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From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Reading between the lines vs reading the meaning
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References: <806785528snz@longley.demon.co.uk> <3vdlm6$8ve@percy.cs.bham.ac.uk> <807101516snz@longley.demon.co.uk> <3vr0qn$jhh@percy.cs.bham.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 1995 04:41:15 GMT
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In article <3vr0qn$jhh@percy.cs.bham.ac.uk>,
Aaron Sloman <A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk> wrote:
>> Try reading The Logic of Scientific Discovery yourself, and looking
>> beyond the words to what Popper is actually saying.
>
>I now see. This is a case where David is very nearly applying his
>methodology (take note only of behaviour) precisely. I.e. my words
>directed him to look "beyond the words" (of Popper), which you could
>construe as not reading what he writes but looking somewhere else,
>on the far side of the page.

Perhaps you are being unreasonable in requiring your readers to go beyond the
words "go beyond the words" :-).

It seems to me that this implies that two kinds of models can built from a set
of words.  One model is what one might call a "literal" model, where the
interpretation must be taken solely from a translation dictionary.  Since we
have no guidance in the matter, we might as well just take definition (1) for
each word from the best dictionary at our disposal and string them together.
The result is likely to be unsatisfactory.  Of course, even here we have to go
"beyond the words" to the dictionary.  Perhaps there is some way to not "go
beyond the words", but I find the notion of words (As sounds?  Ink blots?
What level is "not beyond"?) holding intrinsic significance (meaning? value?
something non-intensional?) to be incoherent.

The other model one might call the "comprehensive" model, where the
interpretion is based anything we can find that is relevant, including the
writer's historical, social, and personal context, past and future writings,
(one might misunderstand that, as when I once commented that I had heard
Margaret Mead on the radio the other day and got the response "Margaret Mead?
Isn't she dead?"), perhaps most important, and I think what you were
addressing above, the logicial structure and interconnectedness of the text at
hand.  The order in which an author lays out chapters, sentences, individual
words, gives context that affects meaning.  Humor, barbs and criticisms,
sarcasm, etc. are all context that *change meaning* from that which would be
derived if one were to settle only for definition (1) from the dictionary.
Let alone the meaning, or complete absence of it, available from "direct
quotation".  (One might get some insight by considering the difference in
treatment by your favorite computer program of text that is "directly quoted"
and text that is *interpreted*.)
-- 
<J Q B>

