"Symbolic reference" refers to a way of referring to or representing something, often an idea or concept, using a symbol or image. It's like using a sign or picture to represent a larger meaning or idea.
Full definition
In ordinary perception these two pure modes are connected
through symbolic reference where the experienced influence of a past occasion is referred to a particular vivid sense in the immediately presented duration.
Notice that such mistakes are not intellectual in character, since this type of
symbolic reference does not involve the operation of thought.
Both types of expression have reference to the real world but in quite different modes
of symbolic reference.
The description of the perception of both the lightning and the following thunder does not therefore have to be given in phenomenalist terms, nor does abandoning the phenomenalist description require Whitehead's second version of
symbolic reference as the projection of a sensum on a spatial region to which it is causally related.
De Monchaux's vision remains unique, independent and distinct, yet is embedded
with symbolic references which bring to mind religion, shamanism, social taboos, Freud, Poe, de Sade, the Brothers Grimm, Gothic and Baroque art, Surrealism, but with a distinctively post-modern edge.
I have tried to outline in this paper what I think is the proper direction this attempt should take and those aspects of Whitehead's account of
symbolic reference which can serve as a promising starting point.
For symbolic reference clearly requires that presentational immediacy and causal efficacy be present together in a single, unitary act of awareness.
Evidence in support of the first hypothesis would need to cite demonstrations of
how symbolic reference, as used by humans, could evolve from functional reference, as observed in other animal communication systems.
Vessels such as vases and urns, cowrie shells, huts, and busts are recurring forms, each
making symbolic reference to the black female body.
Within Sufism, which the artist has extensively studied, geometric forms
contain symbolic references — associations Farmanfarmaian embraces.
As we shall see in the next section, Whitehead's principal version of
symbolic reference becomes his means of relating images or sensa as directly perceived to the objects which cause them.
It is clear, then, that in his doctrine of
symbolic reference Whitehead parts company with the Cartesian epistemological tradition and attempts to mediate the dualities which have plagued it.
He explores these subjects in large - scale, narratively complex layered paintings of oil and mixed media, enormous installations, and elaborate artist books and watercolors, into which he
embeds symbolic references.
But for this second version of
symbolic reference error occurs when the object being symbolized either fails to exist, as for a mirage, or exists in a much different way than is being represented, as for the straight stick immersed in water which looks bent, the red book which looks yellow to the person suffering from jaundice, etc..
We properly interpret that internal and mental impression of the line to refer to parts of the external and physical world of the room through a process Whitehead
names symbolic reference.
The inhibition of
symbolic reference frees the conceptual element as exemplified in presentational immediacy from its exemplification in causal efficacy and thus frees the symbol to carry meanings other than those conveyed by the immediate past (ME 80; S 6, 83f).
In ordinary experience the pure modes of perception rarely occur in isolation; they are normally «unified by a
blind symbolic reference» (PR 180 / 273).
In regard to the most primitive forms of organization, Whitehead stresses the fact that a society «bends its individual members to function in conformity with its needs, so that
symbolic reference gives way to vast systems of inherited symbolisms that result in automatic or reflex action» (S 73).
Referred to in myth and folklore from around the world as well as embodying
different symbolic references in classical and ancient cultures and across different faiths, these donkeys provide a provocation that can not be met: a stubborn and inscrutable view from a world that can never be fully known.
Oracle claims Google has copied the way Java
uses symbolic references into Android; Google denies this, saying that it used numeric references instead.
There is consciousness and unconsciousness, the former arising in the phase of intellectual feelings (and also associated
with symbolic reference).
Whitehead argues that in fact there is such a common ground, that the two pure modes are related
by symbolic reference.»