I love literature but I have to say I disagree with you. Words have no inherent meaning other than statistics of the network they are embedded in, and in relation to each other. That’s the foundation of LLM based auto-regressive AI’s which are a magnificent object example of a context-free “texte” system. The Derridas and Barthes of the …
I love literature but I have to say I disagree with you. Words have no inherent meaning other than statistics of the network they are embedded in, and in relation to each other. That’s the foundation of LLM based auto-regressive AI’s which are a magnificent object example of a context-free “texte” system. The Derridas and Barthes of the world have been proven mathematically partially correct, but never fully grasped how fundamental the Author and concurrent historical records is as coded symbol that connects multiple levels of language abstraction. The “texte” is the Author, and vice-versa. That’s why one can summon Jabberwocky rewritten by Shakespeare, about Das Kapital. The only few authors I’m aware of who predicted our present condition of “texte” are Heinlein (“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”, “Time Enough For Love”), Herman Hesse (“Das Glasperlenspel”) and to a degree Walter Miller Jr. (“A Canticle for Leibowitz”). Your mileage may vary.
If anyone is proven right by language being "statistics of the network they are embedded in" it would be Ludwig Wittgenstein, not Barthes et al. He was a true seeker of how the meaning of language is created by the human mind. The others were just political activists with tenure.
I love literature but I have to say I disagree with you. Words have no inherent meaning other than statistics of the network they are embedded in, and in relation to each other. That’s the foundation of LLM based auto-regressive AI’s which are a magnificent object example of a context-free “texte” system. The Derridas and Barthes of the world have been proven mathematically partially correct, but never fully grasped how fundamental the Author and concurrent historical records is as coded symbol that connects multiple levels of language abstraction. The “texte” is the Author, and vice-versa. That’s why one can summon Jabberwocky rewritten by Shakespeare, about Das Kapital. The only few authors I’m aware of who predicted our present condition of “texte” are Heinlein (“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”, “Time Enough For Love”), Herman Hesse (“Das Glasperlenspel”) and to a degree Walter Miller Jr. (“A Canticle for Leibowitz”). Your mileage may vary.
If anyone is proven right by language being "statistics of the network they are embedded in" it would be Ludwig Wittgenstein, not Barthes et al. He was a true seeker of how the meaning of language is created by the human mind. The others were just political activists with tenure.