Fresco/Derrida claims meaning doesn't exist. I say it does. How can we both be right? — Harry Hindu
The scientific method is metaphysics. — T Clark
meaning=purpose, but since things do not have purposes but are given purposes by the individual, purpose=use. So, what sorts of things are useful? Everything you know and perceive and do is useful in the game of the will to power, which is why Nietzsche's amor fati is indispensable from the conception.What sorts of things are meaningful? How do these things become meaningful? To whom are these things meaningful?
So, the persistence and/or continued existence of meaning is clearly not existentially dependent upon any individual user, but rather it is existentially dependent upon language being used in a consistent way. That consistent usage is satisfied - it happens - when a plurality of capable creatures draw correlations between the specific language use and other things. — creativesoul
Derrida (1930-2004) famously argued that writing preceded speech. By this I believe he meant that the “iterability” of language logically preceded its spontaneous performance...that is, repeatable in any context whatsoever, just as this very introduction to Derrida I’m writing now must be able to signify as an introduction to Derrida after this semester is over [hey! like now!], after I’m dead, after you cease to read it, after the expiration of every element of the context in which I am composing it now. That, writes Derrida, is the very condition of writing itself, without which we simply do not recognize writing as such: if the writing is not “iterable,” it is not writing. — link
We all learn to point at the tree when uttering "tree". This is rudimentary shared meaning:A plurality of creatures drawing correlations between the same things. In this case, it's a plurality of creatures drawing correlations between the name and it's referent(between "trees" and trees).
We all 'agree' that those things are trees and these things are not... by virtue calling those things "trees" but not these things. This agreement is necessary for language to proceed in it's evolutionary process. The 'agreement' need not be an intentional act. To quite the contrary, prior to the ability to voluntarily enter into an agreement about the referent of a name, one must already be deeply embedded in language use. — creativesoul
“Make sense” is a very telling expression, revealing an embodied experience. ”Make” emphasises our active construction of our experience of understanding, and the “sense” or lack of it ultimately rests on sensory experiences we’ve learned to associate with the words and expressions. — Brainglitch
Why does it seem so difficult to do this when talking about conceptions/uses/senses/etc, of the same term "meaning"? Is it not a reasonable question to ask someone when they're using the term "meaning" what they are referring to? Ought not the speaker know what they're referring to, when using the term as a noun? — creativesoul
I've no issue with this at face value. I agree. What I take issue with is the idea that that somehow applies to thought and belief that does not involve understanding a text. We're talking about all thought and belief and what they have in common at a basic level such that that content is capable of evolutionary progression...
Correlations. — cs
I very much agree, with only a slight suspicion about 'correlation,' and I associate this with Wittgenstein. One of my favorite philosophical themes is how radically embedded we are in language use. I don't think it can be over-stated. Even this 'I' that doesn't think it can be overstated is, as a sign, embedded in the way we learn to use 'I.'
To be a human is perhaps most essentially to be co-embedded in a language. The 'we' is utterly prior to the 'I' in the sense that the 'I' is only constructed within the 'tribe' and understands itself in relation to other selves. Far from being controversial, I think such things are obvious to those who are willing to make their tacit knowledge explicit against the resistance of theories that tell us otherwise (and often flatter us.) — Eee
If behavior is the effect of some cause, the cause is the meaning of the behavior... — Harry Hindu
If you ask them what they mean by 'meaning,' won't they be forced to add more links to the chain of signs? — Eee
What do we refer to by 'I' ? Or 'you'? — Eee
Is there a finite chain of signs that can get this exactly right? If the signs are intelligible at all, they can be quoted or repeated in other contexts, among other signs, and be understood differently. — Eee
It's us philosophers who find it difficult to determine the meaning of meaning, mostly because we want to do a good job, and perhaps because we're questionably attached to a project of juicing words for their maximally context-independent meanings. — Eee
I like the game, but I also see it as an infinite game. The interpretation of any text is one more text that's open to interpretation. This is not at all to say that all interpretations are equal. It's just that to live is to be still determining and interpreting. I think even a dogmatic philosopher is always still figuring out what exactly he means by his dogma. We can repeat the words in our mind, but is this really a repetition of something like exact meaning? Perfect, exact meaning is like God or pure spirit. — Eee
Bein' reasonable is thinking about our own thought and belief, including but not limited to statements thereof. That's the best place to start looking. After-all, if our notion of belief is not amenable to evolutionary progression it can - and ought - be dismissed out of hand as soon as we realize that it's not. — cs
If the history of Philosophy merely represented various opinions in array, whether they be of God or of natural and spiritual things existent, it would be a most superfluous and tiresome science, no matter what advantage might be brought forward as derived from such thought-activity and learning. What can be more useless than to learn a string of bald opinions, and what more unimportant? — Hegel
Undoubtedly, but that's true of asking anyone what they mean by any other term as well... — creativesoul
Is it really the case that a 'full' meaning is present that we are merely finding more words for? Or something else? — Eee
You mentioned suspicion about 'correlation' - which is my notion of thought and belief. All thought and belief consists of correlations drawn between different things. — creativesoul
If one does not know the difference between you and I, well, there can be no distinction between who says what. — creativesoul
Is there a finite amount of signs that can get this right? What on earth is this? Is there a finite chain of signs that can be used to comprehend how we use the terms "I" and "you"???
