The best I can offer is what all attribution of meaning consists of and/or requires. According to current convention, all theories of meaning presuppose symbolism.

So...

At a bare minimum, all attribution of meaning(all meaning) requires something to become symbol/sign, something to become symbolized/significant and a creature capable of drawing a mental correlation, association, and/or connection between the two. — creativesoul

Last week a friend and I visited the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. We got in an interesting discussion with one of the guides there. I said, although I'm not certain it's true, that paintings and other visual arts don't mean anything because only words have meaning. She and my friend disagreed.

Do you agree?

Math is "meaningless", i.e. devoid of semantics, because it only seeks to deal with syntax, i.e. the bureaucracy of formalisms that govern the abstract, Platonic world of mathematics. — alcontali

Sure, I guess, maybe. Maybe not entirely. I don't believe that the universe is, somehow, mathematics as some do, but ever since I started learning how to express ideas mathematically in high school, my understanding of reality has had a strong mathematical flavor. Change is calculus. Physics is statistics. Math is not all form and no content.

NB. All the above will remain 'meaningless' to you unless it triggers 'an intention to act' in you, e.g. to follow up the references. If you stick to the futile quest of 'defining meaning', it means we have mererly engaged in a bit of social dancing which seems to be the principal activity of 'philosophers'. — fresco

Well, your explication triggered an intention to act on my part. Maybe I'll come back to ask questions after I've checked your references.

A major question considered in mathematical Platonism is: Precisely where and how do the mathematical entities exist, and how do we know about them? Is there a world, completely separate from our physical one, that is occupied by the mathematical entities? How can we gain access to this separate world and discover truths about the entities? One proposed answer is the Ultimate Ensemble, a theory that postulates that all structures that exist mathematically also exist physically in their own universe. — alcontali

It's always struck me that there is only one place for those mathematical entities to exist - the mind of God. A belief in Platonic ideals and a belief in God are equivalent.

Physics is statistics. — T Clark

Other disciplines, unrelated to physics, also successfully use statistics. Hence, physics uses statistics.

I would disagree with the claim that only words have meaning.

I would disagree with the claim that only words have meaning. — creativesoul

Would you argue that any form of representation has meaning (including art, photographs, etc.)? What about a door? When I see a door, I know I can potentially open it and walk through it. Does a door have meaning? Or, what about my Grandfather’s burial flag? It might have meaning to me that it doesn’t for others. What about that?

A wonderfully tasty ego boost called "personal attack" gets the rhetorical palate juiced up and ready to go. — creativesoul

Delusions of persecution? Sorry, couldn’t resist.

I'd be pleased to discuss references, some of which (Maturana) are difficult to commune with because they are non-anthropocentrically deflationist with respect to 'thinking' and 'cognition'.

Other disciplines, unrelated to physics, also successfully use statistics. Hence, physics uses statistics. — alcontali

Yes, of course. I overstated my point for emphasis. What I was trying to get across is that my understanding of how the physical universe works is closely related to my understanding of how statistics works. As I said, statistics is not just an empty structure we fill in, it has it's own meanings.

Would you argue that any form of representation has meaning (including art, photographs, etc.)? — Noah Te Stroete

That was the point I was trying to make at the museum. As I indicated, I'm not sure it's true. This is one of the questions that is hard to get a handle on because the terms of the discussion - the meaning of the word "meaning" - are not well defined.

“Meaning” has different meanings according to different contexts/uses. A lot of differing opinions in this thread, and I suspect that is due to the different contexts/uses. Most if not all of the posts give “true” accounts of meaning (or meaninglessness). We just have to be humble enough to acknowledge that our posts may not exhaust the meaning of “meaning.”

“Meaning” has different meanings according to different contexts/uses. A lot of differing opinions in this thread, and I suspect that is due to the different contexts/uses. Most if not all of the posts give “true” accounts of meaning (or meaninglessness). We just have to be humble enough to acknowledge that our posts may not exhaust the meaning of “meaning.” — Noah Te Stroete

Yes, that's what I was trying to say, although I was also whining in frustration that poor definition of terms has made this discussion less productive than it could have been.

Yes, that's what I was trying to say, although I was also whining in frustration that poor definition of terms has made this discussion less productive than it could have been. — T Clark

Agreed.

Last week a friend and I visited the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. We got in an interesting discussion with one of the guides there. I said, although I'm not certain it's true, that paintings and other visual arts don't mean anything because only words have meaning. She and my friend disagreed. — T Clark

An interesting discussion. The way I see it, it’s not that paintings and other visual arts don’t mean anything - it’s that any meaning attributed to them is relative to the observer’s limited position within the various structures of the universe in which we interact.

