Waving Goodbye.
My philosophical and ontological agenda is
to identify and distinguish: *that which
exists* from that which some people erroneously
believe to exist - but which in fact
doesn't.
In that sense I am not so much interested
in the MEANING of what is said regarding
the surrounding descriptional complexity
or situational padding, but whether
what is referred to actually exists (is a true denotatum)
or not. That is what ontology is all
about as far as I am concerned.
I claim that whilst
the ideating embrained human exists,
his
*ideas* do not exist at all - no more
than
the *movement* of a waver's hand exists. *Movement*
and *ideation* are for me existential
modalities
of the moving ideator. Hence
only the
ideating hand-waving human exists,
and his
actions are ways, modes, states of
THE WAY
he is existing at the moment he ideates
and
waves. But for the quayside or shipboard
ideating waver - the only *product*
of their
ideation that is communicable is the
*Goodbye* signified by the farewell wave - ALL EXTRANEOUS
memorised feelings and ideations
are incommunicable out of earshot, though
there is indubitably empathetic guesswork
too, following from the mutual antecedal
experience of the emotional feelings of each
partner as hitherto revealed during the course
of their historical relationship.
To say that signs
as
breathed sounds [words] are objects
that
are created by humans is false. For
the objects
of the production of sounds ALREADY
exist
- the brain, the tongue, the pallet,
the
air molecules and the human ear drum.
All
that the production of a sound does
is to
produce varying modalities or changes
in
the activity of these objects, which
have
an effect on the tymphanic detector
located
in the hearer's ear, from whence the
signals
are transferred electrically to the
hearer's
brain as meaning. [understanding] gleaned
from antecedally memorised experience.
There
is no argument that the physical elements
which ALLOW and FACILITATE the transmission
of communicable representations of
feelings
from one human to another exist - but
it
is an entirely different ontological
story
to claim that the information carried
by
this media exists too.
It is the responsibility
of those who believe that ideas exist
outside
the human brain to prove to us that
these
ideas or statements exist exterior
to the
human holism, in what form they exist,
and
where they are to be found in order
that
we may examine them and confirm their
physical
presence.
The fMRI or Petscan or Brain imaging device
simply registers which part of the brain
is active during the processing of various
cognitive operations. The equipment
does not "record" or *interpret
the the content of a human *idea* but only
measures the electrical intensity in certain
areas of the neuronal network whilst cognition
is taking place.
So the idea does NOT
"exist"
as sound waves - in fact
the *idea* doesn't "exist"
at all
- what exists is the acting, existential,
encoding, thinking brain of the holistic
ideator.
When the ideator becomes
an
addressor, as in the case during communication
with another person, then what
entitically
exists at that time
are the
addressee - the sound-waves - and the
existential,
decoding, thinking bodybrain of the
holistic
addressee.
 | Brain scans allow us to see which parts of the brain are involved in different types of mental activity such as language, visual imagery or mental arithmetic. |
By studying which
area
of the brain is active we can infer
that
the incoming codification is of
language type signs
consisting of differential impulses
upon
the eardrum. After transmission to
the brain these signals
are decoded and transacted into an
existential
modality of understanding on the part
of
the existing holism. Whilst the differential
soundwaves exist as molecular/waveform
activity,
it is purely as molecular activity
that they
exist, and not as an "idea."
It
is the human ideator/addressor and
the ideating
addressee that exist in a modality
of understanding
which corresponds to what humans call
an
idea "HAVING AN IDEA," but
in fact
is an ideational existential modality
of
the speaker and the listener who are
existing
in thinking states.
