the stuff of words. I'm not Cezanne: I don't
think there is any way of doing this with my eyes or ears alone: I think it
requires a very complex combination of tools and signs to get down to
firstness. But as Spinoza would have said if he had breakfast with
Bacon, the head and the hand are not much by themselves, but nobody
has ever really shown the limits of what they can do when they put each
other in order and start to organize the world around them.

(And that is about as much philosophy as you are going to get out of me,
I'm afraid. The tide is galloping in....)

David Kellogg
Macquarie University

PS: What I am absolutely certain of is this: mediating activity is not
absent in sign use, pace Alfredo or Wolff-Michael, but it is very different
from mediating activity in tool use, for the same reason that painting is
different from wording: in painting you CAN leave out the human (if you are
doing a dead seal for example, or if you are Rothko or Jackson Pollack--but
keep in mind that the former committed suicide and the latter murdered two
innocent young women). But in wording you never ever can. Wording can feel
unmediated--in fact it has to feel unmediated or it doesn't work very
well--but in reality it's even more mediated than ever.

dk


On Sat, May 6, 2017 at 1:09 AM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
wrote:

> David (and others),
>
> In the interests of disagreement (which I know you dearly appreciate), your
> last post included this:
> "Words don't "cause" meaning: they provide material correlates for meaning
> and in that sense "realise" them as matter."
>
> I was with you up until that point, but that's where I always lose you.
>
> I know it is a rather trite thing to say but I guess it really depends on
> what you mean by "meaning". If by meaning, you mean some plane of existence
> that runs parallel to the material stuff, then this seems to be a bit of
> trouble since this leaves us with, on the one hand, "matter" (res extensa?
> noumena?), and on the other hand "meaning" (res cogitans? phenomena?).
> Matter is easy enough to locate, but where do we locate "meaning" as you
> have described it?
>
> This reminds me of Saussure's classic drawing on p. 112 of his Cours
> (attached) in which "the indefinite plane of jumbled ideas" (A in the
> diagram) exists on one side of the chasm and "the equally vague plane of
> sounds" (B) exists on the other side of the chasm. Each side is
> self-contained and self-referential, and never the twain shall meet. Worlds
> apart.
>
> And this ties to the conversation in the other thread about the
> ineffability of meaning (as well as Andy's Marx quote about a science of
> language that is shorn from life). My suspicion is that this supposed
> ineffability of meaning has everything to do with this Saussurean approach
> to semiotics (i.e., meaningfulness).
>
> Peirce's triadic view of the sign offers a different approach that may give
> a way out of this trouble by putting the word back INto the world. (p. 102
> of the attached Logic as Semiotic).
>
> Peirce offers three kinds of relations of representamen (signifier) to
> object: iconic, indexical, and symbolic. The symbol is the relation with
> which we are most familiar - it is the one that Saussure speaks of and is
> the one that is ineffable or, in Saussure's words, "arbitrary", i.e.
> "conventional". It is the stuff of words, the meaning of which is found in
> other words (hence the sense of ineffability). With only the symbolic
> function, the whole world of words would be entirely self-referential and
> thus truly ineffable (and this is why I like to say that Derrida is the end
> of the Saussurean road - he took that idea to its logical conclusion and
> discovered that the meaning of meaning is, well, empty (and thus
> ineffable)).
>
> But Peirce has two other relations of representamen to object, the iconic
> and the indexical. In signs functioning iconically, the representamen
> contains some quality of the object that it represents (e.g., a map that
> holds relations of the space that it represents or onomatopoeia like "buzz"
> in which the representamen has some of the qualities of the sound of the
> bee flying by). With signs functioning indexically, the relationship of
> representamen to object is one of temporal or spatial contiguity (e.g.,
> where there is smoke there is fire, or where there is a Southern twang,
> there is a Southerner, or, most classically, when I point, the object to
> which I am pointing is spatially contiguous with the finger that is
> pointing).
>
> Now if I follow the argument of another of the inheritors of Roman
> Jakobson's legacy, Michael Silverstein (yes, Hasan and Halliday weren't the
> only inheritors of this tradition - Michael was a student of Jakobson's at
> Harvard... and he does a great impression of Jacobson too), then we can
> indeed locate a ground of the word (i.e., the symbolic function) in the
> more primitive (i.e., rudimentary) indexical function.
>
> But that argument is always a bit too much for me (if there are any takers,
> the best place to find this argument is in Silverstein's chapter
> "Metapragmatic Discourse, Metapragmatic Function," or in less explicit but
> slightly more understandable article "Indexical Order and the Dialectics of
> Sociolinguistics Life").
>
> Vygotsky's argument is quite a bit more elegant and comprehensible: in
> ontogeny meaningfulness begins with the index, first as the index par
> excellence, pointing (something that, as Andy has previously pointed out,
> might not be exactly how things go in a literal sense, but the general
