Joseph:
Nobody is being difficult. The theory you are putting forward here
is called "direct speech perception". The idea is that phonemes are
themselves present in the sound waves, and do not have to be
reconstructed by the receiving brain. It's a very radical,
empiricist theory that has long been associated with behaviorism
(Watson, for example, was a strong proponent of direct perception).
Imagine that you want to convey the letter "A" to me in South
Korea. You could rig up a digital camera and send me an image. I
would not need to "know" anything about language to get your
message; what I see is what I get. That's direct perception.
But that isn't the way we did it. Instead, my computer has a
software system that "knows" what an "A" is, and on a given signal
will produce it for me. I in turn reconstruct what you mean from
the "A" produced by my computer. That is mediated perception.
Vygotskyans,including myself, have always been suspicious of direct
perception, and for good reason. As Vygotsky says, it doesn't
appear to tell us what is specifically human about human speech
(animals, for example, can convey emotion through vocal sounds, but
they do not have human speech). This doesn't bother behaviorists;
on the contrary, it's one of the strengths of the theory as far as
they are concerned. I find it very...well, difficult. But I would
say that the difficulty is not in me.
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
--- On Tue, 6/7/11, Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com> wrote:
From: Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] fetishism | word meaning
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Tuesday, June 7, 2011, 5:01 PM
Do you really need clarification or are you merely being difficult?
J.G.
On Jun 7, 2011, at 2:11 PM, Huw Lloyd wrote:
On 7 June 2011 21:31, Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com> wrote:
Do you hold that vocal sounds affect us emotionally/feeling-wise?
Hi Jospeh, I'm assuming this question is directed at me?
They are capable of emotional influence. Though this a function
of the
person, rather than the sound. For example, deaf people aren't
influenced
that much.
It's not clear to me how this relates to your usage of "are" in
"words are
vocal sounds".
Will let you mull it over.
Huw
Joseph Gilbert
On Jun 7, 2011, at 10:25 AM, Huw Lloyd wrote:
On 7 June 2011 16:27, Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com>
wrote:
Words are vocal sounds. Vocal sounds are meaningful.
I think you have an elision here, Joseph.
If you take "are" as the plural of "is", you're effectively saying:
"A word is a sound, sound is meaningful."
Hence you appear to be conflating the relation of equivalence with
aggregation:
(Spoken) Words are (composed of) vocal sounds.
Just as you might say "Pyramids are (composed of) stone" rather
than
"Pyramids are buildings".
Huw
Joseph Gilbert
On Jun 6, 2011, at 9:15 PM, Tony Whitson wrote:
Peirce explicitly contended that the meaning of any sign
(including
words,
thoughts, arguments, feelings, or whatever), _qua_ signs, lies
in the
virtuality of potential future interpretations (just by virtue
of the
fundamental nature of what it is to be a sign, i.e., in the
activity of
sign-relations).
Also, notice that I'm using "meaning" as something that we --
and our
words, thoughts, etc. -- DO, not something they contain,
convey, etc. I
recently noticed similar usage in the title of Jay's MCA
review of
Sfard's
book, which speaks of "Meaning Mathematically," not "mathematical
meaning."
The latter locution could mean the same as Jay's, but it also
would
allow
the more familiar reading of "meaning" as a noun. If we need
to begin
meaning differently than how we might be heard to mean in
positivist
discourse, I think we need to begin choosing speaking that
resists
assimilation to that discourse.
On Mon, 6 Jun 2011, mike cole wrote:
The poem is neat and your explication brings to mind a
recurrent
thought
when I encounter the core idea of "the thought is completed
in the
word."
I
(think I) know what LSV and Mandelshtam are saying, but I
always have
this
thought that the thought is not yet completed, not in so far
as it is
taken
up, perhaps transformed, and comes back again at a later
time, in some
new,
albeit related, form, to begin that side of the cycle over
again.
mike
On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu>
wrote:
I clipped the wrong line from Martin's post in that last
message. I
meant
the Dickinson verse in reponse to the line that now appears
below from
Martin.
In Dickinson's verse, what's not timeless is not merely the
meaning
that
a
word does as a lexical unit in a language (i.e., in the
philological
sense),
but even in a specific utterance the word spoken continues
meaning, as
it
continues living, non-timelessly.
On Sun, 1 May 2011, Tony Whitson wrote:
On Tue, 26 Apr 2011, Martin Packer wrote:
For LSV word-meaning is not timeless. It changes over
time; he
didn't
study philology for nothing!
A word is dead
When it is said
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
--Emily Dickinson
I find it helpful to think of meaning as something that
words do --
not
something they contain, convey, etc.
Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK DE 19716
twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________
"those who fail to reread
are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
-- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK DE 19716
twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________
"those who fail to reread
are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
-- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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