Which is equivalent to saying it doesn’t exist, surely?
So, in essence, society is an ineluctably negative experience?
ask mastriani, I was quoting him
-Imp
Sorry, you’re quite right about the quote.
Nevertheless, if something is not up for grabs, if it doesn’t stand out, then I don’t see how it can be said to exist in any sense, how it can ever be anything at all. It’s an interesting argument, but I don’t see how we can respond to it in a practical sense without the whole social structure crumbling into dust and that seems to me a reductio ad absurdum.
“beyond the sign” … yes, to a certain degree, because it is a socio-cultural agreement. So it is more accurate to say that meaning is both in the sign and outside the sign, hence semiotics has syntactics, semantics and pragmatics. Just as every person is both private and social … in and outside society at the same time. Why should our language structure and meanings not fall in line with how we live?
No, experience is rarely “completely different” within human sociality and behavior, human experience is still humans experiencing. We all do so by sensory modality. All experience is associative, so meaning can be and is apprehended.
If I describe to you “pain” in my “knee”, and you’ve had a “shoulder injury”, we associate by means of experience and signifier. That the signified is necessarily differing doesn’t obviate the sensory and sensible nature of meaning. We both know of our bodies through experience, through education and being a body we know joints, and through experiencing life, we both know pain.
On the first statement, yes and no. There has to be ascribed a level of agreement and meaning, else the symbol itself ceases to be of any value, personally or socially. Children would never learn language if your assertion was the case.
Again with respect Imp, you know your world as well as I know mine, and all sociality is differing colors and flavors of kool-aid. I’ll never argue against sociality being other than kool-aid for the herd(s).
so much for the concepts of self and mind…
-Imp
agreement remains beyond the sign
-Imp
Invalid argument, the symbols are created and given meaning within particular socio-culturally and geographically bound parameters. We aren’t Mayan, so there is no validity to this position.
No apologies Imp, that is completely erroneous. Except for entirely new instances, which are highly unlikely, all experience is associative because all humans experience through sensory modalities. Experience is first and foremost physical, even emotions are physical in the first instance, and obviously even the interpretations of emotions are associative ~ they have been signified.
Not at all, if we both see a Thompson’s Red Tail Hawk, from opposing coasts of this country, we have had a directly associative experience. The act of seeing is no different from the act of seeing. Again, emotion is, in the first instance, physical.
Yet strangely, because of the associative nature of language and the fact it is a hardwired development, we have been able to decipher and understand “dead languages”.
More exact than less exact; notice how all languages seek to codify and signify persons, places, things and activities. It is because it is bound to the socio-cultural and geographic parameters.
Not really, because genetics are universal with humans, as is the drive to implement language, and as the tale of the tape goes with co-emergent properties, society, culture and geography lend the agreement.
so? agreement remains beyond the sign…
-Imp
We’ve already gone over this, yes? It is bound by the society, the culture and the inherent geography where it developed. Change your place in the world, the symbols change because their development is/was a direct reflection of the environment that promoted them.
Therein lies the problem. You aren’t the only one to have ever eaten steak; I’ve had steak, good, bad, bland, overspiced, etc. It is a function of physicality to eat, and the measure of value is dependent upon genetic predispositions and culture. The activity is associative, and the inherent value is then associative.
There’s no such thing as “unique experiences”, it’s all happened before, and been understood before through the same sensory modalities. Within the context of same society/culture, the meaning is exacted through the agreement of the codification of the symbols used to represent the experience.
Your eyes “see”, my eyes “see”; it is a physically biochemical activity that is easily explained. I’ve seen all the hues you’ve seen, so the experience is associative through signifying. The act of seeing is exactly the same; sensory modality and biochemical input/output.
No, that is where archaeology and anthropology are used to give context of socio-cultural development to make the codification comprehensible. Direct understanding isn’t particular, being human is still being human; physical sensory device with physical input/output.
No, the symbol is developed as a particular socio-cultural device, the meaning is in the agreement of the codification. Syntactics and semantics are arranged and understood, so the symbol is internally representative of the society and culture that codified it and its use.
There’s no way around it. The society, culture and geography assign the agreement, which is accomplished by physical device, (humans), which means there is no point beyond to reference.
there is no way around it. agreement remains beyond the sign. meaning remains beyond the sign.
-Imp
You are attempting to make a distinction that serves no purpose. Society is composed of individuals, those individuals codified signs to enable understanding of meaning within a given specific symbol. The symbol is both the representation and the meaning within the context of the society, culture and geography. Else, symbols have no meaning and all is comprehensible. Yet, we seem to be communicating and understanding one another, none the less.
