I’m posting you carefully worded thoughts. I’m hoping they might constrain your state of mind so that we share some point of view. — apokrisis

The words don't constrain my mind at all, that is a completely deterministic assumption. All the decisions concerning interpretation are made within my mind. My mind makes these decisions based on principles within, not the words, because I don't know what they mean until I've already interpreted them.

Yet your responses come back as saying your understanding is at best vague or uncertain. Or actually you are in the habit of interpreting signals you can’t follow as “this just has to be wrong - it is not the formula of words that I am accustomed to responding to with the return signal of a thumb’s up,” — apokrisis

I can follow the words, but my mind follows the words due to habits it has produced. The constraints on my interpretation are these habits, they are not the words.

So sure. Signs can be intended to function as constraints, but they can regularly fail in that intended function. — apokrisis

So you admit, that signs fail as constraints on interpretation. So why insist that they are? It is not the case that sometimes words constrain and sometimes they do not. The fact that they sometimes bring about the desired affect is due to the power of the interpreting mind. The words themselves have absolutely no power over the human being.

.

And the resident interpretations don’t welcome the threatened intrusions. — apokrisis

Indeed. And these interpretations exist systematically. A fundamental interpretation of existence (what am I here for? What is virtue?) "radiates" outward. If a scientific thesis threatens my fundamental interpretation of existence, so much the worse for science. But that goes for religion and metaphysics, too. That's where "Romanticism" comes in, which thinks in terms of these fundamental interpretations. It's "pre-science" or "pre-metaphysics" in that it thinks the conditions of possibility for metaphysical, scientific, and religious frameworks. On the other hand, it is itself such a framework, self-consciously holding itself at a distance from (other) particular commitments.

I think that this is an incorrect representation. The sign itself does not constrain the interpretation, it is completely passive in this respect. All constraints on interpretation occur within the mind of the interpreter and this can be expressed as habit, or lack of habit. There are no constraints on interpretation within the sign itself. — Metaphysician Undercover

How can the sign carry its function if it doesn't not act as a restraint on interpretation?

Distinguish between these cases :

1) Any meaning, however complex, can be assigned to a sign.
2) Any meaning, however complex, can be determined from a sign.

Weither 1) is true or not does not impede the function of a sign to inform. As long as a non-null amount of meaning can be assigned to a sign, communication can still occur. With 2), however, you can quickly see how this would deprecate languages. You cannot build a language out of nothing but variables and expect it to be able to describe the feeling of kissing a cute girl.

Yes, during assignation, a single sign can be given the role of carrying a lot of information. We could build a language right now where "&" stands for the complete Gymnopédies of Erik Satie, but that would impose an enormous informational weight on the shoulders of the information processor. To realise properly the materiality of information, you must, in my opinion, conjure thought experiments of such kinds. Inversely : attempt to build a functional system of musical notation which could encode the Gymnopédies on less than 1 micron of paper. Less than 0.1 micron?. Less than 0.01 micron? The point, at some level you'll likely hit a wall, where the material complexity of the medium is just not great enough to support the complexity you wish to assign it.

The mind is simply the fact of the process of interpretation. — apokrisis

For what it's worth, I agree. 'Interpretation' is a good stab at a synonym for human existence. The "mind" is a token within or derived from the interpretative process. Interpretation itself is interpretations 'self'-image or model of itself within the "world" as a whole. The world is just "what is," where the 'is' here remains unstable or itself endlessly re-interpretable.

You yourself believe that the Platonic forms amount to 'social conventions', and then fault the realists for thinking that! — Wayfarer

Where I fault the realists is in what type of existence they give to social conventions. Instead of giving real objective existence to things like concepts and ideas, as you and other Platonic realists do, they give a faux objective existence to these things as social conventions. The problem is that this is not real objectivity, though it is claimed to be. It is a disguised subjectivity, which is sometimes called inter-subjectivity. So instead of recognizing that the real essence of the social convention is to be found within the manners, habits, and disposition of the individual human beings, they base their principles in the assumption that there are real existing objects which are referred to as social conventions, (laws and rules of language, etc.). Those realists just switch out the real objective existence of Platonic Ideas, for the real objective existence of social conventions. But the essence of the social convention is that it is a similar property which individuals have.

