It's not a failure if what you require - semiotically - is a machinery of infinite potential reference coupled to constraint of semantic indifference.

So epistemology wants these two complementary things.

It wants a syntax that can generate endless variety. An alphabet of 26 letters can be used to generate every possible word and sentence. Four DNA bases can generate every possible protein molecule.

Then that unlimited openness gets coupled to the thing that then epistemically closes it. There is the other thing of a semantics - a purpose to be served, a reason to care, a distinction that is actually worth marking, a difference that in fact makes a difference.

So any sentence or protein could be produced. For a natural system, that is a huge freedom. And that semiotic possibility in turn allows a system of limitation which decides some statements or molecules are noise, or junk, while others are signal, or have intentional value.

Epistemic closure thus becomes a reasonable choice. Rather than worrying that the world is "some totality of facts", facts become distinctions or individuations that could materially matter. Facts aren't definite in themselves in some realist fashion. They are simply what is "true" - or worth us knowing - to the degree that we have some reason to care.

Facts thus are always intrinsically self-interested. While also being "about the world".

It is this double-headed nature that often confuses. Realism vs idealism tries to make facticity all a thing of the world, or all a thing of the mind. But semiotics shows that "facts" are the signs by which we relate to the world. Indeed, epistemically, it is the relation that creates the self and its world.

But anyway, the way it works is that syntax gives you your referential openness and semantics gives you your referential boundedness. Together, they compose an epistemic system.

Hence Meillassoux's assertion is invalid since epistemic closure cannot come about?

Epistemic closure thus becomes a reasonable choice. Rather than worrying that the world is "some totality of facts", facts become distinctions or individuations that could materially matter. Facts aren't definite in themselves in some realist fashion. They are simply what is "true" - or worth us knowing - to the degree that we have some reason to care.

Facts thus are always intrinsically self-interested. While also being "about the world".

It is this double-headed nature that often confuses. Realism vs idealism tries to make facticity all a thing of the world, or all a thing of the mind. But semiotics shows that "facts" are the signs by which we relate to the world. Indeed, epistemically, it is the relation that creates the self and its world.

But anyway, the way it works is that syntax gives you your referential openness and semantics gives you your referential boundedness. Together, they compose an epistemic system. — apokrisis

One of the occasional excursions into clarity of thought, expression, and content that make TPF worth the effort. Thank you for a piece of instruction that cost waaay less than what it's worth. Now I just have to remember it!

Thanks Tim. Nice to hear.