RE Soren Brier: Meaning is a way of making ?sense? of things for the individual in the world perceived. It is a non-mathematical existential feeling aspect of life related to reflection past, present and future of existence in the surrounding environment, in humans enhanced by language, writings, pictures, music through culture.
ME: In teaching my students about my completely new theory of information, I start by telling them not to expect to understand it first time through, and not to worry if they don't. All cognition is recognition, and it will inevitably take a number of repetitions for them to *recognize* aspects of the course, and therefore to begin to cognize them. Later, when I have derived my theory of gestalt cognition, I suggest that cognition involves matching with something in one's internal library of gestalts i.e. generating meaning from the information received. In support of this, I tell the story of what happened when UFOs were first seen. Nobody knew what they were, so they were named Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), the name explicitly admitting ignorance of their nature. Then some wit called them 'Flying Saucers', and pretty soon any one could recognize what they had seen - "I saw a Flying Saucer in the park this morning!", without bothering to acknowledge that in fact they were none the wiser. A related tale was told by Columbus. When he had arrived in the West Indies, he slowly made friends with the local natives. After they had learned to trust each other, he gave the chief and others a tour of his ships. What they then said was entirely fascinating. It was to the effect that, 'When your ships first came into our bay, WE COULD NOT SEE THEM'. Well of course they could 'see' them. They had noticed that some UFO (= Unidentified Floating Object) had entered their bay. But being unidentified and unnamed, they had no idea what they were looking at. So they could not 'recognize' them. There was no recognition, and in that sense, no cognition. Their lovely statement, 'We could not see them', describes the situation pretty well. I conclude these pathetic tales in agreement with Brier. Meaning is a primary aspect of life, so any theory of human or animal communication, i.e. information exchange, had better be able to incorporate it to be relevant / meaningful. -- Alex Hankey M.A. (Cantab.) PhD (M.I.T.) Distinguished Professor of Yoga and Physical Science, SVYASA, Eknath Bhavan, 19 Gavipuram Circle Bangalore 560019, Karnataka, India Mobile (Intn'l): +44 7710 534195 Mobile (India) +91 900 800 8789 ____________________________________________________________ 2015 JPBMB Special Issue on Integral Biomathics: Life Sciences, Mathematics and Phenomenological Philosophy <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00796107/119/3>
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