You cannot build a language out of nothing but variables and expect it to be able to describe the feeling of kissing a cute girl. — Akanthinos

I really like this. I can imagine a comedy about a very theoretical guy who tries to encode this kissing of the cute girl in a string of ones and zeros. You also mention that piece by Satie in the rest of the post. That's one of my favorites. To me this thinking of the experience if kissing the cute girl and of hearing great music is already enough to demolish the fantasy of describing reality in some cold, precise language. Metaphysics is always a symbolic reduction of reality. It is a tool that functions within the "real" that largely utterly eludes symbolization. "Feeling" is why we bother with such symbolizations, and yet there's a massive gulf between the symbol and the feeling. If we think in symbols (and I think we do), then metaphysics can hope to model the thinking aspect of life. But feeling is the ghost in the symbolic machine that gives it life in the first place.

How can the sign carry its function if it doesn't not act as a restraint on interpretation? — Akanthinos

A sign does not carry its function. Its function is determined by the mind of the author or by the mind of the interpreter. If this were not the case, misunderstanding and misinterpretation would be impossible, because the sign would always deliver the correct function to the interpreting mind. Since the interpreting mind often makes mistakes, then it is necessary to assume that the function of the sign is determined by the mind.

Weither 1) is true or not does not impede the function of a sign to inform. As long as a non-null amount of meaning can be assigned to a sign, communication can still occur. With 2), however, you can quickly see how this would deprecate languages. You cannot build a language out of nothing but variables and expect it to be able to describe the feeling of kissing a cute girl. — Akanthinos

I really can't grasp your point. How does this argue that the function is within the sign, not within the mind.

The words don't constrain my mind at all, that is a completely deterministic assumption. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well I said it was a hope. I could have said a vain hope. ;)

I can follow the words, but my mind follows the words due to habits it has produced. The constraints on my interpretation are these habits, they are not the words. — Metaphysician Undercover

But I can see when you are not following the intended meaning that the words were supposed to encode. The information is not being transmitted. You may be responding back in words, but they are just other kinds of noises that have habitual meaning within your constructed world.

So yes, you do have a capacity for misunderstanding. That proves something here. But not what you think.

The point I made was that words can only constrain an interpretation, they can't determine an interpretation. So all one can hope to transmit is the constraints, not the actual cargo or contents -
which would be the meaning, the semantics, here.

You are proving I am right by asserting your irreducible freedom to confuse or confound any message.

The best my words could do is constrain your state of mind in a suitable way so that you more or less shared my intended meaning. You would have the same point of view - down to the level where any differences didn't make a meaningful difference.

But my words can fail even to achieve that. You can categorise the incoming text as a bunch of internet static lacking any embedded signal. So I can't determine your state of interpretance. And much of the time, I can't even limit its free variety in any measurable way.

And that's fine. That is what semiotics explains.

The words themselves have absolutely no power over the human being. — Metaphysician Undercover

But that is obvious bullshit. Everyone grows up spouting precisely whatever is the common wisdom of their formative linguistic context.

You are telling me you are a rational soul with freewill. Fine. I've done anthropology. I can recognise a social belief system when I see one.

That's where "Romanticism" comes in, which thinks in terms of these fundamental interpretations. It's "pre-science" or "pre-metaphysics" in that it thinks the conditions of possibility for metaphysical, scientific, and religious frameworks. On the other hand, it is itself such a framework, self-consciously holding itself at a distance from (other) particular commitments. — t0m

But Romanticism was also literally the reaction to the Enlightenment. So it is post that science and metaphysical turn.

In the end, the claims of being fundamental are stronger for the Enlightenment view - the method of objective reasoning.

