Autonomous Syntax Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 67-8):

As I discuss in the Postscript, however, proposals that the brain and the mind function like digital computers do not stand up to scrutiny. The idea of mental representations posited without reference to brain mechanisms and structures does not fare much better. An examination of how animals and people categorise the world, and how babies mentally develop, undercuts the idea that language can be adequately explained by syntactical analyses carried out in the absence of an adequate explanation of meaning.  The objectivist view of the world is at best incomplete and at worst downright wrong. The brain is not a computer and the world is not a piece of computer tape.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, syntax is the form that meaning takes, so the Chomskyan Formal Linguistics notion of autonomous syntax is nonsensical.  Meaning is the function that syntax performs.

Objectivist Cognitive Science Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 67):

The cognitive position was to adopt notions derived from logical and formal analysis, putting an emphasis on syntax. In this view, the mind, like a computer, is organised by rules and operates by mental representations. Meanings or semantics are supposed to arise by mapping these rules onto classically categorisable events and objects. Unlike behaviourism, this view allowed one to look into the mind but then described it as if it were a formal system. This description floated more or less free of the detailed structure of the brain. The semantic mapping of that description onto the world is objectivist; things and events are unequivocally described as classical categories.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, in emphasising syntax, cognitivism  takes the perspective of the lower level of symbolic abstraction on two dimensions, emphasising structure over system (axis), and emphasising form over function (stratification).  In doing so, it downplays both choice (system) and purpose (function).

In mapping its description onto the world, cognitivism takes a transcendent perspective on meaning, since it assumes a prior discriminated world onto which meanings can be mapped. In contrast, SFL theory takes the perspective that all discriminations of the world are meanings — properties of semiotic systems — construed of experience, and that meaning is intersubjective.

Behaviourist Psychology Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 67):

One reaction to this state of affairs was to declare the subject off limits and insist that science should concern itself only with behaviour that was observable in ways defined by the forms of successful scientific inquiry concerned with nonintentional objects. In an attempt to salvage the "scientific" posture without denying intentionality, and in contrast to this behaviourism, a different position was later taken by cognitive science.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the behaviourist approach to psychology is an attempt to model behaviour broadly within the mechanistic epistemological framework established by Galileo, focusing on measurable primary qualities, rather than secondary 'subjective' qualities. In Cartesian terms, this is modelling behaviour in terms of res extensa rather than res cogitans.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, behaviourism is concerned with the behavioural manifestations of consciousness rather than consciousness itself: mental and verbal processes, and their projections, ideas (meanings) and locutions (wordings).

Objectivism And Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 67):

In many domains, this ["objectivist"] approach worked enviably well (and still does), but when the mind was put back into nature by nineteenth-century studies of physiology and psychology, a series of difficulties began to emerge. One of the first of these difficulties was that the observer could no longer neglect mental events and mental experience. He could no longer ignore consciousness itself or the fact that conscious experience was intentional — always in reference to an object. The mechanisms of this consciousness were not directly transparent, nor could consciousness be studied directly as an external object — at best, it could be introspected or indirectly inferred from the behaviour of others.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the construal of experience as observations, and their reconstruals as scientific theory, are mental events, mental experiences.  Observations and theories are the content (meaning) of consciousness, as are the objects construed of experience as phenomena (meaning).

The mechanisms of consciousness are the 'inner' processes of consciousness: mental processes that project interior content (ideas) and verbal processes that project exterior content (locutions).  These are distinct from the 'outer' material and relational processes of an embodied brain — the physiological form that realises the semiotic functions of consciousness.

