I fail to understand why Cheerskep continually renounces comments that affirm his own arguments. In re-reading my own sentences that Cheerskep so eagerly attacks, I search in vain for the flaw he triumphantly points to, while raising up capital letters to their full height in proud alarm. I won't copy my sentences here but go ahead and read them again, just as I wrote them below and ask yourself if there is any reason for me to plead guilty to Cheerskep's charge.
If I say a word is said to mean such and such in a given context I am making a gentle plea to my reader to imagine that context and word together and to recognize the sense I have in mind. Of course I need to be alert to conditions that may prevent my audience from making the connection of word to context. That's why I mentioned habit, custom, and mental agility, which pretty much covers the map of contextual variation. As for the use of words and presumed referents, I think it's rather self-evident that there are no inherent referents for any word but that a context of one kind or another is always in place and that it need not be the one that shapes the referent for a word, but often is. That's a clumsy way to say that we generally know what situational context is being presumed when words are being used as signs. The road sign with a curve painted on it is probably universally recognized as meaning 'curvy road ahead' even though it may also represent many thousands of other possible contexts and thus meanings. Cheerskep accuses me of presuming that the word art has a particular and assumed contextualized meaning but I reject his accusation as stemming from his own presumption instead of actual evidence. I have always distinguished between art and artwork, for example, to keep separate the concept of art from a particular proposition or offering of something as exemplifying the concept by its own features. Once that distinction is made it's not necessary to repeat it in every sentence in the same commentary because the 'custom' of contextualization has been established. When I make a painting it is only a proposition that in my culture (worldwide with few exceptions) it will be deemed an artwork and may be a member of that class of things my culture refers to as exemplifying the concept of art. If I shorten the statement and say I make art, it is with the common recognition that educated people in my culture will bear in mind the more complicated, parsed, statement backing it. However, my proposed artwork may not conform to the background statement in in that case it remains a proposition (Does this artwork exemplify the concept of art?) or it calls into question the concept of art or it fails to qualify as a worthy artwork and as an exemplification of the concept of art. This leads to the modern notion that there is no single concept of art, but many, or perhaps none at all and if there is one or many or one, the only way to know is to match artwork propositions to the concepts; creating them by context. I am reminded here of Thierry de Duve's sentence regarding the identity if art: "The jury is always still out". I cringe at Cheerskep's pedestrian reference to Picasso's ability to evoke many associations with formal devices of composition because he means chastises me, as if I don't comprehend the value of metaphor and complex evocations. How many timnes have I written here that anything looks like something else and that anything can be a stand in for anythinbg else? Maybe two hundred times if not a thousand. I've even published articles on the topic. I'd not like to be with Cheerskep on the battlefield. I think he'd regard everyone as the enemy and he'd shoot anyone willy-nilly, whether a comrade in his own foxhole in an identical uniform to his or some real foe on yonder hilltop. Cartoon movie lovers of a certain age will recall Yosemite Sam, the wild west gunslinger who was always came out shooting in all directions, no matter who or what was at hand. Meanwhile, artworks reify art. wc ________________________________ From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, January 19, 2013 12:37:47 PM Subject: Re: wake up In a message dated 1/19/13 12:06:55 PM, [email protected] writes: > "When a drawn curve is said to mean hip it is simply a casual way to say. > . . " > It's a casual way FOR WHOM to say? You're a brave man to assert what everyone who uses the phrase has in mind. > "the > drawn line evokes an association to hip at that time in that context." > Again -- evokes FOR WHOM? One of the ingenuities of Picasso for me has always been his ability to astonish me by his apt associating of a pair of images that very few others on this globe would, without prompting, see as in any way "connected". I'm not against "casual ways" of talking (I often mention "kitchen English"), but we have to be careful with it when the conversation is somewhat "philosophical" -- which is what I take many of the postings on this forum to be. > "(And why, O why does Cheerskep repeat > the point ad-nauseum?)