Warning: Semantic Rabbit Wholes A Head
Let me start by seeing if I can clarify the meaning of the word understanding, so that we can come to an understanding about our understanding of the meaning of meaning. (Don’t worry, it’s not all going to be like this… it gets worse).
understandO.E. understandan “comprehend, grasp the idea of,” probably lit. “stand in the midst of,” from under + standan “to stand” (see stand). If this is the meaning, the under is not the usual word meaning “beneath,” but from O.E. under, from PIE *nter- “between, among” (cf. Skt. antar “among, between,” L. inter “between, among,” Gk. entera “intestines;” see inter-). But the exact notion is unclear. The exact notion seems clear to me. Inter-stand or entera-stand is not to stand among or between, but for something to stand within you. The experience of a proposal which settles within us and sticks to us, stills, strengthens, and stabilizes us. Under-standing = inner-sitting.
The use of understanding as a mutual agreement is noted as dating back to 1803, but this usage ties in to my whole hypothesis. An understanding is a sharing of a single sense of meaning through synchronized articulation. It’s a semiotic handshake.
I started wondering if the origin of the word meaning was related to the mathematical mean function. I thought that I might find that meaning was intuitively coined due to the sampling analog architecture of consciousness and cognitive interpretation. Trying to connect up the gaps between image, icon, character, meaning, and text with the literal mathematical processes of calculating averages and means.
The word meaning, it turns out, is not related to that kind of mean. The former relates to “Ger. meinen to think, suppose, be of the opinion”), from PIE *meino- “opinion, intent” (cf. O.C.S. meniti “to think, have an opinion,” O.Ir. mian “wish, desire.
The latter ‘mean’ relates to “that which is halfway between extremes,” early 14c., from O.Fr. meien, from L. medianus “of or that is in the middle”
The definition as wish or intent makes a lot of sense though. It’s the process through which we transmit the protocol for the handshake of understanding. When we get the meining, then we inter-stand. It’s a semiotic process on the ‘who’ level of human reality. I try to communicate my meaning so that we might have an understanding.
Side note on the ‘who’ level of our reality: You probably know that you are crawling with living bacteria right now. It’s everywhere, moving, growing, multiplying, dying. That’s a microcosmic reality which is verifiable. You may accept this intellectually, but it’s impractical, undesirable, and literally insane to focus on this germophobic universe. That’s because those phenomena are none of our business, unless we make them our business. We can glimpse a look at this layer of reality through optically extending technologies, but it’s really the cells of our body, the immune system, nucleic acids, etc which operate on this scale.
Anyhow, my point in looking at meaning and understanding is to help express what I’m thinking about as far as how things ‘make sense’. My hypothesis is that sense has to do with a completing of a pattern through subjective participation. A pattern makes sense to us, or we make sense out of a pattern.
Further, I think that this completion of pattern is a literal process of bridging a gap with a projection of one’s own interior sense. It reminds me of a semiconductor/transistor where the degree to which current is allowed to jump from emitter to collector is controlled by the base junction.The base junction is like a synaptic cleft in this way too. Sense is the first hand, interior (inter-connection) experience of these junctions and synapses, coordinating and cohering on multiple and interfering layers of text-context gap bridging.
I started out the day tweeting “An image is not a collection of pixels, it’s what you see through the pixels when you ignore them.” This is the essence of sense (or the essence of essence if you prefer).
The control rods, synapse, or base junction here is what I would call the psychological or psychic aperture. Like the pupil of our eye, the amount of sensitivity to patterns and meaning is modulated throughout the day and night as well as the months and years.
It’s probably no coincidence that the effect of psychedelic substances manifest physiologically in blown pupils. It reflects (metaphorically rather than medically) the condition of the mind forced open. Sense is heightened to metaphorical, hyperassociated levels. Pattern recognition is thrown into overdrive so that meaning floods the mind.
My hunch is that the reverse would be true for pupil-contracting narcotics.. maybe they produce an effect on consciousness such that it feels protected from meaning, detached, semi-conscious. Life reduced to a literal stupor.