"Objectivist" Physical Science Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 66-7):

As long as science and scientific observers dealt with physical objects and natural forces independent of the minds of the observers, a grand set of theories within a group of compatible sciences could afford to ignore the psychological intricacies of scientific observers. While their sensations and perceptions went into the performance of their experiments and into intersubjective exchanges with their colleagues, these sensations and perceptions were strictly excluded from their theoretical and formal explanations. Aside from a few difficulties at the boundaries of the very small (in quantum measurement) or of the very fast or large (in relativity theory), the scientific observers' participation appeared to be from a God's-eye view. An "objectivist" picture of nature developed that distinguished things from each other by "classical categories": categories defined by singly necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. These were then mapped onto the physical world in an unambiguous fashion by incorporating experimental data into far-reaching physical theories.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, physical objects and natural forces are meanings (realised as wordings) construed of experience.  As meanings, they are material phenomena that can be construed either as that over which consciousness ranges, or as agents that impinge on consciousness.  In this sense, physical objects and natural forces are entirely dependent on minds.  By the same token, theoretical and formal explanations are also meanings construed of experience: projections of consciousness (metaphenomena).  The mapping of categories onto the physical world is the reconstrual of first-order phenomena (the physical world) as second-order metaphenomena (categories).

The Question Of How Biological Systems Carry Out Recognition Events Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 64):

First, we have to ask how biological systems carry out recognition events — how, without the transfer of preexisting, specifically coded messages, a biological system nonetheless specifically distinguishes one thing from another.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, answering this question involves a theoretical reconstrual of how experience is construed, in terms of the material domain of ideational meaning; that is, in terms of biological material processes and biological relational processes.

Moreover, Edelman's TNGS and Halliday's SFL share the same epistemological foundation: the "world" is not inherently "a labelled place", independent of "labelling" systems.

Development vs The Rules Of Development Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 51, 52):

We have to ask how this process [development] constrains evolution — how the rules of development, which themselves evolved, can only be realised in particular ways. …

But why deviate to such issues as shape and form? And why concern ourselves with cells, molecules, and DNA? The straightforward answer is that the rules by which embryos are built govern the way that brains are built.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, this confuses a (first-order) phenomenon with a (second-order) metaphenomenon; that is: the process of development with the rules that model the process.

The evolution of development is a (first-order) biological evolution, whereas the evolution of the rules of development is, properly, a (second-order) semiotic evolution — an evolution in the scientific model.

Accordingly, the rules that describe development do not govern development anymore than a map that describes a landscape governs a landscape.

Moreover, in terms of interpersonal meaning, the rules that describe development are rules in the sense of modalisation (probability/usuality), rather than modulation (obligation).

Edelman's Individual "Soul" Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 40):

In considering our minds, we must also consider both our kinship with and our differences from other species. As I discuss in chapter 16, one difference is that each of us has an individual "soul" based on language. Whatever we find out about the properties of language, however, the sad fact is that neither psychology nor biology will permit the transmigration of souls.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, 'an individual "soul" based on language' is Edelman's higher-order consciousness.  From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, because language is a social semiotic system distributed across members of a linguistic community, each individual consciousness is a uniquely developed individuated variant of the collective consciousness afforded by the language of the community.

Gestalt Phenomena Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 39):

 

Figure 4-2 Gestalt phenomena 

These figures are from Gætano Kanizsa's work and show how context-dependent perception is. … As Kanizsa put it, "seeing and thinking are clearly distinguishable activities. With these pieces we can imagine a cube (figure on the bottom left), but it is very difficult to see it." Notice, however, that the cube is completed (figure on the bottom right) behind the three opaque stripes and becomes perceptually present.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, this demonstrates that visual perception is a construal of experience as perceptual meaning, which, in humans is correlated with the meaning of language — in this case: 'cube', 'stripe', 'triangle', 'circle', etc.

The Structural Psychology Of Edward Titchener In Chomskyan Formal Linguistics

Edeman (1992: 37):

During James's time, however, excessive attempts were still being made to use introspection to reach conclusions about the mind, often with dubious results (as in the case of Edward Titchener, who regarded experimental introspection as the "sole gateway to psychology" and elaborated grand theories of sensation and feeling based on this method).

