Organic Linguistics. Some New Ideas.

0. Introduction.

Linguistics groups many subdivisions ranging from sign language, phonetic to logic and formal, computational. What I am about to introduce could be seen as part of Semantics in the broad sense. I want to highlight the effect of viewing communication as embedded in reality using the generic DIM-model, that is the Dynamic Interval-Moment Model. The most important novelty in that model is that causality in the observed reality is not well related to causality in reality which we call “ organic causality” to mark the difference between them. The main difference being that organic causality is not a partial order relation, it is not transitive, meaning that in our linguistic logic — where implications are transitive — we have to inspect every statement on the use of transitivity or not. In my book ‘Time Hybrids’ I described the many paradigm shifts resulting from the DIM model for reality, and here I will introduce some corresponding new notions in organic linguistics. I will not care about the kind of semantics I will deal with; I start from my own definitions and I do not try to put them in the framework of the vast existing theory. There are thousands of references related to the subject which can be found via Google, let me just recall a quote of Josiah W. Gibbs about the term semasiology :

“ The development of intellectual and moral ideas from physical, constitutes an important part of semasiology, or that branch of grammar which treats of the development of the meaning of words. It is built on the analogy and correlation of the physical and intellectual worlds”.

Interpretation of the physical world in terms of the generic model of reality where organic causality obviously interacts with the correlation of the physical and intellectual (abstract! ) world will lead to different effects and interpretations. Moreover, society is replaced by organic society — a pseudo-organism as an organized group of living organisms — with an associated moral different from the species-moral and the Life -moral of the pseudo-organism Life. Organic moral and communication in society have new aspects in a semantic theory taking organic aspects and a new logic in account. Viewing communication as a process in the evolving of existing reality from its non-existing part in the void (consisting of potentials or pre-things) with organic causality different from observed causality and with dark interactions and dark influencers present, introduces extra uncertainty principle in the description relating to a deeper root in the unconscious and subconscious interactions. This mixes with the uncertainty coming from the deformation of the learning process into the understanding process (a microstructural deformation) now applied to the ingredients of language, meaning, communication and lifting these to the fine-tuned level of first understanding and then insight in language, meaning context and communication.

1. Order and Structuring.

Order in some set of things is a relation allowing comparison of the elements. Comparison is in terms of selected characteristics; these are properties defined abstractly in the mind which are observable on the objects to be ordered. Any concept may be used as an ordering characteristic, e. g. length, complexity, colour, … , hence there are many possible logical orderings on some set of things, in particular when the things are rather complex objects like living organisms for example. It is clear that an ordering depends heavily on the observer doing the ordering and on the choice of characteristics and on the interpretation of the characteristics by the observer.

Humans are forced to find order in chaos.

Indeed we can only select a finite number of characteristics in a comparison, hence the selected set of characteristics one has in mind in trying to find a way in some chaotic set automatically defines a (composed ) characteristic and an order with respect to it, however hard the comparison is made by the extent of the selected characteristics in the “composed” one.

Hence we are unable to imagine pure chaos!

Language of course comes into the picture creating the usual fuzziness, so there is a narrow definition of order as in Mathematics (partial order, total order, well-ordering, …) and very broadly understood non-definition like in statements about “ the order of nature” or “ the order in the universe”. The latter suggest an observer-free definition of order (and of selected characteristics of comparison) but this cannot exist for the definition we used here. On the other hand the remark about being forced to “ recognize” order in chaos does explain the (wrong) transition of the notion of order to probably chaotic systems. Another reason for the omnipresence of order in human cognition and observations is the fact that we observe change in time and then also discovering causality by cause and consequence also being chronologically ordered. The chronological order is almost certainly the first order people discover; hence it is the initial idea for all orderings.

Order may be seen as a primitive form of structure but structure is to be defined by a coherent set of inter-relations on a set of objects defining some global properties of the set under consideration. Again the inter-relations are observed by the observer up to a selection (neglecting certain relations a priori as not belonging to the structure, even if the final structure is not known! ) in the case of an observed object, and even defined by the observer in case of an abstract construction of some structure (as in math). Observed structures are also abstract structures (the only ones we actually know) but they correspond to some observations of reality. There are many inter-relations between subsets of elements of the structure and these inter-relations do not necessarily come from a relation defined on the total set, hence a structure need not have an ordering underneath it! Putting a structure a collection of things is structuring but not yet organizing. The notion of organizing refers to a function of the organized objects, the function can be abstract like: to be beautiful, to be complete, to fit into some abstract theory,… , or concrete like: acting out a program, surviving in a biotope, supporting some weight, … . Hence in the notion of organization there is a component dealing with a “ planned” result of the structuring, in language this is often highlighted by phrases like “ organized such that …” mentioning the function or aim of the organizing. But there are also notions of self-structuring and self-organizing in particular for living organisms and thus these notions suggest the connection with time and the evolution or change of the structure and organization over time.

Hence a concept starting as being relative to the observer may get disconnected from the observer by observing someone else doing the organizing!

When someone organizes something he has no problem in seeing himself as the organizer and he easily accepts that the organization was planned by him. When we observe something (or someone) doing so-called self-organization we then cannot decide whether the organization is planned with respect to an expected outcome. For this type of recognition it is necessary to have good a priori knowledge about the organism being observed; this is not always present in humans observing human behaviour.

2. Sensations and Signals. Organism Awareness.

A thermometer registers temperature but does not observe it. Even if the thermometer senses the warmth we do not say it has senses, the registration is a purely mechanic action depending on the structure of the object and its functioning in time. If some matter expands when getting warmed up by an energy source, it is a chemical physical reaction without any “ aim” to measure temperature. Of course a thermometer is not a natural object you just find in nature — its structure is designed by people with the aim to measure something — and so we meet the essential concept of “ aim” in our analysis of sensing. To have an aim or to realise there is an aim one needs awareness, even in the most primitive version. Such primitive awareness is only present in living organisms and it can be seen as the defining characteristic of Life. But…is that really true? Is awareness perhaps the result of some mechanical process from so-called “ dead matter” towards living organisms? Is there something like an awareness-force field making matter evolve to living matter? As far as we know — for example by looking at very old ancient buildings and matter laying around us — we did not see old stones communicating. It seems life evolves to life and also to dead matter but not conversely and it is related to Time being irreversible.

Since we are going to analyse some aspects of linguistics we have to start with signalling. There are sounds, light effects and chemical presences in the universe and everything is changing and moving. All of these reflect changes in structure, situation and composition of matter, so they express something is happening but we cannot see it as signals because signals have an “ aim”, that is to be received by something and to be interpreted, understood and acted upon. With our mental abilities now we can view some natural changes in the universe as “signals” telling us what is going on in some place and some time, but that does not make those changes into real signals because they were not “send” with that aim. In the realm of living organisms there are not so many possibilities to send signals because awareness is needed and not only awareness about the Self but also about others of the similar structure capable of receiving the signal. First level would thus be interior signalling and then very local signalling in the direct neighbourhood.

Let us consider the situation of single cells or eukaryotic cells being on the way to become multicellular beings. Awareness of their identity can only develop if there is a primitive memory — better to call it a pre-memory — developing synchronised with the awareness.

Is an unaware single cell alive? If so, what is the difference with a dead matter object? Now here we have to try to describe the essential properties for the concept of Life, and I will do that from the point of view of the moment-interval model for reality.