." > It's gratifying when I see evidence I've been persuasive about some point or other, but I far more often notice that no matter how many times I've dwelt on something, very few seem to have heard me. You yourself, William, have remarked about how tedious it is of me to attack yet again the listers' use of the word "art" with no attempt whatever to describe what notion the lister has in mind, and yet you continue regularly to use it in ways that for all the world suggest you think it "has a referent" that will come to the minds of anyone who reads you. > You write: > > "Words or images do not have any -- NONE-- inherent meanings or are they > particular stable signs when isolated from a context/s. But habit and > custom > and mental agility do constrain our awareness of contexts." > I have said repeatedly that certain words are serviceable -- words in the kitchen, on a ball field, on a battlefield. This is not because they "are stable signs" in a suitable context. Those who think of them as "stable signs" convince me that they think of the sound or scription as a mind-independent entity that "has a meaning". At any rate, they think of a "sign" as "signifying", doing something -- something intrinsic to the "sign". But, I tediously (and fecklessly) repeat yet again, those alleged "signs" DO NOTHING. They are inert. They are in a crucial sense of the word "meaningless". When the sound or scription is contemplated by an observer, the contemplator's brain will associate it, connect it, with other notion in the mind at the same time -- concurrent new notion, remembered notion, and new notions as we draw inferences from new connections. This deludes us into imputing "meaning" to the word. The brain may then propound new notion based in the brain's processing. The end result of all this processing is what I've called a "me-meaning" -- a personal notion (that is, alas, indeterminate, indefinite, multiplex and transitory). You seem to assert agreement with much of this, and yet continue to use certain words in ways inconsistent with this. Meantime, it's not obvious to me that a single other lister has been persuaded by anything I've said. I say that not as a whine but as the primary reason I keep repeating my view as new postings arise that appear to be innocent of any awareness of remarks I've made that (claim I) are pertinent to points in the new postings. > > > > > ________________________________ > From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Sent: Sat, January 19, 2013 10:18:42 AM > Subject: Re: wake up > > In a message dated 1/19/13 9:43:37 AM, [email protected] writes: > > > > On Jan 19, 2013, at 9:28 AM, saulostrow <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Though I would suggest that depiction is a semiotic system (one of > > visual > > > signs and symbols) and therefore linguistic. > > > Michael Brady responded: > > > > Thank you. Much more succinct than my reply. > > > > I myself tend to think of it almost the other way around. A visual > artist's > one-line curve of a woman's hip reminds me directly of a real woman's hip. > The memory of a real woman's hip is, for me, a visual memory. My brain, on > seeing or hearing something, "retrieves" from memory quite directly: This > one > ink-line curve on paper "reminds me" of that real curve because of > visual > resemblance, association of like images. > > I reject systems of "signs", "signifying", "symbolizing" in attempts to > explain why the one curve retrieves for me the memory of the other. A > photograph of Lincoln brings to mind memories of the man; it does not do > so > because > it "signifies" or "symbolizes" or "means" him. The image in the photo > visually resembles images in my memory. The non-artist who, confronted by > a > "schematized, abstract" painting, says to himself "This means shoulder, > this > means hip, this means foot. (Means = signifies)," is flatly wrong. The > imputation of "meaning" to a visual mark is a basic error. > > Philosophers are particularly prone to this peculiar form of > self-delusion. > Unwilling simply to accept the simpler truth that, after repeated > juxtaposition of the sound "milk" with the white stuff, a child's brain > connects/associates the sound with the white stuff, many philosophers have > devised > elaborate imaginary schemes called "denoting", "signifying", > "designating", > "meaning". > > The philosophers do this despite their readily accepting that a child, onc > e > painfully burned by a candle, immediately "associates" flame with pain. > That smart puppy, Pavlov's dog, tried to teach philosophers that > association > is > all that goes on when we recall. > > The philosophers are not consciously being dishonest. Craving a more > profound analysis (and a more intricate vocabulary suggestive of > profundity) > they > have sincerely deluded themselves into thinking that in some sense they > "explain" the brain's ability to associate (and to recall by retrieving > associated notions) better by saying that word-sounds "denote", "signify", > "designate", etc. In fact the words DO nothing whatever; all the action is > by > the > brain. > > In any case, all of this about hip-curves etc remains visual for me, not > "linguistic". In fact, I associate "linguistic" much more with aural > sensation > than visual -- but that's another matter.