Blogger Comments:

This method was adopted by Noam Chomsky, who regarded introspection as the "sole gateway" to language and the mind, with similarly dubious results.  In Chomsky's case, this reflects the fact that his linguistics is Cartesian, and concerned with the res cogitans, and so, concerned with knowledge of language, rather than language itself (as res extensa).  Consequently, because intuitions are instances of knowledge, such introspections constitute the data to be accounted for by a theory of knowledge of language.  This appears to be unknown to most, if not virtually all, linguists working in Chomskyan Formal linguistics.

William James' View On Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 37):

James's greatest achievement may have been to point out that consciousness is a process and not a substance in his characterisation of this elusive process in his essay "Does Consciousness Exist?", a question he also pursued in Principles.  Whitehead has made the claim that, with this inquiry, James was to the twentieth century what Descartes was to the seventeenth.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, human (higher-order) consciousness involves mental or verbal processes unfolding through a medium, senser or sayer, respectively.  Where the process unfolds through time, the participating medium persists through time.  In the case of mental processes, this can include the projection of ideas, the meanings of the semantic system of language; in the case of verbal processes, this can include the projection of locutions, the wordings of the lexicogrammatical system of language (that realise the meanings of the semantic system).  That is, the content plane of language constitutes the content of consciousness.

This ideational perspective is complemented by the interpersonal dimension of consciousness: the enactment of the self in intersubjective relations as meaning.

To these perspectives might be added a textual dimension of consciousness, second-order with respect to the other two dimensions, which involves the highlighting and cohesion of the other two, in ways that that make them coherent with respect to a given situation.

In this view, since language is a social semiotic system, higher-order consciousness is social and collective.  Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 609):

Language is a socio-semiotic system, so it follows that higher-order consciousness is constituted socio-semiotically; and since socio-semiotic systems are collective, it follows that higher-order consciousness must also be collective.

Hume's Scepticism Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 35):

The most ruthless and skeptical of the empiricists, Hume, concluded that no knowledge could be secure given that it is all based on sense impressions.  Even scientific knowledge appeared to be shaken by his analysis of cause and effect as no more than mental correlation based on the repetition of these sense impressions. But as we will see later, sense impressions are not the issue; the biology of mind involves much, much more.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of SFL theory, all knowledge, including relations of cause, is meaning construed of experience.  Scientific knowledge is the reconstrual of (first-order) meaning as (second-order) 'meaning about meaning', the reconstrual of phenomena as metaphenomena, analogous to the reconstrual of a landscape as a map.

On the other hand, the uncertainty of meanings, as arguable propositions, is a feature of the interpersonal dimension of semiosis, and metaphors of modality suggest that all projected meaning is probabilistic.

I think	that	‘s	true
Modality: probability	Subject	Finite	Complement
Mood			Residue

The probabilistic nature of meaning-making, semogenesis, is borne out by the two-slit experiment of quantum physics which demonstrates that, at the very limits of perception, observed particle frequencies (meaning as instances) vary according to the probabilities of the system (meaning as potential).

Berkeley's Monistic Idealism vs Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 35):

And Berkeley's monistic idealism — suggesting that inasmuch as all knowledge is gained through the senses, the whole world is a mental matter — falters before the facts of evolution. It would be very strange indeed if we mentally created an environment that then subjected us (mentally) to natural selection.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, there is a distinction between experience and its construal as meaning.  In construing experience as meaning, there is a distinction between a material order phenomena (the physical world) and semiotic order metaphenomena (mental and verbal representations).

It is not that the "world" is mental, but that 'the world' — as perceived, thought or talked about — is meaning construed of experience.

Descartes' "Solipsism" Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 34-5):

Descartes' conclusion that there was a thinking substance radically sidestepped biology, along with the rest of the materially based order. Given his remarkable forays into biology, this is surprising. One matter Descartes did not explicitly analyse, however was that to be aware and able to guide his philosophical thought, he needed to have language. And for a person to have language, at least one other person must be involved, even if that person is the memory of someone in one's past, an interiorised interlocutor. This requirement shakes Descartes' notion that his conclusions depended on himself alone and not on other people.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, thinking is not a substance but a mental process that unfolds through a medium, a senser.  Philosophical thoughts are the meanings of language — made possible by the wordings of language — projected by mental processes that unfold through a senser.

