>>In a message dated 10/26/98 8:26:13 AM Eastern Standard Time,
>>[log in to unmask] writes:<snip>

>In a message dated 10/26/98 Fred Welfare <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>I am >referring to an 'explanation' of communication which recognizes not
merely the >signifier-signified relationship for any meaningful entity we
experience, <snip> but also, the >existence of a designator, an other, which
designates the signifiers.
>Otherwise, you have reduced meaning to its semantic-syntactic relations and
>obscured the pragmatic dimension.
>You would then have to presume that
>everyone is a monadical mind, a closed up self.  This is preposterous.
>Intrapersonal relations are the source of our thoughts which we need to
>acknowledge through the determination of the source of a thought or feeling.
>Others have intentionality, the intent to communicate, to manipulate, to
>influence, to >do things, etc...  It is relevant to recognize whether
someone else is >influencing us through subtle, subliminal, attitudinal
dispositions or >otherwise and whether this constitutes the source of a
dream, a thought, a >daydream, a feeling , etc...>Everything is communication.

        Yup indeed.  But the questiion is not whether the letter arrives at
its destination (you recieve exactly what I send--a limit case of
replication rarely achieved except by the help of strict consensus, and so
contingently); the letter always arrives.  The relevant matter involves the
form in which it arrives.

        Do you mean that we need to acknowledge intrapersonal relations as
the source of our thoughts *by* determining them as such???? This seems
redundant and ciruclar, but perhaps I simply am not understanding you.
What does it mean to say that the sources of our thoughts are the sources of
our thoughts?  Or is the important matter the fact that we acknowledge them
as such??  How does this sentence elaborate on your claim that we are not
monads?  (of course we are not!) Please clarify.

        My inclination, with respect to dreams to which this discussion is
tethered, is that the dreamer is the source of her dream eidos, or
represetnations.  These representations may indeed have their source
elsewhere, but that is not saying much: no matter their source, the form
they take is a representation, which is of course a mediation, a screen
of/from the Other or of the other scene (who/which may well be the
dreamer/dreamer's locale, or not), and from which this other is decidedly
absent --replaced by the represetnation.  As representations, then, they are
received not as replications (xeroxes, cc's) of the sender's communication,
but are rather transformed by the "receivers" interpretation. so you see,
their source is irrelevant.

>Yes, some thoughts and feelings are authentically our own which we can
partly >recognize when we cannot validly attribute it to our perception of
another's >feeling or thought.  Empathic identification is a multiple
endeavor, we are >empathizing with others as others empathize with each of
us and others at the >same time.  Recognizing this, and that others are also
attempting to influence >us in many different ways, some of which may be
objectionable, but all of >which is within our evaluation, ideally; or
practically, within our cognition.

        Such talk about influence sends me to to Habbermas and to political
theories of ideology.  Without of course leaving psychoanayslsis (never!).
>
>I would agree that Freud's notion of a censor is absent moreso during our
>sleep, and that, within certain states of mind, meditative perhaps, we
>perceive internal images more vividly. >But, imagery is a relevant aspect
of the sender-receiver notion of >communication (which I hope no one will
pejoratively call projection->introjection which refers to the attribution
and perception of our own >misgivings and interests).  It seems to me that
when we sleep we are more >susceptible to the 'sendings' of others, whereas,
when we are awake, we are >enacting our own interests.

        What does that mean?

>(However, this could easily lead to a discussion >of conventional morality
and legality, ideology, the nfluence of media, the >notion of authentic
needs and false needs, etc...)  Likewise, when we sleep or >rest, we can
more easily send and receive feelings and thought with others, as >in the
notion of intimacy.

        I've alredy responded to this further above, but I suspect I will be
found guilty of the intropjectio-projection bit.  Ah, communication. On the
other hand, your evocation --if I am reading you closely enough-- of a
spiritual trans- or inter-subjectivity seems to be going into much more
interesting territory.