I will only give an ultra-compact rough treatment of that here; full detail can be found in my book “ Time Hybrids” . Let us look at Time as a totally ordered set, so we do not need any other assumptions like a group structure or real numbers. The universe is a set of states at moments in time, the state at one moment is related to the state at a later moment by a transition correspondence from the first to the second. Nothing exists at moments but there are momentary potentials in the states and we can look at strings of such potentials when these are connected by the transition correspondences. Now some of these strings will define existing events after certain time intervals — called existence intervals — which will lead to a manifestation of the existing phenomenon. There are very weak assumptions made on the existing universe here, much weaker than what is assumed for example in Relativity Theory and Quantum Theory ( I will not go into technical detail here). The beginning of the process of evolving towards existing will start at some initial moment with some potential without a history in the universe — in the sense that it is not obtained from a foregoing potential under some transition correspondence — which we will call a creative potential or a pre-thing. Conclusion : “ existing takes time” , and observing will take more time. An observation interval ( in Physics thus larger than the Planck time unit) may contain existence intervals for many consecutive manifestations of some event or object which will all be observed as one event or object. This creates a serious problem because observed objects (say o-objects) and existing objects (say e-objects) are very different structures, it also explains why the uncertainty principle in Quantum Theory appears and how the idea of a cloud of probabilities for the position of an observed object tries to remedy this. Now when we have an original idea the brain activity for this starts at some moment with a creative potential, which is thus not a consequence of the history of the universe. The observed material things in the universe obey the rule of cause and consequence and in actual physics you can trace it back to the time of the Big Bang; “ Laws of Nature” steer the whole process. Yet in quantum theory the momentary popping-up (as well as disappearing) of particles is accepted, so there it is accepted that there is no cause for the phenomenon. In the dynamic interval-moment model I described roughly here there are always causes in moments (so in the non-existing realm of reality, we may call the existence-void), thus seemingly leading to determined evolution, but the appearance of creative potentials makes the model indetermined. Thus dead matter does not create creative potentials in its process steered by laws of nature going back to the origin of the universe, but living organisms do! In fact I propose that to be the definition of a living organism. Conclusion : living organisms introduce creative potentials and thus Life is essentially “ unpredictable” .

Coming back to an unaware cell now, yes, it may be viewed as living in a pre-aware state since the awareness is under construction via the construction of a pre-memory. Repeated interactions from the exterior of the cell — like warming up and cooling in day and night — leads to chemical interior reactions depending on the composition of pre-cell which is just a bag with mixed chemicals having developed a flexible membrane. The regularity of movement of the composing chemicals begins to build structures inside the pre-cell and after a critical number of repeating interactions the type of interaction is “ recognised” by the internal structure which has been formed. It is just a version of some binary recognition, yes-no for the action but that means the action can be identified as “ the same” or “ similar enough” by the cell ( this little miracle marks the birth of the pre-aware cell from the pre-cell and that process was part of the evolving manifestations starting in a creative potential which marked the beginning of life! ). For our analysis of organic linguistics it is important to stress that the beginning of life was from “ communication” in the sense of recognition of an interaction which was not a signal in our actual sense but was interpreted as one by identifying it. This moment is also the discovery of an exterior outside the interior, growing into the “ meaning” of the membrane and shortly after to the sense of touch. Thus touch is the first of our senses to develop but we ignore that it is really an observed sense and there is one existing pre-sense before that which is the memory-contact sense, the ability to withdraw information from the primitive pre-memory, let us call this “ interior touch”. This ability allows to create an identity of the organism when is aware of what is in the pre-memory.

I find evidence for this at the level of viruses and bacteria in the so-called quorum-sense. Some bacteria about to attack a group of some possible hosts do not attack immediately, but they wait until the time is ripe, so to say. That is they check — using chemical presence testing — in their neighbourhood whether enough of their kind are present — and it has been proved they can distinguish between clones and others — only when they reach the desired quorum will they launch the attack. However there is some virus who preys on those bacteria and it to does not attack immediately but it spies on the quorum checking of the bacteria with their own chemical testing. Then using information in their own (chemical? ) pre-memory they decide together to launch a group attack, “ knowing” there is enough prey available. Thus the virus as well as the bacteria make some decision not determined by the exterior world but emanating from their own activities, meaning that the decision for the start of the attack is by a creative potential in some moment, yielding that in the definition of Life I gave the virus is a living organism in spite of not having a metabolic system and being a kind of parasite. This scientific research confirms that — in my language — interior touch is present and the notion of identity is used by both the bacterium and the virus even to the level of recognising the species, even family!

The awareness of identity will let the pre-memory become a memory of the organism-identity what will lead to the development of the Self composed of three parts : first, the biological organism living in reality — let us call that the bio-self — then secondly, the abstract identity interiorly interacting (by pre-thinking) — let us call that the navigator — planning the actions of the organism in reality, and thirdly, the abstract construction by defining properties observed by the navigator on the biological organism, let us call that the self-image. At what stage of the organism’s evolution these abstract structure are developed, and to which level, depends on the kind of organism; obviously it is paralleled by physical growth and structural changes of the multicellular organism — like the development of a metabolic and nervous system — most importantly by the growing brain activity and the construction of an abstract cognitive world using fantasy and creativity.

To finish this biological story related to the dim-model let me point out that creativity is present in all living organisms — for example in taking decisions, hunting strategies, defensive attitude development — that is ab initio encoded in the definition of life starting with creative potentials in moments.

So the membrane (later skin) separates the interior from the exterior allowing the start of the pre-memory and interior-touch, leading to pre-awareness and growing into memory, Self, touch and senses, thinking, investigation of the exterior world and its constructed abstract world, with the discovery of others and communication. So I could say I elaborated on the J. W. Gibbs quote on the “ correlation between the physical and intellectual worlds” .

In returning to language I will not discuss in detail body language, sign language, animal languages, (abstract) coding and decoding, formal languages, structural and grammatical differences between different languages. I will stay with aspects common to all symbolic languages and the semantics of giving meaning.

3. Linking by Word Valences.

We will focus on symbolic languages, neglecting the sounds used for transmission. Symbols are abstract items, like letters or drawings and pictures, they do not exist in the material universe but are constructed concepts in the cognitive realm of the “ speaker” . In the dim-model, for example, all momentary potentials are non-existing in reality and thus we may view them as abstract, not referring to something existing, however they reflect something in reality “ being” in zero time moments; thus they are existing-abstract but not real-abstract. This is the first time here, our usual language — which I use to write this text — produces ambiguity because of the new notion of existing reality versus reality generated by the non-existing part; so remember my warning about organic causality and the problems in the reality logic! Potentials may be viewed as (finite) words in smallest pre-things (viewed as letters say) and when these realise to an existing object the word becomes material, so we may say “ the word became flesh” with some poetic freedom. The same phenomenon appears in language: concepts obtain meaning by creative decisions! Indeed in language there are the related concepts of structure and meaning plus the aims of communication, messaging and understanding. Concepts themselves have a structure and a meaning but that is different in every individual, so the realisation of the aims of language is a matter of social activities and a relation between individual and society. The basic building blocks of language are words and the meaning given to them. The combinations of letters in a word has no abstract meaning since it goes back to the possible sounds the speaker could make when beginning to signal audible warnings, the name of the symbol (letter) based on how it sounded when pronounced. However the combinations of words are not arbitrary. Firstly some words refer to actions, some to objects, some to feelings, some express intensities and properties, some refer to history or future plans. That is a matter of “naming” which may or may not be influenced by an intended meaning. In order to obtain a clear view we have to distinguish areas of application or applicability useful in the linking of words, to do that I introduce word-valences or rather concept-valences. Like in chemistry words or concepts have some composition valence and there are several valences. There are many but we can start with a first list of the most obvious ones : 1. structural. 2. meaning. 3. emotional (mood). 4. social. 5. situation (local). 6. temporal. One may put words together with some of the valences linked and some not linked moreover this linking structure is a process variable in time and depending on all the external and internal factors involved. The valence network linking grouped words is only partially observed by another person taking part in a conversation and usually conversations are rather fast compared to the time needed to analyse deeper the “ content” of the message, so usually people have a ready made pre-concept of the valence interconnections of the communication which they apply even to written language, where the time to reflect about the valence-networks of words would be amply available. Just a few words about every type of valence here now.

1. Structural. The grammatical structure, e. g. noun adjective etc. , defines types of dependencies between words. Conjugation of verbs allows to describe evolutions in time.

2. Meaning. Obviously the meaning is important in connecting words, but the meaning of the words is used in the planned meaning of the message and that aimed meaning influences the meaning or the emotional interpretation of the words, e. g. the meaning of the word “ flag” changes in a text, say a revolutionary manifest compared to a description of ornaments at some festivity.

