Reply to Clark Goble Sun 5/26/2002 11:04 PM

CG:
Really your issue
boils down to, how do we communicate inner mental states and attitudes.

DS:
Yes.

CG:
Unfortunately you move from this to a theory of emotional communication that
seems unwarranted.  You suggest that somehow communicating by seeing a
person is more comprehensive than writing about it.  Yet I see no evidence
for this.

DS:
The evidence is in the quotes I gave you.  Emotions arise in parallel to
words through the body.  So I get more meaning when I see a person speak
than I get when I read their words.  By understanding embodiment I
understand how to use movies in a language like way.

We find great value in movies because we can see faces (see hand movement,
etc).  That gives us greater clarity about the feelings behind words.  There
problems with seeing faces to gain knowledge of feelings.  People can
deceive us with their expression.   But most people find the visual
expression of movies more than just the sum of the words.

We can't interact with a movie because of the linear construction of movies
in the sense we can exchange words between us.  We ordinarily don't have
available a non linear editor to cut up a film and send back our response to
the film maker (in a language like way).  That exchange process of the
spoken word exposes a potential language like use of movies if we want to
use movies as a tool of everyday communication.

To understand what the problems with movies are we need to understand how
the body works.  In the reply to my brief remarks to this email you sent you
wrote,

CG Mon, 27 May 2002 00:04:11 -0600:
Perhaps you need analyze this notion of embodiment a little more in depth? I
don't mean that as a criticism, just that as you use it, it sometimes is
confusing.  I admit from the posts you've had, I'm not quite always sure if
you are using it in a metaphysical way, an epistemological way, or more as
some hermeneutic category.

DS:
I've not read much Derrida.  An essay or two, so I'll pick up Grammatology.
I have problems with Post Modernist Philosophy in regard to embodiment. Here
is a quote from the site you recommended,

http://www.utas.edu.au/docs/focus/June97/Derrida.html

"A centre is something that guarantees meaning for everything else.
    It is the thing that is fixed by which everything else is to be
    judged. So Christians will say that Christ is the centre. According
    to Derrida all Western thought has been based on the idea of a
    centre, God, Essence, the First Cause, the Immovable Mover, the
    Ideal Form. But all centres, says Derrida, exclude. By being a
    centre they automatically marginalise others. Male centred culture
    marginalises woman, white centred culture marginalises black,
Christian-centred culture marginalises non-Christian, science-centred
    culture marginalises non-science. Thus centres produce binary
    opposites: the centre and the other, black and white, man and
    woman, and so on, and privileges the Centre as the true and the
    good over the marginalised Other as repressed, evil and worthless.
Deconstruction "involves a way of reading that concerns itself
    with decentering?with unmasking the problematic nature of all
    centres"2.

DS:
though not germane to the question I raise about how emotions are
communicated I'll contrast some Post Modernists claims to an embodied
realism.

There are four Post Modernists claims I have in mind;

1.  The complete arbitrariness of signs.  The pairing of a signifier (sign)
and signified (concepts) is utterly arbitrary.

2.   The 'centre' (locus) of meaning is among free floating binary
oppositions (difference).

3.   The purely historical contingency of meaning.

4.   The strong relativity of concepts.

I disagree.

1 In a movie the order of the movie is not arbitrary.  An uncut segment of a
scene represents a non arbitrary pairing of the symbol (the scene fragment)
and the scene.  Violating that order would destroy the sense of motion
integral to the whole sense of motion.

2  Meaning to a scene in a movie is given directly not by opposing two clips
to gain meaning.   I get a meaning without seeing another clip.  I get a
meaning the first time I see the movie.  There is a direct meaning in any
given scene.   The issue of embodied memory and association is not arbitrary
but a result of direct connection of the body to the world.

3   The silent footage that I shoot would mean the same thing to whoever saw
the movie.  X gets up out of the chair and walks through the open door.  X
talks to the camera I see their mouth move.  The same information would be
communicated to other people.

4   That footage seen a thousand years from now would have the same meaning
as now.  (A stable long lasting concept).   Same examples as number 3.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor