Date: Sat, 21 Dec 1996 14:39:57 -0500 From: Whit Blauvelt <whitfb-AT-dorsai.org> Subject: Re: In a sense, there's nothing 'wrong' with defining 'language' (or any other term) to mean 'the entire universe' - since in a trivial sense everything connects, reality is holistic. Still, there's another level where language is useful for describing particular things (instead of everything) - else why have separate terms (or language, even)? At this level, languages such as our speech and writing are a small thing, separate from the rest. And to confuse it with the rest is to confuse the data of our maps with the realities those maps are at best limited sketches of. The error of the 'dataverse in communication' view is that it denies reality in favor of talking about reality, it supports a computational view of mind that leaves out the qualities of real experience, it makes of the twin boob tubes (TV and WWW) real equivalents for a world whose state the multinationals would as soon we largely ignored. It's really the same mistake as confusing a book for God (where God is taken as a name for the ultimate organization of existence - the anthropomorphic mistake is a different discussion, as is the polytheistic challenge). Data are about things, and no data exhaust the description of a thing (except for the special case, perhaps, of things which are artifacts of data) - as even a slight acquaintance with, say, quantum theory - or any area where mapping has been pushed rigorously towards recalcitrant reality - amply shows. As an athiest computer programmer, I find the litcrit notion that all is language at best only a wish-fulfillment fantasy that the object of ones study should turn out the be the center of everything. Since programmers also deal in languages, I've seen the same inflated claims from my own field. Embarassing. > The problem here is the definition of "language".... In my take there is > nothing but "language." The entire universe is a dataverse and it is a > communicatory nexus.... from the subatomic level up, particles and molecules > are communicating, using "language" in one form or another....(the birds and > the bees and the flowers too) every process in the universe stems from one > form of transmission and reception, causality and response, all of which are > language....conscious or unconscious... > gravity and mass, light and dark, all these are communications, of which we > are part in kind of matter's response.... \/\/ I-I I T \ whitfb-AT-dorsai.org / http://www.dorsai.org Blauvelt / nyc usa \ http://www.isitc.org --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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