> structure here works well, I think, as a heuristic if nothing else - words
> are first learned as indexes, temporally and spatially collocated, "bottle"
> is first uttered as a way of saying "thirsty" and then later to refer to a
> co-present object; note this is also why young kids get discourse markers
> at such a young age (and seems incredibly precocious when they do!), since
> discourse markers are primarily indexical). The indexical function is the
> rudimentary form that then provides the groundwork for the development of
> the symbolic function.
>
> So then, in this Peircean(Vygotskian) approach, the meaning of signs is not
> ineffable, there is a grounding for words, and that grounding is the
> indexical, the "word"/sign that is both in the world and of the world.
>
> This seems to me a way of putting meaning back into matter. And perhaps
> speaking of words as the material correlates of meaning can be a useful
> heuristic (i.e., how else can we talk about meanings and concepts given our
> current set of meanings/concepts?). But we should also recognize that if it
> becomes more than an heuristic it can lead us astray if we take it too far.
>
> I'd add here that I think one of the greatest opportunities for CHAT to
> make a contribution to social science today is in its conceptualization of
> "concepts" (and, by extension, "meaningfulness"). I think that perhaps one
> of the most taken-for-granted aspects of social science today is the idea
> that we know what "concepts" are. In anthropology, people easily talk about
> "cultural concepts" and typically they mean precisely something that floats
> around in some ethereal plane of "meaningfulness" and which is not of the
> material stuff of the world. Yet, this runs counter to the direction that
> anthropology is heading these days with the so-called "ontological turn"
> (I'll hold off on explaining this for now since this post is already
> running way too long, but I'll just mention that one of the aims of this is
> to get to a non-dualistic social science). CHAT's conception of the concept
> seems to me to offer precisely what is needed -- a way of understanding the
> concept as a fundamentally cultural and historical thing, rather than
> simply as an "ideal" thing. The concept is the holding of a(n historical)
> relation across time (cf. Hebb's synapse or Peirce's sunflower). Concepts
> are thus little historical text-lets.
>
> Okay, that was too much. Perhaps I will find some time in the future to
> return to that last part, but there is no time to develop it further now.
>
> Anyway, I'm glad that I finally had the opportunity to catch up to these
> conversations. Delightful reading/thinking.
>
> I'll keep reading but no promises that I'll be able to comment (as a young
> scholar, I need to be spending my time putting stuff out - and unlike the
> rest of you, I'm no good at multi-tasking... it's either one or the other
> for me).
>
> Very best,
> greg
>
>
>
> On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 4:18 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Well, yes. But if present day conditions are the REVERSE of the
> conditions
> > under which Vygotsky was writing--that is, if the present trend is to
> > subsume labor under language instead of the other way around--don't we
> need
> > this distinction between signs and tools more than ever? That is, if
> sloppy
> > formulations like "cultural capital", "symbolic violence", "use/exchange
> > value of the word" are erasing the distinction between a mediating
> activity
> > which acts on the environment and a mediating activity which acts on
> other
> > mediators and on the self, and which therefore has the potential for
> > reciprocity and recursion, isn't this exactly where the clear-eyed
> > philosophers need to step in and straighten us out?
> >
> > I think that instead what is happening is that our older generation
> > of rheumy-eyed philosophers (present company--usually--excluded) are too
> > interested in the "tool power" of large categories and insufficiently
> > interested in fine distinctions that make a difference. But perhaps it
> > is also that our younger generation of misty-eyed philosophers are, as
> > Eagleton remarked, more interested in copulating bodies than exploited
> > ones. Yet these fine distinctions that do make a difference equally allow
> > generalization and abstraction and tool power, and the copulating flesh
> and
> > the exploited muscles are one and the same.
> >
> > Take, for example, your remark about the Fourier transform performed by
> the
> > ear (not the brain--the inner ear cochlea--I can see the world centre for
> > studying the cochlea from my office window). Actually, it's part of a
> wide
> > range of "realisation" phenomena that were already being noticed by
> > Vygotsky. In realisational phenomena, you don't have cause and effect,
> just
> > as in cause and effect you don't have "association". Words don't "cause"
> > meaning: they provide material correlates for meaning and in that sense
> > "realise" them as matter. Meaning does not "cause" wording; it correlates
> > wording to a semantics--an activity of consciousness--and through it to a
> > context of situation or culture, and in that sense "realises" it.
> >
> > So in his lecture on early childhood, Vygotsky says that the
> stabilization
> > of forms, colours, and sizes by the eye in early childhood is part of a
> two
> > way relationship, a dialogue, between the sense organs and the brain. The
> > reason why we don't see a table as a trapezoid, when we stand over it and
