symbol and referent

Posted by : desimemberti.blogspot.com Kamis, 10 Maret 2016

SYMBOLS AND REFERENTS

A symbol is an object that refers to a referent. A referent is an object that is referred to by a symbol. We know from previous discussion that there are qualities,

objects and classes.Objects are collections of qualities, namely the qualities that

describe the object, and classes are collections of objects, namely

all objects that have the qualities that are both common and unique to

that class.

An object is defined by its qualities, by the qualities that ithas. And its qualities are gathered togetherinwhat we call an Object Quality Set.

An object quality set could also be called a description quality

set, and is often just called a quality set. Classes are also defined by a quality set called the Pertinent

Quality set, its the quality set that is pertinent to the concept of

the class. In other words objects in the class may have many

different qualities, but only some will be pertinent to why the object

is in the class.

Pertinent quality sets are subsets of the qualities in an

object's quality set. In other words any dog has a lot more qualities

than just being a dog, but its those doggy qualities that make it a

dog! The pertinent quality set contains all those qualities that are

both common and unique to all the objects that are in that class.

Common means that every object in the class has those qualities,

in other words every object has the pertinent quality set as a subset

of its full object quality set. In other words all dogs are dogs Unique means every object in the universe which has thosequalities in the pertinent quality set is a member of that class.

In other words only dogs are dogs! Thus commonness means being in the class implies having the

pertinent quality set, and uniqueness means having the pertinent

quality set implies being in the class.

NOTHING AND SOMETHING

A nothing is an object with the empty quality set.

A NOthing has NO qualities in its quality set.

A something is an object with a non empty quality set.

A SOMETHING has SOME qualities in its quality set.

The empty quality set means the object has no qualities, utterly

devoid of somethingness.A something therefore always has SOME qualities, and a nothing

always has NO qualities at all.

THE LAW OF ONE NOTHING.

Notice there can only be one nothing.If there were two different nothings, then their two qualities

sets would have to be different, and thus not empty. Two empty quality sets can never differ from each other.

They must therefore always be one and the same empty quality set. And therefore two identical quality sets must describe twoidentical objects or events, namely one object or event.One might be tempted to ask if there can be many such nothingsall of which are identical to each other, like 101 dalmations. But by

being two or more of them, they are no longer identical, because one

is over here, and the other is over there etc, or one is this one, and

the other is that one.

Even if they are all piled up on top of each other on the same

point, if you can differentiate between the objects in the pile in any

way, those differentiations belong in each separate object's quality

set, and thus they are all different quality sets and thus can not be

empty, and thus not nothings. So we conclude that can be many sometings, but only one nothing.

THE NATURE OF SYMBOLS AND REFERENTS

1.) DEFINITION OF SYMBOL AND REFERENT

The first is, that a symbol is an object that is being used by

someone or something to refer to another object called the referent.

For example, in a book, you have the word cow, and the word cow

is then used to refer to some real cow out in the real world.

Or you have a picture of a cow in a book, and its a picture of a

cow named Daisey, with black and white spots, who lived on a

particular farm, at a particular time, and here is this complete

picture of Daisey.

The picture is an object, and the ink on the paper is an object,

and the picture is made of paper which is an object, and this compound

object is being used to refer to the actual cow that existed in the

real world. The referent also is an object, it too exists in the real world,

just as the symbol does. Obviously, that's where milk comes from. Moooo!

2.) SYMBOLS AND REFERENTS ARE TWO DIFFERENT OBJECTS

So the second most important thing to know about symbols and

referents is that they are two different objects. And because they are two different objects they have two

different quality sets, each one describing the object that the

quality set belongs to.

For example the picture of the cow is made of paper, made with

ink, made with a photographic process, is basically two dimensional

and exists in a book.

That's a symbol, it has qualities and it is an object which

exists.

The referent is a real cow, its made out of skin and bones and

blood and teeth and eats grass and goes moo!

So you can see that that the two different objects have two

different quality sets.

3.) SYMBOLS AND REFERENTS HAVE DIFFERENT QUALITY SETS

So the third thing to know about symbols and referents is that

some of the qualities of the symbol will not exist in the referent at

all. And some of the qualities of the referent will not exist in the

symbol at all.

For example the picture of the cow is made of paper and ink, and

yet there is no paper or ink in the real cow.

The real cow is made out of blood and bone. The picture of the

cow is not.

So each one of these objects has qualities that are unrelated to

the other object.

Yet the picture of the cow looks very much like the actual cow,

they have 'geometrical congruence or simiarity'.

Technically congruence means identical in shape and size, while

similar means same shape but different size. We use the two terms

interchangably through out this lecture. Also the paper that the picture is printed on has 'substance' and

so does the real cow. Both have mass and weight etc. Thus there will often be qualities between symbol and referentthat belong to both symbol and referent.

4.) SOME OF THE QUALITIES OF THE SYMBOL ARE MAPPED TO QUALITIES

OF THE REFERENT.

The fourth thing to know about symbols and referents is that some

of the qualities of the symbol are mapped to some of the qualities of

the referent. In other words some of the qualities of the symbol are

used to refer to some of the qualities of the referent. The quality in the symbol that is mapped to the quality in thereferent may be two very different qualities. It is not the

similarity in qualities that matters but consistency of mapping and

use.