We have made use of meaning in the world by containing it within certain value structures: in discourse, logic, numbers, language, etc. This is how we understand what meaning is. In the same way, we have made practical use of subjective, value-laden experiences by understanding them as contained within certain 4D event structures such as evolution, life, and of 4D events such as a person by containing it within a 3D object. This is how we try to make sense of and interact with the universe.

So a straight-forward photograph is a 2D container for 3D objects that refer to 4D events with 5D experiences, and we can follow the logic of containment and relate to the structure of meaning in it.

But most artworks these days don’t follow this: they can invite us to find meaning in objects or events without referring to a particular experience, or even in shapes or colours that don’t refer to specific objects. They challenge us to recognise meaning outside of these standard structures: to realise that our understanding of the universe that is confined within these structures is only a very limited aspect of how we are capable of interacting with the universe.

So when you say that ‘paintings and visual arts don’t mean anything because only words have meaning’, in my opinion you are trying to contain the meaning of all your experiences to a particular value structure that you believe to be universal (ie. words) - and so anything that cannot be contained within words is declared ‘meaningless’.

So when you say that ‘paintings and visual arts don’t mean anything because only words have meaning’, in my opinion you are trying to contain the meaning of all your experiences to a particular value structure that you believe to be universal (ie. words) - and so anything that cannot be contained within words is declared ‘meaningless’. — Possibility

Insightful.

You can get into whatever you like as long as it's relevance to meaning is clearly stated. On an aside, I deny knowledge of future events altogether. That is a consequence of knowing what sorts of things can be true(correspond to what's happened and/or is happening) and what makes them so.

Yes, that's what I was trying to say, although I was also whining in frustration that poor definition of terms has made this discussion less productive than it could have been.
— T Clark

Agreed. — Noah Te Stroete

An odd agreement given that I've offered an adequate criterion(definition if you like) for all meaning.

A definition of "meaning" is - I suppose - what you're seeking from me. Fair request.

The best I can offer is what all attribution of meaning consists of and/or requires. According to current convention, all theories of meaning presuppose symbolism.

So...

At a bare minimum, all attribution of meaning(all meaning) requires something to become symbol/sign, something to become symbolized/significant and a creature capable of drawing a mental correlation, association, and/or connection between the two.

There are no examples to the contrary. — creativesoul

There are two claims here about which I am dubious. Firstly, there is the claim that for meaning to be there must be symbolism. Perhaps by "symbolism" is meant signing in general; and if so, then no problem.

Peirce draws very useful distinctions between signs, ikons and symbols, if my memory serves. So, some examples of signs could be: some clouds are a sign of rain, some bird calls or animal sounds are signs of the presence of predators, smoke is a sign of fire and so on. Ikons are visual representations of things; representations in the sense that the ikon resembles what it represents. Symbols are arbitrary marks or sounds that "stand for" things. The last is restricted to linguistic phenomena.

Secondly, is the claim that all meaning consists in "attribution of meaning". This is one sense of meaning, but there is another common usage where to say that something has meaning is just to say that meaning may be rightly attributed to it, and that if we deciphered it correctly then what we took it to mean would be ( more or less) in accordance with what it was intended to mean.

So, for example, say you discover what appears to be an ancient tablet with hieroglyphics inscribed on it. There are two possibilities; either those marks have meaning or they don't. If they don't have meaning they might just be random marks inscribed for no purpose, with no intention to convey anything. If they have meaning, then they would have had a culturally agreed (or even in extremis, merely an individually intended) meaning at the time they were inscribed; which means that they could, potentially or in principle at least, be deciphered correctly or incorrectly.

So, it would be in keeping with common usage to say in the latter case that the tablet has meaning, even though it may presently have no determinate meaning for us, because we have not deciphered it.

A wonderfully tasty ego boost called "personal attack" gets the rhetorical palate juiced up and ready to go.
— creativesoul

Delusions of persecution? Sorry, couldn’t resist. — Noah Te Stroete

Well played. I realized that that ad hom charge may not have stuck after I posted.

As I said, statistics is not just an empty structure we fill in, it has it's own meanings. — T Clark

Well, my own staunch resistance against incorporating any premature semantics into mathematics, especially en provenance from physics -- which is undoubtedly the greatest culprit in that respect -- is because it could easily make mathematics unusable for application in other disciplines.

Take, for example, a look at Kleene's closure:

In mathematical logic and computer science, the Kleene star (or Kleene operator or Kleene closure) is a unary operation, either on sets of strings or on sets of symbols or characters. In mathematics it is more commonly known as the free monoid construction.

