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If you are going to equate a single picture with a "series of representations" depicting in sequence an unfolding story, then we have not yet agreed to speak the same language.

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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

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If you are going to equate a single picture with a "series of representations" depicting in sequence an unfolding story, then we have not yet agreed to speak the same language.

What I am saying is that a picture can take on many meanings of cultural significance.

Take our flag, for instance. It has 50 stars that symbolize the states, it has 13 stripes that symbolize the original 13 colonies. The red stripes are for blood shed and the white stand for courage.

Ask someone who had never heard of the USA what the flag meant, they might say that the stars on the blue background stood for the night sky, the red meant stop, and the white stood for purity. They might think it was a symbol for being unlucky because there are 13 stripes.

In other words, yes, an object can mean many things given the context it is viewed in. A star can mean many things, a number can mean many things, a color can mean many things.

Now, you can believe that there is one real meaning for every photo, such as the one of Washington crossing the potomac, but not all people are going to understand it, or know what it is.

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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

There are multiple meanings to the colors....which was what my post was actually about... meaning... now if you would like to contribute positively to the thread, please feel free

Thanks in advance

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

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ORIGINAL: xssve

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

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In order for communication to occur, you do need a medium, in this case, the intrwbz, a common language, or mode, the ASCII characters set, the Indo-Anglo/European language, letter/symbols (a set of meta symbols, eidetic memory) in mutually recognizable letter combinations that signify abstract concepts (word/concepts, a set of common lexical symbols, lexical memory), formed into readable sentences (syntactical memory) capable of being interpreted through analogous mutual experience (episodic memory).

You have merely described the machinery of communication here. Had I everything you have specified at my disposal, the outcome would not be communication. It's like a recipe that omits the the role of the cook - outcome is zero. Something further is needed.

At a minimal level, that something is two humans and the series of agreements they must make to enable all the machinery you have described above to perform its role. Without human participation and agreement nothing happens ... the machinery listed remains idle, the ingredients remain precisely that - ingredients.

Keep reading.

I'm struggling to find any sense in your position xssve.

Previously, you insisted that "what actually happens when communication happens is physics and biology, what else can it be?" (xssve post # 169) ie. it's entirely a matter of internal physical/biological events within the human body.

Now, you seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge the decisive role that humans must perform in order for communication to happen, or to agree that successful communication depends upon direct human involvement.

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So, that's all background, but everything I say from here on is built on the foundation of that physical exchange of symbols - you also need a transmitter and a receiver, or in this case, two transceivers, and their experiential sets have to be close enough to recognize not only the symbols, but the concepts they represent - basically, I'm repeating what you and Julia have already said - you cannot receive an intelligible frequency modulated signal on an amplitude modulated receiver, all you're gonna hear is static.

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ORIGINAL: HannahLynHeather

i figured the same thing julia, so i did a fucking search and all the sites seem to confirm his story. but i did come across a site <usflag.org> that states that the colours on the fucking flag had no particular meaning when it was adopted. the colours were given meaning some 5 years later when the great seal was designed.

http://www.usflag.org/colors.html

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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

And what about this has anything to do with human consciousness?

Thanks in advanced for not hijacking the thread that many people are still trying to enjoy

Thanks in advanced for following the TOS

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And its just coincidence that the designer of the flag also was on the committee that designed the Great Seal with the same colors, but of course totally different meanings.

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What does the flag mean to you as a cultural symbol?

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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

I am asking a question.... do you have anything to contribute to the thread in regard to human consciousness?

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ORIGINAL: HannahLynHeather

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What does the flag mean to you as a cultural symbol?

fuck all really. if anything to me its a symbol of cultural arrogance and a narrow parochial world view that dismisses the experiences of the majority of the fucking world's inhabitants simply because they are not americans.

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ORIGINAL: HannahLynHeather

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And its just coincidence that the designer of the flag also was on the committee that designed the Great Seal with the same colors, but of course totally different meanings.

holy moses' blistered feet! no fucking wonder nobody likes agreeing with you if this is how you acknowledge it. rein it in there buckwheat.

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ORIGINAL: HannahLynHeather

the maple leaf? not too fucking much either. i guess to me it symbolizes canada, a wishy washy well meaning place that pretty much emasculates any good idea we come up with because we're too fucking gutless a culture to risk pissing anybody off.

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ORIGINAL: eihwaz

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ORIGINAL: rawtape
[...] Bill Newsome's work on rhesus monkeys, showed how the brain/mind understands the "meaning" of seeing an object moving from left to right, or from up to down, insofar as how, by stimulating the relevant neurons (substrate) we can hack/manipulate this "meaning"...

If the "meaning" here is that there is a moving object in the visual field, it seems to me that this is perception, i.e., experience, rather than meaning.

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
It's probable that I'm missing something but wouldn't a more minimal statement be something along these lines: 'Specific contra-typical responses to a stimulus are observed in rhesus monkeys when selected neurons are manipulated in a specified manner'.

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We know what the stimulus, the manipulation and the response are... but isn't everything in between less certain? How can we be certain the "[rhesus] brain/mind understands the "meaning"" in a manner similar or comparable to human brains? I do appreciate your tentativeness but there are some difficulties in transferring findings across species aren't there?

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Both pain and heat are experienced/interpreted in diverse manners by humans. This being a BDSM site, I don't have to point out the multiple potential interpretations of pain do I?

However this identifies an area where the general approach we have been discussing seems a tad fuzzy. This is why I alluded to love earlier in the thread to another poster. It seems that inner or internal experiences/feelings are more complex to ascribe shared meanings to - How does my pain compare to yours? Is my love as passionate as yours? Are we even talking about the same thing? How might we know any of these things?

Different people could interpret the exact same pain differently and people possess markedly diverse thresholds of pain. OTOH if we consider say 'pain' as a group noun, as a classification of certain physical/emotional experiences, we've already attached a meaning to it haven't we?

So at this point I'm afraid I might need a little more persuasion. (Please don't resort to pain!)