Yeah, sorry. Should've been clearer.

I do agree with that, but I think you're the only other contributor who has suggested that 'information' and 'meaning' are more or less synonymous in this context. I find that suggestion pregnant with, well, meaning. There is the trend towards saying, hey, maybe information is fundamental in the Universe - maybe it's not too much of a stretch to then say, hey, maybe meaning is fundamental - after all! (After having declared it entirely banished in the aftermath of the Copernican revolution.)

But I'm keeping clear of Derrida and Heidegger. I don't have time to study them in depth, and without studying them in depth, nothing much I say will be relevant. — Wayfarer

Thanks for the polite and well-written reply.

Yes, I thought information-as-meaning was quite relevant here. I was probably a little frustrated that you consider scientism to dominate Western philosophy when many consider Heidegger, arguably one of scientism's destroyers, the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. If being is meaning is intelligibility, then it is blatantly what constitutes the universe-for-us. The universe-apart-from-us is of course a "piece" of the universe-for-us, namely the "scientific image."

It's a damned shame that Heidegger wore the swastika and (so far as I can tell) peaked early, before he was sucked into and arguably ruined by politics. I thought you might especially appreciate Sheehan's interpretation, since Sheehan has great respect for the positive aspect of religion. In any case, I think your missing out on what's of great value in Heidegger, just as I did for quite awhile, put off by the ugly translations and the indulgence of the later work.

'Religion' has many meanings, and some of the connotations of that word are unavoidably negative, even evil, when we consider the chequered history of religion in the world. No question. But what I'm trying to argue is that there are epistemological and metaphysical issues that have become intertwined with religion, in such a way that the social attitude towards religion - the desire NOT to believe - influences our very being. I think that is the meaning of 'unbelief' - it's not that you won't bow to the Pope - I certainly don't - but that there is a kind of pathological hatred of anything that can be construed as religious ('pathological' because the roots are not visible i.e. unconscious.) — Wayfarer

I certainly agree that there is a desire not to believe in traditional religion, but the desire to believe in general is (as I see it) alive and well in politics. Within this "real" battle of politics, religion tends to function as a token. So I would read this pathological hatred for religion as religion. The religion of the left-leaning is this or that strain of humanism. The religion of the right is a blend of traditional religion with patriotism and a reverence for (possibly fictional) tradition.

Certainly, religious modes of knowledge are 'subjective' but only in the sense that they involve an understanding which must be first-person, i.e. they don't concern matters about which one CAN be objective; they don't concern objects at all, unless those objects are symbolic. Whereas science only concerns objects, and seeks explanations of everything in terms of objects and forces. But you see, to say this tends to provoke the reaction - ah, you're religious, you don't refer to science to sort out the wheat from the chaff - you're 'not even wrong'. — Wayfarer

I agree, but this "only" is pretty much subjectivity itself. And, as I see it, this "not even wrong" critique only has an edge against objectifications of religion. Is the world 6000 years old? Of course not. But that belief is still out there. Are we commanded by an infinite being to keep multiplying? Stone homosexuals? I know that you don't think so. But there are voices out there who do. As long as unsophisticated religion remains a "threat," I think we'll continue to see a distrust of any hint of objectivity in religion, at least until it possibly wins and burns all the books.

'Public' is a key word here. It means 'third person', what can be exhibited in the 'public square'. Again, religious or spiritual truths are not 'public' in that sense, because they can only be understood in the first person. But they're not subjective in the sense of idiosyncratic, peculiar to myself - hence the role of the spiritual mentor or 'guru' in validating your integration of spiritual truths. — Wayfarer

For me this necessity of external validation is off-putting. As I understand/experience "spirituality," it's a self-justifying experience. But that's just me being subjective. For me "spirituality" involves a "transcendence" of the assumption that there is one, universal, "proper" spirituality. Within my solution there is no need for a one-size-fits-all solution. It is revealed in retrospect to have been an assumption, a questionable inheritance from more objective understandings of the spiritual. I was wearing colored lenses without realizing it, in other words.