Kleene's star is the basis of Kleene algebra:

In mathematics, a Kleene algebra (/ˈkleɪni/ KLAY-nee; named after Stephen Cole Kleene) is an idempotent (and thus partially ordered) semiring endowed with a closure operator. It generalizes the operations known from regular expressions.

Like every abstraction in mathematics which is either without value, or else with very high value, this construct is meaningless/nonsensical (=no real-world semantics), useless (=no direct use), lazy (doesn't do much; even as little as possible), and therefore, ultimately ridiculous.

Of course, most such abstractions will turn out to be worthless, but most high-value abstractions are also like that. The formalist philosophy in mathematics warns for that:

According to formalism, mathematical truths are not about numbers and sets and triangles and the like—in fact, they are not "about" anything at all.

The governing rules in mathematics demand that the domain for each variable is properly declared. For example:

∀x∈A={x|x ∈N∧x<10}

When introducing x, you must declare what domain it belongs to. This domain is never the real, physical world. The following is forbidden:

∀ x ∈ real_world

So, if the variable does not belong to the real, physical world, where does it exist? Well, in an abstract, Platonic world that is not the real, physical world.

In other words, the metarules in mathematics staunchly enforce Platonism, even though mathematics is in essence a bureaucracy of formalisms that are not "about" anything at all.

Stephen Kleene originally started writing about his algebra in 1951, in his technical report for the US Airforce, "Representation of Events in Nerve Nets and Finite Automata". It took decades for his work to snowball into the incredible hype that it is today:

Welcome to Regular-Expressions.info.
The Premier website about Regular Expressions.

If you just want to get your feet wet with regular expressions, take a look at the one-page regular expressions quick start.

Do not worry if the above example or the quick start make little sense to you. Any non-trivial regex looks daunting to anybody not familiar with them. But with just a bit of experience, you will soon be able to craft your own regular expressions like you have never done anything else. The free Regular-Expressions.info Tutorial explains everything bit by bit.

If you're hungry for more information on regular expressions after reading this website, there are a variety of books on the subject.

His work has become bigger than life now. There are an incredible number of addicted afficionados who are gurus in the field that Stephen Kleene created. Kleene is truly a grandee.

Note that after practical implementation of Kleene algebra inside a regex engine, it is still not "about" anything at all. Kleene's work would not have taken off, if its purity had been badly tainted from the get-go with real-world semantics en provenance from physics.

I would disagree with the claim that only words have meaning.
— creativesoul

Would you argue that any form of representation has meaning (including art, photographs, etc.)? What about a door? When I see a door, I know I can potentially open it and walk through it. Does a door have meaning? Or, what about my Grandfather’s burial flag? It might have meaning to me that it doesn’t for others. What about that? — Noah Te Stroete

I would argue that all representation is meaningful. How it becomes and continues to be meaningful is set out in the OP. We could get into that farther in you like.

The language use matters here.

Is a door meaningful? That all depends. If it's the only door at the end of the universe and there are no creatures alive that draw correlations between that door and something else... then no, it's not, because it does not have what it takes to be.

Your grandfather's burial flag is *precisely* as meaningful(to you) as each and every correlation between it and something else that you've drawn.

So when you say that ‘paintings and visual arts don’t mean anything because only words have meaning’, in my opinion you are trying to contain the meaning of all your experiences to a particular value structure that you believe to be universal (ie. words) - and so anything that cannot be contained within words is declared ‘meaningless’. — Possibility

Yes, exactly! And No, completely!!! I'm saying, again, I'm not sure, that "meaning" means words. Paintings are not insignificant, or unimportant, they just don't mean anything. And that's the frustration of not having defined "meaning" back at the beginning.

So let's do it now:

• What is meant by a word, text, concept, or action.
• The definition of a word
• The thing one intends to convey especially by language
• Significant quality
• Something intended
• The logical connotation of a word or phrase
• Importance or value
• What something expresses or represents
• The thing, action, feeling, idea, etc. that a word or words represent
• The special importance or purpose of something

Some phrases:

• The meaning of life
• What's the meaning of this?!!!
• What do you mean?
• What does this word mean?
• What does Hegal mean when he talks about "desein?"

None of this seems particularly satisfying to me.

It depends on the language game you’re engaging in. I think that @creativesoul hit on some of my concerns, though.

And that's the frustration of not having defined "meaning" back at the beginning. — T Clark

It's been adequately defined since. Does that not matter here? Does that change not alter the degree of frustration you had prior to it?

What does Hegal mean when he talks about "desein? — T Clark

Hegel or Heiddy? Dasein or desein? What do you mean here?