In this way the symbol can be used to refer to the referent, not

just in a dumb way where symbol refers to referent, but in a more

meaningful way in which the symbol's qualities point directly to the

referent's qualities.For example in the picture of the cow there is a pictogram of a

cow, of Daisey in particular. Its a space time drawing, with color,

black and white spots, outlines, projected in two dimensions, that has

a one to one general spatial correspondance to what Daisey actually

looks like. We call this geometrical congruence between symbol and

referent. In this case it is pretty easy to look at the symbol and tell

what it symbolizes because a certain subset of the symbol's qualities

are very related to a subset of the referent's qualities.

5.) SYMBOLS CAN HAVE PICTURE FORM AND DATA CONTENT

The fifth thing to know about symbols and referents, is that

symbols can have pictogramness or picture form, and they can also have

data content. For example the word 'cow' certainly doesn't look like a cow, and

certainly doesn't have a lot of data in it that would tell you what a

cow might be.It's an arbitrary symbol. However a picture of a cow has both picture form and data

content.

Picture form means there is a one to one correspondance between

some part of the symbol, the picture of the cow, and the actual

referent. Picture form means the same thing as geometrical

congruency. Data content means that contained in the symbol either in its

picture form or in some other form is encoded data that will tell you

something specific and true about that referent.

For example a hologram film plate of a cow has very low picture

form but very high data content about the cow. The data content can

be extracted from the hologram film plate and in fact turned back into

picture form with lasers shining through it at just the right angle.

A digital photograph of the cow, that is turned into one's and

zero's and then encrypted has zero picture form, but again the data

content remains very high and can be recovered from the data form.

A scientific tome without pictures or diagrams about the cow is

also a symbol for the cow.

Such a book, being all printed words, has a very high density of

symbols which in themselves have very little picture form or data

content. The word 'cow' tells you nothing about the referent, but

once connected to a memory bank that understands what cow refers to,

the data content can again be extracted that properly decribes the

referent.

So the word 'cow' is low picture form and low data content.A book about the cow is low picture form and high data content. A photographic picture of a cow is high picture form and high

data content. So in summary symbols can have very high picture form, very high

data content, or both or neither.

In general however high picture form implies high data content

as long as the picture form is geometrically congruent to the

referent.

6.) SYMBOLS AND REFERENTS ALWAYS HAVE A CAUSAL PATHWAY BETWEEN

THEM.

The sixth thing to know about symbols and referents is that there

is always a causal pathway between them. For example if you take a

photograph of a cow, clearly light bounces off the cow, comes into the

camera lens, affects the silver crystals on the film, and it gets

developed, and the film is a direct causal result of physical

interactions in the physical universe that can be traced back from the

film surface to the cow and the photons bouncing off the cow from the

sun.

Even if someone a million years ago invents the word 'cow' to

refer to the general class of cows, there still had to be at some

point a causal pathway between the actual cow and the fact the person

one way or another, directly or indirectly, came up with a word 'cow'

to represent it. If there were no causal connections between the cow

and the person, the person would never have had a need or cause to

invent a word to refer to it.

And so that symbol 'cow' invented by the caveman still has a

causal heritage, a causal pathway, back to an actual cow or mental

imagine of a cow in the mind of the person using the symbol.

Thus where ever there is a symbol that refers to a referent,

there must have been some causal pathway, either direct or indirect

between the original referent and the symbol.

From this we conclude that if there is no causal pathway between

two objects, they can not be symbol and referent to each other.

And if they are symbol and referent to each other, there

must be a casual pathway between them.So there we have said something very odd, and the astute reader

will notice that the following definition of symbol and referent is a

superset of the normal language usage.

We are going to assert by definition that any two objects which

are causally related to each other are symbol and referent to each

other. The referent is the earlier event and the symbol is the later

event. Notice that when two objects (events) are causally related to

each other, the symbol always contains some data in its final state

about that causal relationship between the symbol and the referent.

Some data content is transfered between referent and symbol everytime

there is a causal event.

This is called a data transfer via causal imprint.In any two objects that are causally related to each other tht after object is the symbol for the before object which is the

referent, and the after object contains a data 'imprint' on its state

that contains data content about the nature of before object.The symbol is imprinted with data content about the referent.

In the case of arbitrarily chosen symbols chosen by man to refer

to objects, such as the word cow, the data imprint is not so obvious.

It isn't obvious that we can learn about what a cow really is by

looking at the word 'cow'. The data transfer has either been interrupted between referent

and symbol, lost to antiquity, or dropped below the noise floor.

But in the case of symbols that are directly and intimately

causally connected to an immediately prior referent event, the data

imprint on the symbol is embodied in the very nature and state of the

symbol after the event occurs.

OBJECT AND EVENT

The definition of an object as a collection of qualities can be broadened to mean any event in space time.That is, a single moment of space and a single moment of time,ora single small conglomeration of such,form an event, and thereforeform an object. So not only is the alarm clock on your bedroom bureau an objectbut so is the fact that it is ringing at 8 o'clock in the morning onJan 1st, 2001. That event of it ringing at that moment is part of thequality set of the spacetime plus clock at that moment and thus forms

the complete object which exists at that moment. Thus an object is comprised of ALL the qualities that are in itsquality set at any given moment of space and time.

Now another example of an object is a light switch on the wall.

and the wires that connect it to a light bulb via a battery, the power

source, that powers the whole system. The whole thing can be considered an object, or it can be broken

down into sub objects of light switch, wires, battery and light bulb.