Language itself is a social semiotic system that is developed in each individual through social interaction, a development that corresponds to the development of higher-order consciousness, the ability to construe experience as (linguistic) meaning, and the interpersonal construction of the self.

The World As Unlabelled Place Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 28, 29):

But in reality, the world, with its "objects," is an unlabelled place; the number of ways in which macroscopic boundaries in an animal's environment can be partitioned by that animal into objects is very large, if not infinite. Any assignment of boundaries made by an animal is relative, not absolute, and depends on its adaptive or intended needs. 

What is striking is that the ability to partition "objects" and their arrangements depends on the functioning of the maps that we discussed earlier. …

At the same time, the theory must account for object definition and generalisation made on a world whose events and "objects" are not prelabelled by any a priori scheme or top-down order.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, meaning is immanent within semiotic systems, not transcendent of them.  Any object is a construal of experience as first-order meaning (material phenomena).

Importantly, without the correlation of ideational meaning with perceptual discriminations, there can be no construal of experience as labelled objects, merely the construal of experience as nameless patterns (like those of a Jackson Pollock painting).

Receptor Sheets To Brain Sheets Mappings Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 19):

Neurones can be anatomically arranged in many ways and are sometimes disposed into maps. Mapping is an important principle in complex brains. Maps relate points on the two-dimensional receptor sheets of the body (such as the skin or the retina of the eye) to corresponding points on the sheets making up the brain. Receptor sheets (for example, touch cells on your fingertips and retinal cells that respond to light) are able to react to the three-dimensional world and provide the brain with spatial signals about pressure or wavelength differences (they react to a four dimensional world if we consider time as well). Furthermore, maps of the brain connect with each other via fibres that are the most numerous of all those in the brain.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the mappings between points on receptor sheets and corresponding points on sheets in the brain provide the material means of construing experience as perceptual meaning.

Mappings between these and other sheets in the brain provide the material means of mapping perceptual meanings to the meanings of other semiotic systems, most importantly, those of language.

For humans, the meanings of visual experience are correlated with those of language, yielding a different construal of visual experience from those of other species.

Mind–Brain Dualism Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 11-2):

Dualism has persisted in various forms to the present day. For example, while apparently monistic, behaviourism is simply dualism reduced by denial of the mind as a scientific object, and therefore left with one end hanging. Behaviourists solve the dilemma by examining behaviour and ignoring intentionality. They do not attempt to put the mind back into nature; they simply deny its validity as a scientific object. And many nonbehaviouristic psychologists, while asserting that they are materialists and not substance dualists, are nonetheless property dualists. While conceding that the mind and the brain arose from a single substance, they insist that psychological properties must be dealt with exclusively in their own terms, which necessarily differ from those used for the physical objects or bodies giving rise to these properties. A good example of a property dualist is Sigmund Freud in his later years.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the distinction between the mind and the physical object (embodied brain) that gives rise to the mind is the distinction between different domains of experience.

Construals of the mind are concerned with what Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 131) call the 'conscious-semiotic centre of the ideational universe'; that is, the symbolic processing — (internal) mental and (external) verbal — that creates content: meaning and wording.

Construals of the embodied brain are concerned with the outer domain of 'the ideational universe', with its complementary perspectives of (active) material processes and (inert) relational processes.

Descartes' Res Extensa And Res Cogitans Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 11):

It is here that the second great figure of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, Descartes, comes to the fore. In his search for a method of thought, he was led to declare for "substance dualism." As I mentioned earlier, according to this view the world consisted of res extensa (extended things) and res cogitans (thinking things). Galilean manipulations work on res extensa, the set of extended things. But res cogitans, the set of thinking things, does not exist properly in time and space; lacking location, not being an extended thing, it cannot fall into the purview of an external observer. Worse still is the problem of interactionism: the mind and the body must communicate. With an uncharacteristic lack of clarity, Descartes declared that the pineal gland was the place where interactions between res cogitans and res extensa occurred.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, 'substance dualism' arises from construing experience as things, rather than as processes involving participants.

