You’re thinking it a dichotomy but in reality they are inseparable so it really shouldn’t be thought that way. Ok, I can dig it.

I’m happy that you can dig it.

Machines are built, but organisms grow. The organic and the mechanical are different.
— Wayfarer

If the structure and processes are the same, it doesn't make a difference how it was achieved. — Terrapin Station

they’re not the same, and the difference matters. But not being able to recognize that is entailed by your position, so nothing further can or will be said.

I’d be even happier, ecstatic no less, if you’d chalk yourself up in the “meaning absolutely requires reason” column.

I’m a YankeeVirgoBabyboomer, and we operate better in a gang, doncha know.

Ya der hey. I think I agree with that but you would have to spell it out for me.

Hmmm. The thesis would begin with.....meaning is a product of reason and is no way a property of that which reason examines.

The proof would take 7-8 pages, so we’ll forego that, with blessings (and chuckles) from the attendees, I’m sure.

Absolutely agree. I think I was saying something like that in the “2+2=4” thread.

It doesn't indicate the presence of meaning (to be deciphered).

It's possible if there are people present for them to assign meanings to any arbitrary thing. — Terrapin Station

So, you claim there is no difference between an ancient tablet and an object that displays naturally produced marks; that both embody no inherent meaning, that meanings are arbitrarily assigned to both, and that researchers who claim to have deciphered ancient texts are merely assigning arbitrary meanings? The researchers couldn't possibly have "cracked the code" and reproduced a translation of the ancient text, because the script on the manuscript or tablet is simply meaningless?

Cool.

I remember seeing that expression, but I didn’t stick around. Thread name?

Is 2 + 2 = 4 universally true?

It better be. Mathematical expressions were initially deemed logically infallible, hence universally true. But we’d never been anywhere off-planet. Now, with spacecraft still operating billions of miles away sorta sustains the reckoning for universality.

I’ll never know, but I have to think mathematical logic is both necessary and universal. I also think it will be just as necessary and universal for any other relational intelligence similar to ours. Different symbols probably, but same operational predicates.

Yeah, I worked toward that conclusion in the course of the thread, but I also worked in the materialism/idealism false dichotomy.

Brief opening proposition here, or send me where I can see for myself?

In the words of the immortal Gilda Radnor.....never mind. Found it.

I don’t know how to link the thread here.

“2+2=4” is universally true but isn’t a property of matter outside of a mind observing it. Something like that.

Perused the thread; agreed without exception. 2 + 2 will equal 4 anywhere in the Universe, as soon as we get there to prove it. Or maybe as soon as we get there and find some intelligence ready to prove it to us. Or maybe just us getting there proves it. Either way, there’s going to be a mind, and by association, reason itself, tagging along for the ride.

Tegmark (2007) thinks the Universe is a mathematical entity in and of itself. But that’s way above my capacity.

Cool. I make you an honorary cheesehead. :wink: :up:

I loves me some cheese, boy howdy.

Not so sure about that headgear though. I haven’t sat in a barber chair since cars had fins, so.....not sure about the fit.

LOL. You don’t have to wear the headgear. I don’t.

I'm not familiar enough with how you think to know why you think a distinction between organic and machine has a structural symmetry to the distinction between meaningful activity and meaningless activity. Do you see the fact that brain states are actually states of an organism - and only organic things can have brain states - as undermining that structural symmetry? If not, why not? — fdrake

Where I started, was with the ability to create abstractions, which is the question in the OP. I argued that 'Abstraction relies on the ability to make judgements - about 'like', 'unlike', 'greater than', 'less than', and that therefore abstraction is fundamental to language, to counting (and so maths), and to logic.

From that, I argued that language in particular can't be depicted in the simplistic terms which the OP stated, as a simple matter of association, or stimulus and response, because of the fact that through reason and language, humans are able to abstract and to see the relations between abstractions, which is what grounds language, symbolic thought and reason.

The quotation from Descartes was about the faculty of reason in particular; he's making what I consider to be a similar point.

Whereas I think there is a near-universal (but often implicit) consensus in modern analytical philosophy that the nature of reason (language, thought) can be understood in terms of evolutionary theory and neurobiology - that's where talk of 'brain-states' comes from. So it's natural to believe that, through this perspective, we can in principle understand how reason and language evolved, and the sense in which they're a product of evolutionary development. And the way I'm challenging that, is by pointing to the deeply circular or question-begging nature of such arguments. What I'm arguing is that reason (language, thought) cannot be reduced or 'explained' in those terms, because ultimately reason itself is something more than, or other than, either a physical or biological faculty; indeed it is the source of all and any explanation. Through reason, humans are able to discern something other than or more than the physical; which indicates that man, 'the rational animal', is something more than, or other than, the simply biological. It's a form of transcendental argument.

(This is similar to the argument that Thomas Nagel develops in The Last Word and Mind and Cosmos.)

There is a "material difference" between the two texts: and that difference is the way they were created. — Janus

That material difference is lost whenever the text is copied. The pixels on a computer screen displaying a work of Shakespeare have no material connection to the original document.

It doesn't matter whether we can tell the difference or not. — Janus

It does, because if you cannot tell me how the texts differ without begging the question, how can you argue your point?

