🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1312@pdn.UUCP> alan@pdn.UUCP (0000-Alan Lovejoy) writes:
>In article <164@thirdi.UUCP> sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode) writes:
>/So, there are the following categories of messages:
>
>/1.  Those that make statements.
>/2.  Those that try to evoke specific experiences.
>/3.  Those that stimulate and act as "inkblots" for the imagination of the
>/    audience.
>/
>/Of these three forms of messages, only the first has truth value or
>/(therefore) mendaciousness.
>
>A painting of some actual event or object "represents" something because
>of its resemblance to something else.  This resemblance is totally in
>the eye of the beholder, however.  Even among human beings, there are
>those who would not perceive a drawing as anything but lines and or
>colors on paper.  What an animal or an alien from Arcturas would
>perceive when viewing the Mona Lisa is questionable.   

Sorry.  I think I understand what you are saying, but I don't see how it
relates to what I wrote.  I think the point I was trying to make was that
certain communications could not be mendacious.  That's different from saying
that they couldn't be interpreted in different ways or misinterpreted.
Perhaps by "mendacious" you meant, not "lying", but "capable of being
misinterpreted".  In this case, though, surely all sorts of physical phenomena
are capable of being misinterpreted and will continue to be so indefinitely,
unless science reaches a final culmination that I think it is not going to
reach.

Also, lying is an *intentional* act, as is communicating, and a message, to be a
message (as I use the word) must be intended as a communication.  Otherwise, it
is just an index of something (a "token", to use your phraseology), not a
message.

>Information can be stored and/or transmitted in way that does not use
>"signs" and which can not be mistaken.  Photons that have bounced off
>or come through matter carry guaranteed true facts about that matter.

I think this assertion is incorrect.  The *photons* do not carry any facts at
all.  Facts arise as a result of the *interpretation* of the nature or pattern
of the photons.  Photons need to be interpreted just as much as messages do.

>Of course, It's very hard to communicate usefully without using signs.

Indeed!  In fact, it's impossible to communicate at all without using signs, if
one defines communication as an intentional act.

The difference between signs and tokens is not the reliability of the
interpretation.  It is solely in the intention to communicate contained in the
former.  A great actress, for instance, uses what you would call "tokens"
(flushing, crying, otherwise physically evincing emotion) very convincingly
and deceptively.  The physiology may be identical.  The difference is solely
in the intention.
-- 
"Absolute knowledge means never having to change your mind."

Sarge Gerbode
Institute for Research in Metapsychology
950 Guinda St.
Palo Alto, CA 94301
UUCP:  pyramid!thirdi!sarge