well argued. i do maintain the agreement argument. meaning as an “in-itself” (omg here comes the existentialists) is a no-thing, until agreed upon as a unit of, or represented by, language. your reverse swastika example created different experiences among the viewers, but i predict that after exposure to discussion about it, the hegemony of the more widely accepted meaning will prevail, at least for a time (longer perhaps than the first impressions, shared with the local/immediate community).

the phenomenon of dialects can be interpreted as a phenomenon of power relationships as well. the dominant english was the english of the ruling class and the communities/colonies around them (Received Standard English). It took CNN in the 90s to dislodge this english as the most spoken and understood. Still, it maintains some hegemony due to the cultural artifacts written in it – Shakespeare, being so valued.

@Ryan A,

logical statements cannot be made outside of language. math is expressed entirely as a language. it’s not called english or french, just the language of math. 1 is an acceptable symbol for things that are not 0, 0.01, 1.1, 2, etc.

AAAAAARRGGH! My brain, it burns!

Let’s not start mentioning the F word, Foucault that is, not the four letter one…

For all intensive purposes, language as a structural, artificial, synthetic thing is a system of agreements, though meaning can be different. As you said, that meaning must be accepted and decoded to be realized, mentally concretized and actualized, though by the intent of that author, the meaning exists by his or her very awareness of that meaning, regardless of its acceptance by another practitioner of that same cognitive system. By extension, meaning is contingent soley upon nothing but its very existence, though through the production of semiotic noise via culture and interpretation meaning is then based upon agreement and disagreement. The decoding of linguistic proposals would then make little or no distinction between agreement or disagreement, “correct” or “false” interpretation, as these are dependant upon a “biased”, cultural view that uses specified systems of cognizance with which to differentially interpret signs. Essentially, meaning is not exclusively dependant upon agreement nor disagreement but, rather, on the very act of realization, actualization, concretization. [The reverse swastika in Manabi Straight will generate different first-hand thoughts for those who are historically [un]aware of the Nazi’s propagation of that shape, but, nevertheless, an interpretation of its placement constitutes pure meaning]

Yes, Geass is labeled as a trainwreck because the advocators and propagators of the discourse on it are x, y, and z. The dubious honor that some anime are entitled to by the ‘aristocracy’ of the aniblogosphere has a rather hegemonic relationship to most ‘proletarian’ viewers and/or bloggers. Kaioshin’s counter hegemony against the discourse on Geass and ideology of ‘trainwreckage’ is admirable. Though any three-dimensional person can see how, in comparison to the average two-dimensional consumer, getting tangled up within Geass leaves little room for analysis that stems from its content though occurs extradimensionally to it and into a larger context.

JM: It’s not…

RyanA: ew…science…math…but I get what you mean, now that I thought about the term.

“any statement in language can be expressed using logical statements,” what about non-sequitors? They’re not philosophically logical, but linguistically, syntatically, they can be.

And also, any statement in language can be expressed using logical statements, which can incorporate the same meaning with a more compact dictionary; hence efficiency. I feel trying to get philosophical on language is a round-robin.

this discussion has become quite entertaining. forgive me if i won’t bother quoting my sources – in return i won’t pretend to contribute anything original.

language itself is a system of agreements. discourse only exists because there is a language that powers it. each individual utterance of sound, or each sign experienced by a person may be ascribed meaning contingent to the person’s subjective experience. when that person reproduces that utterance or sign as a unit of communication to another person, it is nothing more than a proposal. it is up to the recipient to agree on the meaning (with the sender, or with other recievers).

this is why there is plenty of difference (as well as a lot of similarities) with alphabets and phonetics (aspecially those using roman letters). the spanish agree with themselves that the letters j and x produces h sounds, while the english don’t necessarily agree (at least for the first few times they hear it).

complex signs like an anime follow the same rules. the planning team wants to communicate a specific thing, the writer perhaps another, the stockholders maybe another, and then there’s the director.

anime is released, initiating the discourse between creators and consumers.

the anime itself, once produced is consumed through the filters of expectations of each individual consumer. these people talk to each other (another discourse) and form conclusions that become popular. and for a time, this is what will stand. this i believe why code geass has the dubious honor of being enjoyed as a “trainwreck”.

ghostlightening: I’m not a lit matjor; language and meaning aren’t contingent upon agreement ipso facto. We inherently, linguistically and cognitively agree based on the principles of English, but the content of our meaning isn’t in agreement, not “the meaning of language” itself.