A thinking thing (res cogitans) is a metaphorical reconstrual of a 'thing thinking', that is, of a senser mediating a cognitive mental process, through which ideas are projected into semiotic existence.

An extended thing (res extensa) is a construal of experience as a phenomenon of a perceptive mental process mediated by a senser.

Descartes' distinction is thus between the medium of a cognitive process (res cogitans) and the range (or agent) of a perceptive process (res extensa), this being a contrast along two dimensions: process type and degree of involvement in the process.

However, contrā Descartes, a thinking thing (res cogitans) is construable as located in time and space, as demonstrated by any clause in which a cognitive mental process is located in time and space, such as Einstein thought so in Bern in 1905.  Spatio-temporal location is thus not limited to the phenomena of perceptive mental processes.

On the other hand, although cognitive mental processes are not perceivable phenomena, the behavioural processes that manifest them are, as demonstrated by construals such as they saw him meditating.

they	saw	him meditating
Senser	Process: mental: perceptive	Phenomenon him meditating Behaver Process: behavioural

A Physical Science Of The Brain Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 11):

Keeping in line with physics, should we declare an embargo on all the psychological traits we talk about in everyday life: consciousness, thought, beliefs, desires? Should we adopt the elaborate sanitary regimes of behaviourism? Should amorous partners say to each other: "That was good for you; was it good for me too?" The ludicrousness of this last resort becomes evident when we consider the denial it entails. Either we deny the existence of what we experience before we "become scientists" (for example, our own awareness), or we declare that science (read "physical science") cannot deal with such matters.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, physical science models the brain in terms of the material and relational processes from which emerge the conscious processes, mental and verbal, that project ideas (thoughts and desires) and locutions (spoken and written texts).  The relation between the two levels can be construed as a realisational relation between neurological form and semiotic function, wherein semiotic functions become established through being encoded by reference to neurological form.

Physiological Models Of The Brain Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 11):

But as Whitehead duly noted, the mind was put back into nature with the rise of physiology and physiological psychology in the latter part of the nineteenth century. We have had an embarrassing time knowing what to do with it ever since. just as there is something special about relativity and quantum mechanics, there is something special about the problems raised by these physiological developments. Are observers themselves "things," like the rest of the objects in their world? How do we account for the curious ability of observers (indeed, their compelled need) to carve up their world into categories of things — to refer to things of the world when things themselves can never so refer? When we ourselves observe observers, this property of intentionality is unavoidable.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the rise of physiology and physiological psychology did not put the mind into nature; it merely began the study of the brain from within the confines of Galilean epistemology.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, physiological models of the brain are concerned only with the outer domains of experience, doing and being; they are not concerned with the 'conscious-semiotic centre of the ideational universe' (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 131): the symbolic processing of sensing and saying that creates content — meaning and wording — through projection.

From this perspective, observers are 'conscious things', and it is this that distinguishes them from non-observers.  Human observers "carve up their world", not by "referring to things in the world", but by construing their experience as meanings, such as 'observer', 'object' and so on.

'Einsteinian And Heisenbergian Observers' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 10-1):

Even with the startling revelations that at velocities approaching that of light or at very small distances the observer is embedded in his or her measurements, the goal of physics remains Galilean: to describe laws that are invariant. We have no reason to abandon this goal. This is because Einsteinian and Heisenbergian observers, while embedded in their own measurements, are still psychologically transparent. Their consciousness and motives, despite occasional arguments about their importance to quantum measurements by philosophers of physics, do not have to be taken into account to practise physics. The mind remains well removed from nature.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, physics doesn't describe laws, but reconstrues material phenomena — construed of experience — as theoretical meanings, including laws.  The laws are a feature of the semiotic description, not of the described material.  The description and the described are different orders of construed experience.  Moreover, in terms of interpersonal meaning, physical laws are modalised statements (probability and usuality), not commands or modulated statements (obligation), as the limit of physics, quantum theory, demonstrates.

