SYMBOLS

     Symbols are actualities that are used to refer to other
actualities.

     For example a word (sound waves) or letters (ink on paper), or
pictures are themselves all actualities which are USED by people to help
them communicate about other actualities.

     The symbol 'Homer' refers to the actual being, me.

     SYMBOLS refer to the REFERENT.

     The MAP refers to the TERRITORY.

     The MEANING of a symbol IS its referent.

     The conscious unit has conscious experiences, sound, sight, touch,
smell etc which are themselves an actuality, but which the being uses to
refer to other actualities like the physical universe.

     Redness for example is a quality of conscious experience, i.e.
conscious color form, but is used to refer to the alleged existence of
physical light waves of a certain frequency.

     Light waves do not have color, redness is not a quality of a
photon.  Wavelength is a quality of a photon.

     Color and redness describe a conscious color form in the mind's eye
of a conscious being.

     Light has frequency and wavelength, 'red' light about 5000
Angstroms.  But *RED* is not a quality of light, frequency and and
wavelength are.

     Red is a quality of conscious color form only.

     Red is a quality of the SYMBOL.

     Frequency and Wavelenth are qualities of the REFERENT.

     The Conscious color form is used as an actuality by the being as a
SYMBOL to refer to the actuality of the alleged light wave with
frequency, which is the referent.

     It doesn't matter what color the being assigns to what frequency,
as long as the assignment is consistent.  It would be perfectly OK if
one being saw green where another saw red, there would be no way for
either to tell they were seeing different colors, and both would call it
the same word and see it associated with the same frequency of light.

     The Proof says (in part):

     If A and B are two objects, and A changes and B does not, then A is
not B.

     In other words if A and B refer to objects which may or may not be
the exact same object, and A changes and B does not, then definitely A
and B refer to two different objects.

     So you have a being using actualites called symbols to refer to
other actualities called referents.

     In the case of conscious color form, the symbol is redness, the
referent is light waves.

     The point is that the conscious color form which is red and the
light wave which is 5000 Angstroms are two different objects, the first
used as a symbol and the second used as the referent.

     This is easy to prove using the above section of The Proof.

     Have someone sit at a table with a red apple on the table and
perceive the conscious color form of the red apple.

     Then have him close his eyes.  When he closes his eyes, the red
conscious color form disppears (barring him remocking it up), but the
actual apple on the table is still there.

     When the being closes his eyes the SYMBOL of the apple changes, his
conscious color form, goes way in this case, but the REFERENT does not.
Thus the symbol and referent are two different objects.

     This is why most meatballs consider that closing one's eyes to the
world doesn't do much to change the world.  Closing one's eyes may get
rid of the symbol but it has no effect on the referent which is still
there to come bite you whether you see it or not.

     The first thing one has to notice is that just because one
experiences the symbol, this doesn't mean that the referent is actually
out there.

     One can see red apples in dreams, and certainly there are no apples
actually there in the sense that the average meatball understands it.
Its a dream.

     Or while awake one can simply mockup a red apple that one can see
in its entirety, but no one else can, and again there is no actual apple
there to match the symbol.

     If you place an actual apple on a table and percieve it's symbol in
your conscious color form, and then mockup a second symbol apple next to
it so that both look actual, this still doesn't create an actual second
apple on the table as any scientist could verify with simple measuring
instruments.

     Thus a being can create symbols that have no referents.

     This is not a problem unless the being doesn't know he is creating
symbols without referents or comes to believe that because he
experiences the symbol there MUST be a referent existing also.

     A being can also fall into the trap of thinking that because he
doesn't see a symbol the referent necessarily doesn't exist either.

     OK, all of that is pretty obvious and beyond argument.

     Here is where it gets serious.

     All a being is conscious of is what he is conscious of.

     All a conscious unit can know directly is what he is conscious of,
and what he is conscious of is what he knows.

     All consciousness-of is certainty-of, as perception of conscious
color form is inherently perfectly certain of itself.  You can't have an
uncertain experience.

     Uncertainty comes in when the being tries to extrapolate from his
conscious color form symbols to the alleged referent.  He heard
something, that he knows, but was it something falling, or someone at
the door, or a ghost etc.

     Now here is the point.  All the being has ever been conscious of
are his conscious color form symbols.  Therefore those are the only
things he can be sure exists.

     He can THEORIZE that his conscious color form symbols refer to
actual referents beyond themselves, but this can never go beyond being a
theory because he can never directly perceive the referent!

     A BEING THAT CAN ONLY LEARN BY LOOKING AT SYMBOLS, CAN NEVER KNOW
WITH PERFECT CERTAINTY ANYTHING ABOUT THE REFERENTS!

     Thus a being who can only know by looking at his own conscious
color forms, can never know with perfect certainty anything allegedly
referred to by those conscious colors forms.

