Hi math. Excellent write up. Thanks. I have no doubt we’re both on the same page, I agree with everything you’ve said. In fact, the discussion on child development is a perfect lead in.
I’m changing gears and getting away from the linguistic side of meaning now! Please have a glass of wine and think of this as a late night discussion at a pub as opposed to a debate or well thought through presentation… it ain’t that. If it’s not a fun discussion, I’ve failed.
Children (babies) can have some kind of meaning in their head. A pain in the tummy might mean hunger and the need for milk, or the sensation of chafing might mean poop and they need their diaper changed. To resolve the need, they can cry which means that mommy will come to help. The use of the term ‘mean’ here is some type of thought in their mind which indicates the experience had by the baby corresponding to something, such as a concept, if in fact babies are capable of concepts. Certainly I can grant a baby the ability to form a concept to some degree; commesurate with their experience level. This isn’t to say the baby understands what milk is or poop is, but there is an experience of something, the experience is generated by qualia or sensations of the world, and that experience, formed by the qualia, has meaning.
Note that I’m using the term qualia here in a more strict sense than some. People sometimes use the term qualia to mean experience or any part of an experience. I’d like to use the more specific meaning which are those specific experiences obtained from the various individual bodily senses. More in a moment.
Back to the baby… which came first for the 4 month old, the meaning/concept or the qualia based experience? I don’t think it’s too radical to suggest that qualia came first. Perhaps Chomsky might suggest that semantic representations are innate (ie: meanings are innate to the human mind) and thus the concept or meaning was available for discovery prior to the experience of it, but I think that’s a bit off. I would however conceed that there must be something innate in the human mind to allow meanings to form.
What about qualia – perhaps qualia are the innate building blocks that are used to form meaning in the mind? Chalmers in his book “The Conscious Mind”, lists various “experiences” which he catagorizes. This list is his, with my thoughts in paren’s.
1. Visual experiences (qualia of seeing)
2. Auditory experiences (qualia of hearing)
3. Tactile experiences (qualia of touching)
4. Olfactory experiences (qualia of smelling)
5. Taste experiences (combined qualia of smelling and sensors on the tounge including sweet, sour, bitter, temperature, texture, etc)
6. Hot and Cold (qualia from skin nerve cells)
7. Pain (different qualia from skin nerve cells)
8. Other bodily sensations (other qualia… won’t go there! lol)
9. Mental imagery (formed by all prior listed qualia. Has meaning)
10. Conscious thought (formed by all prior listed qualia. Has meaning)
11. Emotions (emotions are qualia but also have meaning)
12. The sense of self (feelings such as this are qualia and can have meaning)
This list isn’t intended to be all-encompassing, but at least it is representative of the various types of experiences that can be had, per Chalmers.
One through eight above are, or can be, defined as what I’d call ‘pure qualia’. They don’t need to be ‘experiences’ in the sense of having meaning by themselves. You might imagine the experience of seeing red for example, but that experience not having any meaning. Similarly, you might hear a high pitched whining noise (qualia) without having meaning apart from the experience of the noise. Similarly, all experiences 1 though 8 can be had by a 4 month old baby for example, before these qualia can be related to some kind of meaning (such as the experience of a fire truck with it’s siren going as it speeds by is created by the experience of red and the high pitched whining noise along with some structural representation forming a mental image that has meaning).
For 9 through 12, these are generally constructs within the human mind which use qualia but they also equate to something. Mental imagery (such as the memory of a past event or combined experience of all qualia creating a present event) generally posses meaning, as does #10, conscious thought. Emotions such as ‘fear’ or ‘excitement’ are sensations of qualia that have meaning, and perhaps these emotions are primative and evolved prior to any linguistic abilities.
Would it be reasonable to suggest that meaning is created by qualia, and it is the qualia which are the fundamental building blocks of ‘meaning’?
Your discussion about babies is a perfect example I think of how babies experience ‘pure’ qualia, without the ability to relate it to meaning. Take for example, what you say here:
Piaget thought that infants were incapable of actual mental representations until they were about 8 months old. Here's why: he noticed that if he showed his 7 month old an object he would reach for it (he did a lot of experiments on his own kids) but if he covered it up, the baby would stop looking. He reasoned that this means that for the baby, the object ceased to exist. (The infant lacked "object permanence"). This was because he thought the infant could not yet form mental representations – out of sight, out of mind. At 8 months, kids will begin to search for the object – but they make a lot of errors, such as searching for an object in the last place it was hidden instead of a new place.
