At what point does signification end and reality begin? My father, sitting across the table within arms' distance, is not my father. He is an image of my father: rays of light bounce off his body and are received by me through the eyes as patterns of light, then decoded and interpreted by the occipital lobe of my brain. If I were to shake his hand, I wouldn't be really feeling his hand: the nerves in my fingers and palm and knuckles would sense pressure and texture and relay this information to my brain as a mixture of physical sensations. When he speaks, I am not really hearing his voice: rather, my eardrums would vibrate as the oscillating air created by his vocal chords reached my ears and caused my eardrums to vibrate. Then the very small bones in my ear would transmit these vibrations to nerve endings which are directly connected to the temporal lobes of my brain.
At what point does iconography and signification end and reality begin? The German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, stated that it is impossible to know the true nature of the world because we are limited by our own abilities to perceive the world around us. For the most part, when Kant wrote these words, he was speaking of the critic or philosopher's inability to purely and properly synthesize and grasp foreign concepts because of the individual's inevitably biased and even jaded view of the world. It is impossible to objectively think and perceive because of one's experiences, education, emotions and basic state of mind. However, this same principle can be applied on a scientific method. Bees sense a flower in a very different manner than I might. Their compound eyes take in light in a very different manner from human eyes; their antennae function as a nose, but operate differently; their difference in size from me makes them consider a flower more like a giant structure than a small plant; and they do not have taste buds or a tongue like I do, so tasting nectar is a unique experience for them.
Perhaps there is no reality, only observance. No thing with a brain and sensing organs can truly know the pure nature of the world, and rocks do not have a conscience.
I think I can help with your signification quandary. When Locke talks of significations, I think he is speaking of words and the ideas, things, and situations they represent. Signification, according to the OED online, means "The process of signifying; the production of signs." Signifying means, "The action or process of indicating or intimating something." Your Dad isn't a signification. The signification is what you think of when someone says the word, "Dad." Significations become more precise when the object the word represents is present. In class, when Dr. Graban held up the pen and said, "Pen," our signification of the pen was quite similar to the specific object she was referring to. If she had said "pen" without holding it up, you might have thought the word pen signified a green pen, and I thought of a fountain pen, and someone else thought of a blue pen. (Well, what is more likely is that we all would have thought either of the last pen we saw or a very nondescript, generic ballpoint pen.)
ReplyDeleteAt least, this is my understanding of signification at this point. Perhaps Locke might say that words are vehicles that carry significations, and that ideally, words should be precise enough to create identical significations of an idea or concept in two people.
So, if in class on Monday, you describe to me what your Dad looks like, the words will signify something to me - and it may or may not be what your Dad looks like, depending on the preciseness of the words (and other factors). However, you Dad is not a signification, and therefore he will not show up in class if you start describing him. Though, if you brought him to class, and said, "This is my Dad," then I would have a very precise signification of your Dad.
Does this help?
Chris-
ReplyDeleteApplying your post about your dad's visit on Parents' Weekend helped me understand what Derrida wrote about "differ" meaning "delay or an interval or space" (p. 279).
I'm understanding the space Derrida writes about as one between the signifier and the signified. In that space is "a network of opositions that distinguish them,"((p. 285), or in your case, all the neurons firing and the nerve endings responding -- a physical system saying, "what we're perceiving isn't this, isn't this, it isn't this... oh! it must be "Dad!" Your post gave me a physical illustration of the "system" betweeen signifier and signified at work.
Now I (think I) understand why Saussere said "Arbitrary and Differential are two correlative qualities." Because of the ever-churning (computing?) (Willy Wonka's factory and Rube Goldberg Machines at Purdue are coming to mind here), anyway, because of the ever-computing differential and how it imposes time on meaning, all signs are to some degree arbitrary because they're never the same in two moments or two perceptions.
Your post gave me an idea of what happens "in between," or the "undecidables" Deconstructivists would call it. I think Derrida tried to quantify the space between signifiers, signifieds, and referents and to explain why signifiers never really are exact-- because of what happens "in between."
I liked what Rebecca said about significations and making your dad show up in class by describing him.
"Perhaps there is no reality, only observance. No thing with a brain and sensing organs can truly know the pure nature of the world, and rocks do not have a conscience."
ReplyDeleteChris,
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your matrix-y themed proposal about the difference between reality and observance. And to be honest I have to say I agree on many levels with your discussion. Indeed if you consider the reality of a bee as the actual experience of physically feeling and being a bee, then our reality can never exist outside of our own minds, since there is no way we know what it's like to be a bee.
You may have heard of the metaphorical saying, "Reality is what you make of it." When I look out my window, I can see a tree with leaves on it, but I'll never ever know what it is to be a tree, so how can I know what I'm observing is reality? Just like you illustrated your Dad through a canvas of sensory perceptions, all facets of our reality come through one lens alone, our brains.
The reality that we make, such as my personal perception of a tree, or your perception of your Dad, is made up of all the knowledge and experience we have with those specific identities. To you, the signification of your father is the reality your mind has formed around his essence and being. To me he is an idea you have conjured, something that to me has no signification beyond the level that he is your biological parent.
As you see, signification is the identity our reality has allowed us to recognize in a person, object, or idea.
p.s. ... Adding to my response, the workings of the system when your physical faculties are at work perceiving what turns out to be "Dad" is an example of the human system being a "change comparator," deducing what something is by noticing what it is not... "not dangerous, therefore friend, not friend, but closer, therefore family member, not mom... Dad!" Your post helped me understand "differing relation" (p288)as part of what Derrida was saying about how something is defined by how they're different or what they're not.
ReplyDeleteDo you think I'm on the right track here?