3. The emotional connection to the meaning of some word is variable (person, place, situation, time, … ), e. g. mother is different in mother of all wars than in a mother’s love.

4. Social factors and traditions play an obvious role e. g. blanket is something different to a homeless person sleeping in the street than for the rich person in a mansion. The level of education influences the richness of language available to the communicator, even independent of his/her intelligence.

5. Situation. The ongoing activities one takes part in do change the meaning of words e. g. the word water at a beer-drinking party in a pub versus a person lost in the desert for a few days.

6. Temporal. The experience of life changes meaning of words e. g. someone sees coffee differently early in the morning or late at night. Variation with time can be very fast, a matter of hours or less versus periods of decades or almost a life time.

If two concepts are linked it is a priori symmetric but we may want to distinguish one concept as more dominating in the link, so define an ordered valence — say between concepts A and B — as the pair (A,B) if A dominates B, we can write it as an arrow A — ->B. Then when A and B are equally important we may write it as A ←->B, and the graph of the valences on the set of concepts C may be visualised by the corresponding arrows.

Some valences are personal, some like “ structure” should be general generic aspects (grammar, if one knows enough of it! ). The linking of valences of concepts which are defined by groups of words is initially independent of the linking of valences of words in each concept separately but also from the linking of valences between words in different concepts. The meaning of the concepts depend on the linked valences of the words describing it; but the linking of concept-valences may be independent of the linking of word-valences in them and are also personal and the linking does not have to respect the type, it is for example possible to link “ emotional” in one concept to “ situation” in another. Since we described the concept by words having a meaning the word valences used are normally more structural, say grammatical, the links between concept-valences is then more of the “meaning” type So in a conversation the complete understanding of the exchange of concepts is only reached when the meanings are synchronized and when the valence connections are in both persons exactly the same. Clearly this means that linguistic almost perfect understanding is an aspect of “ knowing” the person extremely well, this level of knowing the other is not often realised so understanding is almost never perfect. Now I have set the scene to go into a deeper analysis later.

4. Linking Meanings by Context-Valences.

The grouping of letters in words originally was done on the basis of a few available sounds but when the language developed to a more complex tool that seems to have become almost random, most languages have a small alphabet yet hundred-thousands of words. The structural valence of words is related to meaning while the letters in it are not (anymore), e. g. the word human has a different meaning as an adjective or as a noun, similarly the meaning of meaning is different as a verb or as a noun. So let us first consider “meaning” . We gave every word — later also concepts defined as groups of words — a meaning and you can find it in a dictionary, but there every word is explained in other words and you are supposed to know the meaning of these new words. When looking up all words in the explanation of the first you keep on finding new ones and perhaps even the original word you started from appears in the explanation at one of the next levels of your search. This already makes it clear that the description of the meaning of one word is not going to be very easy or even not necessarily non-ambiguous. The combination of different words or concepts in a message mixes the meanings of the words or concepts in a more complex meaning of the phrase or description of the message, the meanings of the separate words or concepts may get a colour by the context of the message. The context consists of the network characteristics of the web of meanings derived from the composing words or concepts, that is which valences of the words, concepts, are linked and which not and what properties are assumed on this amalgam of word-meanings. The concept of meaning (of some message in language, it has also by transfer been used in other contexts with different meaning, like the meaning of life etc. . ) has context-valences, the most obvious ones are listed hereafter : Logic, Reason, Sense, Ambiguity, Impression, Expression, Conviction, Imagination, Truth. These are important in understanding the meaning of the message and like before the context-valences are personal but at distinct levels, for example one may expect that Logic is more similar in different people than Imagination. So again the understanding will depend on the knowledge of the inner conditions of the provider of the information. Even just seeing someone speak can give extra information from the body language, reading a text will therefore be leading to less correct understanding in terms of the personal aspects of the writer, yet it may be more easy to understand in the absence of emotions of the communicator (even if he/she describes them in the text it will be understood by the brain as non-real information in a “ story” and in anyway one cannot react to it ) the generic quality of the message. A message consists of a set of statements in terms of meanings of concepts, where a statement The context-valences play an important role in a learning process we may call “ learning the meaning”. We have already obtained the “meaning of concepts” by the words they use and the words meanings connected by the linking of word — valences — which is personal but can be agreed upon — and if enough words and valences are used in the construction of the concept we can obtain a rather satisfactory understanding of the concept’s meaning. Yes this is not an exact science, it depends on the interaction between the involved people in the communications! The statement about some connected concepts will have a meaning depending on the context-valences for the meaning of the concepts involved and the linking of these in the statement, again the more concepts fitting into the meaning of the statement and the better — in the sense of the common agreement by the communicators — context-valence linking in it, the more unambiguous the meaning of the statement will be. This looks like an impossible task but the working of the human brain which is able to find suitable interpretations of fuzzy information actually yields uncanny good transfer of information in view of the seemingly unsurmountable lack of precision in the constructions! It is a miracle to me that we actually succeed in understanding each other but it is no surprise that there is also a large part of misunderstandings. But it is a process and repeated corrections will lead to better understanding, provided people will put in the energy to fine tune their definitions and are interested to listen and extend the language where necessary. Thus language will become more complex and the linguistic part of the brain has to learn more …and more. The ingredients being the concepts with selected valences in the statement, the relation being the linking of the valences, defining the meaning. Then there is the cognitive analysis of the deformed aspect process (micro-process)(see Section 15) given by the aspects of the meanings, being the context-valences of them, and the aspect relations being the linking of context-valences. Then the knowledge of the micro-process will be the understanding of the learning process, thus the understanding of the meaning of the statement. The aspect deformation of a learning (also of observation processes) was part of the construction of a measurable model of the understanding and also the creative process for use in didactics in a publication by Ma Min, F. Van Oystaeyen, see [1] Obvious conclusion for this part: Language is a tool for transferring meanings, understanding the language is different from understanding the meaning of messages in it, in the latter the personality of the provider of the information plays a role which can be (partially) neglected as far as generic ( with enough global validity) messages are concerned. The context-valences are the new structural links between (not concepts but) meanings of concepts which have to be studied further.

In fact, what do I mean with what do you mean, you did not say something to me? I want to try to clarify what means meaning. Of course I will do that in language, using words, but these words have a meaning, often an ambiguous meaning depending on intonation, body language, context, … . Initially sounds were used to indicate some object, like a bear or a tiger, the sound could have some intensity corresponding to the amount of fear the object induced. If your friend was screaming abuoha like mad, in panic you could deduce that the bear was standing right behind you. That is useful information although not the most practical. So the language developed and with the invention of deeper abstraction began to talk about itself. This is the most important part in our evolution, the point where we freed ourselves from reality, stepped out of time and created invariant meanings, say, notions which could be used to give meaning to reality and our role in it. We can think in meanings that are out of time, even though the neuro-biological process takes time; in some people thoughts develop slower than in others and the ability for abstraction is not the same in everyone. So, using the meaning of meaning and other words I used as they exist now, we can say that we could give meaning to our sensory activity making it into observations fitting in a context we also defined abstractly and started to describe better and better. Hence the ability for abstraction came before sensing became observing! So we arrived at grammar and linguistic theory and that made communication more regulated and an observable object by itself. Yet when you have to explain the meaning of some word, say the word “ good” , then you have to use many, very many, other words, discussions will arise, and perhaps some agreement about the meaning of “ good” may be reached, perhaps not! In Mathematics you describe definitions from the most elementary level on, use these logically in a well-described logic following the same principles, build layer after layer of logically proved statements leading to higher level of complexity and always new definitions. The result is a high tower, the opposite of the tower of Babel, you can understand the universal language perfectly and unravel every statement at a higher level logically to the statements at lower levels giving rise to the final statement. But Mathematics is the poorest language, you cannot even think about doing that with our communication language, you either get caught in endless loops or have to invent new meanings and concepts to get an unbiased explanation for other, leading to an infinite workload. Moreover language is connected to the feelings of the speaker or communicator as well as of the listener or reader, words change meaning in a context and that is even variable in time for the same communicator and the public for the communication. Yet the meanings we adapt are invariable in the abstract world so once formulated one could argue that it must be possible to only use the agreed meaning for a word, if another shade of meaning is aimed at one should introduce formally a new word, just like in Mathematics. That would lead to a semi-formal language, still different from formal languages in Computer Science or Mathematics, but less ambiguous and context dependent than our natural language. The ambiguity of our language is the reason they invented pubs where you talk to others, there endless discussions can go on for ever and only the drinking limits the activity. So I intend to talk about meaning and the meaning of meaning in a semi-formal language, that means I will stick to the given definition of a concept but I will not repeat each definition beforehand.

