[Xmca-l] Re: Rogers day

Fri Sep 7 23:46:56 PDT 2018

Hi Doug and venerable others,

Yours is a very beautifully written explanation, and very dense to unpack.

One question I have is that, yes, given that meaning can extend beyond the heuristic framework of complexes from which it arises – or am I making a mistake by saying meaning rather than language? I am forced to consider how a symbol becomes anchored, as you use the concept of symbol. How does that work? It can't just float in the air at the moment I comprehend it.

Were it so, then I could have endless numbers of mentalist symbols stored in a "shelving system" whereby one symbol could reside disconnected from all the rest. And perhaps I would require some kind of Dewey decimal system or registry in order to retrieve the symbol at which time I could utilize it. This doesn't seem to carry any economy. It does borrow the mechanics of computer memory access though, and so again we are borrowing a metaphor that as you say has become dead.

The problem is when the metaphor limits our ability to reason in the world, "in the world" being the most important aspect to emphasize.

I contend that the metaphor of the computer for human cognition is a dead end, because it just doesn't make sense to limit our thinking based upon units of a machine that did not exist even a hundred years ago, where human cognition has been around a lot longer. That's like trying to use a yardstick to measure the sun. On the other hand, there has been some utility to employ the computer as a metaphor for thinking, because it may have relinquished us from a behaviorist model of stimulus/response without knowing what is inside the black box. With the computer metaphor, we could start to imagine what was in the black box. And that is the power of the metaphor, that we can map one thing to another and try it out, play and experiment. Is this like that? How much is it like that? How different is it from that? etc.

What fails is how much we don't want to let the metaphor go when the aspects of cognition fail to be effectively represented by the computer metaphor. Some would rather deny the aspects of cognition than give up the darn metaphor.

If the only requirement for the symbols I (as-if) carry around in my head was that I could comprehend them to use them, perhaps like identifying a philips screwdriver from a flathead screwdriver because I know that they are each useful based upon what type of screw I'm trying to negotiate from a hinge, let's say, there is still in my memory a recollection (re-hyphen-collection) of the context of these tools and their utility. The point being that the tool can never be decontextualized. Even to use the word "tool" means it is to be used for a particular application, it implies a context. Sure, any tool can be used in a different and innovative way, but this doesn't negate how the tool got to be a tool in the first place.

There is a difference between a tool and an object, in this regard. Because the tool is unified with a context (of utility), an object on the other hand, is removed from its context. It is an abstraction and just like an item discovered in an archeological dig, after hundreds of years in the ground, the only way we can come to understand it is by trying to suss out the context, like the scene of a crime, what happened to make this dead body dead? What is it like that we already know about? etc.

But context doesn't reside inside the metaphor, but pervades the metaphor as embodied meaning, and extends beyond it, so to speak, connecting or mapping the metaphor to its environment in the world. This environmental aspect that I'm referencing assists in economy, but it has the sense of being "invisible" because of our human attentional focus upon utility and meaning, rather than holding the entire contextual view in our heads. A symbol, as an object, becomes harder to utilize the more it extends away from its more-grounded locii (within a context), but those who are familiar with the symbol still carry the contextual framework. It is a framework not the entire world, after all.

One example of this (which tests my cobwebby math memory) is the formula of 2πr equaling the circumference of the circle. (2πr) is a complex of (2) multiplied by (3.14...) multiplied by (the radius of the circle), where each of these number values are symbols in their own right, but behind this economic and compact formula, which is a handy tool, is a context that need not be unpacked every time we invoke the formula, such that 2πr comes to be seen as a single unit of meaning, that is (2πr) references -> (the circumference of a circle). That reference only appears to be removed from its heuristic framework (and not just because I used parentheses), still the connection remains because the world of circles shows the merit of the formula every time, and this is not because of the formula, which is just a description of circles, but because the circumference of all circular items in the world do indeed have this proportion in relation to their radii fairly predictably. That reality is located in the immanent world, not inside the symbol. The symbol is a reference to the world itself, but we can't remove the world for the sake of the symbol.

Just try.

But the tricky thing here is that it is our attention that *does* (as-if) remove the world, and this is for economy, because the world doesn't have to be uploaded into the mind in order to use the formula or to utilize the symbol, because we are inside the world and it remains, but instead our attention is what morphs with the affordances that the world presents to us, in this case the affordance of a circle.

I would say that our attention becomes fragmented by the symbol, so we can streamline our cognitive resources for economy's sake. Just experience

(2πr)

versus

(2) multiplied by (3.14...) multiplied by (the radius of the circle)

We need less attention for the first symbol than the second one, both signifying the circumference of a circle. Nothing changed about circles in the world in the process.

I am doubtful whether comprehension of the tool, as I understand you to describe a symbol, can ever be disconnected from the world, because then wouldn't it be the case that we would never be able to explain the meaning of 2πr to another person once we comprehended it? The framework would be completely lost and the symbol un-anchored. We would know what the symbol could represent, but we wouldn't know why, it would be an ahistorical object. Perhaps we might forget momentarily, but then the world is there with its circles for us to reference, like reading the world as a dictionary, to remind us, re-anchor us.

When we peel a banana, our attention is on the peel for a short time, until it is removed, and then we throw it away and enjoy the fruit, but the peel only disappears from our attention, not from the world. In fact the entire world may drop away as we focus upon the banana and the sensual experience of its smell, texture, and flavor, etc. I suggest that it is the same with what you deem symbols.

Another "inverted" aspect of this might be seen in the palace memory, and how spatial imaginings (contexts) can help the capacity of memory, but that is because there is such a thing as a framework of a conceptual house, a context that resides in the embodied world. We had to know and experience a house-in-the-world to imagine one. Here is a framework erected so that memories can be "put inside" for later access. Some folks using this method can forget about the item because they recollect the room first and survey what is in it, based upon location in this imaginary room, to retrieve it again. Like knowing I have all my books on cognitive science on the third shelf from the top, but I might not know exactly their names until I stand in front of the shelf to examine them. This is a perfect example of the economy of context.

That's why it must be that these "symbols," as in a memory palace, are not mental apparitions in the head, but something embodied, because of knowing up and down, right from left, as one travels the memory palace, room by room, can only happen with a body.

This doesn't mean that a person has identical associations or contexts or what have you for each word or symbol as another person, it just means that for each word or symbol there is a history behind it and that history continues to grow and develop with every use in a context-in-the-world, making that "meaning" unique, uniquely developed, and uniquely appreciated by that person.

I believe the same can be said of rituals. They are enactments of the world through symbols that reference the world in some capacity, and we just unpack rituals to relive an attentional aspect of the world in order to keep their coherency and currency alive in us.

In a certain way, rituals can be a way of garbage collection, in that they clear away the cruft that might have settled from the last time we had the ritual. Re-enactment affords an opportunity for reorganizing our meaning-making, for re-anchoring our connection to the past, to family, to any embodied connection-in-the-world.

I realize that there may be some things I'm missing in my argument above, but I am counting upon others to point that out for me, and to them I say, in advance, thank you. :)

Kind regards,

Annalisa

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