🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <17963@aero.ARPA> crummer@aero.UUCP (Dr. C. A. Crummer (Charlie))
writes:
>How about this for a definition?  A symbol, in addition to being a thing in
>itself, is a *pointer*.  As a pointer it points, or evokes in the one
>perceiving the symbol.  A symbol is a pointer only because the one
>perceiving it defines it to be one.  A person from an aboriginal
>civilization might see a photograph and just eat it.  For him it may
>signify or symbolize nothing.  

That sounds very reasonable.  Are there any constrictions on what a symbol can
point to?  It seems to me that some symbols point to concepts, others to
objects, others (like a swatch of cloth) to themselves.

>Communication apparently depends on a
>community of agreement as to the meaning of symbols.  As was pointed out,
>the photon that has interacted with matter in a certain way might be
>interpreted by a physicist as a token or signal, which is just a certain
>kind of symbol.  The physicist may understand enough about the physical
>world to know that a photon generated in this way can be seen as a signal
>from the world and as such can not be mendacious.

I agree totally about the community of agreement.

The idea of a physical phenemanon as a signal from the world is intriguing
also.  I believe it was Berkeley (I believe) who viewed the physical universe
as a communication from God.  Thus, for him, all perceived physical events
were *symbols*, and we could understand them as communications.  Plato had a
similar concept, with his Ideas that exist above the plane of physical
existence, which Ideas are conveyed, or "pointed to" by physical events.  Thus
in Plato's case, the communication was from the higher plane of ideas (in
God's mind) and in Berkeley's, directly from God, who, helpfully, gave us a
universe of discourse.  We can rely on such communication, because God (in
whatever form) does not lie.  Descartes based his reconstruction of the
universe, after his reduction to "I am", on the non-mendacity of God, also.

What I find intriguing is the similarity between this notion and the notion of
there being an "absolute objective reality out there".  In both cases, the
phenomena we see are from something and pointers to or indicators of, that
thing.  In the Platonic and Berklean case, that reality is God or God's
thought.  In the materialist case, the phenomena are a "communication from":
and "pointers to" an absolute material reality.  In both cases, the more
accurately we can decode this "communication" the closer we are to the
"truth".

It seems, therefore, to be only a short step from pantheism to utter
materialism, a fact that neither the one nor the other might relish.
-- 
"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