So far in Section. 3 and Section. 4, we identified some concepts in our version of linguistics which will play a main role, including the appearance of deformations of learning processes and a possible change of the aspect logic of understanding compared to the learning (observing) logic. We talked about meaning but that is different from “ giving meaning” where obtaining meaning is the aim but constructing it is a different process with its own meaning. We now return to this starting at the primitive level.

5. Giving Meaning as a Quest for Meaning.

When a being has sensory activities and a memory it still does not understand its position in reality so it cannot act planned. It needs a brain and a specific activity of the brain, not only making it aware of itself but enabling to give meaning to some of the sensing it can do. Meaning is an interpretation of sensed information in terms of the awareness, that is a first primitive realization of the interaction triggering the exchange between itself and the sensed environment. Self-awareness and memory do not seem to be enough to enable giving meaning, the realization of the link, variable in time, between the being and the sensed objects, is a type of awareness of the second level, being aware of being aware and then developing more complex cognitive activities about the aware relation being-object. Then that relation itself becomes the object of a learning process, one of the first interactive learning processes we developed. What is necessary for self-awareness is to be able to sense yourself as a part of a reality outside you, this is again a learning process applied in order to make an observation (an understood sensing) out of the sensing and for this it is necessary to have a brain activity that enables you to step outside the reality and think “ abstractly” about the interactive relation between you and some outside object or event. You have to understand that relation could also not exist, or could be different, like you have been able to recognize difference in objects from the memory by introducing an abstract structure on the objects. The first “ abstract” structure is far from geometric shape or other structural arguments developed much later, it is rather the formation of an idea of identity of the object allowing comparison of similar but different objects in time via the memory, this will quickly lead to the formation of classes of similar objects (for example grouping together some moving objects versus objects that seem to stand still). At that point abstraction is at work. Where does this ability for “abstraction” come from?
I do not know for sure but I have a good conjecture! It would require the complete understanding of our thinking to really understand it, but some partial approximation is possible and over longer evolution periods it could grow into some useful practical tool!

From this ability almost everything typically human will follow later by some straightforward evolution and if our biologists are right that our evolution happened mainly in the last 50000 years, which is very fast for such a big development, moreover the origine of the “explosion” of knowledge — even if unknown — is not explainable in terms of mutations. The (abstract) word has become flesh (reality? ). Obviously at this point one may evoke religious beliefs in order to explain by causality the origine of abstract thinking, but on the other hand one may be contented to not know the answer to all questions. At this moment I shall not treat any arguments for belief or agnosticism, it is not the aim of the Quest.
We are now at the moment when people are able to associate abstract properties to sensing, hence they can observe, they can analyse their observations using a primitive logic that seems to be inevitable when combining the self-awareness with abstraction and giving meaning. This logic probably evolved from observing processes in time, i. e. change and learning that there are consequences for deeds and actions in reality and interactions with reality; so the discovery of cause and consequence leading to the abstract notion of time. Originally all abstractions were induced by applying the ability for abstraction to sensed events, thus observations, but the same mechanism that introduced self-awareness and abstraction in giving meaning allowed to view the abstractions as objects or event themselves. At the same time the existing communication by sounds and signals became observed and thus the object of a learning process, thus again treated in an abstract way itself. This lead to the “ construction” of logically based language allowing communication of the internal ideas about some reality outside.
I will now not go through the known evolution of the human race and their way of thinking.
For now let us summarize that meaning, giving meaning, resulted from the ability to abstract from sensing, more or less at the same time as developing language and abstract thinking interweaving into a system of growing complexity, based on primitive learning processes that became also abstract on the way and leading to complex learning processes and communication of abstract cognitive structures. Hence Mathematics and all sciences developed from the first ability for abstraction.
But in our quest we are still at the moment when meaning obtained a meaning, i.e. we have a workable definition now.

6. The Deeper Meaning of Meaning

We have seen that giving meaning arose from awareness of the relation between the self-aware I and an event or object by applying the ability for abstraction making it to observation of that relation and starting a learning process. Originally, with the first meanings that was a very primitive learning process built on minimal pre-knowledge in the growing memory but at the moment that abstract ideas, that is ideas not stemming directly from observations of some reality, were also viewed as objects of such learning process, these abstract ideas could be used to invent properties of observed objects, events or already observed ideas. Then the process speeds up considerably! At the same time a process of identification is growing. It started with self-observation and the definition of an abstract notion of the observer, a substructure of the self that will be identified as the invariant identity of the being, this identity connects the old man and the young boy and identifies them as the same person. Person or persona also refers to some abstractly defined object as the soul, which may or may not correspond to a reality in a person! We do not know which objects in nature (animals) have a self-awareness and also not whether they are able to construct some abstract world like we can, we assume that not many, probably no other being is capable of doing that. But in our analysis of reality we act as if (again an application of abstraction! ) every object has an identity making it different from other objects. Thus we realize an object is what it is in reality, as a unique composition of sub-objects and events and interactions, and not what we observe! The technique of the learning process is applied again, properties of the object are defined and invented (by using fantasy, another application of the ability of abstraction! ), but we cannot establish that the properties we discern actually describe the object completely. Then restricting to some set of properties, usually those considered first or found most important, one can define similarity between objects. For example by observing some identified stones, one defines properties, construct groups of similar stones and then form the “ concept” stone. This is an abstract statement that does not exist in nature, where many specific stones do exist of course, but the concept stone does not exist in space and time.

It is impossible to integrate all properties one can invent or observe into the definition of the concept, hence it is the art to select a “ generic” set of properties, that means a set of well-defined properties leading to an acceptable level of correctness for the concept. Usually there is not more than an educated guess involved in the formation of the concepts, perhaps the situation could be best described as a trial and error strategy but without serious testing for the errors!

Also concepts may be ill defined, their definition depends on the properties used in the characterization and these may be incomplete and even plainly wrong! Now what we call meaning is a concept derived from the learning process of the identity of an object, being an observed object or event of reality or an abstract idea developed further. This learning process is dependent on the context of observations and cognitive analysis applied, it will be evaluated in communication with other humans and that may lead to a quite generally understood meaning although there may be many fuzzy parts in the concept that may show up each time it is scrutinized by a more complete analysis.

On the level of self-observation we defined an abstract identity, say the observer in us. The ongoing learning process of self-evaluation defines the meaning of the observer, that is the way we understand ourselves, i. e. we create an image of ourselves by putting on layer after layer of abstract properties, this means that the observer observes himself in the learning process so it is that part of the self identified with the person in reality doing the constructing. The process of constructing that image may be seen as the third part of the complete Self, the person you think you are, that is what we mean to ourselves. Even though we identify the observer as invariant in time, the meaning of the observer changes in time (our idea of who we are changes, usually slowly), normally we have one meaning for the observer every time we think about it (see further, we apply new meanings but the old meaning never changes! ).

Note I did not identify “ giving meaning” and the “ meaning” , the first is the process leading to the second and the latter is invariant in time. If we later change the definition of a fixed “ meaning” hen we should distinguish linguistically between the old and the new concept in order to avoid ambiguity. This is usually not done in language because the changes are initially very personal, only after a lot of communication with many individuals may the change become general enough to allow the same old word meaning the new meaning. To be correct it is important that one should view meaning as a series of time invariant meanings each at a certain time being applied to the object, so not meaning is changing but the description of the object is changing by using different meanings. Of course the result is that communication has a large content of not well-defined globally valid meanings, so even if meaning is in fact time invariant our “ economic” way of using language creates the fuzziness responsible for many misunderstandings and infinite discussions. In language we then also say : having a meaning as if meaning is unambiguously associated to the object as a property of it, but usually stating “ it makes sense” which is a very different property. In fact meaning is not a property of the object, it is a “ generic” concept which associates a meaning to the object in one’s interpretation of the object in a certain time period.