You can dispute that and we can weigh the evidence.

(See, the scientific method wins again as the best way to do actual philosophy.)

You often refer to that, but this was part of his paper on sending and receiving information, wasn't it? It wasn't a philosophical theory as such, was it? — Wayfarer

It was a vague "philosophical" distinction given solid mathematical/empirical foundations at last. And so that has had immense consequences if you actually believe in progress in metaphysics.

Information stopped being airy-fairy and hand-wavy. There was a formula for measuring it. And hey presto, it turned out to be the same formula as for measuring thermodynamic entropy. Mental uncertainty and physical disorder could be measured in exactly the same coin.

The fact that these two apparently totally unrelated things are somehow two aspects of the one thing has to be a pretty seismic metaphysical discovery, no?

Are you still just going to shrug it off?

This still assumes that the fundamental forms are physical. I have been researching the Forms, which is the 'formal' side of hylomorphism, and the original concept of the Forms is that they are outside space and time altogether. The motivation of early philosophy was not instrumental or scientific in our sense- it was as much 'the quest for the transcendent' as the quest for useful knowledge about the sensory domain. — Wayfarer

My working assumption is in fact that the fundamental forms are immanent, not transcendent. So I am with Aristotle rather than Plato on that score.

My metaphysics starts further back with Anaximander. The form of nature emerges through the expression of actions. The timeless/placeless symmetries are revealed to "exist" via the symmetry-breaking that actualises the world in which they are a formal/final source of cause.

In the end, the claims of being fundamental are stronger for the Enlightenment view - the method of objective reasoning.

You can dispute that and we can weigh the evidence.

(See, the scientific method wins again as the best way to do actual philosophy.) — apokrisis

By "pre-science" I mean the establishing of what counts as evidence in the first place. Even the idea that disputes 'should' be resolved in terms of weighing evidence is already a commitment. It makes no sense to weigh the evidence for a weighing of evidence as the right method. We inherit a fuzzy criterion. "Abnormal" discourse challenges this criterion, while "normal" discourse employs it to make warranted assertions.

But Romanticism was also literally the reaction to the Enlightenment. So it is post that science and metaphysical turn. — apokrisis

That it came later should give us pause. To view entities as present-at-hand for an ideal subject was a massively useful idea. Public objects became predictable and manipulable in an unprecedented way. We started to think that this non-intuititive way of "deworlding" objects gave us the real object. I'd say that it just rips the object from the fullness of our experience of it in a way that's good for certain purposes. Beyond the usual "sentimental" objections to this, there is also the question of not wanting to inaccurately understand the world by uncritically being trapped in just one framework.

Where I fault the realists i — Metaphysician Undercover

Remember that in the context of the discussion about ‘reality of universals’, I mean by ‘realism’, not ‘modern realism’, but ‘realism with respect to universals’. It has a very different meaning to today's realism.

I don't know if I'm a Platonist, but I believe there is a valid intuition, which is expressed in Platonic philosophy, whereby something like the ideas or the forms are organising principles or archetypes. They are inherent in, but also transcendent to, the fabric of the cosmos, as the ideal forms to which things tend. That is an old idea, long since rejected. But this intuition, modified by the tradition, and especially by Aristotle provided a means of unifying perception, action and aim which has since been generally lost.

A genuine realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality.

What's Wrong with Ockham, J P Horschild.

It is the loss of this sense of there being a rational order in the Cosmos, that marks the advent of scientific materialism, foretold by Nietzsche:

The total character of the world, however, is in all eternity chaos—in the sense not of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms... Let us beware of saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is nobody who commands, nobody who obeys, nobody who trespasses. Once you know that there are no purposes, you also know that there is no accident; for it is only beside a world of purposes that the word "accident" has any meaning.