:wink:

It's always struck me that there is only one place for those mathematical entities to exist - the mind of God. A belief in Platonic ideals and a belief in God are equivalent. — T Clark

There may be a danger in thinking like that. The core claim in religion, the belief in God, is about the origin of the real, physical world. Religion is not about the origin of the abstract, Platonic world of mathematics. It is about the origin of our true reality.

In my opinion, natural predisposition is the reason why the belief in God, as the creator of the real, physical world, is so prevalent.

A first reason is that we instinctively sense that the universe cannot have existed forever. The mathematical intuition for this is that, since time progresses, it cannot be infinite, because infinite plus a finite amount, is still infinite. Hence, if time were infinite, it would stand still, which it doesn't. Therefore, instinct says that there must be a beginning of times. Furthermore, since everything that exists has a lifecycle, i.e. a beginning and an end, the universe will also come to an end. Hence, our intuition about a Last Day, i.e. the Day of Last Judgement.

You will also find this theory of instinctive acceptance of a Beginning and an End, Alpha and Omega in the religious scriptures, i.e. the Bible and the Quran:

"Fitra" or "fitrah" (Arabic: فطرة‎; ALA-LC: fiṭrah), is the state of purity and innocence Muslims believe all humans to be born with. Fitra is an Arabic word that is usually translated as “original disposition,” “natural constitution,” or “innate nature.”

It has also been suggested that the religious meaning can be translated into the logical equivalence in philosophy, as Kant's concept of 'ought'. In a mystical context, it can connote intuition or insight and is similar to the Calvinist term "Sensus divinitatis".

The danger in excess Platonicity inside the core of religion, is that we would be repeating views from the notorious Mutazila heresy ( 8th to the 10th centuries).

Excessive rationalization of "fitrah" can lead to far-reaching trouble:

This paradigm is known in Islamic theology as wujub al-nazar, i.e., the obligation to use one's speculative reasoning to attain ontological truths.

A purely Platonic view on God was widespread and known as the "Greek heresy" in the Golden age of Islam:

Harun Nasution in the Muʿtazila and Rational Philosophy, translated in Martin (1997), commented on Muʿtazili extensive use of rationality in the development of their religious views saying: "It is not surprising that opponents of the Muʿtazila often charge the Muʿtazila with the view that humanity does not need revelation, that everything can be known through reason, that there is a conflict between reason and revelation, that they cling to reason and put revelation aside, and even that the Muʿtazila do not believe in revelation. But is it true that the Muʿtazila are of the opinion that everything can be known through reason and therefore that revelation is unnecessary? The writings of the Muʿtazila give exactly the opposite portrait. In their opinion, human reason is not sufficiently powerful to know everything and for this reason humans need revelation in order to reach conclusions concerning what is good and what is bad for them."

The Greek heresy will always end up denying the axiomatic base for religion, i.e. in Kant's lingo, the unexplained (="revealed") categorical imperatives that serve as a starting point for religious law, i.e. morality. As Aristotle nicely said (probably in Metaphysics, Book Gamma), "If nothing is assumed, then nothing can be concluded". Without axiomatic starting point, reason alone becomes an exercise in infinite regress.

Hence, I am against the excessive Platonic rationalization of "fithrah" ("Sensus divinitatis"), i.e. the natural predisposition ("instinct") to believe in God and the Last Day. Rationality is merely a tool and does not encompass every possible mental faculty.

It's been adequately defined since. Does that not matter here? Does that change not alter the degree of frustration you had prior to it? — creativesoul

"Meaning" is just a loosey-goosey word for I don't really know the fuck what. And no, it hasn't been defined in any way that allows a clear understanding. This whole thread is constructed on a foundation of loose sand.

I have no idea what either "dasein" or "desein" mean. I don't think Hegel or you do either. I don't think either of you know what "means" means.

This is what I’m trying to say - meaning is a dimensional aspect of how we interact with the universe. One far broader than space, time and value.

We can’t satisfactorily define ‘time’, for instance, unless we examine it from a theoretical position in which time is irrelevant. Any attempt to define time in relation to a universe of objects, to position time within a time-dependent discourse, is fractured at best - like your definitions for ‘meaning’ listed above. Time is relative to the living, and meaning is relative to the observer. It points to the difficulty of clearly positioning meaning within meaning. Like trying to locate a photon without measuring it.

This is why @creativesoul’s definition of meaning is an expression of the relationship of the observer to a value structure.

Paintings are not insignificant, or unimportant, they just don't mean anything. — T Clark

They do mean something, but the ‘something’ isn’t fixed. That something is always going to be different for a different observer, and will also change in relation to the value structure they employ in interacting with the painting.