No, quite to the contrary. I can feel exactly what you feel, the only difference is the individual internal dialog, predicated upon individual awareness which seeks to impose cognitive dissonace with others to achieve the perception of “‘I’ am different”. It’s an evolutionary ploy.
Only on the basis that you are intended to desire separation based on the above. The actual experience itself, is the same, with previously given variables accounted for.
Your body is playing with your internal dialog, it is intending to let you know that there is a nutrient deficiency that it needs to bring back into balance. If it succeeds, you are pleased and stop eating when satiated. If it fails, due to other factors, you will feel the need to gorge and be dissatisfied, or if it is utterly wrong you may feel dissatisfied and/or ill. It’s an activity Imp, nothing special about the experience, and certainly nothing beyond associative properties.
The rhetoric is contextual, speaking in broad terms regarding linguistics doesn’t leave much room for individualism … what’s the relevance? I’m not human, in your assessment?
The codifying of the sign is the agreement. Therefore, the sign is the agreement, and holds the meaning within that parameter. It’s referred to as salience.
Then all language is incomprehensible, wasted effort and utterance.
I thought that was the point I was making about the agreement encoded upon and through signs by society, culture, and geography?
The only difference in my position was at the Mayan example, (many others do exist, but that was the one of choosing), those outside can understand meaning from a different socio-cultural sign by means of other disciplines.
We all have the predisposed ability to learn more than one language, and with study of historical implications upon society and culture, can even learn the meanings in an “alien” sign system. I have a family member in Spain, he’s been there for a decade ~ he thinks in Spanish, and when he returns to the U.S., he has to actually exercise his processing abilities to “relearn” speaking in his original system.
Most of those who wield it, do so in such a poor fashion, with so little understanding, the tool is most often greater than the wielder. I realise that is an unpopular opinion, so swing the sledgehammer if you must.
I can’t say with authority, but my position as it stands is that it is highly dependent upon which sign system is under scrutiny.
Are you certain? I think this is where philosophy has to have its say. The sign itself may have been and maybe still is arbitrary, but I think with further inspection, the agreement is far more exacting.
Imp, no one, as far as I can tell, is saying that meaning inheres in the symbols - on the contrary, we all accept meaning is given/put into the symbols by people, that symbols only have meaning within a particular socio-cultural context. You may disagree with the “socio-cultural context” bit, but I think it is unfair to caricature that as blind realism.
Likewise, nor is anyone saying that “agreement is beyond the sign” as you seem to be suggesting. Rather, the sign should be understood (and I think Mastriani and I agree here) as the constellation of physical, vocal and graphical gestures within a particular geographic, historical and social context. I do not deny that personal, private meaning is inaccessible as such, but this does not change the fact that we are capable of communicating by reaching some level of agreement regarding our meanings and intentions. Granted that in a purely logical context this breaks down, but to assert that context always and necessarily as the totality of our experience is not merely nihilistic but a philosophical imperialism of the worst kind.
As the website you referenced has it:
look through the thread again. my claim is: “I think the difficulty arises when I keep the distinction between the signifier and the signified… they are never the same and the signifier is not always representative of the signified… that was the point I was hoping to make clear… I deny “the sign” as anything but a private event”
your quote of saussure only makes my point… the signs in themselves are nothing. WE make the meaning through agreement.
-Imp
At what point did I disagree with that? 
Imp,
You’re right for the most part, we lost the context of the discussion in definitions, (again … damn it.)
But here, I have to question:
You’re the philosophy standard, so this is just inquiry. If we agree that the symbol has been codified to represent the agreement, then does not that symbol have assigned to it a value? It, the symbol itself has become “meaningful”?
no, the symbol itself has become nothing more than marks on a page…
our interpretations of the symbol have changed (as per the linguistic agreement)
yet each individual’s interpretation is unique as they each have unique perceptions on which their interpretations are based… there is no “form” of language…
-Imp
But here’s where things get befuddling.
Granted that there is unique interpretation, (I’m letting you have that one, even though I don’t completely agree), the means for understanding that interpretation, is still language, even in the private event context. Humans do not conceptualise outside of language, language is both the means to and end of.
Considering that the symbol is a concrete representation of the collective socio-cultural agreement, once codified the symbols and consequent signs now have value. That value can be physically verified, (form).
no, the means for describing is language… are you telling me you can’t conceptualize outside of language? can you remember how you felt? did you feel the feeling linguistically?
concrete representation of the categorical? we’ll make it simple… imagine every instance of cat… to the exact detail…
which one is the definitive cat? which meets the definition perfectly? are slight differences not allowed?
when do the symbolic descriptions fully define the individual instance?
-Imp