**

It was a vague "philosophical" distinction given solid mathematical/empirical foundations at last. And so that has had immense consequences if you actually believe in progress in metaphysics. — apokrisis

I'm not 'shrugging it off', but I am pointing out that Shannon's theory was originally published as a theory about information transmission:

Information theory studies the quantification, storage, and communication of information. It was originally proposed by Claude E. Shannon in 1948 to find fundamental limits on signal processing and communication operations such as data compression, in a landmark paper entitled "A Mathematical Theory of Communication". Applications of fundamental topics of information theory include lossless data compression (e.g. ZIP files), lossy data compression (e.g. MP3s and JPEGs), and channel coding (e.g. for digital subscriber line (DSL)).

It was in this context that the notion of 'information entropy' was introduced:

Entropy quantifies the amount of uncertainty involved in the value of a random variable or the outcome of a random process. For example, identifying the outcome of a coin flip (with two equally likely outcomes) provides less information (lower entropy) than specifying the outcome from a roll of a die (with six equally likely outcomes).

However that appears to be different to thermodynamic entropy:

'Thermodynamic entropy': 'For a closed system, the quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work.'

So, what is the relationship between logical and thermodynamic entropy? it seems to me that they're being equivocated.

I am with Aristotle rather than Plato on that score. — apokrisis

Nevertheless, Aristotle, with Plato, believed that the Ideas are immaterial and eternal; it's simply that he didn't believe it was meaningful to speak about them as if they existed apart from their instantiations. But the Forms don't come about as a result of any kind of physical process; Aristotelianism was 'top-down', not 'bottom-up'.

A sign does not carry its function. Its function is determined by the mind of the author or by the mind of the interpreter. If this were not the case, misunderstanding and misinterpretation would be impossible, because the sign would always deliver the correct function to the interpreting mind. Since the interpreting mind often makes mistakes, then it is necessary to assume that the function of the sign is determined by the mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

If the meaning of a sign is determined by the author or by the interpreter, then again communication would be impossible. All direct conversations would be spent trying to establish a common vocabulary and semantic, and all indirect communication would be simply impossible.

The meaning of the sign is established at the moment of its formation as a sign. "&" means nothing until someone assigns meaning for it, by making public another bit of information with at least some degree of authority, which is that "'&' means 'and'". Before this, "&" was the sign of nothing except perhaps of random human activity as scribble.

The sign restricts interpretation by refering to a connected bit of information available to properly prepared processors, which is the knowledge of general acceptable use of the sign.

By "pre-science" I mean the establishing of what counts as evidence in the first place. — t0m

But my point is that something can't count as evidence unless there is a theory framed to be countable.

So what is Romanticism counting? As a theory, what actually possible measurements does it suggest. If it doesn't offer any, then it is not even a theory. It is just an idea that is "not even wrong".

We started to think that this non-intuititive way of "deworlding" objects gave us the real object. I'd say that it just rips the object from the fullness of our experience of it in a way that's good for certain purposes. Beyond the usual "sentimental" objections to this, there is also the question of not wanting to inaccurately understand the world by uncritically being trapped in just one framework. — t0m

Fine words. But now deliver the theory that has countable facts and so can rise above the class of ideas that are not even wrong.

I mean poetry is fine. Feelings are fine. Pluralistic viewpoints are fine. There is a reason why Western culture promotes these things for sure.

And I have the right theory about that. :)

There is a rational sociological explanation for the fostering of irrationality. Convincing folk they are self-actualising beings creates the pool of requisite variety that rapid cultural evolution can feed off. Society becomes this great big competition for attention. Apply a ruthless filter over the top of that, and hey bingo, out pops out your master race. Or at least the ruling elite.

Of course there is then the rational reaction - the PC response to try and declare everyone some kind of cultural winner. Prizes all round. Everyone gets an equal share of the social limelight.

Yeah right. Dream on.

I'm not 'shrugging it off', but I am pointing out that Shannon's theory was originally published as a theory about information transmission — Wayfarer

Jesus Christ. How do you think paradigms can be changed except by someone managing to ignore what everyone else was insisting had to be the central thing.

