[From: Bruce Nevin (Thu 930325 08:36:48)]
[Rick Marken (930324.0800)]
I am glad you read the first sentence of my (Wed 930324 08:44:38).
Any agreements or disagreements with the rest of it?
Because it is agreements for which we control when we use
language, and failure of agreement is a disturbance.
Put that in your diagram thus:
System Boundary
>>_____________________________________________________________
"boss || "me"
reality"|| reference for
>> uncontrolled perception
>> r
>> >
>> v
>> >C> ---->pure disturbance --> awareness of
>> ^ error error
>> >
>> o------> copy of perception ----> awareness of
Other || \ of disturbance disturbance
People's|| \
Posts || \
>> ______ \ __________
d(t) -->|| |f(d(t)| -----o------->| |
>> >______| meaning[d(t)] | | ___
>> > h[m(d(t) | p(t) | | r reference
for
What I || | + |----->| C |<--- controlle
d
would || | m(o(t)] | |___| variable
say || ______ | | | p(t)
next/ || o(t)-->|f(o(t)| ------------->|__________| |
mean || ^ |______| meaning[o(t)] |
if I had|| | |
said || | |
that || | ______ e(t)= r-p(t) |
so far || -----|g(e(t)|<----------------------------------
(imagi- || |______|
nation)||
>>_________________________________________________________________
What is indicated here is a "shadowing", in imagination, of the
other's utterance in the environment. Many levels and much
complexity intervene between the perception of sounds (or graphic
shapes) and the association of meanings with the utterance.
We do not do anything like this "shadowing" when perceiving
someone's arm movements, except in professional dance,
acrobatics, or the like. This is for the very good reason that
it is possible only when we have in ourselves (settings of)
reference perceptions which we can reasonably expect the other
person also to be maintaining.
My discussions of social norms concern how it comes about that
people come to have the same settings of the same reference
perceptions for things like language. It doesn't happen as a
byproduct of interaction with other people who fortuitously share
those settings of those references already. As with dance and
acrobatics, people have to work very hard at it, and they have to
have help from others. These teachers tell the learner how well
their outputs approximate the norm, so that the learner can then
develop settings of her own perceptions of effort, position, etc.
for control such that others will perceive her outputs as
conforming to the norm. This is because the learner can in
general monitor her own outputs only in a limited way.
A motivation for going to all this trouble (for ordinary social
norms, not for acrobatics!) is that it enables cooperative
action. I won't elaborate that point again, unless it's not
already abundantly clear.
There is a problem indicating the relation between f[o(t)] and
meaning[o(t)] with a labelled arrow if that means, as it usually
does, a relation between two levels of the perceptual hierarchy.
This is because meanings are by Bill's hypothesis any and all
perceptions, at any level of the hierarchy. The hypothesis was
that a linguistic perception of a word is combined with one or
more nonlinguistic perceptions ("meanings") in the input function
of an ECS controlling a category perception to match the
reference signal in the comparator of that ECS. There isn't a
level of the hierarchy at which words are perceived, and a higher
level at which meanings are perceived. Linguistic perceptions
are controlled from the intensity level at least to the program
level, and probably higher, in parallel with nonlinguistic
perceptions. Non-linguistic perceptions are associated with
linguistic perceptions, as our perception of what the latter mean
for us, by some relation other than the familiar arrow connecting
one level of the hierarchy to the next.
This association of meanings with words and with combinations of
words (and with controlled linguistic perceptions of still more
complex structures in utterances) is not standardized. Bill
imagines stick figures when he reads a sentence about scientists
digging under an old tower. I imagine stereotyped but
unmistakably ordinary flesh-and-blood human beings. All that is
identical in these perceptions is the word "scientist" and
certain category perceptions of features that human beings
physically have in common--two arms, two legs, head, etc. But
these are category perceptions, so we may well say that all that
the nonlinguistic "meaning" perceptions have in common is the
words with which they are associated. In other words, the social
standardization of language helps us to structure our perceptions
categorically in the same way as do others with whom we will need
to cooperate.
Does ANYBODY get it yet, or will this be ignored too?
Bruce
bn@bbn.com