I have read and reread (and reread again!) chapter 2 over the past month, and find it much denser even than chapter 1. The concept I get hung up on over and over is the notion of arbitrary applicability (AA). While I know that AA is defined as a relationship that depends on social whim or consensus instead of formal characteristics of the stimulus, I think I’m missing the implications.
If we look at the equation for Cfunc as expressed on page 33, there’s a sentence that follows that says: “[w]e can say it this way: given arbitrarily applicable stimulus relations between A, B, and C, and given a context that actualizes the transformation of a given function of A, the functions of B and C will be modified in terms of the underlying relations between A, B, and C.”
I’d like to substitute examples for “A, B, and C”—could someone tell me if I’m on the right track with this?
An example of an actualizing context would be people talking to each other, having a conversation.
In that context, A might be a banana (the fruit itself, not the word).
One person could say, “Have you ever noticed how her nose [B, in my example?] looks like a banana [the oral word for the fruit, C in my example?]?”
Now, this comparison relies on both people’s previous experience with bananas. If the person responded “What’s a banana?” the first person would have to whip out a banana, or at least a picture of a banana, for purposes of comparison.
If this is right so far, one question would be, does one of the 3 items in the relation have to be something with material existence, not “just” a word? I think the answer to this is “no” because what if my characters were talking about something abstract?
So . . .
One person might say, “Love [A] is blind [B].”
Would C in this example be the quality of not being sighted, of blindness?
I’m getting tangled up here. Help!
Response Submitted
Funcky Cstuff. (Submitted by Jacqueline A-Tjak on August 1, 2006 - 2:55am.)
Hi Leslie,
I hope I do this right and this message will appear as an reply to your post.
The example you give of nose and banana seems right to me. The function: 'bended' tranfers/transforms from the actual banana to the nose (word).
Now the second example. Here is a 'simple' way to look at this: I do not know whether you need the third part (C). Transfer of function can happen too when it is about two relata, A en B, Love and blindness. There would be a transfer of the function: not seeing properly from the word blind to the word love.
Now lets make it more complicated:
The word blind refers to actually being blind or seeing someone that is blind (modeling). You could understand the sentence 'love is blind' without ever having seen that, just by hearing people tell about it.
With 'love' its even more complicated, because that is an even more complex experience.
Your question was: does one of the 3 items in the relation have to be something with material existence, not “just” a word.
The answer, as far as I understand it, is no, but....Somewhere in the learning history has to be direct experience. If you take the example of numbers: They are abstract, but we learn them by counting actual things. So your example would not be about three relata, but maybe thirty relata that add up to 'love is blind'. And one or more of these relata would be derived from experience.
And I think it would be far to complicated to try and figure out what relata you need to get at 'love is blind'.
So for the sake of understanding the matter maybe it is easier and enough to stay with the two relata.
Well, I hope this makes sense and it is a good test to see if I get what RFTstuff is about.
Jacqueline