It is only after the sensations of sight, sound, tactile stimulation, etc… all form within a baby’s brain and have some end result, that meaning can begin to form. Perhaps babies experience pure qualia, and then they take that qualia to create these semantic representations (ie: meaning) within their head.
What I’m suggesting is that perhaps the brain has this ‘equivalence function’ which takes qualia and is able to equate it to something such as prior experiences, or concepts which are similarly created by, and memories about, qualia.
I have one other line of reasoning. If qualia are the innate building blocks as I’m suggesting, and if these building blocks somehow equate to the total experience to produce meaning through this ‘equivalence function’ in the brain, then perhaps there are people who, because of genetic/biological differences in their brain wiring, have it backwards. Perhaps for these unique individuals the equivalence function takes the meaning and produces qualia instead.
1. Qualia Experiences => equivalence function => meaning (normal people)
2. Meaning => equivalence function => qualia experiences (unique individuals)
And in fact, this might be the case. For people with synesthesia, perhaps the brain creates meaning from qualia, but also creates qualia from meaning as suggested by #2 above. From an article in Nature:
(note: C. stands for the subject with synesthesia on whom experiments of a devious nature were performed)
"C.'s (the subject with synesthesia) large difference in congruent/incongruent reaction times (236 ms) indicates that automatic photisms were induced by the arithmetic solution (for example, the yellow photism associated with the digit 7 was generated in responce to calculating 5 + 2). This suggests that an external stimulus (for example, a physically present numeral 7) is not required to trigger a photism. Rather, activating the concept of a digit by mental calculation was sufficient to induce a colour experience. Thus, although C.'s photisms are both consistent and automatic, they do not require a physical stimulus to elicit them."
Article attached. Note that a photism is the qualia (ex: the experience of yellow) had by the subject.
About this article has been written:
Other studies have demonstrated that synesthetic perception occurs involuntarily and interferes with ordinary perception. And last summer, University of Waterloo researchers Mike Dixon, PhD, Daniel Smilek, Cera Cudahy and Philip Merikle, PhD, showed that, for one synesthete, the color experiences associated with digits could be induced even if the digits themselves were never presented. These researchers presented a synesthete with simple arithmetic problems such as "5 + 2." Their experiment showed that solving this arithmetic problem activated the concept of 7, leading their synesthete to perceive the color associated with 7.
This finding, published last July in the journal Nature (Vol. 406), was, according to Dixon, the first objective evidence that synesthetic experiences could be elicited by activating only the concepts of digits. As such, these results suggest that, at least for this synesthete, the color experiences were associated with the digit's meaning, not just its form.
Ref: http://www.apa.org/monitor/mar01/synesthesia.html
I had a very long discussion with one synesthate to discuss this. She swore up/down/sideways that her photisms were elicited only by the letterforms. I tried to trick her once by asking what kind of photism she experienced when viewing DIV, but she was too quick for me. She simply said DIV is means ‘idiot’ in her culture (England) so she didn’t see anything (she experiences photisms with numbers only). I pointed out that DIV is the number 504 in Roman numerals and she said she simply didn’t read Roman… <argh> But I wonder if it’s the letterform as she insisted or the meaning of a number which forms the photism as suggested by Dixon!
To summarize, I’m suggesting that perhaps meaning is created in the mind by an ‘equivalence function’ of sorts. I’m suggesting that the brain takes raw qualia (ie: such as the perception of colors or grey shades, spatial relationships between these colors in the visual field, auditory perceptions, tactile, olefactory and other qualia, etc.) such as a baby might experience, and using an equivalence function of sorts, the brain then determines, or learns, how the overall experience of all these different qualia inter-relate. This equivalence function is what creates meaning out of raw qualia in the brain. Meaning then, might be thought of as an assemblage of raw qualia that represents something. That representation can also be used by the brain to predict future or past events, for example – by creating mental imagery and using that to predict past/future events. I could give some examples but it’s getting late.
Have you ever heard of any theory like this? Does it seem unreasonable?
And not to mention, other participants in the conversation might be unfamiliar with them.