Lastly there’s something here about Cantor’s Dust. I’m not mathematically inclined in the least, but I think that there’s something here about literalism defeating sense that keys into the whole picture of semiotics and electromagnetism. Somehow I think that this is the problem with infinities which tends to cause geniuses to kill themselves. A feedback loop is set up between the abstract and concrete which cannot be resolved through a narrow gated literal sense, and can only resolved at a lower psychic F-stop which tolerates more ambiguity and broader gaps. It’s like pointing a video camera into a mirror, the recursive overexposure blows out the medium.
understandO.E. understandan “comprehend, grasp the idea of,” probably lit. “stand in the midst of,” from under + standan “to stand” (see stand). If this is the meaning, the under is not the usual word meaning “beneath,” but from O.E. under, from PIE *nter- “between, among” (cf. Skt. antar “among, between,” L. inter “between, among,” Gk. entera “intestines;” see inter-). But the exact notion is unclear. The exact notion seems clear to me. Inter-stand or entera-stand is not to stand among or between, but for something to stand within you. The experience of a proposal which settles within us and sticks to us, stills, strengthens, and stabilizes us. Under-standing = inner-sitting.
The use of understanding as a mutual agreement is noted as dating back to 1803, but this usage ties in to my whole hypothesis. An understanding is a sharing of a single sense of meaning through synchronized articulation. It’s a semiotic handshake.
I started wondering if the origin of the word meaning was related to the mathematical mean function. I thought that I might find that meaning was intuitively coined due to the sampling analog architecture of consciousness and cognitive interpretation. Trying to connect up the gaps between image, icon, character, meaning, and text with the literal mathematical processes of calculating averages and means.
The word meaning, it turns out, is not related to that kind of mean. The former relates to “Ger. meinen to think, suppose, be of the opinion”), from PIE *meino- “opinion, intent” (cf. O.C.S. meniti “to think, have an opinion,” O.Ir. mian “wish, desire.
The latter ‘mean’ relates to “that which is halfway between extremes,” early 14c., from O.Fr. meien, from L. medianus “of or that is in the middle”
The definition as wish or intent makes a lot of sense though. It’s the process through which we transmit the protocol for the handshake of understanding. When we get the meining, then we inter-stand. It’s a semiotic process on the ‘who’ level of human reality. I try to communicate my meaning so that we might have an understanding.
Side note on the ‘who’ level of our reality: You probably know that you are crawling with living bacteria right now. It’s everywhere, moving, growing, multiplying, dying. That’s a microcosmic reality which is verifiable. You may accept this intellectually, but it’s impractical, undesirable, and literally insane to focus on this germophobic universe. That’s because those phenomena are none of our business, unless we make them our business. We can glimpse a look at this layer of reality through optically extending technologies, but it’s really the cells of our body, the immune system, nucleic acids, etc which operate on this scale.
Anyhow, my point in looking at meaning and understanding is to help express what I’m thinking about as far as how things ‘make sense’. My hypothesis is that sense has to do with a completing of a pattern through subjective participation. A pattern makes sense to us, or we make sense out of a pattern.
Further, I think that this completion of pattern is a literal process of bridging a gap with a projection of one’s own interior sense. It reminds me of a semiconductor/transistor where the degree to which current is allowed to jump from emitter to collector is controlled by the base junction.The base junction is like a synaptic cleft in this way too. Sense is the first hand, interior (inter-connection) experience of these junctions and synapses, coordinating and cohering on multiple and interfering layers of text-context gap bridging.
I started out the day tweeting “An image is not a collection of pixels, it’s what you see through the pixels when you ignore them.” This is the essence of sense (or the essence of essence if you prefer).
- Connecting the dots.
- Solving a problem.
- Finishing a puzzle.
- Filling in the blanks.
- Answering a question.
- Figuring it out.
- Putting it together.
- Getting from A to B.
The control rods, synapse, or base junction here is what I would call the psychological or psychic aperture. Like the pupil of our eye, the amount of sensitivity to patterns and meaning is modulated throughout the day and night as well as the months and years.
It’s probably no coincidence that the effect of psychedelic substances manifest physiologically in blown pupils. It reflects (metaphorically rather than medically) the condition of the mind forced open. Sense is heightened to metaphorical, hyperassociated levels. Pattern recognition is thrown into overdrive so that meaning floods the mind.
My hunch is that the reverse would be true for pupil-contracting narcotics.. maybe they produce an effect on consciousness such that it feels protected from meaning, detached, semi-conscious. Life reduced to a literal stupor.
Lastly there’s something here about Cantor’s Dust. I’m not mathematically inclined in the least, but I think that there’s something here about literalism defeating sense that keys into the whole picture of semiotics and electromagnetism. Somehow I think that this is the problem with infinities which tends to cause geniuses to kill themselves. A feedback loop is set up between the abstract and concrete which cannot be resolved through a narrow gated literal sense, and can only resolved at a lower psychic F-stop which tolerates more ambiguity and broader gaps. It’s like pointing a video camera into a mirror, the recursive overexposure blows out the medium.