Maya Pines of The Howard Hughes Medical Institute writes:
"Now several imaging techniques such
as PET (positron emission tomography) and
the newer fMRI (functional magnetic resonance
imaging) make it possible to observe human
brains at work. The PET scan on the above
shows two areas of the brain (red and yellow)
that become particularly active when volunteers
read words on a video screen: the primary
visual cortex and an additional part of the
visual system, both in the back of the left
hemisphere. Other brain regions become especially
active when subjects hear words through ear-phones,
as seen in the PET scan on the right. To
create these images, researchers gave volunteers
injections of radioactive water and then
placed them, head first, into a doughnut-shaped
PET scanner. Since brain activity involves
an increase in blood flow, more blood—and
radioactive water—streamed into the areas
of the volunteers' brains that were most
active while they saw or heard words. The
radiation counts on the PET scanner went
up accordingly.
This enabled the scientists to build electronic
images of brain activity along any desired
"slice" of the subjects' brains.
The images above were produced by averaging
the results of tests on nine different volunteers.
Much excitement surrounds a newer technique,
\fMRI, that needs no radioactive materials
and produces images at a higher resolution
than \PET. In this system, a giant magnet
surrounds the subject's head. Changes in
the direction of the magnetic field induce
hydrogen atoms in the brain to emit radio
signals. These signals increase when the
level of blood oxygen goes up, indicating
which parts of the brain are most active.
Since the method is non-invasive, researchers
can do hundreds of scans on the same person
and obtain very detailed information about
a particular brain's activity, as well as
its structure. They no longer need to average
the results from tests on different subjects,
whose brains are as individual as fingerprints"
— Maya Pines The Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
All that
we can
infer then is that the subject has
received
[existing] incoming sound-waves which
have
been converted into electrical nerve
impulses
which are the subject of cognition
by the addressee in his/her modality
of decodification
has processed, moderated and come to
an understanding
of what they signify - But what they
intend
i. e., - THE IDEATION - corresponds
with
the existential ideational behaviour
of the
human signaller who sent the oral significations
to the subject, and the person who
received
the message via the perturbations of
his/her
ear-drum and changed it back into the
original
representation of the ideational modality
of the sender which is being communicated.
The Farewell Wave.
 | "Goodbye Rose! "Goodbye Fred!
Let me employ a simple example. But first
let us look again at the types of communication
that are available for use in the production,
transmission and communication of a representation
of our ideational states to other brains
that upon the reception of them they may
ideate and understand them. |
(1) Oral messages - the production of sound
waves which impinge upon the ear-drum of
the addressee.
(2) Bodily movements [the waving of a hand
which means "Go back!" or "Come
here!" etc.
(3) Facial expressions conveying existential
states of pleasure, anger, surprise etc.
(4) Written signs and significations - an
arrow pointing "left" marks on
paper or a monitor communication
(5) Other methods not mentioned here.
In what way are they all similar? Answer -
they are all ideated and agreed upon
IN ADVANCE.
Now let me take
the
most simple example of a communicative
sign,
and after reading what I have to say,
let
us see if you still believe that ideas
*exist*
independently of the human ideator.
You go down to the docks. There is a ship
ready to sail. On the deck you see the figure
of a friend. As the vessel pulls away from
the quay, the friend raises her hand and
waves it up and down. You understand that
she is using this hand movement to signal
her present mode of existential ideation
- which is *Goodbye Fred.*
Now do you think
that
the hand and its movement *exist* as
an *idea,*
or do you like me believe that the waving hand exists as part of the human holism, and
what exists is the ideating brain
of
the departing friend and your own ideating
bodybrain [or holism] as you stand
on the
quay ideating the existential understanding
that she is existing in a state of
ideating
the idea of *goodbye?*
The addressor communicates
aspects of the way in which he/she
exists
in his/her present existential modality
of
thinking *that which is to be communicated,*
and also during the period whilst the
oral
activity of the conveyance of that
information takes place.
Once the verbal
significations
have been received by the addressee
as a
feature of his/her existential manner
of
thinking, the information as it is
cognised
and transacted upon, becomes an existential
aspect of the modality of the subjectivised,
listening and thinking recipient.