Like everyone else, you are obsessed by the semantic content of a message. You believe that it must exist - even though you've search high and low and nowhere does it seem to have physical existence. It is spookily immaterial - a transcendent ghost haunting the world.

Then along comes someone who ignores that it must be about the differences that make a difference and focuses on the physical limits of difference-making. The constraints on information at the general cosmic level. Forget about the vastly elaborate human level, let's get down to the fundamental basics.

I mean who would have thought the Universe has a limited information capacity before that was demonstrated by Shannon? Had it crossed any mind that you know of? Do you not see the genius in discovering that materiality can only hold a certain amount of meaning? Do you not yet get the Copernican nature of that revelation and why it now reverberates so loudly through the sciences?

So, what is the relationship between logical and thermodynamic entropy? it seems to me that they're being equivocated. — Wayfarer

You go check the equation and tell me where you see any equivocation.

But my point is that something can't count as evidence unless there is a theory framed to be countable. — apokrisis

I'm by no means against quantitive evaluations of assertions. But is it not a "non-quantitative" assertion that only such assertions should have weight? The "not even wrong" framework is "not even wrong" by its own notion. That falsifiability should be the criterion is itself not falsifiable. You see what I mean? Metaphorically speaking the "law" itself is the supreme "crime." I suggest that such frameworks are "justified" pragmatically. They are experiments that "worked." If evaluating assertions in a particular way gives us what we want more than it leads to disaster, then we tend to keep evaluating them that way.

So what is Romanticism counting? As a theory, what actually possible measurements does it suggest. If it doesn't offer any, then it is not even a theory. It is just an idea that is "not even wrong". — apokrisis

I think we are talking about the realm of value or motive here. There's a certain "objectivity" in a great art. It resonates for a culture. It concretizes that culture's ideals. Maybe the dominant ideals can be made partially explicit in theory, but I grant art and literature an important place in the revelation of reality. Art is not just "subjective" or amusing. It's at the center of a culture's understanding of existence. Some quantification of this realm is possible. We can see measure the proportions of a culture's ideal woman. But I don't see why we would measure our understanding of cultural ideals only in a quantifying manner. We don't just want to manipulate and predict. We want to participate in and grasp or enjoy these ideals. We aren't only manipulative-predictive knowers.

There is a rational sociological explanation for the fostering of irrationality. Convincing folk they are self-actualising beings creates the pool of requisite variety that rapid cultural evolution can feed off. Society becomes this great big competition for attention. Apply a ruthless filter over the top of that, and hey bingo, out pops out your master race. Or at least the ruling elite.

Of course there is then the rational reaction - the PC response to try and declare everyone some kind of cultural winner. Prizes all round. Everyone gets an equal share of the social limelight.

Yeah right. Dream on. — apokrisis

I relate to all of this. They are excellent points. I'm not defending the holy individual here, though I do think there are limits to this dissolution of the individual into the social. I'm really just trying to be accurate about the world. For me, however, this very notion of "world" is in question. I don't assume the world of natural science. To me that is a useful abstraction that exists within a more "primordial" notion of the world. We are in the world with others. But I don't think the spatial notion of objects next to other objects captures this "in-ness" or "with-others-ness."

ike everyone else, you are obsessed by the semantic content of a message. — apokrisis

Information entropy is exactly about semantic content, isn't it? It's how many bits can be lost before the information contained in the string loses its meaning? Yes or no?

You go check the equation and tell me where you see any equivocation. — apokrisis

Which equation? You mean https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Entropy_in_thermodynamics_and_information_theory

Do you not yet get the Copernican nature of that revelation and why it now reverberates so loudly through the sciences? — apokrisis

No.

You believe that it must exist - even though you've search high and low and nowhere does it seem to have physical existence. It is spookily immaterial - a transcendent ghost haunting the world. — apokrisis

I said in my last response to you, emphatically not.