The other point is that works of art never would be created by the "random work of monkeys" anyway, and nor would objects indistinguishable from ancient tablets or manuscripts occur naturally, so the whole thought experiment is not really of much significance. — Janus

Just because your position cannot deal with the consequences of the thought experiment doesn't mean it's insignificant.

So, you claim there is no difference between an ancient tablet and an object that displays naturally produced marks; that both embody no inherent meaning, that meanings are arbitrarily assigned to both, and that researchers who claim to have deciphered ancient texts are merely assigning arbitrary meanings? The researchers couldn't possibly have "cracked the code" and reproduced a translation of the ancient text, because the script on the manuscript or tablet is simply meaningless? — Janus

Re your comments, I'd say that:

(1) nothing whatsoever "embodies" inherent meaning (other than minds, at least),

(2) meanings are not arbitrarily assigned to anything (assuming that you're implying that it's random (or "random" if we don't buy that anything is literally/ontologically random))

I don't know if my use of the word "arbitrary" led you to these comments. The idea behind "It's possible if there are people present for them to assign meanings to any arbitrary thing" and similar phrases is that there is no restriction on the things in question--anything we consider could be something that people would assign meaning to. It doesn't imply that people are arbitrarily assigning meanings.

There are no meanings "in" anything but minds. There is no "embodied" meaning in anything other than minds (the embodiment there is via brains, since minds are identical to subsets of brain structure/function). No inherent meaning in anything other than minds, etc. But that doesn't imply that there's anything random(/"random") to the way that minds assign meanings to things (at least not normally--I wouldn't say it's impossible to "randomly" assigning meanings to some things, but that's not at all what people usually do).

And as I said above, in a reply to creativesoul, which is pertinent to "cracking codes": "there are interpretations that allow consistency, coherence, etc. among a number of different texts, where that can be opposed to interpretations that do not allow that." Part of what we consider to be cracking a code is that we've arrived at an interpretation that allows consistency, coherence, etc. among a number of different texts. That in no way implies that the meaning is in the texts in question. The meaning is in our heads.

I don't see how this differs from Solipsism. The only reason we see an apple on the table is because we assign some meaning to the breaking of the symmetry of the white tablecloth at the point it becomes red apple. It's all just 'stuff' without our meaning applied to it. Yet we do not act as if solipsism were the case, so I can't see how theories which assume it could be much use to us.

I don't see how this differs from Solipsism. The only reason we see an apple on the table is because we assign some meaning to the breaking of the symmetry of the white tablecloth at the point it becomes red apple. It's all just 'stuff' without our meaning applied to it. Yet we do not act as if solipsism were the case, so I can't see how theories which assume it could be much use to us. — Isaac

I don't see how you'd believe it has anything to do with solipsism whatsoever. Solipsism is "the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind."

I didn't say anything even remotely resembling or implying that.

It's not even "meaning solipsism" if you'd want to coin that term, because I'm not saying that there's just one person doing this or that we can only know that there's one person doing it. You could say that it's "meaning idealism" if you like, though.

I also don't at all agree with you that the way that we cleave things perceptually has any necessary connection at all to meaning.

You claimed that the pattern is only in the mind of the person observing the pattern, it does not exist in the text. I'm asking what the difference is, for you, between this view and the view that the apple does not exist in 'reality' but only in the mind of the person observing it, at it too is just a breaking of symmetry which is otherwise meaningless.

You claimed that the pattern is only in the mind of the person observing the pattern, — Isaac

Nope. "Pattern" isn't the same as "meaning." I didn't use the word "pattern" at all. If in your view, meanings are patterns, period, and that's all they are, that's fine for you, but you can't graft that unusual view onto someone else's comments as if they must think the same thing you do, as if they must use words just the same way that you do.

I was only saying something about meaning qua meaning. Meaning in the sense of semantics/semantic content. I wasn't saying anything in general about realism/idealism. I'm a naive/direct realist in general. Apples exist in the external(-to-minds) world. The meaning of "apple" (or of apples if that's the sort of thing that someone applies meanings to) does not exist outside of minds, because meaning is a mental activity, just like desires or emotions are.

Linguistic meaning is a redundant term. "il n'y a pas de hors-texte". — emancipate

Nonsense.

Right, so you're happy for the pattern to be a property of the text in an objective sense, but you determine 'meaning' to be some state of the brain of some observer?

So, taking that to be the case, which object's property is its history. Is the hammer's history of being used to hit nails a property of the hammer, or of the brain recollecting it?

Right, so you're happy for the pattern to be a property of the text in an objective sense, — Isaac

"Patterns" are simply the fact that not everything is a completely uniform, homogeneous "soup," especially when irregularities have repeated similarities. They don't imply anything about meaning.

History, or the past, isn't an existent property of anything. The past existed. It no longer exists. There would be properties of the hammer that are evidence that it was used to hit nails, but it would be a very loose manner of speaking to say that that "history is presently in the hammer (or anything else)." The present properties of the hammer might include, say, microscopic fracture patterns, that we could then use to deduce that it must have been used to strike nails (or something similar).

So where is the fact that the hammer was used to hit nails? If humans capable of recollecting the fact ceased to exist would it cease to be the case that the hammer was used to hit nails?