The 'plague of individualism' is only that of nihil ultra ego, 'nothing beyond self'. When the individual is properly anchored both in truth and in the community of the wise, then that individual is indeed a worthy individual (near the original meaning of the 'arya' in Buddhism, which the Nazis were later to purloin for their depraved ends). — Wayfarer

I must confess that I think there is a profound reading of "nothing beyond self" that isn't plague-like. It can suggest a bestial, thoughtless mind or a mind that has so transcended alienation that it is one with "God." As you likely know, Kant was accused of nihilism. Indeed, his view implies something akin to nihil ego ultra. The self arguably has to participate in God (become God) to understand/enjoy God. The question is then: what kind of self are we talking about here?

I like the idea of the "community of the wise." As you mention via the Nazi example, it's easy for a community to decide that it is wise and switch on the death machine for the unwise. As I see it, "true religion" should ideally transcend but include community. In other words, it will or is "social" or "decent" within an existing community but does not essentially depend on community. (Of course we need some community to become adults in the first place.) I have a soft spot for the sage who lives on the mountain, away from the usual noise and folly.

So was your answer that once hominins are language users, from then on information is not physical for them? Was it physical before? Or did they just not traffic in the kind of information you're talking about before language use evolves?

Our understanding nature is not the same as nature, regardless of the predictive successes of any science, what is in-itself is not an obtainable point of view, stronger version it cannot even be thought. The world as it is, it could be otherwise. — Cavacava

Have you looked into After Finitude by chance? The author radicalizes this "could be otherwise" while trying to break through to the in-itself (get around Kant).

As you were totally unimpressed with my argument, I've found a completely different way to describe the problem. Please take a few minutes to read this and let me know what you think.

I think you will agree with me that there are different types of information. If there wasn't different types, then all information would be the same. So information about one thing is different from information about another thing. These are the different subjects of knowledge. For example, information about how to drive a car is one subject, and information about how to grow corn is another subject. The different subjects are different types of information, and this describes one sense, or one way of using "different types of information".

The second sense of "different types of information" refers to the different physical forms in which we find information, what you call the medium. In this sense, radio waves are a different type of information from sound waves, which is different from a book. According to this sense, we can say that our eyes receive a different type of information than our ears do, which is a different type from what our nose receives.

These are two distinct ways of using "different types of information", and although they are obviously distinct, we still must be careful not to equivocate. The first refers to differences in the subject matter, while the other refers to differences in the physical form. You will find that this distinction manifests itself in certain circles of criticism as the distinction between content and form. Content is the subject matter, the idea, while the form is the means by which the content is presented, the physical attributes of the presentation.

When you argue, as you do, that the same information can be conveyed through different media, you say that the same content (subject matter) can come in all different types of physical forms. I'll disregard my dispute over the use of "same" here, and accept this principle along with your use of "same", for the sake of argument. From this position, your claim is that what is essential to information is the subject matter, and the physical form is accidental. When the same subject matter has different physical forms, you call this "the same information". So you conclude that the physical form plays no part in the information itself, as "the same content" is equal to "the same information". .

Here's the problem. If this were the case, then we ought to be able, in principle, to remove the physical form from any piece of information, and be left with pure content, pure subject matter, and this would be pure information. Now imagine if there were such a thing as pure content, pure subject matter, a pure idea, this would be pure information with absolutely no physical form. If we distinguish information from non-information, by apprehending an order or structure of the physical form, then pure content, or pure subject matter, would be unrecognizable as information. So if somehow, we were able to apprehend pure content, or pure subject matter, we would not be able to distinguish whether it is information or not, because it would have no physical form by which we could make such a distinction..

(By the way, this is essentially the same argument you used against me, when you said that we cannot know God, when I said that God is the most highly intelligible of all intelligible objects).

