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From: rjf@canon.co.uk (Robin Faichney)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: ``Text'' (Was: Re: semiotics)
Message-ID: <1990Oct9.073116.14090@canon.co.uk>
Date: 9 Oct 90 07:31:16 GMT
References: <1990Oct7.191106.24276@math.lsa.umich.edu> <3185@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <RICHARD.90Oct8155943@mullauna.cs.mu.OZ.AU> <3202@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Sender: Robin Faichney <rjf@canon.co.uk>
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In article <3202@idunno.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) writes:
>Now, what is a text? It is a set of pointers to other bits of
>text. Evidently one wants to say, yes, but a newspaper article
>about how a fire broke out is really ABOUT this particular event..
>I understand what is "meant" by such words;
>but only through different discourses, not through experience. I
>can "imagine" the fire and that's good enough. But that's not
>good enough to create a universal signifier. And in the end
>there is only this huge tangled web of "meaning," which seems
>to act "as though" something were "meant" -- that's clearly its
>purpose -- and yet, it's all there by virtue of it somehow having
>got there and grown up all by itself. 

Would it be correct to say, in these terms, that the only
correspondence between the text and the physical world is in our
imaginations?