Somewhere...

[Tony Hardie-Bick]

On 08/10/11 16:17, James Coplin wrote:
>> Words Are Not the reality ...
>
> I'm not so sure about this.  As much as I tend to war with the
> post-modernists (being decidedly modern myself which in the way academics
> works means I hopelessly old-fashioned) I think they are on to something
> with language and meaning.  We communicate and therefore make reality
> largely through language.  Not exclusively as we also convey realities
> through art like traditional fine arts, architecture, music, film, etc.
> However, each of these also have a language.  Some are more advanced
> including full blown grammars and rules others are decidedly softer but
> the communication requires some sort of a common palette of understanding
> if the transmitter and receiver are to exchange.  However, the exchange is
> never perfect.  The receiver always necessarily proscribes and defines
> their own realities based on the communication on their own terms.  If
> there is no commonality, the receiver will overlay meaning completely on
> their own terms.  This often leads to surprising results.  I'm thinking of
> things like the American architect Charles Greene and his appropriation
> and reinterpretation of Asian (main Japanese) motifs into some of the most
> amazing homes ever (in my opinion).

Another example is the creation of reggae, which was at least partially the 
result of listening to barely audible american music broadcasts, and 
(re)creating a style of music that was imagined already to exist.

A phrase like "Words are Not the reality" seems to me a bit like saying the 
electro-chemical impulses transmitted between neurons are not the thought (nor 
the thought the thing it represents, and so on...), and by implication a 
recursion, suggesting a version of reality that is less matter and more 
symbolic, with no man or other creature a master or an island, except by the 
necessary illusion that enables us to relate to the world around us, seeing 
something that is creative, and thereby a mirror of our own unknowable natures.

But hell, I'm not a professional in these matters ;)

Tony (HB)