Dear Soeren:
Before we might be able to measure meaning, we would first need to have a
mathematical theory of meaning in order to specify the expectation.
With best wishes,
Loet
________________________________
Loet Leydesdorff
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR),
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam.
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681;
loet@leydesdorff.net
; http://www.leydesdorff.net/
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es
> [mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Søren Brier
> Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2006 1:13 PM
> To: Stanley N. Salthe; fis@listas.unizar.es
> Subject: SV: Fw: [Fis] art and meaning
>
> Dear Stan and Gordana
>
> When you talk information here are you thinking of Shannon or
> Wiener information? Or some logical measure of structure and
> organization? Or do you include meaning?
>
> Luhmann says that a message is consisting of meaning,
> information and the form of expression.
>
> It makes sense to me that information is the quantitative and
> structural aspect of meaning and intention.
>
> But I see no way of measuring meaning. Luhmann talks of a
> surplus of possibilities of choice and action, which, I do
> not find sufficient for instance to describe the meaning of a
> religious og philosophical message about the meaning of
> suffering and love.
>
>
> Søren
>
> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es
> [mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es] P� vegne af Stanley N. Salthe
> Sendt: 18. februar 2006 23:51
> Til: fis@listas.unizar.es
> Emne: Re: Fw: [Fis] art and meaning
>
> Gordana --
>
> > Thank you Stan, that was precisely what I meant by my question.
> >
> > Exactly how to define informational content of things that
> can not be
> >verbalized? (Maybe only because, as you say, our linguistics
> >communities have not conquered those rare territories such
> as dreams or
> >music or arts.)
> This includes as well poetry, which IS linguistic, but
> relies not so much on denotation, but on numerous properties
> like rythm, aliteration, rhyme, dissonance, assonance, and so
> on. As far as I can see, information in language products
> refers only to denotation. I do suppose that changes in
> rythm, the use of dissonance where one expects rhyme, and
> other breaks in expectation might be treated as informational
> in the standard sense, but this seems pretty weak.
>
> Those spheres of personal experiences we may hope will be
> explored in the future, so that at least we may learn how the
> brain processes those things.
> >
> > You said:
> > Now, technically, I think information is just any
> constraint on our
> >activity. So, do dreams, and those scents and music that
> have not been
> >harnessed by society, constrain our actions? If not, are they
> >informational? Some information is associated to meaning by
> semiosis.
> >But if dreams, fragrances and music are not information, we know
> >nevertheless that they are meaningful to us personally. So, can
> >meaning exist aside from information?
> >
> > My feeling is that in dreams informational content of our
> brains gets
> >re-structured, or re-connected in different ways. Dreams contain
> >elements from real life memories, but they are differently related,
> >distorted, intensified, etc. So I guess dreams have
> definitely informational content.
> In that sense of breaking the expected, perhaps so.
> However, I am particularly intrigued by these feelings that
> are entirely unique, never being experienced in the waking
> world, and never repeated (and so only barely remembered) in
> the dream world either. These must arise from unique
> configurations of neuronal propagations. It has been noted
> that unique configurations confront us all the time every
> day. Every situation is to some degree different from any
> other, but, of course, we do not focus upon this, rather on
> what is common between instances, and so, by way of
> classifying, we feel we understand what is happening. And
> this approach is fundamental to science. Here meaningfulness
> seems to associate with commonality.
>
> > One more interesting aspect of the problem is the
> approximate thinking.
> >We have a feeling if something is OK or not. Very often experts
> >have a feeling . Their expertise can be verbalized up to
> the point,
> >but after that, there is a feeling what is just the
> right amount
> >of something, the right measure, the right thing to do in
> certain situation.
> >Those feelings also have informative content, as they definitely
> >constrain our activity.
> Yes, this -- intuition -- is very important in daily
> life. And, indeed, it does constrain our actions. But I
> think that we cannot necessarily assign conventional meanings
> to intuitions, and so this raises the problem of what is
> 'meaning' in semiotics. As a pansemiotician, I think that if
> an intuition constrains our action, then it must be
> meaningful. I am sure those strange dream feelings, if I
> felt them in some waking context, would definitely influence
> my action, and so they would have to be classified as
> potentially having meaning. But then their meaning might be
> assigned by way of which action they invited. But that would
> completely lose the importance they appear to have experientially.
>
> > In any event, I do have a feeling :-) that meaning and information
> >are so tightly bound that anything having meaning must be
> possible to
> >express in terms of information.
> OK. But note the last example I just gave. Here a rich
> experience might impell me to step to the right instead of to
> the left, and so may save my life from a falling object. If
> we express its meaning in terms of this important result, I
> think we would miss the greater part of its richness, which,
> then would be meaningless!
>
> STAN
> >
> > Best,
> > Gordana
> >
> > Stanley N. Salthe wrote:
> >
> > Replying to Gordana --
> >She said:
> >
> >
> > It might be a pure feeling of sheer beauty or harmony
> (whatever it
> >might be). I wonder is there any meaning in >that feeling
> of being one
> >with music in the same flow, just dissolving in a moment? Not the
> >externalist meaning >that you can ascribe to a music-loving
> listener in
> >an instant of exaltation, but the subjective meaning for me as an
> >>individual. Is there meaning in a feeling? May I say that music
in
> >that case is information that impacts my >physical body, my
> receptors,
> >my brain, and changes its structure so that in the next moment in my
> >life I will >experience things differently?
> >May I say that meaning of music for me as a subject is
> the result
> >of the difference that made the difference in my physical
> structures, somehow?
> >
> >
> >
> >This raises what has been for me an issue of some interest. I
> >associate some kinds of meaning with emotion. Our culture
> invites only
> >a certain limited range of emotions. We can get an idea of
> how small a
> >range this is by paying attention to the emotional content
> of dreams --
> >actually more interesting that the images. Here we
> experience emotions
> >that are never elicited in everyday life, and that are,
> indeed, indescribable and unique.
> >They are as indescribable as the scents of many of the various
> >essential oils taken from plants. Some of these associate with
> >numinous feelings, as with encense (frankincense, olibanum) or Peru
> >balsam, which have been smudged in (at least) churches and
> synagogues
> >for centuries. But many (for
> >us) float free of any particular association, as they have not been
> >harnessed by our society. Are these 'untamed' fragrances --
> and those
> >dream emotions -- meaningless? This brings me to music. I
> now listen
> >largely to Romantic keyboard music -- Schubert (the father
> of musical
> >Romanticism), Chopin (The soul of Romantic music) and Schumann (the
> >spirit of Romantic music). It seems clear to me that these artists
> >have INVENTED certain emotions that literally did not exist prior to
> >their discovery on the keyboard in the Nineteenth Century.
> Now, these
> >emotions are also indescribable, but in this case it is
> clear that they
> >can be (have been) shared by many persons in the experience of art.
> >But, do we all agree as to the 'meanings' of these passages?
> We don't
> >really know, do we? It seems likely that neurologists might
> be able to
> >discover some general shared responses to them elicited in us during
> >experiments, but would these be 'describable' (translatable
> to language)?
> > Now, technically, I think information is just any constraint on
> >our activity. So, do dreams, and those scents and music
> that have not
> >been harnessed by society, constrain our actions? If not, are they
> >informational? Some information is associated to meaning by
> semiosis.
> >But if dreams, fragrances and music are not information, we know
> >nevertheless that they are meaningful to us personally. So, can
> >meaning exist aside from information?
> >STAN
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
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Received on Sun Feb 19 14:13:24 2006