Now we turn the table on the question of what is the essential aspect of information. Since we can only distinguish information from non-information, by apprehending the physical form, then having a physical form must also be an essential aspect of information. The physical form is what distinguishes information as information, rather than non-information, though it may have nothing to do with the content, what the information is. Without a physical form there is only random nonsense, like apokrisis' apeiron, and this cannot be said to be information. So this is the first and most evident essential aspect of information, that it has a physical form. If it has no physical form it is indistinguishable from non-information. The physical form allows us to identify something as information. Once we identify something as information, rather than non-information, by apprehending the physical form, then we move to the other essential aspect of information. We assume that since it is information, it must contain material content, subject matter. Then we act to determine that content.

So in you example of the op, that there is information, is somewhat taken for granted. The horn is synonymous with "there is information". But the op asks us what is information. So this example doesn't serve us because it already designates that the horn signifies "information", then the clerk seeks the content. We must include the horn, the system of alert, "that there is information", as part of the information. Now let's remove the horn. How is the clerk ever going to know "there is information", in order to seek content, unless there is a physical signal? Without a physical signal, there is no differentiation between information and non-information. So the physical signal is just as essential to the nature of information as the content is.

Actually the mind 'generates' what Husserl called the 'umwelt', the lived-meaning-world, which comprises 'our world'. — Wayfarer

This umwelt is crucial for me. Any linguistic "reductions" of this umvelt occur within this lifeworld or meaningworld. Concepts of the physical and of information have their function and relevance only within our lived world. The conjectures of theologians and physicists alike are encountered by individuals as abstractions, possibly of great value. But any particular abstraction is just one among many that frame this lifeworld conceptually.

We can say that this world is "really" matter or "really" God's plan, but this "really" does not erase the lifeworld it hopes to dominate. I like Husserl & Heidegger for pointing out or unveiling this lifeworld as the basis, background, or horizon for the theoretical mind. One might joke that only a certain kind of hyper-theoretical personality would need such a reminder. But perhaps these lifeworld reducing theories are motivated after all by non-theoretical concern. Such reductions justify transformations of the lifeworld, either personally or politically. They also clarify the grand "meaning" of the life world, which we arguably interpret in terms of fundamental poses. Who should I be? Offering an interpretation-for-all of the shared umwelt is usually an implicit and often enough an explicit answer to this question, however tentative.

So was your answer that once hominins are language users, from then on information is not physical for them? Was it physical before? Or did they just not traffic in the kind of information you're talking about before language use evolves? — Srap Tasmaner

What I'm saying is that language and abstract thought rely on an ability which I don't think can meaningfully described as 'physical'. Essentially it's the ability to grasp meaning, to say 'this means that'. Now you can say that even animals see meaning - fire means danger, and so on. I do know with bee-dances this can be quite refined. But I still think that is something that can be described behaviourally, i.e. as stimulus and response, without any reference to mind. (In this, I am, as you can probably see, defending the Greek definition of man as 'the rational animal'.)

But as to whether it was physical 'before' - well, the way I put that is, does the 'furniture of reason' - logical laws and the like - come into existence with humans? I would say obviously not. A=A is the case whether there is anyone around to notice it. But when it is noticed, it is noticed by a rational mind - a mind that knows what A=A means. That is of the essence of rational intelligence - that it understands meaning in that abstract sense.

This is where I am drawn to 'objective idealism' - which is the notion that there are real ideas, that can only be grasped by a mind, that are however not dependent on this or that mind. It's as if the world has an intelligible structure which is discoverable through reason, the discovery of which is the unique ability of a rational creature (and that is very much in the mainstream of at least pre-modern Western philosophy). So even though such a creature is indeed the 'product of evolution' in a biological sense, once that ability begins to arise, then that creature is no longer completely determined by biology - it's transcended the biological.



(I will get to the other long posts in due course, household duties call.)

