Absent Referent - Implicit Vs. Explicit

Implicit Vs. Explicit

Any written symbol for the Absent Referent (e.g., {}, "G-D", 0, "null", etc.) is by nature explicit. However, there is also the implicit Absent Referent, where the symbol for the missing thing is also missing. Examples:

  • "wife" -- A person with self-identity, yet exists relative the "husband" (implicit absent referent)
  • "pet" -- Barely a thing of its own right, a "pet" mostly exists in reference to the Owner/Master, implicitly absent referent.

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Famous quotes containing the words implicit and/or explicit:

    The vanity of men, a constant insult to women, is also the ground for the implicit feminine claim of superior sensitivity and morality.
    Patricia Meyer Spacks (b. 1929)

    Like dreaming, reading performs the prodigious task of carrying us off to other worlds. But reading is not dreaming because books, unlike dreams, are subject to our will: they envelop us in alternative realities only because we give them explicit permission to do so. Books are the dreams we would most like to have, and, like dreams, they have the power to change consciousness, turning sadness to laughter and anxious introspection to the relaxed contemplation of some other time and place.
    Victor Null, South African educator, psychologist. Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure, introduction, Yale University Press (1988)