From: Yash (yashk2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Jan 07 2002 - 04:23:43 MST
Herein is included the exchange I had with Joe Dees in October.
Now you can compare this with all the drivel that has been patiently been
concocted by some for no other reason that putting themselves on pedestals
In this post, Joe finally suggests that I check out Wittgenstein's works (he
also names them, by the way, to ease my search, a sure sign that the person
wishes to share, not to dismiss blindly), also mentioning that not only
Wittgenstein tried it but abandoned it, with his own reasons written in his
later works.
That's the kind of exchange which I find constructive.
Note that the fact that Wittgenstein actually abandoned for some reasons
could be perceived by some as being a "destructive" remark.
Not to me it isn't: I cannot hope for my endeavour to be successful being by
only one person in a short life-span.
However, as I said in the post below: if you want to understand something,
building it yourself can give valuable insight.
I just gave an example, and some would go on endlessly about their own
dogmatic diatribe.
See below for an example of how the much-decried Joe Dees (we all have our
failings) and <insert-whatever-names-Hermit-has-been-using> Yash have
discoursed on the subject in a couple of posts.
And make your own opinion.
Yash.
__________
On 10 Oct 2001, at 14:58, Yash wrote:
> A well balanced education indeed.
>
> I think you would have been unhappy should you have studied only one
> of these trakcs, e.g. only psychology.
>
> With added philosophy, sociology and anthropology, you can better
> integrate the small-scale analyses within a larger framework.
>
> Your specialties are interesting as well.
>
> What are your views on the current state of Semiotics? Would you
> recommend reading Barthes, de Saussure? Do you regard Eco highly?
>
Semiotics is on the dampening side of the expansion curve; most
of the good big foundational structural stuff that could be said within
the three interrelated disciplines of semantics, syntactics and
pragmatics has been said, and now it's a matter of filling in
relatively small gaps within and between. To study semiotics
memetically is to realize that there is a subtext to it, that is
reflected by the fact that most of the individuals and institutions
involved are or have been influenced by the Catholic Church; which
wantsta extend the sign metaphor to include totality as a sign of
deity. Of course it doesn'y fly, but because of that bias, the baby
has to be carefully disentangled from the bathwater.
Saussure is good to read, and of course, so is Peirce; Eco's early
work contains most of what he had to say and the later stuff is
mainly literary riffs on it. Charles Morris (especially Foundations of
the Theory of Signs) and Louis Hjelmslev are well worth reading,
but for contemporary understanding, I would recommend reading
Thomas A. Sebeok ( particularly Signs: An Introduction to
Semiotics <and> Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs) and John
Deely ( particularly Introducing Semiotics: its History and Doctrine,
Basics of Semiotics, Frontiers of Semiotics, <and> The Human
Use of Signs: Elements of Anthroposemiosis) (if you can filter out
the dogma) and Dialogic Semiosis, a book by Jorgen Dines
Johansen. I also heartily recommend the more phenomenological
approach of Algirdas Julien Greimas (along with Jean Piaget and
Claude Levi-Strauss, one of the three great French structuralists),
particularly his book On Meaning: Selected Writings in Semiotic
Theory, in whioch he explicates his theory of the semiotic square.
>
> I was quite disappointed with "The Search for The Perfect Language"
> although I thoroughly enjoyed "Foucault's Pendulum".
>
> Methinks I had some interesting ideas about language myself at that
> time that, disappointingly, Eco has either not stumbled upon or not
> said in his book.
>
> If you want to search for a perfect language, try to build one: it
> will get you closer to understanding anything of that sort. I don't
> think Eco ever did that.
>
Language is best constructed through more or less 'blind' evolution
through natural mutation and equally natural selection than it is pre-
crafted (see esperanto). What works in a language can best be
ascertained by trying it purely, without the emotional investment in
some alternatives over others that self-awareness during its
practice brings.
>
> Meme: Archetypes, Alphabets, Symbols and Myths as a way to compress
> information and preserve them for the ages.
>
> Meme2: A name describes a function, or process. e.g. in the ideal
> language, the word for Circle, is also actually the Integral formula
> for calculating a circle's are, for example.
>
> Meme3: Make the alphabet a moral system, a memotechnical system. Name
> the letters, smack onto them also a numerical value (yep, like Qabala
> and Vedic gematria). Make the first letter's name expandable
> recursively so that the first letter can give you the rest of the
> letters.
>
> e.g. The first letter, representing A, could be called ABAC (the
> second vowel is unimportant here). From A, you can therefore get to B
> and then C. B could be called BaCaD, and C, CaDEF, etc...
>
> Ideally, a whole set of knowledge should be derivable from just the
> alphabet and some logical rules.
>
> Still working on it.
>
Check out Ludwig Wittgenstein, first his Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus (which resembles what you seem to be trying to do)
and secondly his Philosophical Investigations, which include a
rejection of his previous work, and why.
>
> Regards,
>
Likewise.
>
> Yash.
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