i would suggest there is a difference between having many possible interpretatitions and having many possible layers of interpretations. Its necessary a special kind of interation to allow you go for all the chain inside those layers, most people can only go as far to pass the literal layer to a metaphorical or moral level, in a very basic way.
I like to separate the text itself from meaning. The text is objective. Meaning is subjective. The text is ink on paper or bits in some computer memory. No meaning is stored there. Meaning only exists when a human being reads the text. It vanishes once the human forgets what was read. The next time the human reads the text a new meaning is created. My motivation for this is to make sure a computer is not considered conscious by simply manipulating texts. See Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment.
So the layers of interpretations or interpretations or anything to do with meaning don't exist until there is a human being who creates them. This is going to make the meaning of the text relative to the human being doing the reading, but we are communal beings and so we can more or less agree on the meanings we experience when reading a text.
I only mention the above to see if either of you agree with that.
The text is neither objective or subjective, it is nothing. It is like saying a chair is objective. You are talking about an object. A symbol is always conected with his meanings - and meaning is different from interpretation and the meaning of a symbol only exists as process of interpretation of someone else.. I also would say every meaning is objective (even if wrong). In semiotics (semiology, depending the side of atlantic) everything is a process. There are parts, but they need to work together. Futhermore, the word "chair" has (several) meanings, all of them depend on the interaction - you must not forget there is two humans in this process. The "author" is also responsable for interpretations.
Take the example I gave about Candide and Voltaire. A person considered that the meaning of the text is "Ignorance is a bliss". His conclusion was objective: a literal interpretation of the text allows this. It is wrong, because he failed to consider the use of irony, he had no information about voltaire, etc. His interpretation is not subjective (nor we should claim that because the interpretation depends on personal background that is is subjective), nor it was mine. Of course, someone's reaction to a text may be guided by emotions rather than be analytical. Also, while all interpretations are personal (so subjective, even if logical, but in this case not the oposite of objective), all meanings of symbols are also variable according the context. So i think it is a bit pointless to bring this difference.
We have also texts that are ambiguous - Nothing better than Dante - and will have several meanings because he build the texts that way and with this will allow several interpretations.
Not quite, Yes/No. I think the written word also carries its load of meaning according to several factors like the language and the country in which it was produced, the background of the writer, the density of the text itself (its layers of significance- for example some texts are just read on a literal level, others, usually literary texts are open to several interpretation).
I believe good literary texts have a kind of life and a history of their own. What, for example, would make a Shakespeare or a Cervantes text survive so many centuries?
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
Just so you know what motivates my questions: I want to make sure that a computer manipulating texts is not considered conscious just because of this manipulation, that is, the computer is not manipulating "meaning", only texts.
However, I normally think of a text as "meaningful" or not as a text, but I think that is a cultural mistake that I make and so I am trying on the opposite idea: no text is meaningful in itself.
Both of you mentioned the author or writer, but the writer could be a computer. For example, the computer could generate a random number and that number linked to a set of strings that would be the subject of the sentence. In a similar way a verb could be selected and then perhaps an object. Now we have a sentence. A human being reads the computer generated sentence: "I eat bread." When does this text become "meaningful"? I would say the text becomes meaningful only when a human reads it (or writes it or thinks it).
What I think both of you are saying is that meaning is something shared. I agree with that. It is not something peculiar to me as an individual when I read the text. Then we ask ourselves, if meaning is shared, where is this meaning that we all can see and agree upon? We are tempted to say that meaning is in the text because a text is easy to point to, but is that correct? We don't have to write down everything that has meaning. We could just be talking to each other and use sound? In that case is meaning in the sound waves? I would think it is not there either and yet we agree enough on the meaning of the words and so it is not something only I or only you know.
"Just so you know what motivates my questions: I want to make sure that a computer manipulating texts is not considered conscious just because of this manipulation, that is, the computer is not manipulating "meaning", only texts."
I certainly would not consider a computer conscious in any way. To my mind a computer is a machine like a car or a fridge that merely does what it is programmed to and instructed to do and it is widely subject to mechanical and eletrical failings. In certain distopical context (inumerous roboter films I would say) computers and specially roboters are treated as if they were independent beings with an own conciousness and an own will power. This exalting of computers and roboters (which in itself is a cultural factor) reminds me of the story of Frankenstein, which is the result of the 19 C fear of creating uncontrolable monsters in laboratory. From there to now what one notices is that the human monsters are conceived in the usual way.
I donīt think it totally impossible to think of an self concious and self suficient machine that gets out of the control of its creators. But I think it very very difficult to happen at the present moment.
Last edited by Danik 2016; 02-17-2017 at 10:52 AM.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
Well, are you talking about a computer just randomly selecting words until he finds an order that we can understand? In this case, the person responsable for the creation of such computer/program is concious and just created an technique/toll for writting, which i suspect is too little effective.
Let's just remember, language itself was born from us giving meaning to things are unconcious - nature occurences, for example. Language is not exactly logical (how it is born and developed).
We don't need a meaning to agree and perhaps we do not need a correct meaning. Think how many cultural creations are born from our "Mistakes". The entire, magical scene of Moses parting the red sea is a mistake, for example. For years, people understood Moby Dick just as a sea adventure novel. it was wrong. Proust used to say the writer is born from the moment the reader dies, because he starts trying to tell the story or give a meaning that is his own. This flexibitily is the root of all art. Think about: We have no idea about the smile of Monalisa, yet, it gave us a lot to think about. To create about.
Obviously, when we are strictly talking about a literary study, we will do a selection. We have our bias. But I suggest to avoid "you cannot do it" to "it is good what you did?".
I guess what I am trying to do by removing meaning from the text or sound waves is to place it in some sort of consciousness "field" that we use when we communicate. The existence of this field or whatever would ground any psi ability we had as well as allow us to communicate with each other through language.
The robot would not have access to this field because the robot is not conscious, but only has access to texts or sound waves. These texts and sound waves are traces left by this field, but they are not the field itself. Those texts and sound waves would be the data needed to fit a model that the robot uses to interpret our communication and attempt to join in our conversation. The strong AI proponent would say that that is all we are doing as well, but is it?
One could modify Proust's comment by saying that the act of reading rewrites the story unless one is a robot. If one is a robot the act of reading optimizes a response to the stimulus given by the text or sound wave.
I find these data part a bit difficult to grasp. If communication is reduced to "scripts ", algorytms and sound waves I fear that all cultural elements that are not strictly technological are eliminated.
Last edited by Danik 2016; 02-17-2017 at 09:33 PM.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
We are a little far from the topic of why does free verse count as verse.
Lol! I should say so!
I guess it all started with the reflection of a text having one or several meanings or no meaning at all.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
I didn't realize I had a position on something like that until I wrote it down.
And I never thought about a computer being eventually able to produce literature.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
My computer produces literature everyday
The computer manipulates texts and metaphorically "reads" them, but only a human can give the text meaning since texts don't intrinsically have any meaning. I think that's my position. Which means there must be some level of consciousness above us that allows us to participate in meaningfulness. The position is holistic rather than mechanistic.
I was thinking today about what the OP was really saying about free verse when asking if it counted as verse. When I read what he/she wrote I think it might have something to do with verbal abuse that I mentioned in an earlier post to this thread. I would rethink the question like this: Is free verse verbal abuse?
Now, I like some free verse, so I would answer: Sometimes it doesn't work for me, that is, when looking through my consciousness to find some link to meaning I don't find any. When it doesn't work I ask myself "Is it me or the author?" Practically speaking, it is always me since I can't do anything about the author except whine about it and not read the text.
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