Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!eliot From: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: ``Text'' (Was: Re: semiotics) Message-ID: <3202@idunno.Princeton.EDU> Date: 8 Oct 90 17:11:58 GMT References: <1990Oct7.191106.24276@math.lsa.umich.edu> <3185@idunno.Princeton.EDU> Sender: news@idunno.Princeton.EDU Distribution: comp Organization: Shitson University, New Crapsey Lines: 58 In article richard@cs.mu.OZ.AU writes: ; ;On 7 Oct 90 21:48:51 GMT, ;eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) said: ;> That's what Derrida says, and that's why "there is nothing beyond the ;> text." ; ;Ok, could someone explain what the semiotics people mean by the word ``text''? ; ;richard It means, roughly, the entire universe of discourse. Eagleton explains this in the following way. Supposing I need a definition of the word "consciousness": Webster's says that it is the "quality or state of being aware." If I look up "aware," it's defined as "having or showing realization, perception or knowledge," and gives "conscious" as a synonym. (In the penguin dictionary of Psychology the definitions for awareness and consciousness indicate each other, and otherwise say nothing). I then look up perception, etc, and eventually discover that I'm in a loop of some sort. The trouble is that there IS no "original referent," or "universal signifier," in terms of which the whole edifice of "meaning" is built. Things only appear to be defined in terms of each other. You will say: "ah, but if I can point to a referent, then we can agree on a common term." Thus some people have thought that they can avoid the loops by resisting abstraction: but you can't. A dog is a dog not because it has four legs, is furry, eats dog food, but rather, because it's NOT a cat, nor is it a fire-engine. So things are really defined in terms of what they are not, not in terms of what they are. What they are are merely negative instances of other pieces of language. 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, the fire breaking out. But try to imagine how a Roger Schank story "understander" would "understand" this story: it would have a built-in "fire breaking out" script which would be triggered by the event (of reading the story). Around here the absence of any referent turns into the Chinese Room puzzle, and we all know how easily that one's resolved. The question is, when you read this story, do you act on a script? One likes to hope not, but the general mechanism by which the suitable inference is made STILL need not be "grounded" (as Harnad likes to say) in reality, experience or whatnot: in fact, one might question whether any such uinderstanding EVER is "grounded." For instance: I've never been in a fire; I never even saw a balzing conflagration (of newspaper -worthy reportage). Yet 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" somethiung 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. Perhaps one might like to think of "language" as an emergent property, but what would it emerge from?