There's a lot in that article that I'm not able to understand - it would require a course in physics and/or information theory to really grasp it. However one question that occurs to me about the purported equivalence of thermodynamic and logical entropy is that there is no concept of temperature or energy in the discipline of information entropy. As a really crude example, you could encode the same information in a string of granite boulders, each of which weighed 1 tonne, and also in bits on a hard drive. Then you could introduce the same amount of information entropy in each sequence. However the physical energy required to introduce the same amount of information entropy would be completely disproportionate, as the energy required to move boulders is far greater than that required to encode bits.

Do you not see the genius in discovering that materiality can only hold a certain amount of meaning? — apokrisis

But isn't the problem the interpretation of meaning as reducible to bits? I love bits. It is eye-opening that the universe can only "store" a finite number of bits. But this abstract universe and there bits are themselves "information" in the more "primordial" sense of meaning, whatever it means for something to mean. We can make the question more manageable and more productive by deciding that meaning is bits. But this cuts the knot. What is it to mean something? What is intelligibility itself?

What is it to mean something? What is intelligibility itself? — t0m

Very close to the question I asked in the OP.

Consider this: the above discussion about information theory was based on the requirement of information being encoded in a medium and transmitted electronically. Shannon’s theory is behind data compression and the like, because it provides ways of creating algorithms which enable you to compress English text (for instance) by deleting redundancies without altering the message content. So if you wanted to convey a body of text or an image, those methodologies enables you to reduce the number of bits you have to transmit without loosing any of the actual content. (Recent useful essay on Shannon here.)

But there’s no way to quantify meaning, as such. For instance, take the case of some important piece of information, like an equation - the very equations we’re discussing here, for instance. Imagine if you were the inventor, and sole possessor, of such idea, and you encoded it on a computer. And then you died, and the hard drive became corrupted. You’ve then lost a lot more than information - you’ve lost an idea, that might have had profound and far-reaching consequences in the physical sciences. How could you possibly quantify the consequences of that? You might be able to encode it in - I don’t know - a few hundred bytes. But the principle the equation describes might have ramifications and applications that revolutionise industry. So - how much information was actually lost?

ou’ve then lost a lot more than information - you’ve lost an idea, that might have had profound and far-reaching consequences in the physical sciences. How could you possibly quantify the consequences of that? You might be able to encode it in - I don’t know - a few hundred bytes. But the principle the equation describes might have ramifications and applications that revolutionise industry. So - how much information was actually lost? — Wayfarer

Interesting point. I hadn't thought of it that way.

What I had in mind is the direct experience of meaning. Meaning is. Similarly redness is. We "live" in language in that cannot be quantified. We can quantify how many bits it takes to encode a string of letters of course, but that's just the "shell" of meaning. And yet meaning seems to need a body, if no particular body. In any case, it seems to me that reducing meaning to information "throws away" the depth of the question, however practical such a reduction might be otherwise.

That’s what I’m seeing in the Platonic ‘eidos’. Interesting fact: the word is derived from the Indo-European terms for ‘seeing’. I suppose, colloquially, that’s what we refer to when we say that someone ‘sees reason’. That ability to grasp or see the meaning of an idea, is plainly fundamental to speech and abstract thought - it’s of the essence of what ‘reason’ means.

(Mind you, I’ll admit I’m responsible for equivocating the meaning of ‘meaning’, ‘idea’, and ‘information’ in this thread. That’s why I understand how my approach must be exasperating to a lot of people. But, somewhere amongst all the smoke, I sense a flame.)

The point I made was that words can only constrain an interpretation, they can't determine an interpretation. . — apokrisis

Then the words are not actual constraints, they are potential, or possible constraints. The listening being must take the words into ones mind and convert them into actual constraints. But this itself is an act of interpretation, so it is impossible that the words act as constraints on interpretation because interpretation must occur before the words are converted from possible constraint to actual constraints. The words which exist within the hearer's minds are only representations of the spoken words, they are interpretations, that's how we can mishear. So if the words actually constrain something, it is something other than interpretation. Perhaps the person might use the words to help exercise some constraint over one's own behaviour, but this is posterior to interpretation.

