[ExI] Joyce vs. Korzybski

Jef Allbright jef at jefallbright.net
Wed Jan 30 16:10:03 UTC 2008


On Jan 30, 2008 3:10 AM, ben <benboc at lineone.net> wrote:

> How can anyone even contemplate conveying that? It's bound to come out
> as gibberish. He's trying to explain what red feels like. Can't be done,
> no matter how talented a writer you are.

"Can't be done", true, but you seem unaware that this is *always* the
case.   And *never* the case, at a more useful level of abstraction.
My point is that we certainly can and do effectively communicate, but
the associated context cannot ever be completely conveyed.  We never
convey what "red" (or anything else) feels like -- and to expect that
we could (that it's even coherent) is the source of much confusion
about qualia -- but we do, more or less effectively, convey symbols
(pointers) intended by the sender to trigger certain states in the
receiver corresponding to the meaning of the message.

This is the case for all communication, and realizing this, writers
like Joyce experimented with methods for communicating with different
degrees of effectiveness, by emphasizing alternate layers of context
while deemphasizing the more "direct" symbolism which people commonly
and naively take to be the "real" message.

This topic resonates strongly with me because every day I encounter
people confusing the message for the meaning -- on matters of
passionate interest and concern to both parties.  I see people
habitually arguing what they see as "the simple fact of the matter",
attacking portions of the message that appear weak or flawed, and
disregarding portions that don't seem to make sense.  By doing so,
they throw away information relevant to generating a likelihood
function for that with which they are interacting, and end up mainly
playing with themselves.

FWIW,

- Jef



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