The meaning of an observable object is usually analysed via experimental ” observations” and properties supposedly resulting from “ real facts linked to the object” via traceable real interactions, observed or not.

The meaning of an observed event is usually described through “ causes and consequences”, which are defined by the “ interactions” between the event and ourselves or our direct environment.

The meaning of an abstract idea is usually expressed through “ logical deductions” from accepted truths at the moment of the analysis.

Summarizing. Meaning is a concept built on a learning process about real or abstract objects, based upon abstract logical deductions and experimental observations.

In the evolution meanings start at very elementary level, using the minimal abstraction ability and observations available at that level.

Primitive meanings could for example be : food, danger, cold, these concepts do not change usually. Obviously the more complex the thinking and the ideas, the more fuzziness appears in the meanings.

Meanings are invariant in time if one views changes in interpretation as an application of new meanings as one should, not as a change in the old meaning (the old meaning stays existing even if it is not applied to the original object anymore)!

Even with the fuzziness and shortcomings mentioned above, meaning and abstraction made the complex language and cognitive development possible, and that is a remarkable success in view of the countless applications in reality. One could conclude that reality seems to agree with meaning!

7. Stepping in and out of Time.

Once the meaning of an idea, or of an object or event, is fixed, it somehow IS outside of time, it does not exist in the sense that it exists in space and time, but we can remember it, put it on paper, a disc, other people’s memory, any carrier of information. The relation between the object and it’s given meaning is not invariant in time, but this should not be seen as a change of the meaning itself, it is associating a new meaning to the object and the new meaning should ideally be indicated by a different name or code (see Part 2. ).

So, we cannot freeze an object or the biological process of an idea in time, time moves on and does not look back, but we can freeze the meaning we gave to something. As long as the carrier of information, where we encoded the meaning, exists the meaning IS. In fact even if all carriers and possible receivers would be gone, the meaning may still be viewed as BEING outside of time, but this is not important here so I will not insist on it. Since we may use the meaning at any moment after its creation this yields us a possibility to step out of time with our abstract thinking. Of course the neuro-biological process of thinking is in time but the meanings, as well as the deductions we make on the basis of these, are out of time, available to us at every moment and even independent of the functioning of our memory once modern technology of storing information has been used. Oral traditions, stories, books, recordings, digitized information, …, they were all means of sustaining the timeless character of meaning. This marks the most important feature of human development:

we step in and out of time by abstracting information in meanings.

We should not think of time as a parameter varying over the real line (the totally ordered topologically complete real numbers ), there is no reason, no physical proof or evidence that natural phenomena can be measured by real numbers, it is just very useful because the completeness (see Topology of Real Numbers) allows approximation, that is any convergent series of rational numbers is, by definition a real number. The universe is a totally ordered set of states with transition functions connecting any couple of states, every state corresponds to one change in the universe, but I use the word change here just for the differences between states, not a process in time! What we observe however, very partially observing a very small number of possible differences in some interval in the totally ordered set, is “ change in a period of time as a passing variable” . So our notion of time is the meaning given to the observation period necessary to establish certain differences in the states of the universe. Shortly (and less correctly) put : observation creates time…and takes time! Hence the observation of some “ change”, i.e. a difference between states of the universe locally observed, belongs to another state of the universe, it is in the total order of states situated after the states being observed as different! This tells us our observation never says anything about the state it is in, that observation alone is responsible for a new state of the universe different from the ones the observation tries to study! Hence even giving meaning to some sensory information (which also took time) also puts the meaning (and thus the understanding of the observation) in another state of the universe, even in the hypothetical situation that nothing else happened in the universe. Thus giving meaning is an event in the universe, the thinking itself represents changes in the observed universe and changes of states in the reality!

So it is correct to say that even one person’s one idea changes the universe!

Of course that is due to the neural activity in the brain, these are real events, but the question is whether the meaning itself is part of the universe. If I would think of a pear instead ( so assuming that it could be done in a moment, not a time period where both ideas appear one before the other) of an apple, does that change the universe ? That looks very very implausible. But that means that meanings and abstract ideas (thus the meaning of them not the process of having the idea ! ) are outside the universe. So we cannot observe a meaning, yet we can deal with it in our cognitive analysis, so what is going on? Well that is very simple, we can think about the meanings but:

we cannot sense a meaning (i.e. there is no sensory information in a meaning! )

Since observations were analysed sensory phenomena, meanings cannot be observed, they are not in reality, just like fantasy, like I said before. In fact meaning is fantasy and fantasy is pure meaning, consequently meaning is the source of creativity, it may be viewed as an interaction with our stepping out of time to define an interaction with reality based on the fantasy of meaning. Now even non-religious people should be amazed that we, small insignificant humans have the possibility to create as an interaction between something out of time — which we may view as “eternity” — and reality!

Creative actions allow us to realize an interaction between eternity and reality.

I leave you to think about what this means!

8. The Secret Life of Meanings.

By idea we refer to a specific bio-electronic action of the brain, then we associate a meaning to the idea which may be an observation in reality or some result of abstract thinking. In any case meanings are abstract constructions deposited in the memory the moment of their construction. But those meanings may also be put into dictionaries, written in the hard disc of some computer and included into data banks. This shows the time invariance of the meaning, we may recollect it at any moment, either from our memory or from one of the information carriers used. An abstract concept does not exist as an entity in space-time, but we may see it as an ingredient of the abstract world we create first in our personal mind, then in society by means of communication usually inputting it in some information system.

So meanings seem to be rather fixed, however the meanings in the memory are not as invariant as we would think from the foregoing, not only because of the properties of the memory and the well-known tricks it can play on you, but also because of some deeper properties of the meanings as conceived by us. First you can willingly change the meaning by a learning process and analysis of the meaning viewed like an object, hence defining ingredients and some relation expressing the construction of the meaning from the ingredients, this may be a causal relation but it can be purely abstract logical too. Then you analyse it further by viewing the ingredients a sets of aspects related to the ingredients by properties abstractly constructed in the description of the meaning, deforming the ingredient-relation to an aspect-relation (which may have links in the opposite direction compared to the relation of the underlying ingredients, this is where creativity and fantasy are involved (see papers by Ma Min and F. Van Oystaeyen). In the thus defined micro-process on the aspect level understanding is created while knowledge is on the level of the ingredient-process. Thus we consciously change the meaning this way. There is another way via society. Indeed once a meaning has entered the society it may change by transitions, usually by linguistic pollution or by transfer to other areas of application, like a technological term being used for other situations, like temperature versus colour-temperature or heat and a heated conversation. Thus changed meanings are recognized by each member of the society as new modified meanings but since the learning process on the modification is missing it will always be a more fuzzy meaning e. g. the heat from a fire is always understood correctly, the heat of a conversation is rather a matter of interpretation and personal evaluations influenced by the mood or the local situation.

Now we arrive at the meaning “ changing itself” almost as a living thing. Well, really it is us changing and growing, expanding or reducing our brain capacities or the knowledge stored in the memory. Once defined a meaning may be kept unchanged in a dictionary for example but in our mind a meaning is in fact an interaction between our present self and our own history collected in the memory. But the memory is a tricky thing, that is a first observation. Moreover, think of the meaning as a fixed linguistic expression, so its encoded form in words, then when rereading it there may be differences in emotional contents or in gradations of intensity: heat may seem more attractive on an ice-cold day with strong gales than during an excursion in the Sahara. This means that a meaning automatically has sidekicks usually of the emotional kind and these vary rapidly with days going by. So we discover that a meaning goes deeper than just a definition, in fact we do not know how deep it actually goes and to what feelings and other concepts it may connect in the future (or has been in the past). In other words the embedding of a meaning, even if formally invariant, in the total internal world of our mind including feelings, emotions as ongoing processes is very important. This makes me think of algebraic geometry where one studies varieties as abstract objects but in practical application (even in theory at higher level) the embedding in an affine or projective geometric space is very important. The embedding of the meaning in the variable system of our mind-memory-emotions is unconscious, we cannot control that and even we cannot begin to analyse it, there is just no “ time” for that as the changing mind does not pause.