     Thus just because we experience space and time, doesn't mean there
IS space or time.

     Just because we experience DIMENSION, doesn't mean there IS
dimension.

     Just because we experience OUT-THERE-NESS, doesn't mean there
IS out-there-ness.
 
     You might well ask, well if there is no space or time, if there is
no dimension in actuality, how can symbols exist which look like they
have dimension?

     So that's a very good question.

     Clearly this class is brighter than most.

     Symbols come into two forms, mnemonic symbols and non mnemonic
symbols and of course lots of shades between.

     A mnemonic symbol is a symbol which encodes in itself what its
referent is.  One can recognize directly from the symbol what it
probably refers to.

     A non mnemonic symbol is a symbol whose physical nature bears no
relation at all to what it symbolizes.

     For example a little stick drawing of a man that kids make is a
mnemonic symbol as it contains symbolic arms and legs and heads etc, so
one can guess and be helped to remember what it refers to.

     A photographic picture of a person is a highly menmonic symbol
for that person.

     But a word like 'man' is a non mnemonic symbol as there is no
evidence of 'man-ness' in the word itself.  The word is completely
arbitrary and unrelated to man-ness.

     An exception to the above is called onomatopoeia where some words
like "woof!" sound similar to what they refer to.  Again this brings
an element of mnemonicness back into an area of symbols that is
usually completely free of it and arbitrary.

     In general the assignment of meaning to symbols, the assignment
of a symbol to its referent, is completely arbitrary.

     One can take any scribble and claim this heretofore refers to an
octopus.

     Or one can make things easier on one self by creating more
heiroglyphic symbols, i.e.  mnemonic symbols to help one communicate.

     Symbols that carry their own meaning (definition) in their very
structure save a lot of work.  This is why a picture (mnemonic symbol)
is worth a thousand words (whole mess of non mnemonic symbols.)

     A little observation will show us that the symbols of conscious
color form are HIGHLY mnemonic to what we think they refer to.

     Consciousness of space looks a hell of lot like space.

     Consciousness of light looks a hell of a lot like light.

     But none the less it is an error to confuse the symbol with the
referent, or TO DERIVE THE NATURE OF THE REFERENT FROM THE NATURE OF
THE SYMBOL, or to assume that the referent exists just because the
symbol does, or worse to derive the nature of the SYMBOL from the
nature of the symbol!

     Now that last one might seem odd, but it applies to the conscious
color form of space and time.

     We experience space and time (and objects in them), but does that
mean that space and time exist?  That would be assuming the nature of
the referent from the nature of the symbol.

     But further we ask, doesn't the conscious experience of space and
time, even if it is only a symbol for space and time, necessasrily AS
A SYMBOL have space and time itself?!

     How could we experience a MNEMONIC symbol of space and time
unless there were space and time in which the symbol of space and time
could exist!

     We see that a non space/time symbol could exist which referred to
space and time, but how could a MNEMONIC symbol for space and time
exist if there were no space and time to build into the MNEMONICNESS
of the symbol!

     How could it LOOK like space and time if it didn't HAVE space and
time?!

     Well that's a really good question and a really deep question.

     If the symbol of space and time itself has space and time,
doesn't that prove that space and time must exist as an actual
referent?

     Yes.

     But what if one can have a symbol, that although it looks like it
has space and time, does not in fact have any space and time?

     What if the symbol is a hologram, a holographic projection of
dimension in a non dimensional medium?

     For example a normal hologram in the alleged physical universe is a
mostly two dimensional object (thin film) that displays a richly deep 3
dimensional world.

     So couldn't it be possible that an actually 0 dimensional object
could act as a hologram to project conscious images of 3 dimensional
objects which could then be used as symbols to refer to alleged but
actually non existence external physical spaces and times?

     It is easy for us to see that we can't assume that the existence of
a symbol necessarily implies the existence or nature of the referent,
but it is harder to see how the nature of the symbol itself doesn't
necessarily imply something about the medium holding the symbol.

     How could you have consciousness of space and time in a
consciousness that HAD no space or time?

     Well that is what The Proof is about.  If consciousness itself had
any space or time, you could never see the symbols projected in that
consciousness because preception is certainty, and certainty is
impossible across a space or time distance.

     STOP RIGHT THERE!

     That last sentence is a big sentence.

     Certainty is impossible across a space time distance.

     That's because certainty comes from self luminousness, and
self luminousness is impossible across a space time distance.

     The conscious ball that holds the projection of experiences
(symbols) for space time, does not itself have any space time but is in
fact zero dimensional and extension free.

     Homer

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Homer Wilson Smith     The Paths of Lovers    Art Matrix - Lightlink
(607) 277-0959 KC2ITF        Cross            Internet Access, Ithaca NY
homer@lightlink.com    In the Line of Duty    http://www.lightlink.com