Einsteinian and Heisenbergian observers are "embedded in their own measurements" in the sense that any perception of material phenomena requires a senser through which the mental process of perception unfolds.  It is in this sense that consciousness has been introduced into physical descriptions of nature, thereby creating an inconsistency with the Galilean epistemology that forms their foundation, as previously explained.  This is, however, distinct from any desiderative mental processes ("motives") of observers, which, as Edelman says, do not have to be taken into account to practise physics.

The Inconsistency Between Galilean Epistemology And Quantum Physics Though Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 9-10):

Even today after the Einsteinian revolution and the emergence of quantum mechanics, the Galilean procedure has not been swept aside. Albert Einstein's theory of relativity showed how the position and the velocity of the observer altered the measurement of space and time, and by taking acceleration into account it altered the very meaning of the word matter. Quantum mechanics showed that the operation of measurement in the domain of the very small ineluctably involves the actions of the observer who has to choose, within the uncertainty dictated by Planck's constant, the level of precision with which he or she wishes to know either the position or the momentum of a subatomic particle. This reflects what physicists call the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Blogger Comments:

While it is true that 'the Galilean procedure has not been swept aside' after the emergence of the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, these theories differ significantly from 'the Galilean procedure' in as much as both involve the observer in the theory.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, by including the observer, the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics construe experience as meanings that are the cognitive projections of conscious processing — senser and mental process — whereas the original Galilean procedure construes experience as meanings in the absence of the conscious processing that projects them.

As shown in previous posts on Quantum theory, it is this (unrecognised) inconsistency between the two epistemologies that confuses physicists with regard to the "intrusion" of consciousness into the Galilean domain of primary qualities: the position and motion of bodies.

Edelman On Galileo Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 9):

In Science and the Modern World, Alfred North Whitehead observed that in inventing mathematical physics, Galileo removed the mind from nature.  By this figure of speech, I suppose he meant that Galileo insisted that the observer must be objective, that he must avoid the vexing disputes of Aristotelian philosophers over matters of causation. A scientist should instead make measurements according to a model with no human projection or intention built into it and then search for correlative uniformities or laws that either support or disconfirm his or her claims. 

This procedure has worked magnificently for physics and its companion sciences.  Isaac Newton stands as the triumphant figure of its first full flowering.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, as Kœstler (1979: 476-7) observed — see previous post here — Galileo removed the mind from nature through his distinction between primary qualities (e.g. the position and motion of bodies) and secondary qualities (e.g. odours and sounds), identifying only the former as the domain of scientific description, as expressed in the following excerpt from his Il Saggiatore:

To excite in us tastes, odours, and sounds I believe that nothing is required in external bodies except shapes, numbers, and slow or rapid movements. I think that if ears, tongues, and noses were removed, shapes and numbers and motions would remain, but not odours or tastes or sounds. The latter, I believe, are nothing more than names when separated from living beings.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, this is the distinction between quantifiable semiotic construals of visual experience and all other semiotic construals of experience.

This is distinct from Edelman's distinction between 'objective' and 'projective' which, from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, is the distinction between the projected ideas of cognitive and desiderative mental processes, that is: the distinction between thoughts and desires.

Edelman's Objective vs Projective Distinction Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 8):

We can say this in a flurry of rhymes and near rhymes: intersubjective communication in science must be objective, not projective. No wonder that magic, vitalism, and animism pervaded prescientific communication. The projection of individual wishes, beliefs, and desires was not only allowed but was a major goal to be achieved in organising societies for defence against natural threats in a sensible way.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, Edelman's distinction between 'objective' and 'projective' is the distinction between the cognitive projection of thoughts and the desiderative projection of wishes and hopes, respectively.

The interpersonal counterpart of cognitive projection — I think x — is modalisation: probability and usuality, and so Edelman's notion of objective scientific communication involves propositions (questions and statements) of probability and usuality.

The interpersonal counterpart of desiderative projection — I want x — is modulation: inclination and obligation, and so Edelman's notion of prescientific communication involves proposals (offers and commands) of inclination and obligation.