I think I understand what your overall position is, and the specific claim you're advancing in this specific thread, and I know in a vague way they go together. But I can't put them together. So when I said this:

I think your argument really only cares about the first and last steps: seeing something and symbolizing it; seeing a symbol and interpreting it. These functions you attributes to intelligent minds, therefore these functions are mental, therefore they are not physical. I don't think the translation has anything to do with it. — Srap Tasmaner

You didn't like that, and responded:

As my argument is only concerned with establishing that information is not physical, the fact that it can be described as 'mental' is neither here nor there. — Wayfarer

But every time I ask something specific about information and how critters like us share it, you tell me your views on mind:

What I'm saying is that language and abstract thought rely on an ability which I don't think can meaningfully described as 'physical'. Essentially it's the ability to grasp meaning, to say 'this means that'. — Wayfarer

That sounds ever so much like what I said.

I'm not convinced that such a view of mind as non-physical compels you to conclude that information is not physical. Information could be something else we embodied minds traffic in just as we do other physical stuff.

And I don't see the argument from translatability as establishing that something not physical is being passed around. I still think in your version of the argument, meaning is non-physical from the outset.

I think I'm seeing a gap where you don't, and that either you'll make it clear to me that there is no gap or I'll make it clear to you that there is, and maybe then you'll fill it, or not.

I dislike doing these quote cum recap posts, but there's a disconnect here that has me flummoxed.

I have read through it a couple of times, and I like his ideas about Corelationalism and what he calls Facticity

The only problem is that I keep losing the damn book,it's a great size for carrying around, Just lost it while on vacation, left it in a plane. I found a copy on line, now all I have to do is re-find it, but I like physical books better than their virtual equivalents.

Interesting. I wonder why bother persisting with universals at all. Need to read up! — Wayfarer

Without universals we couldn't make statements about particulars (e.g., I have two hands).

For Aristotle, there is only one world - the world of everyday experience - and it includes both particulars and universals.

So twoness is real (in the world) as an abstraction of particulars (e.g., my left hand and my right hand).

What is interesting it's that both Bergson and Peirce viewed matter as some sort of decayed or constrained mind. In is unitary but manifesting differently. This is the point of opposition of the two.

From The Law of the Mind

"Consistently with the doctrine laid down in the beginning of this paper, I am bound to
maintain that an idea can only be affected by an idea in continuous connection with it. By anything but an idea, it cannot be affected at all. This obliges me to say, as I do say, on other
grounds, that what we call matter is not completely dead, but is merely mind hidebound with
habits. It still retains the element of diversification; and in that diversification there is life."

Mind is preeminent in Peirce's philosophy (as in Bergson's), and any presentation to the contrary does not represent his works fully. Mind has to be there. It's always there, even if it is denying its own existence.

I spilled coffee on a library copy (the same convenient paperback), so I guess it's mine now.

It strikes me as truly original. I don't entirely "believe" or agree, but the creativity is undeniable. I just ordered Harman's book on Meillassoux, which looks pretty great.

It's a damned shame that Heidegger.... — t0m

I have decided, with some regret, that I simply can't overlook Heidegger's politics. Agree that he and European philosophers are powerful critics of scientism, though.

I think we'll continue to see a distrust of any hint of objectivity in religion, at least until it possibly wins and burns all the books. — t0m

Not at all what I meant.

As I understand/experience "spirituality," it's a self-justifying experience — t0m

That's pretty close to what Janus was saying, and I see the point. But the situation in current Western culture is distorted by the role of science as 'arbiter of reality'. That's not just me kvetching about scientism again, either.

One thing I DO know about Heidegger - his work was existential, not in the sense of being of a piece with other existentialists, but because it was concerned with a radically different way of being in the world. (I had a friend who went through a major transformation after reading Being and Time many decades ago). That's nearer to what I'm talking about - 'first person' in the sense of a philosophy that changes your lived experience. Science is not concerned with that - and to say that, is no slight against science. It's just not what it does. But for many that IS knowledge, and the only knowledge worth pursuing.