The best my words could do is constrain your state of mind in a suitable way so that you more or less shared my intended meaning. You would have the same point of view - down to the level where any differences didn't make a meaningful difference. — apokrisis

It is possible, that I could allow your words to have some influence over my state of mind, but again, this is posterior to interpretation. The only influence which they have on my state of mind, is dependent on how I interpret them. So they do not constrain my interpretation because the interpretation is prior to any affect that they have on me. The affect which they have on me is the result of my interpretation.

But my words can fail even to achieve that. You can categorise the incoming text as a bunch of internet static lacking any embedded signal. So I can't determine your state of interpretance. And much of the time, I can't even limit its free variety in any measurable way.

And that's fine. That is what semiotics explains. — apokrisis

So why did you claim that the words are constraints on interpretation then? If the words can be interpreted as something other than words, then how is it possible that the words are constraining this interpretation? They are not even words according to this interpretation.

Remember that in the context of the discussion about ‘reality of universals’, I mean by ‘realism’, not ‘modern realism’, but ‘realism with respect to universals’. It has a very different meaning to today's realism. — Wayfarer

Yes I understand this. What I was pointing out, is that some modern forms of realism assume the basis for the reality of universals, in the reality of social conventions, rather than in the reality of independent Ideas (Platonism). But when the "social convention" is analyzed it turns out to be nothing more than a similar disposition, attitude, or manner, in many different individuals. This renders it completely subjective, leaving the important point, the means by which the similar manner is produced.. Subjectivity is ruled by what appears as "good" to the individual. So now we have to turn to "the good" (the common good), to ground the reality of universals. That forces a turn toward God and religions, where "the good" is studied, and best understood.

Apokrisis right now is refusing to acknowledge the subjectivity of social conventions, claiming "a social belief system". But we all know that all belief systems are particular to the individual human being, and any claim of a "social belief system" is just a generalization, it isn't a real thing. So Aprokrisis' argument just takes us in a vicious circle.

If the meaning of a sign is determined by the author or by the interpreter, then again communication would be impossible. All direct conversations would be spent trying to establish a common vocabulary and semantic, and all indirect communication would be simply impossible. — Akanthinos

Why do you say this? Once a habit of recognition is established, meaning is determined on that basis. There is no impossibility here.

The meaning of the sign is established at the moment of its formation as a sign. "&" means nothing until someone assigns meaning for it, by making public another bit of information with at least some degree of authority, which is that "'&' means 'and'". Before this, "&" was the sign of nothing except perhaps of random human activity as scribble. — Akanthinos

I don't think that you understand meaning at all. I can write &, and it has some meaning for me. it symbolizes something for me, without making anything about what it symbolizes public. Meaning is not something public. It can be made public, but it is inherently private.

It can be made public, but it is inherently private. — Metaphysician Undercover

How come that is not the very same subjectivism you’re criticising in the top paragraph of your post?

You might mean ‘first person’, rather than ‘private’, perhaps?

Incidentally, a snippet from the Aeon article I mentioned on Claude Shannon:

A clue to the origins of Shannon’s genius can be found in the sheer scope of his intellectual interests. He was a peculiar sort of engineer – one known for juggling and riding a unicycle through Bell Labs’ corridors, and whose creations included a flame-throwing trumpet, a calculator called ‘THROBAC’ that operated in Roman numerals (short for ‘Thrifty Roman-Numeral Backward-Looking Computer’), and a mechanical mouse named Theseus that could locate a piece of metallic cheese in a maze. Genetics, artificial intelligence, computer chess, jazz clarinet and amateur poetry numbered among his other pursuits.

Sounds a fascinating character.