We have to face it, the time invariant meanings we define are not experienced as really time invariant by us. We act as if they are time invariant usually because we are used to work with fuzzy definitions, we do know that our attitude today may be different from yesterday’s and probably also from tomorrow’s. For example “ forgiving” is a case of change of meaning of the aware type but combined with a change of meaning of the unaware type if the forgiving is real and changes our feelings towards a person drastically (which may lead to some surprise inside the forgiver and to non-understanding of the past attitude )

A formal person, a thinker according to rather fixed strategies, may not recognize the fluidity of meanings in others, to begin with not in himself. He will blame the (aware) attitude of the other for not sticking to the agreed meaning. A less principal or more flexible thinker may not associate a very big value to a fixed meaning, he may change meaning easily, both aware or unaware. The more flexible approach may seem more convenient but it means more doubtful conclusions and less “ trustworthy” behaviour. Perhaps calling the first a “scientific” thinker and the second a more “ artistic” thinker is not well founded, but it does give an idea of possible types of attitudes.

I once had a strange dream in which mathematical objects, like a group, were connected to daily objects like bread. I thought a lot about the meaning of this dream and concluded that meanings in our memory are by construction of the memory linked to other meanings, not necessarily by the content but just by some internal ordering in the memory. I imagined all meanings are in little drawers and the meaning in the next drawer may be unrelated logically but it is close in the memory! These ordering connections in the memory are unaware, they have no “ meaning” but they may interact with any cognitive activity, occasionally they may become aware. It is important in inter-human relations to realize this variability of supposedly non-varying concepts and while getting older everyone starts looking for the drawer where some concept is and sometimes finding it, not by the content, but by some group of letters or seemingly unrelated other memory.

Conclusion. The ordered structure of the memory interacting with emotions and feelings while thinking about some meaning defines a process of variable embedding of the (supposedly invariant) meaning in our mind which results in an unaware shifting of meanings.

We may think of this as a secret “ life” of meanings !

9. Sensation, the Sense of Being and Awareness.

We have decided meaning is an important basis for language so we have to say something about its origin. It is immediately clear giving meaning is a process in time, so it needs the activity of the memory because we have to use the past in defining a new meaning. But the memory also is a process, it develops since birth (or even before) and is part of the evolution of the species. Since memory must exist before the first meaning there are thus meaningless memories, what can they be ?

Well, there were sensations !

The impressions of our senses also developed gradually; probably ordered by their action radius, from closest to the core of the organism to the end of the universe, starting with “touch” rather being touched, then taste, smell, hearing, sight. Some multi-cellular being floating in the ocean had interactions with the temperature (day and night difference appearing regularly) or with the touching by waves or stream-patterns in the water. How could the organism recognize the same event, e. g. the rise in temperature during day. Of course its chemical construction reacted to the temperature and the regularity of that inner reaction somehow could be stored as a preparation for the next reaction. How that really happened we may never know but we know it happened and the organism created memory to identify some outer interaction as the same as before so it reacted in the same way. here is already the first problem, the interaction was not identical, the temperature for example was different each day. So the sensing (like a thermometer on a chemical energetic level) became observing by comparing different but similar events. Yet sensations when first remembered (later by combining all senses) were meaningless and in our memory today that level is still present and active. Everyone has some memory of some undefined place with some smell or some feeling or taste associated to it, sometimes one remembers the place and time even but often it is an indescribable sensation. In dreams this occurs regularly. Now when decoding ideas into meaningful concepts we use not only the memory but also sensations from before memory. But is touch really the first sense, I do not think so. I believe there is the sense of being in every living organism, that is not awareness or consciousness because these notions imply knowing what you are, the sense of being is pre-awareness and will develop later into that. The sense of being is the source of all abstract activities later in our brain and mind, it is abstract itself and it uses no energy from the system, like the observer of ourselves is there without interaction with reality being necessary (so it seems! ). I would like to bring the creation of language back to sensations and if possible to the sense of being in later parts.

10. Basic Structuring.

In foregoing sections I brought back the search for the origin of communication to the level of the first multi-cellular organisms. The key example is the steering of cells in our body by stem cells, the communication going via chemical signalling or touching (and there may be some other possibilities. Thus cells communicate, chemically or by touch, but they do not think (certainly not in the way we define that) but they are conscious of themselves and others ( clearly because they even communicate). In foregoing part I wrote that there is (I believe, but we can identify it in ourselves) a first sense and that is “ the sense of being” in other words., the sense of being alive, which later creates consciousness and awareness (which involve some knowledge about “ being what” or “ being who” , so some memory and I think that memory alone would suffice though very primitive “ thinking” in some nerve-centre might develop quasi-simultaneously. The memory seems to be enough to identify and distinguish hence consciousness is maybe possible from the combination of the sense of being and some very primitive memory (without cognitive action and before the construction of a nerve centre). The construction of an organelle (common for cells) guided by remembering past external interactions created the primitive memory which then discovered and distinguished inner from outer actions and inter-actions, thus leading to identifying itself as an observed object. What are the characteristics of the communication and the pseudo-language at that level? Well there is always the “ intention” to communicate which is expressed by some interaction not following the logic of the material interactions in the system of the universe, it is a planned interaction by a living organism aiming to get some message out and in such way steering or influencing the receivers of the message. It is interesting to note that even at that so-called primitive level the aim of manipulation is present in communication! The coding of the message is not individual defined but is a characteristic of a group (for example stem cells), the decoding or “ understanding” by others is almost perfect, it seems very few cells prefer to go and do something else when steered by stem cells to do some necessary task like trying to heal some wound. That is an effect of the simplicity of the coding and decoding even if we do not know for the moment how it works in a detailed way. Fact is that the interaction between stem cells is determined by some aim from within the organism (the need to close a wound). Of course there are stranger communication systems like how the gut bacteria communicate certain “ wishes” to the brain cells via the vagus nerve, but we do not go into that here. There seems to be no way cells can communicate with structures outside the organism they belong to even not to cells of similar organisms not “ in close contact” (say like symbiosis ) with it. The grammar exists on this level by the logic of the chemical impulses and the selection of touching expressions and impressions together forming a reasoning where doubt comes in through communication mistakes due to properties of the channel or of the coding and decoding. Note that the valences of meaning thus turn up except that believe and truth are not present at this level, those valences we associated to meaning depend on higher, that is more complex structure of more developed language. What is needed for believe and truth is comparison to an accepted theory e. g. an expectation of the future on the basis of actions undertaken. In order to obtain “ meaning” with all valences we mentioned before it is necessary to have learning processes with creativity and fantasy included in order to deal with anti-relations on aspects in the opposite direction of the described ingredient relations in the observed study process(e. g. an interaction with a planned structure).

Now let us jump billions of years and see how our modern linguistic system deals with the evolved system from cellular communication (I do not mean cell phone communication ).