These points are tangential to this thread but may discuss it elsewhere .

your claim is that what is essential to information is the subject matter, and the physical form is accidental. When the same subject matter has different physical forms, you call this "the same information". So you conclude that the physical form plays no part in the information itself, as "the same content" is equal to "the same information". .

Here's the problem. If this were the case, then we ought to be able, in principle, to remove the physical form from any piece of information, and be left with pure content, pure subject matter, and this would be pure information. Now imagine if there were such a thing as pure content, pure subject matter, a pure idea, this would be pure information with absolutely no physical form. — Metaphysician Undercover

What is essential to information is what it specifies. For instance you have a complex formula and method for combining the ingredients to create an explosive. It contains instructions and methods which have to be replicated exactly for the result to be synthesised. Again, that formula could be represented in any number of media. We have standard ways of representing chemical names and so on, but conceivably you might have a world in which there were even different chemical symbols etc. All the text could be in different languages, one in metric numbers, another in imperial. The point is, there could be huge variation in the written or printed or electronic form of the information, but the meaning, the output, has to be exactly the same - otherwise, no 'bang'. It's very precise.

Now as to whether that information can exist without physical form - probably not something like a formula. But it still doesn't really affect the basic principle - that the information is absolutely determinate, but the form it can take is highly variable.

If it has no physical form it is indistinguishable from non-information — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, there is the whole domain of pure mathematics. The 'physical form' that it takes is only the symbols in which it is notated, but the domain itself comprises purely the relationship of ideas. Now I don't want to get into 'what are ideas' as that is a very difficult question in its own right. And also I'm not really talking about what 'information' is in a general sense - as you say, it's a word with many meanings, and it's used in many ways. (By the way, I'm bad at maths.)

And I don't see the argument from translatability as establishing that something not physical is being passed around. — Srap Tasmaner

The subtle mistake there is what that by nominating 'something being passed around', the question arises, what could that be? But that is a reification. If that 'something' is nothing other than the meaning of the sentence, then it's not actually anything - nothing is being passed around. Hence the basically incorporeal nature of ideas!

That sounds ever so much like what I said. — Srap Tasmaner

My reaction was: well, if you mean 'mental' as distinct from physical, then no argument from me on that score. I said, I do subscribe to some form of dualism (although I'm vague on the details; but so too does David Chalmers (for instance).

Information could be something else we embodied minds traffic in just as we do other physical stuff. — Srap Tasmaner

Thus negating everything that's been said thus far.

If you were a medical examiner presented with the corpse of a recently deceased person, you could ascertain their stomach contents without too much trouble. How would you, however, determine what was in their minds? Even given the most fantastically advanced scanning equipment? You see, I don't think you could infer what the subject's brain was thinking, because I don't think it's 'in there' - any more than the characters of House of Cards can be found in your flatscreen television.

For Aristotle, there is only one world - the world of everyday experience - and it includes both particulars and universals. — Andrew M

Hmmm. I wouldn't modernise him too much, he still believed that everything has a final purpose. But I have to get into this book I've taken out about him. (Incidentally, there is a nice article on Aristotelean philosophy of maths on Aeon, if you haven't seen it: The mathematical world, Jim Franklin.)

What is interesting it's that both Bergson and Peirce viewed matter as some sort of decayed or constrained mind. — Rich

Amusingly:

Charles Sanders Peirce took strong exception to those who associated him with Bergson. In response to a letter comparing his work with that of Bergson he wrote, "a man who seeks to further science can hardly commit a greater sin than to use the terms of his science without anxious care to use them with strict accuracy; it is not very gratifying to my feelings to be classed along with a Bergson who seems to be doing his utmost to muddle all distinctions."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Bergson

Two questions arise from this for me. Firstly is deception fully possible. It is possible for something to give false information, without any physical signs of it whatsoever? Secondly, does form carry zero content? This is what is traditionally held to be so, but do forms carry qualitative information of anykind? Is the quality of something entirely based on the content, or is there a quality to the form? Is symmetry beautiful, and is that a fact?