I believe that
it is
the communicating, symbolising human
communicator,
the addressee and the legitimate [objectival]
nominata that is referred to in a symbolic
exchange that exists - not the abstraction.
It is by communicating by way of symbolising
that the human utterer is expressing
himself/herself
as he/she speaks. It is by waving one's
arm
that people signal *Goodbye!*
I am suggesting
that
the waving-arm conveys a meaning that
*only
exists for the waver and the waved
at/to
(and others who are aware of such symbolisation,)
and is something that does not exist
in itself
externally to them. Not many people
think
that the meaning of *Goodbye* flies over the sea from the arm of the waving
waver on the seashore to the waved
at person
on the deck of the departing ship.
You must
be aware that the waving-arm triggers
a previously
learned symbolic meaning in the brain
of
the recipient of such a visual signal?
All
agreed symbolisation works this way.
For me it is sufficient
that the meaning conveyed by the sight
of
such a signaling arm is understood
antecedally
by both involved and the code *is cracked*
by referencing the agreed *codes* of
meaning
internalised socially and *stored*
as a neurological
template..
For the
quayside
or shipboard ideating waver - the only
'product'
of their ideation that is communicable
is
the 'Goodbye' signified by the farewell
wave
- ALL EXTRANEOUS memorised feelings
and ideations
are incommunicable at such a distance
out
of earshot, other than by adopting
a signalling
system used by bookies on race tracks,
though
there is indubitably empathetic guesswork
going on following from the mutual
antecedal
experience of the shared emotional
feelings
of each partner as hitherto revealed
during
the course of their historical relationship.
Therefore
to stop communicating when it is the
natural
part of being human seems to me a bit
silly.
It is like saying - if you do not believe
that Pegasus exists - you should never
utter
the word, or because the Union Jack
is symbolic
of Britain you should turn your head
away
from it and not look at it. Could you
please
explain why you think that because
language
is an existential mode of a symbolising
human
that I should stop using it? If you
disagree,
and insist that leaned signs or learned
language
code IS MORE than an existential mode
of
a symbolising human being and has an
existence
all of its own. Could you tell me where
it
can be found when it is not being used?
Thus all the libraries
of the world contain written representations
of human significations which without
a human
reader's brain activated in an existential
modality of reading and de-coding the
content,
remain totally meaningless and render
the
bizarre modern notion of "memes"
utterly ridiculous.
Such would be the
situation
of a radio in an abandoned spaceship
on Mars
as an earth based newsreader reads
the
World News to a dead alien world.
The significations [phoneme strings] exist
as sound waves, which without a listener
to receive and decode them as to their significance are meaningless and
immediately cease to exist. An idea can only
be thought about whilst the thinker is thinking
about the way he exists in relation to the
thought. In normal discourse the addressor
may be in a modality of retrieval-readiness
in anticipation of some response from the
addressee, which might necessitate a further
comment or additional information. If on
the other hand the addressor was [say] an
office boss] who delivered some brief instruction
to a worker, it is possible that he would
immediately revert to another neurological
mode as he hands out some other instruction
to another person, after dispensing the first
"idea" into "memory."
So the human *idea*
does
NOT "exist" as sound waves
- the
idea doesn't "exist" at all
- not
even *inside* the human brain - what
exists
is the existential, cyphering, thinking
brain
of the holistic addressor and the sound-waves,
plus the existential, decyphering,
thinking
brain of the holistic addressee.
The thinker simple
changes
the existential mode of ideating [neural
activity] from one mode to another.
People
say "A person "has" an "idea," but they do not understand that what is
REALLY going on, which is that a person exists
in an ideational state of thinking and transmitting
a representation of the "way it feels"
to exist in that state of thinking and communicating,
and the other person [the listener] exists
in an ideational state of thinking and receiving
and making sense of a representation of the
"way it feels" for the other person
[the speaker] to be in that state, and to
access the content of which his/her conversational
partner is attempting to communicate.