11. Networks and Touch Topology on the Brain.

We extrapolate the ideas we explained about cell communication to the nowadays situation of us humans. The chemical-energy aspects are still present in the neural network and nervous-system, the neurons flashing, ganglia, synapses, … . But what about the “ touch” ? First let me point out that only by the sense of touch one can develop a touch-)language which is as rich as modern English or old-fashioned French. You can use fingers, fists, palms backhand and if necessary even heels, toes, knees, … , to create different touch types. Then one can combine them in say one to ten different combinations of simultaneous touching, say two fingers, a thumb a fist a nose, a knee and a big toe, and so on (some flexibility is necessary to obtain a rich language! ). Then on the human body there could be identified a hundred (or even more) zones where the touch would be in a different associated class of concepts. Combining all possibilities with, say ten different intensities of touch, yields enough concepts to fill a good dictionary of modern English or old-fashioned French. Since touch and any sense became part of the neuron-network and nerve-system with the brain as the centre, the touch is replaced by the locality in the brain where some action is triggered, this depended on the evolution process from sea-organism to amphibious animal, reptile, mammal, primate, human, and gave rise to a rough topology on the brain with zones associated to a certain type of activity. So there is a half where pattern recognition (more primitive observations) are located and a half where the linguistic and more abstract activities fit. People with separated brain halves can learn to play chess easily, that is mainly pattern recognition but Mathematics is then almost impossible to master because that uses both brain halves, so also language, similar for abstract logic. The evolution was also an evolution in the “ reality” of concepts considered. Obviously the very primitive beginning must have been about very concrete and simple exterior interactions, but along the way more complex thoughts were necessary to deal with first emotions and then other concepts not dealing with existing realities but with earlier defined abstract concepts. So the evolution of our thinking and hence of language and communication is oriented from concrete pictures of objects to abstract descriptions of concepts even without any existing reality. This was on the level of meaning but also within the structure of the language which quickly became itself an abstract construction without existing reality behind it. The obvious trivial problems then arise, does concept X (for example god, good, truth, … ) exist or not, is the supposedly real object Y really existing or does it only live within our mind. The formal study of language does not deal with such problems which found a home in philosophy. Like language itself the organic linguistics also travelled from a very “ concrete” structure to an almost completely abstract one but the organic component brings back some concreteness into the theory.

12. Exformation!

We have been thinking about the relation between the sense ” touch” and the evolution of language. Two valences of meaning are very related to this point of view, namely : impression and expression, corresponding on cell level to being touched and touching. Impression is a reaction on an outer interaction, it is directed to the inner self and a combination of observation, listening, learning and studying, experimenting, analysing, researching. Expression is “ outgoing” , communicating (speaking), opinionizing, creating artistically. The incoming interactions become information, thus it is “ in formation” to become analysed observations and so there is also exformation, that is the formed and analysed product ready to be exchanged with the outside world. Information becomes exformation and conversely when exchanged between people so in a fruitful discussion there is a process, a chain of information-exformation passing between participants with modifications happening regularly hoping to lead to a common “ point of view” on the matter under discussion. A repetition of unchangeable biased slogans does not create an information-exformation transition! In principle the transformation from in-to ex-formation is not depending on the validity of the information, i. e. whether it is correct or not. However there exists something like lying or fake information. We do trust information from our senses if that is not coming from the exformation of another person, say from observations about material reality. But even in animals there are strategies for survival which use trickery, for example pretending to be what it is not via mimicry or behaviour adaption, and people are the masters of that game they even try to trick themselves and that works! They use an interior language, which is aware thinking, to talk to themselves and also create exformation about interior aspects abstractly observed on themselves, the used analysis also makes use of “ creative” elements and fantasy in structuring the third part of the Self trinity observer-biological being-obtained self-image. The same strategy is then used in language and communication. Being (semi-)aware of that is the root of distrusting other people and their information. Added to this deformation of communication is the valence of emotion appearing in word linking, and emotions are not well controlled by cognitive reasoning and logic (other valences). Nowadays the visual interpretation of communication is mainly in reading messages but originally it was in observing body language, but even there some falsification is going on. In fact the false exformation made it into an art form : acting, theatre, story telling, fantasy books film. In fact the word fantasy is now most often understood as “ false exformation from someone” where as abstractly it is a wonderful tool of disconnecting observational interpretations from existing realities. Strangely the fake exformation, as in stories, theatre etc… is capable of triggering emotions just like real events, knowing the fake or invented quality does not change our emotional reactions drastically while rationally we know very well it is “ only a story”. This is a version of “ fantasy” , the disconnecting emotions from reality of information in a kind of ”dream reality”. People do like to leave the logic of observation analysis for a mock logic of a dream reality which may even lead to an addiction, just look at the hours spend in watching TV or reading novels. All of this originates from the organic linguistics dealing with the deformation of information and exformation lifted to an art form in paintings, acting writing or telling stories. Even if the essential information in those activities is false it is used as an educational tool, the imagination of being someone else in purely invented situations, without danger of being really wounded or dying is a weapon for survival. Good stories have their own logic which is false but interior consistent, the solutions in the events in the story give insight in what may happen in reality. So we are the kings of deformed exformation!

13. Truth is Organic Belief.

We could hope that the valence logic will influence the truth and belief in our meanings. Indeed there is Logic in the grammatical rules, but not all are so logical since many have evolved in a process of adapting the theory to common practice. When we are giving meaning to observations of real phenomena there is a kind of “observed logic” transiting into the meaning and language about that. When dealing with abstract notions based on fantasy, creativity or conjectures, then there is only the grammatical logic completely disconnected from the logic of the content of the communicated meanings. Now truth as an objectified concept does not exist, all we can do is decide whether some statement is true or not depending on our system of earlier accepted true statements referred to as facts sometimes. It is clear that this system is in fact a collection of accepted beliefs and it is vast because almost everything we hold to be true is such relative decision. We may deny that but we are aware of it, in some perhaps sub-conscientiously, that is also clear in the language itself since we invented the notion conviction and one can be more or less convinced about the truth of the statements. The objectified universal truth is thus an abstract belief and it does not exist in reality (same for: Justice, Love, Goodness, Evil, … , concepts written with capital). For fruitful communication it is necessary that the meanings have a content one can agree about to be true with some conviction, otherwise there will be no trust in the information of the communication hence no belief. Before our meanings can convince another there first has to be some “ correctness” in it and that means the communicator has to belief his/her own meanings in the context used. There is more “ truth” in meanings shared by many than in personal meanings and contexts; religious groups, political parties, scientists in some discipline, these get more credit than a lone preacher. The media with its mediocrity seeking structure will automatically support communication of the group-type. Yet, one million fans can be wrong (Elvis) ! But the valences truth and belief, which actually practically amount to the same thing to each individual (! ) when viewed in the organic linguistics, are associated to the meaning here, not the context defined by statements of several linked meanings. Thus we find some inner-truth which maybe identified to inner-belief in every meaning we keep in our memory because the meaning is not there just by itself, no it is there with connections to other meanings which forms an inner-context not depending on the communication it will be involved in. For example “ bread” may be related to wheat or to butter for those who eat it regularly but it may be virtual to some people in a tribe in the jungle. Hence the meanings stocked in the memory are there as organic meanings with the linked meanings ( with various degrees of truth and belief) growing while life goes on. That is another variability in organic meaning, you can check yourself how the meaning of for example “car” has evolved organically since you were a kid playing with some dinky-toy truck and now being a bus-driver, yet when you say “ car” a listener will understand car but with his own organic deformation of the basic meaning. Now I understand why I never liked cars, even as a kid I was not interested at all and I never got a drivers licence or drove a car (except for one short experiment in the army when ordered to drive a truck, the officer quickly decided : “ Van Oystaeyen, you never have to drive a car! “ .

14.Ambiguity and Poetic Licence.

