Semiotics & Structuralism ..Recall that there is concern with the epistemic and ontic roles of mathematics. We were hoping that mathematics would provide a handle on mind space, in a fashion that would allow the technostructure to participate in an otherwise discontinuous transformation to immaterialism that might take on the aspect of dematerialization – something to be avoided. The conceptual and economic roles of quantum computers were suggested as a vehicle for the participation.
In the process of examining qc’s I came across the ‘semiotic interpretation’ of qm. This might be helpful in better defining the semiotic potential of math.
A personalistic immaterialism would likely suppose that thoughts are largely reducible to felt meanings. If there is to be a significant semiotic role for math, then its constructs ought to be similarly reducible. Naively this seems unpromising. Perhaps there is some misapprehension concerning the nature of reduction. In a purely relational world everything should be mutually reducible to the extent that anything is reducible.
Psychologism and intuitionism as applied to math are only a small step toward feeling. It could be that mind space is irredeemably heterogeneous. There is no common basis for its phenomena. What then is the basis for unity? The source of unity may lie in the transcendental domain. That light is then broken into myriad colors and shades as it is refracted into ‘matter.’ There is no subconscious, only a unified supra-conscious.
The mathematics describes the continuous ramification of the original source in all its possible variety. Historical time is another dimension of meaning. There can be only structure because actual substance would obstruct the return cycle. The substance is only our ignorance. The structure is purely relational.
If a math-structure program is to succeed it will be necessary to show that color is not elementary. Even from an evolutionary perspective, color vision appears relatively late and would likely incorporate other pre-existing cognitive structures, or so would argue the functionalists.
Be clear that this structural program is not reductive in any usual sense. Our common currency, our lowest common denomination is cosmic love. Love may be blind but evidently it need not be color blind, speaking only literally, of course.
We tend to suppose that color is gratuitous and arbitrary. Those who are color-blind can manage very well. Yes, but color and its lack can be integrated with the structures of meaning, as is more obviously the case with olfaction.
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rev. 10/22/98