Richard Sansom writes:
"We are trained from the outset that
there is always a correspondence between
the signified and the signifier, and in doing
so we inculcate very early on a neural mapping
that is good enough for starting out in the
world of human communication. However, we
soon discover that this is not always the
case. Language and signification in general
has become so rich that not only can the
same thing be said, or inferred in many ways
it is often easy to get lost in the complexity
of interpretations. While the bedrock of
the signified/signifier correspondence remains
built-in in our brain, with large agreement
space, that correspondence is frequently
blurred. It is easy to agree on simple things,
but quite another thing to agree on complex
ones. In particular, abstractions, philosophy
and the legal system for example. While one
might argue that every signifier has a meaning,
it is impossible to accept that meaning as
absolute. This being the case, I suggest
that meaning itself is one of those abstractions
that has little chance of ever having a solid
footing in our discourse. (And if meaning
has no solid footing, where are we?) The
recent squabbles in our political system
proves the point: words are so frequently
open to a variety of interpretations that
sometimes the meaning can be severely twisted.
What's interesting to me is the way in which
this communicative process becomes instantiated
in the very young."
Logic indicates that there is NO MORE information
carried by the hand-wave. The observer can
*read something into* the movement, but the actual
movement of the hand is a signal that bespeaks
"goodbye," and nothing more, any
concomitant feelings of loss and compassion
are NOT part of the information signalled
by the movement of the hand. Those feelings
may or may not be present as part of the
emotional existential state of the girl by
the rail as she waves goodbye,
or of the man on the dockside.
She may in fact be in an existential state
of being glad to see the back of him, or
he of her. Alternatively, at the same time
the person on the jetty may associate warm
feelings of loving attachment to the departing
female, which are evoked as part of the existential
experience of witnessing the departure and
the wave of her hand, but these feelings
are an existential modality of THE MAN ON
THE QUAYSIDE, and do not EXIST "hovering
Platonically somewhere over the waves"
in between him and her, as part of the some
fantasy characterisation of the independent
communicative IDEA of love and loss.
An IDEA that doesn't exist at all independently
of/or outside of the brains of the ideating
modalities of the two separating protagonists.
Someone might say:
"The gesture, like a sound-word or painting,
is also a carrier signal of images and feelings
- not as eliciting but sent within the intended-interpreted
interpersonal history of the individuals
involved. There is no difference between
my acknowledgement of her in this state and
one of the dock workers! Your analysis lacks
intrasubjectivity."
Going along with the assumption that there
IS some romantic or emotional congruity between
the two principles in this imagined scene,
I am not denying that emotional feelings
are being felt by both of them at the same
time, and that indeed those feelings may
roughly correspond - feelings of sadness
at the moments of parting, a kind of emptiness
felt deep in the body at the thought of the
loss of his or her loving ways and physical
tenderness, etc. But the actual wave of the
hand itself [unless that is it is made with
a flourish indicating flippancy] is the only
signal that is involved - all supplementary
feelings are generated by the neurophysical
networks of the two people based upon interpersonal;
facts gleaned from the association which
indicate HOW SHE IS PROBABLY FEELING right now and how she thinks that I AM PROBABLY FEELING RIGHT NOW.
| THINKING IS WHAT BRAINS DO | | THINKING IS ONE OF THE WAYS THAT YOU EXIST | | WHAT YOUR BRAIN IS DOING NOW IS WHAT YOU ARE DOING NOW. | | *THOUGHT* AND *IDEAS* DON'T EXIST - ONLY THE IDEATING, THOUGHTFUL YOU EXISTS | | *CONSCIOUSNESS* AND *SPIRIT* DOESN'T EXIST EITHER | | WHAT EXISTS IS THE SPIRITUAL, CONSCIOUS THINKING YOU | *BEING* DOESN'T EXIST - WHAT EXISTS IS THE SPIRITUAL, CONSCIOUS, THINKING YOU BEING YOU |
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