<div dir="auto"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote" dir="auto"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 4:41 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Reading these conversations over the last few days, it has struck me <br>
that some people keep referring to 'real' things, usually using the word <br>
'referents' (e.g. an apple), as though our brains had direct access to <br>
them and could somehow just know what they are.<br>
<br>
But we don't.<br>
<br>
Think about it, what is "An Apple"?<br>
<br>
It's a term that we associate with a large set of sensory and memory <br>
data, including language data, but mostly things like visual, textural, <br>
taste, smell, emotional, etc., data stored as memories.<br>
<br>
Seeing as we all have different memories associated with the label "An <br>
Apple" (because some of us were sick the first time we ate one, some of <br>
us are allergic to something in apples, some of us have a greater <br>
impression of sweetness, or sourness, when we eat one, some of us once <br>
discovered a maggot in one, some people have only ever eaten Granny <br>
Smiths, others only Braeburns, or Crab Apples, and so on and so on...), <br>
then 'An Apple' is a different thing to each of us.<br>
<br>
There is no spoon! Er, Apple. There is no Apple!<br>
Not as a 'real-world thing'.<br>
<br>
"An Apple" is an abstract concept that, despite the individual <br>
differences, most of us can agree on, because there are a lot of common <br>
features for each of us, such as general shape, some common colours, a <br>
set of smells and tastes, how we can use them, where we get them from, <br>
and so on.. The concept is represented internally, and communicated <br>
externally (to other people) by a linguistic label, that refers, for <br>
each of us, to this large bunch of data extracted from our senses and <br>
memories: "Una Manzana".<br>
<br>
It's all 'nothing but' Data. Yet we all think that we 'understand' what <br>
an Apple is. Based purely on this data in our brains (because we have <br>
access to nothing else).<br>
<br>
So this idea of a label having 'a referent' seems false to me. Labels <br>
(data in our heads) refer to a big set of data (in our heads). Where the <br>
data comes from is secondary, diverse, and quite distant, when you trace <br>
the neural pathways back to a large and disparate set of incoming <br>
sensory signals, scattered over space and time. The meaning is created <br>
in our minds, not resident in a single object in the outside world.<br>
<br>
This is my understanding of things, anyway.<br></blockquote></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Very well put Ben. I think your case that referents don't exist, at least not in anyone's heads, is convincing. It's a miracle language works as well as it does when we all mean and feel something different with the words we use.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">JasonĀ </div><div class="gmail_quote" dir="auto"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"></blockquote></div></div>