Footnote: I was listening to a lecture on Christian Platonism today and learned from it that it was St Bonaventure who first said that ‘everything is a sign’. This was based on the Platonic idea that everyday objects ‘signify’ the ideas which there are their real form. Lecturer went on to mention a well-known writer by the name of Walker Percy, who, he said, found through semiotics a way out of nihilism. Haven’t heard of him previously but sounds interesting.

It is possible for something to give false information, without any physical signs of it whatsoever? — Wosret

Sure - I could give you a false treasure map, you would have no way of knowing from the map itself. You would have to go and dig.

DO forms carry qualitative information? What kind of ‘forms’ do you have in mind?

There being no treasure where the map marks makes it clearly discoverable.

All forms. This is the question, are forms entirely reflexive, telling you only about the physical qualities of the interpreter, the only objective information being present in the medium of formation, or do they themselves carry qualitative information that is not only reflexive? Normally there is a distinction drawn between content and form, form being logical, and not able to introduce new information, but being a process of truth retention, only making explicit implicit information one already contains. All content, or facts, coming from the physical world.

Hmmm. I wouldn't modernise him too much, he still believed that everything has a final purpose. But I have to get into this book I've taken out about him. — Wayfarer

Yes and purpose (a universal) is also immanent in the world, not transcendent to it.

It is absurd to suppose that purpose is not present because we do not observe the agent deliberating. Art does not deliberate. If the ship-building art were in the wood, it would produce the same results by nature. If, therefore, purpose is present in art, it is present also in nature. The best illustration is a doctor doctoring himself: nature is like that.

It is plain then that nature is a cause, a cause that operates for a purpose. — Physics by Aristotle - Book II, Part 8

(Incidentally, there is a nice article on Aristotelean philosophy of maths on Aeon, if you haven't seen it: The mathematical world, Jim Franklin.) — Wayfarer

I hadn't - thanks for linking. As the author says:

Because Aristotelian realism insists on the realisability of mathematical properties in the world, it can give a straightforward account of how basic mathematical facts are known: by perception, the same as other simple facts.

Back to your OP, this same principle applies to information. It's not itself a physical thing (since it's a universal) but is realized in physical things and so can be known by perception. Which is why physicists are interested in it.

Thanks, very interesting. And I tend to think the ‘immateriality of information’ has tended to show up in physics, also. I don’t know if you noticed the article I linked from this post but it explicitly speaks of quantum physics in terms of the Aristotelian ‘potentia’.

What is essential to information is what it specifies. — Wayfarer

That is what I called the subject matter, or content. But since information cannot exist without a physical form, physical form is just as essential as content. The physical form is what makes the information, information, and not something random.

The point is, there could be huge variation in the written or printed or electronic form of the information, but the meaning, the output, has to be exactly the same - otherwise, no 'bang'. It's very precise. — Wayfarer

The content may remain the same, in many different forms, but that does not prove that the content can exist without a form. And if the content cannot exist without a physical form, then that it has a physical form is just as essential to the nature of information as is the particular content.

Again, there is the whole domain of pure mathematics. The 'physical form' that it takes is only the symbols in which it is notated, but the domain itself comprises purely the relationship of ideas. — Wayfarer

You may believe that there is a real, ontological realm of pure mathematics, in which mathematical objects exist independently of any physical symbols, you have much company here. But this is Pythagorean Idealism, and it was refuted by both Plato and Aristotle. As I explained, it really doesn't make sense, because without the physical form, we have nothing to posit as the means for distinguishing one mathematical object from another, and we get sucked into the vagueness of Peirce's pure, infinite generality, apokrisis' apeiron.

