John Bateman Denying The Existence Of Text

John Bateman wrote to sysfling on 10 February 2017 at 16:01:

well, *actually* there is no such thing as text. There's just variations of patterns of pressure gradients in the air and contrasts in brightness in the visual field....

Blogger Comments:

Bateman claims that variations of patterns of pressure gradients in the air and contrasts in brightness in the visual field exist, but that text does not.

actually	there	’s	no such thing as text
		Process: existential	Existent
comment Adjunct: factual	Subject	Finite	Complement

There	’s	just	variations of patterns of pressure gradients in the air and contrasts in brightness in the visual field
	Process: existential		Existent
Subject	Finite	mood Adjunct: counterexpectancy: limiting	Complement

On the one hand, the claim here is that only phenomena in the material domain of experience can be ascribed to the set of existents — a view that owes something to Galileo's distinction between primary and secondary qualities, refined further by Descartes' distinction between res extensa and res cogitans.  On the other hand, it is a reductionist interpretation of that view, since it reduces the existence of such material phenomena to (virtually) their lowest level of organisation, ignoring all higher levels.

Galileo's distinction assumes that meaning is transcendent — that it is not confined to semiotic systems.  In contrast, SFL theory models meaning as immanent — confined to the domain of semiotic systems. Variations of patterns of pressure gradients in the air and contrasts in brightness in the visual field, just as much as texts, are construals of experience as meaning.

In terms of epistemology, Bateman's position is a version of objectivism, which the neuroscientist Gerald Edelman described as 'woefully incoherent and not in accord with the facts'. Edelman (1992: 232):

This view can certainly be held outside of science. Indeed, the objectivist position seems in accord with much that is commonsensical. But when it is held inside science, it comes close to the Galilean position we discussed in chapter 2. In that sense, human concepts, assertions, and languages are valid only if limited to physics, chemistry, and parts of biology.