> > compare the front with the back, the reason why we don't see a piece of
> > chalk at nighttime as black, the reason why we have orthoscopic
> perception
> > and we don't see a man at a distance as a looming midget is that the
> brain
> > imposes the contrary views on the eye. And where does the brain get this
> > view if not from language and from other people?
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Macquarie University
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 11:55 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Personally, I think the first and most persistently important thing is
> to
> > > see how much alike are tables and words.
> > >
> > > But ... Vygotsky was very insistent on the distinction because he was
> > > fighting a battle against the idea that speech ought to be subsumed
> under
> > > the larger category of labour. He had to fight for semiotics against a
> > > vulgar kind of orthodox Marxism. But we here in 2017 are living in
> > > different times, where we have Discourse Theory and Linguistics while
> > > Marxism is widely regarded as antique. As Marx said "Just as
> philosophers
> > > have given thought an independent existence, so they were bound to make
> > > language into an independent realm." and we live well and truly in the
> > > times when labour is subsumed under language, and not the other way
> > around.
> > >
> > > Everyone knows that a table is unlike a word. The point it to
> understand
> > > how tables are signs and word are material objects.
> > >
> > > Andy
> > >
> > > (BTW David, back in 1986 I walked in an offshoot of the bionic ear
> > > project. The ear has a little keyboard that works like a piano keyboard
> > in
> > > reverse, making a real time Fourier transform of that air pressure wave
> > and
> > > coding the harmonics it in nerve impulse. The brain never hears that
> > > pressure signal.)
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > Andy Blunden
> > > http://home.mira.net/~andy
> > > http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> > > On 3/05/2017 7:06 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil wrote:
> > >
> > >> David (and or Mike, Andy, anyone else), could you give a bit more on
> > that
> > >> distinction between words and tables?
> > >>
> > >> And could you say how (and whether) (human, hand) nails are different
> > >> from tables; and then how nails are different from words?
> > >>
> > >> Alfredo
> > >> ________________________________________
> > >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.
> edu>
> > >> on behalf of David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> > >> Sent: 01 May 2017 08:43
> > >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > >> Subject: [Xmca-l]  The Stuff of Words
> > >>
> > >> Gordon Wells quotes this from an article Mike wrote in a Festschrift
> for
> > >> George Miller. Mike is talking about artefacts:
> > >>
> > >> "They are ideal in that they contain in coded form the interactions of
> > >> which they
> > >> were previously a part and which they mediate in the present (e.g.,
> the
> > >> structure of
> > >> a pencil carries within it the history of certain forms of writing).
> > They
> > >> are material
> > >> in that they are embodied in material artifacts. This principle
> applies
> > >> with equal
> > >> force whether one is considering language/speech or the more usually
> > noted
> > >> forms
> > >> of artifacts such as tables and knives which constitute material
> > culture.
> > >> What
> > >> differentiates a word, such as “language” from, say, a table. is the
> > >> relative prominence
> > >> of their material and ideal aspects. No word exists apart from its
> > >> material
> > >> instantiation (as a configuration of sound waves, or hand movements,
> or
> > as
> > >> writing,
> > >> or as neuronal activity), whereas every table embodies an order
> imposed
> > by
> > >> thinking
> > >> human beings."
> > >>
> > >> This is the kind of thing that regularly gets me thrown out of
> journals
> > by
> > >> the ear. Mike says that the difference between a word and a table is
> the
> > >> relative salience of the ideal and the material. Sure--words are full
> of
> > >> the ideal, and tables are full of material. Right?
> > >>
> > >> Nope. Mike says it's the other way around. Why? Well, because a word
> > >> without some word-stuff (sound or graphite) just isn't a word. In a
> > >> word, meaning is solidary with material sounding: change one, and you
> > >> change the other. But with a table, what you start with is the idea of
> > the
> > >> table; as soon as you've got that idea, you've got a table. You could
> > >> change the material to anything and you'd still have a table.
> > >>
> > >> Wells doesn't throw Mike out by the ear. But he does ignore the
> > delightful
> > >> perversity in what Mike is saying, and what he gets out of the quote
> is
> > >> just that words are really just like tools. When in fact Mike is
> saying
> > >> just the opposite.
> > >>
> > >> (The part I don't get is Mike's notion that the structure of a pencil
> > >> carries within it the history of certain forms of writing. Does he
> mean
> > >> that the length of the pencil reflects how often it's been used? Or is
> > he
> > >> making a more archaeological point about graphite, wood, rubber and
> > their
> > >> relationship to a certain point in the history of writing and erasing?
> > >> Actually, pencils are more like tables than like words--the idea has
> to
> > >> come first.)
> > >>
> > >> David Kellogg
> > >> Macquarie University
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>