The resolution of this problem is offered in Plato's Timaeus, which became "The Bible" of Neo-Platonists. The independent Forms are given the existence of particulars. Each particular physical object has a Form which is necessarily prior to it in time, therefore necessarily independent from the physical object. The "particularity" of the independent Form is essential to it. This allows that one Form is distinguishable from another Form, through the Form itself, rather than through the form of a physical object. However, the fact that the independent Forms are necessarily particular forms, creates a categorical separation between these Forms and human ideas such as mathematical objects, which exist as universals or generalities.

It doesn't matter that Peirce liked our disliked Bergson's perspective of life, the one commonality they shared was that mind has primacy and matter is derived from mind. He directly described matter as "effete mind". Peirce, whatever his goals were, realized as did Whitehead, there was no getting away from this within his metaphysical description of nature.

Any description of Peirce's metaphysics is woefully incomplete if it does not include that everything, in Peirce's description, is derived from the mind. ... even his own description of nature.

We've been through this before. How can you claim direct cause and effect if we still see red when the wavelength is not "red"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_constancy — apokrisis

You're right. We have been through this before, thanks to you not reading and not paying attention to my posts and avoiding the difficult questions.

You are asking an impossible question. You are attempting to compare what a wavelength looks like (being red), to what it looks like independent of looking at it. I've already been over this with you. How do you know what a wavelength looks like (is not red) independent of looking at it? How do you know anything about the wavelength at all and that it actually exists, or that there is a relationship between red and wavelengths? How did you get to know any of that, along with semiotics and pragmatism for that matter?

Is not the statement, " ...we still see red when the wavelength is not "red" ", a statement about reality independent of looking at it - as if you had a "direct" view of reality itself? If you say "no", then you end up discrediting the statement itself. If you say "yes", then you have finally seen the light and would be agreeing with me.

How do you know that the wavelength is not red if you don't have some "direct" knowledge that that is the case?

All stated rules are given their sense only by our application of them and not by their syntactical definition, since a stated definition is in itself a rule whose meaning must also be shown by application.

Sign signification, in being a rule, likewise only makes sense when considered as a human reaction that connects sign to signified. And that is true for both mathematical rules and physical laws. For in both of these cases if we entirely ignored how humans use equations, we would lose the ability to show that the equations represent or imply anything.

And we cannot eliminate ourselves as the meaning-mediators of rules via simply introducing additional rules to describe our meaning-making, since we immediately arrive at a similar problem as before, namely we would need to demonstrate our rules of 'self' description for them to signify anything. .

A trivial corollary of this is that the "free will vs determinism" debate is utterly nonsensical.

Now i have never read any Peirce except for his SEP entry, and I don't have a good grasp of his notion of an interpretant, particularly in my recollection of his earlier problem of an endless of chain of signification, but my reasoning tells me that his semiotic philosophy can only make sense if it reduces to a pre-theoretic foundation of meaning grounded in human perception or action that cannot be stated but can only be shown.

Similarly, I would strongly argue that Berkeley's notion of an 'idea' wasn't a theoretical concept of the mind, but a gesture towards a pre-theoretical basis of relating to the world that also can only be shown, since it is only by interpreting Berkeley in this way that his subjective-idealism can defeat his intended target of epistemological scepticism that results from representational materialism.

So basically I am led by the force of logic to conclude, at least on the basis of my possibly incorrect understanding of these two philosophers, that Berkeley and Peirce must share the same idealism. Indeed i cannot even see how idealism can be theoretical without being self-refuting, and hence i cannot see room for more than one idealism.

In which case, you and I would never be able to converse! If you say 'apple' and I think 'banana', then it's game over for communicating. That's why language and reasoning are essentially universalising activities - they rely on our grasp of types, of generalities - when you say 'apple', any English-speaking person should know what you mean. Given that, it is of course true that we will 'see things differently'. But we have to have something in common to begin with, for language to even work - that is the store of language with all of its subtleties and depths. — Wayfarer

Can you support your bold claim that we must "have the same thought" in order to communicate, instead of merely "similar thoughts" as I suggested?

