I'd like to thank Mike, Warren and Ross for airing and clarifying!

There is something going on, I think, even beyond Ross' example of occurances
in films which become meaningful in retrospect, and it points to my
difficulty with looking at S&W's conception of relevance as being more than an
heuristic.  It would take me some effort to work this out, and since it seems worth
it, I'll attempt it in a later post.  But briefly it seems to me that tho you
might hypothesize a hardwired mechanism for developing and relating what has
contextual effect, what you measure (how you measure is another whole problem)
will be determined by the software - cultural experience AND character of the
language that's in play.  So, I'll point to myfavorite Quine (I don't quite get
yours, Ross about epistemology naturalized, but i suspect it might sink in in
a bit) where, in the essay "Ontological Relativity",  he reveals how different
language systems have the capacity for referencing different (and possibly
unrecognizable to one another) ontologies.

I agree with Ross that it's better to think of pragmatic and semantic (as
used here) as a continuum.  I also think that it is helpful to think of different
kinds of meanings as having an easier relationship with one or the other
perspective, e.g. If we think of meanings that are stipulated, we've got
convention and habit working to reduce the processing effort and maybe increase the
(measurable) results: (we have a dictionary, but we don't think we need
it)(knowing whether or not you needed the dictionary is a real interesting question -
anyone got thoughts?)  If we have meanings that are evoked,  however, judging
the success of the communication, measuring things like processing effort, or
contextual effect become far more problematic, and if they are "natural" occur
in nature in highly varied forms and to very different degrees depending on
the very different ways we each seem to be wired in this regard - Mike being
wired, as I think I am, to occasionally and much to my own delight, run amok in
creating novel and possibly spurious contextual effects. (is the expression
'spurious contextual effects' oxymoronic in S&W's conception?)

But the example I'm thinking of in terms of "retrospective relevence" is my
experience of seeing Wim Wenders' "The Anxiety of the Goalie at the Penalty
Kick." or Stan Brakhage's "Fire of Waters"  Neither of which made ANY sense to me
until some 20 minutes or so after the film was over when "I got It!".  In
this context S&W's construct as related here needs to differentiate among the
various ways things are, or seem meaningful, and the varying degree to which
criteria for the success of communication can be applied.  In the case of my
seeing "Fire of Waters" my "getting it" 20 minutes later completely ovehauled my
notion of cinema.  So what I rebel against in this formulation of relevence is
the implication that a difficult communication is bound to be less relevant.

Another thing I rebel against is the idea of locating meaning somewhere (or
anywhere). I don't believe it resides either in the film or in the mind so
much, but that it is more of a dynamic of interaction, and we should look to
describe the dynamic prior to looking at the fields in which the dynamic plays.
E.g. in the case of the infamous 8mph sign we might ask Hitchcock "did you mean
something specific by leaving that sign in the shot?" and he might say no. But
if we asked him "did you mean to leave that sign in the shot?", he might
still say, "yes".  And the "yes" would have a far more pregnant meaning. Even if
Mike reads something or things that are specific into that shot, he can
describe the dynamic the shot evoked, whether or not Hitchcock, if he could even put
it into words why he left the sign in there, would agree with Mike's
description of where his mind went when he saw it. The sign evoked something in Mike,
who being the kind of guy he is, felt moved to elaborate on and analyze it.
I'd guess there's only the slimmest chance that were he still alive, we'd ever
be able to tell to what extent H's thoughts on the sign coressponded to what
they provoked in Mike.  On camera Hitchcock had a way of  occasionally "speaking
out of the side of his mouth."  Perhaps the inclusion of the sign was a
gesture of that ilk.

 How do we assess the relevence of what Mike read, or read into the sign? By
seeing the degree to which it opens up or illuminates, or changes our
conception of what was going on in the shot or in the film.  The degree of relevence
is a dynamic, which in this case is being amped by Mike's insights. I think
we'd do better in understanding how this occurance became meaningful by looking
at this specific instance of the creation of active implications in Mike's
mind.  The important thing about how the meaning works is not so much in the film,
 and not so much in Mike's mind, but in the general expectations we share
about implied and evoked meaning.
So we can conceive that we always have valid multple meanings, especially in
art, unless we have reason not to, rather than the other way around.
 As for Ross' thinking that human communication might be a result of natural
history, I can't imagine how it wouldn't.  My motto for many years has been
"Music is the mother of all meaning."  We really really underestimate the degree
to which the musical component of language contributes to meaning.  If you
agree, then the idea of finding the locus of meaning takes on a slightly
different aspect.
Dan

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