Two other valences of meaning we did not mention before, ambiguity and imagination are related and also somewhat linked to emotions. A lot of ambiguity arises from transfer of meaning, like “a hot discussion” , “ a weak mind” , “ a tense atmosphere”, etc… . Most often it is done by changing the meaning of an adjective applying it to another noun to express some similarity in the emotion or interpretation created or referred to in the original use. In transferring meaning that way one uses imagination, fantasy and creativity, it probably arises from someone first using the new meaning in an original point of view or perhaps in some “ poetic” description of some situation. Whereas some expression, like a “ deep understanding” still has some logical connection to the original meaning of deep, a hot discussion is less connected to the meaning of hot. The created ambiguity is also creating more fuzzy communication yet, the unexpected combination of meanings also yields a sensation of surprise and wonder, at least upon hearing the new combination the first time(s). Just like exformation this deformation is even lifted to an art form of expression in Poetry, indeed the original use of concept combinations however far-fetched is seen as creative and artistic. Finding new combinations creating vague spooky meaning-effects attracts people and it seems to open a new world of dreams and new thinking. Really that is a false impression steered by ambiguity but it does link to the sensation of novelty and beauty thus forming a new observed reality with unforeseen possibilities within its own more unpredictable logic. Whereas reality has obvious restrictions on possibilities language has only some formal grammatical rules but almost no rules dealing with the content of the words and phrases, there has to be no truth or believe, not even logic, in the messages. This freedom of language results in millions of books being written most about non-existing concepts. Imagination also gave rise to a language of images (fitting name thus), probably rooting in the observation of body language or just from observing daily life. How much time of humanity is consumed by watching “ moving pictures” on TV and all kinds of modern versions of cinema. The freedom with respect to content of language translates in some levels of rigidity. The most rigid is the written language, the commandments where carved in stone, that was very solid rigidity, oral language is very volatile when compared to written text, it is a well-known game to let a group of people transfer a message given at the start to a first person and then pass it (whispering) down the chain to be spoken at the end of the chain; after ten passing’s the message is often changed in hilarious ways. It seems that much of the freedom of language hides in the possible interpretations. In fact the context or final message is constructed in the build-up of the communication and so not known from the beginning of the construction, this allows multiple interpretations in the beginning normally reducing along the way when the message becomes clear. In a discussion this will lead to initial ambiguity which can however persist because the participants do not follow the line of development of the message but are too busy following their own understanding of what is the topic of the presumed message. On the other hand a written message neglects the flow of emotions in the reader, who is unable to interact with the messenger, this explains why the addition of emoji to a text may prevent certain disagreements on the condition that the emoji would be honest and not aiming to create more discrepancy. The valences of ambiguity and imagination may lead to artistic expression but because of them, the original aim of spreading information in a message has to be linked to another goal of language : “ explanation” of information or information about the way of providing information.

15. Explanation and Understanding as a Deformation Process.

An explanation for some phenomenon in reality may be seen as a logical linguistic construction describing the phenomenon and its links to already acquired knowledge, thus fitting it in some cognitive context which may lead to creating a “theory” about it . A ‘good’ explanation is then one which may be confirmed by logical experiments created in reality. A second but related meaning of explanation is when the object studied is itself an abstract construction, it could be an explanation of the first kind obtained from someone else, like a course, oral or written text, an existing theory, and so on… . Then the aim of this type of explanation is to reach a better level of understanding, that is when a person explains to himself the explanation of some study object handed to him by another, for example a teacher. This may be repeated in a stepwise process of better and finer understanding. These topics bring us to another intrinsic structure of linguistics, that is linguistic processes related to observation processes and getting insight in reality as well as abstract descriptions thereof. We will consider learning processes for a study object, fine tuning of learning processes as process deformations leading to understanding processes. In the understanding of a learning process there are two different understanding processes at work, first a linguistic one which deals with the linguistic constructions in the explanation about the study object, secondly a logical one dealing with the logical structure of the contents of the study object. We will view an abstract process as a set P of ingredients with links between them stemming from a relation R on P, a relation may be seen as any set of arrows A — ->B for A,B in P, or in other words a set of ordered pairs (A,B) for A,B in P. Logical implication and causality are interesting examples of such relation. The process is denoted by (P,R). Now we will introduce fine tunings of (P,R) , I called them deformations in earlier writing by giving a better description of the ingredients as a set of so-called aspects,; so each A in P is viewed as a set A={ a(1), … , a(n)} where n depends on A, and the a(i) are aspects of the ingredient A. We let P be the set of all aspects and we try to find a relation r on P with some suitable relation to R on P. At least we want r to be an aspect-relation that means if x(1)rx(2) with x(1) and x(2) in the same ingredient X then x(1)=x(2). In practice, when defining an aspect deformation one tries to determine a set of aspects providing a better description of the ingredient, then one searches for a suitable aspect-relation, for example such that r on P induces R on P in some well-described way. For example in the IMPACT project of the Flemish government — studying the impact of internationalisation on the education in schools — I used an ad-hoc, you could say an educated guess, choice of aspects for ingredients of a questionnaire and used implications for the relations; for applications in Didactics, the deformation of a learning process where the relation is a partial order relation — for example causality or a logical implication — the fine tuning is obtained by a closer scrutiny of the logical structure of the ingredients so that the deformation obtained is “understanding” but its relation is not necessarily a partial order relation anymore, in fact relations of some aspects in the opposite direction of the relation on ingredients appear and those mark exactly where creativity is used in the understanding process, see [ ]. A third application of the same idea is in the study of the observed reality versus the existing reality where causality of observed phenomena is deformed into organic causality of the aspects of an observation which are the existing phenomena in existence time intervals contained in the larger observation interval for the observed phenomenon! The relation between organic causality and observed causality is not as good as one could hope for, see Time Hybrids [2], what explains some mixing of causality and correlations. Whereas in the process of pollution of a river the choice of ingredients and aspects is almost obvious (temperature, chemical elements, soil situation, nearness of industry… ), the relation being causality and aspect relations being measurable by experimental checking, the processes in linguistics is more complex and since it is abstract in nature there is more freedom in constructions when compared to the processes of observed reality versus reality, “die Gedanke Sind Frei” (our thoughts are free).

In Section 4 we introduced meaning of concepts and statements in terms of concepts and messages in terms of such statements.

Concepts are set of words with their meaning linked by valences, the linking of these valences described — given that enough descriptive words and adequate valences are being used, what depends on the ability of the person thinking about the concepts introduce — the meaning of the concept is relatively clear, yet, as pointed out earlier, there is a personal aspect in it which can only be cured by some agreements in a group of communicating people. Similarly a statement is a set of meanings of concepts (as obtained before) but if the statement is going to have a well-described meaning the meanings of the concepts used is modified by the context of being in the statement; So the meaning of the statement is obtained from the process of concept meanings related by the context — valences we mentioned in Section 4. The deformed process is obtained by taking for thee concepts thee set of concept-valences and for the deformed relation for the linking of word-valences in the concept we now take the linking of context-valences of the concepts in the statements. The meaning of the statement and the linking of the context-valences are mutually determining each other, so in case we have to find the meaning of the statement our brain has to understand the linking of the context-values of the concepts used by the constructor of the statement. I noted earlier that this sems to be a miracle if it works, but it is a deep property of our brain activity that it actually can get useful information out of rather fuzzy components. It is tempting to see in this some quantum property of the brain, but for me that may be the reverse of what really happens because the definitions of the quantum model for reality were the result of that same brain activity, the brain created quantum theory, not the other way around! Now considering a more complex message as a set of meanings of statements one can use the meaning of the statements as building blocks and define a the meaning of the message via the linking of the message-contexts valences of the statements, so this is just the same deformation principle as before but on the next level of complexity and similar problems for personal interpretations appear again and are solved by the brain’s flexibility in the same way as on the earlier levels. Now not everybody’s brain has the same level of flexibility and so communication by language has limits for everybody, some are people of many words others care more for deeds and honest motivation. Here I hint at the moral issues linked to messages — both elementary or very complex — and how these are used, hence to the aims of communication.

There is a lot more about structural linguistics and relations with formal logic and even formal languages. Remember I claimed to use a semi-formal language by sticking to fixed definitions but on the other hand using an almost biologically based approach . Both in poetry and common spoken language more “free” systems are used and it is understandable that approximating perfect encoding and decoding of messages is not always the aim or priority in different situations. Sometimes one may try to reach a certain beauty of expression or mystic meanings of fluid contents. So what aim you choose for communicating depends on you and also on who you intend to communicate with and that is beyond the scope of any form of linguistics, it borders on expression of the inner — often even reaching into the subconscious — the expression of the soul. Sometimes it is said that music is a language, but really that is both more and also less. I also did not treat anything related to the quality of the content of communications since that fits more into psychology and even philosophy perhaps. Formal languages and computer languages have amore exact scientific structure but these are more “poor” than the complex human language which remains the brain’s most deep performance.

References.

1. Ma Min,Fred Van Oystaeyen, A measurable mathematical model for processes,Journal of Mathematical Sciences, vo.34 (2015), p.11–36.
2. Fred Van Oystaeyen, Time Hybrifs, Nova Science Pubishers,New York,2021.