Must we also "make the same utterances" in order to communicate in language, or merely understand the same utterances; and do we have identical, or merely similar understanding of the utterances we use? Do we also need to have the same intentions, or is it enough to understand each other's intentions; and do we have identical or merely similar understanding of our intentions when we communicate? It seems to me that similarity is all we need, and by and large all we can get.

The reason you and I have quite similar thoughts associated with the English word, apple, is that we have similar bodies and live in the same world and have had similar experiences of things called apples. The similarity in the ordinary meaning and use of the word is grounded in the similarity of ordinary experience.

I'm sure you'll agree, the further we get from ordinary experience, the more divergence there is in the use of words and in opinions about the meaning of words or the truth of assertions. The power of communication doesn't flow from the universality of the word, it flows from the commonality of experience that informs our use of words. The farther we stray from that common ground, the more room for confusion, and the less basis for agreement and understanding, until at last it seems there's nothing but a spray of speech associated with vague thoughts and emotions.

The word itself is a typical or generic pattern of linguistic action that emerges and changes in history. I'm not sure what it adds, apart from confusion, to speak of "universality" in this context.

When two competent dancers dance freely together, there's a sense in which they understand each other, and a sense in which they understand each other's dancing. When they dance "the same dance", say a minuet or twist, they don't make identical movements, but similar or complementary movements that conform to a generic pattern, an abstract rule or type.

It means bad news for materialism. — Wayfarer

Same old song and dance.

I remind you I count myself a wholehearted epistemological skeptic. So far as I can see, metaphysical materialism and idealism are equally futile doctrines, like every other pretense to metaphysical knowledge.

I have a phenomenologically grounded conception of the natural, physical world. To all appearances, minds belong to bodies, and mental activity is an activity of physical things; and what we might call products of mind (including concepts, abstractions, types, words, numbers, possibilities) are products of the physical things that engage in mental activity. To all appearances, it seems the mental emerges from and remains grounded in the physical.

Of course it's possible to imagine any number of "metaphysical" scenarios in which minds and their abstractions exist in some nonphysical world independent of the physical world we seem in fact to inhabit. But it's not clear to me why we should take any of these divergent and often conflicting fantasies more seriously than the others, and I'm not sure there's any basis on which to select among them. It seems more reasonable to avoid such indefinite speculation.

(Actually I read an interesting comment the other day on the etymological between 'idiosyncratic' and 'idiot'. An 'idiot' wasn't originally someone who was intellectually disabled, but someone who spoke in a language nobody else could understand.) — Wayfarer

I've heard a different story: http://www.etymonline.com/word/idiot

Of course it's possible to imagine any number of "metaphysical" scenarios in which minds and their abstractions exist in some nonphysical world independent of the physical world we seem in fact to inhabit. But it's not clear to me why we should take any of these divergent and often conflicting fantasies more seriously than the others, — Cabbage Farmer

As much reason to take the fantasy of mind emerging from "physical" seriously. I have no idea what you mean by physical things doing mental things. Are they little humanoids?

as if you had a "direct" view of reality itself? — Harry Hindu

Precisely. Direct needs to said in scare quotes. Indirect is admitting that it is only “as if”.

I don't think you could infer what the subject's brain was thinking, because I don't think it's 'in there' - any more than the characters of House of Cards can be found in your flatscreen television. — Wayfarer

But there is a structure-preserving map from the actors on set to the digitally encoded signal that is transmitted to my TV. That signal carries information about what the actors were doing. Whether the actors are "only physical" or not, it is only information about their physical characteristics that is captured, encoded, and transmitted: how they looked, how they moved, what sounds they made, and so on. Television just extends the reach of my senses of sight and hearing, and it does so by each step between me and the source of the sounds and images translating in a structure-preserving way.