How come that is not the very same subjectivism you’re criticising in the top paragraph of your post? — Wayfarer

In the top paragraph, addressed to apokrisis, I am not criticizing subjectivism I am proposing it as opposed to apo's objectivism. Apokrisis claimed that the words of communication exist as actual constraints on interpretation. I insisted that Apokrisis has this turned around, what constrains interpretation is the habits of the individual who is interpreting. In relation to interpretation, the words are just a passive thing being interpreted, and the interpretation depends on how the individual recognizes them. So all constraints on interpretation must be in the mind of the interpreter.

Apokrisis turns final cause around, such that it is not associated with the will and intent of the individual, but it is supposed to be the function of some phantom being, called "society", as if society has its own intentions and thereby constrains individuals to do what it wills.

I agree that some media or containers are better suited to convey specific types of information, much like it is better to use a picture than to describe a place using words. That said, you could still describe the place using words and convey the same information; it would just take a lot of words.

Perhaps put more simply : It is up to the information processor to establish the identity between the information particulars encountered across multiple mediums. This identity belongs to the interpreted information, not to the information medium, and therefore does not inform us on the medium, which means that this does not contradict the claim that information is material. — Akanthinos

Sorry, I did not understand that paragraph. Could you perhaps rephrase it?

For me the issue is that language itself is a "container" -- at least to the degree that we believe in translation. Do we think in words? In my experience, we do, with maybe a little wiggle room for some kind of spatial-temporal reasoning. Can we generally strip meaning from its body? It's not so clear. — t0m

You bring a good point, but yet I think we can still think without using words or images, or imagining any other containers. Think of the concept of 'justice'. Can you describe this concept with words? It may be possible but I can't because I don't know its essence yet. Can you use an image for it? The concept itself does not seem to be physical. And yet, the word 'justice' is not a meaningless word, and I'm sure we can all use it correctly to describe a specific situation. This goes to show that we can think about some concepts like 'justice' without having to rely on containers.

Human infants are born with the ability to learn language. It is innate. Certainly it is in some sense a product of evolution, what I'm questioning is the extent to which language and abstract thought can be understood solely through the prism of evolutionary biology. Because to do so, invariably reduces the subject of the enquiry to 'how does that help the species survive?' That is the sense in which biological explanations are often reductive. While the neo-darwinian synthesis is a biological theory, it is often taken as a philosophical principle to support positions and conclusions which are outside the scope of biology per se. But it is, as I say, a separate question. — Wayfarer

Perfect. Then we agree that the form our ability to learn a language takes is innate - physical - a product of evolution. So then how do you go from saying it is a product of evolution to saying that those explanations don't explain some aspect of language that isn't biological. That seems like a pretty big assumption - that language isn't biological in every sense. If biology can't explain all of it, then what do you think will - and what is it that is missing? The way our minds work is also biological, and would therefore be acted on by natural selection. What do you think learning is, if not natural selection acting on our minds and shaping the way they interact with and understand the world in order to propagate genes more efficiently?

Then we agree that the form our ability to learn a language takes is innate - physical - a product of evolution. So then how do you go from saying it is a product of evolution to saying that those explanations don't explain some aspect of language that isn't biological. — Harry Hindu

I can't begin to explain. That is why I ignored your posts before - it's not as if I don't think there's an answer, or that I don't have a response, but that in order to get to the point where you would understand what the point was, we would have to discuss a completely different topic. I might consider starting a new thread on this point, but it's not relevant to this thread.

//edit// - I've created a separate thread to address these topics.

I don't think that you understand meaning at all. I can write &, and it has some meaning for me. it symbolizes something for me, without making anything about what it symbolizes public. Meaning is not something public. It can be made public, but it is inherently private. — Metaphysician Undercover

The public\private dichotomy does not help us here, and it is not toward it that my use of the term "public" was aimed, but rather to the fact that the initial act of assignment, the first time someone establish that & means "and", that must be at least at some point be shared to the processors. If "&" has meaning for you, it is because you also have access to another bit of information, that is, the meaning of "&" as "and".