The majority only establishes the discourse. Of course what seems agreeable upon is based on and within the discourse that it was realized and made visible. It’s because – technically speaking – that discourse already existed and was simply realized itself through various sociocultural/etc. conditions.

RyanA: Ew, science…I don’t get what you mean when you use your non-negative scalar metaphor. The potentiality thing makes sense though.

reika: It is probably pointless to speak of right or wrong in this context. It takes human cognizance to actualize, realize, concretize, make visible, interpret, digest, extract (etc. etc.) meaning, though in this theoretical “wholeness” it existed before human intelligence did – it’s existence that hermeneutically “necessitates” sapient concretization is not in any contingent upon humanity itself. Basically, it always existed, but it needs some kind of intelligence that concretely exists in the universe to make it visible and known to some observer.

There was originally a fifth section here on the disassembly of the roles of author/viewer, not because any one creates, but because they both have to actualize meaning from wholeness. Generally, it was just too short and overly redundant.

I don’t think meaning distinguishes between its medium. Images, physical entities, ideas, sounds, feelings; they’re all equal conduits for meaning. What does a drop of water mean? What does the sound of a piano mean? It’s about what the ethereal, bodyless meaning rather than the physical link through which it passes.

N: mmhm.

Generally, this “serendipity” thing is a very politically unviable tool. Who cares if meaning is infinite? It has a tendency to distract from political priorities. It’s kind of ironic that this is intellectual fanservice, or at least mental masturbation. (though this time around the text wasn’t the intended [hence irrelevant at that] meaning anyway.)

I’m rather uncomfortable with having infinite possibilities, since having nothing to differentiate them results in the lack of meaning [similar in the case of extreme subjectivity] So where do we get the basis for the judgment of whether interpretations are wrong or right? Social consensus? or it’s pointless to talk about wrong/right interpretations?

Wouldn’t saying that it’s arbitrary work here?

so, on the side, what is the work, i.e. the anime? is it just the images, the physical entity, or is it the ideas included in it? interpretations?

I thought lelangir has said that it encompasses all of this stuff. In terms of us finding meaning in it, you could say that we’re all creators, but that seems to open up more bags or worms.

Doesn’t that raise a problem with infinite meaning/depths? Essentially there’s no ‘correct’ or ‘wrong’, only what the author meant and what the author didn’t intend to mean. [which, if you put freud into the mix, will get much more complex, for the author's subconscious intent is not even knowable to him/herself.] I’m rather uncomfortable with having infinite possibilities, since having nothing to differentiate them results in the lack of meaning [similar in the case of extreme subjectivity] So where do we get the basis for the judgment of whether interpretations are wrong or right? Social consensus? or it’s pointless to talk about wrong/right interpretations?

I myself is more on the idealist side though, that reality is without meaning, [if it actually exists in the first place] and that meaning must be created, etc etc. For isnt’ it human ability to associate and distinguish? reality without intepretation would be uniform and thus meaningless.

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have to say it’s a hard post to digest; esp. that my education had been 90% pure science, so lots of terms looks…alien XD.

…wrote this on 2nd reading, and there are some parts that i suspect I still do not fully understand. oh well, that’s what makes things interesting.

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so, on the side, what is the work, i.e. the anime? is it just the images, the physical entity, or is it the ideas included in it? interpretations? because as viewers there is eventually a grey zone that we cannot erase which contain things that could have been put there by the creator, or interpreted by us… to admit ideas make up the work too, doesn’t it put us in with the creators too?