Is that what you're asking me here? — creativesoul
Heidegger constantly reminds us throughout Being and Time, the account of 'inauthentic' life of everyday anyone is not to be interpreted evaluatively or morally but rather ontologically. It is an a priori Existential of being human: "the anyone is the condition of possibility of all human action" (p. 2). Thonhauser writes: "To be socialized in the framework of established modes of intelligibility and regulated modes of comportment is the prerequisite for becoming an agent in one's own right" (ibid.). — link
"Full" meaning is present?
I don't talk like that. Something else. — creativesoul
Derrida (1930-2004) famously argued that writing preceded speech. By this I believe he meant that the “iterability” of language logically preceded its spontaneous performance...that is, repeatable in any context whatsoever, just as this very introduction to Derrida I’m writing now must be able to signify as an introduction to Derrida after this semester is over [hey! like now!], after I’m dead, after you cease to read it, after the expiration of every element of the context in which I am composing it now. That, writes Derrida, is the very condition of writing itself, without which we simply do not recognize writing as such: if the writing is not “iterable,” it is not writing. — from above
All answers to the question of what one means by some word or other requires increasing signage... Some explanation increases signage. We agree here, I think. — creativesoul
All answers to the question of what one means by some word or other requires increasing signage... Some explanation increases signage. We agree here, I think.
— creativesoul
Excellent. And I think we agree that language is a social phenomenon, only possible for a community in a shared world. — Eee
The meaning of "meaning" consists of the correlations drawn between it's use and other things. — creativesoul
Put it in some context everyone can at least agree on first.. — halo
For some thing to have meaning, it has to be tied to a value for that person or people. Such as, a sense of status or independence.. An idea that encompasses a value or opposes them, would have meaning to it. It has to touch one of your higher values in a personal way. — halo
The meaning of "meaning" consists of the correlations drawn between it's use and other things.
— creativesoul
By correlations you mean 'a mutual relationship or connection between two or more things'? — Eee
It does seem clear that language largely deals with relationships. But surely there is more to say, even if that's a start. And maybe there can be no end to the talk about talk. Perhaps what we mean by meaning is largely dark for us, because what we can make explicit is just the tip of the iceberg. That doesn't mean I'm against trying to clarify. I just speculate that the nature of meaning might prevent an exhaustive definition of meaning. — Eee
It's mutual(shared) when a plurality of individuals draw the same correlations between the use and other things. — creativesoul
All attribution of meaning requires something to become sign/symbol, something to become significant/symbolized and a creature capable of drawing correlations between different things. — creativesoul
All attribution of meaning by language less creatures requires only the creature capable of drawing correlations between different things... none of which are linguistic devices and/or marks(signs/symbols), and all of which are directly perceptible things. That situates the kinds of correlations that are drawn at a level some call 'beneath' common language. — creativesoul
We know that something like 'pure meaning' is translatable. — Eee
But I'm still most interested in the highest levels of human thinking, which, it seems to me, requires words. — Eee
If "pure" is meant to denote something in it's most unadulterated uncorrupted and/or basic state, then it doesn't get any purer that what I've set out here. — creativesoul
Language, Saussure insists, has an oral tradition that is independent of writing, and it is this independence that makes a pure science of speech possible. Derrida vehemently disagrees with this hierarchy and instead argues that all that can be claimed of writing - eg. that it is derivative and merely refers to other signs - is equally true of speech. But as well as criticising such a position for certain unjustifiable presuppositions, including the idea that we are self-identical with ourselves in 'hearing' ourselves think, Derrida also makes explicit the manner in which such a hierarchy is rendered untenable from within Saussure's own text. Most famously, Saussure is the proponent of the thesis that is commonly referred to as "the arbitrariness of the sign", and this asserts, to simplify matters considerably, that the signifier bears no necessary relationship to that which is signified. Saussure derives numerous consequences from this position, but as Derrida points out, this notion of arbitrariness and of "unmotivated institutions" of signs, would seem to deny the possibility of any natural attachment (OG 44). After all, if the sign is arbitrary and eschews any foundational reference to reality, it would seem that a certain type of sign (ie. the spoken) could not be more natural than another (ie. the written). However, it is precisely this idea of a natural attachment that Saussure relies upon to argue for our "natural bond" with sound (25), and his suggestion that sounds are more intimately related to our thoughts than the written word hence runs counter to his fundamental principle regarding the arbitrariness of the sign. — SEP
On Braver’s narrative, Kant’s Copernican revolution inaugurates anti-realism by allowing him to conceive of phenomena as dependent upon the structuring activity of the mind; this provides the basis, as well, for Kant’s rejection of correspondence truth. On the other hand, Kant still retains a realist view of the “transcendental” subject responsible for this structuring work, as well as the notorious “realist” commitment to the reality of noumena or things-in-themselves. It is Hegel’s critique of the latter commitment in particular, according to Braver, that produces the more thoroughgoing anti-realism of the Phenomenology of Spirit and substantially leads to the decisive Hegelian claim (essential to all varieties of continental anti-realism that follow) for the necessarily historical character of all philosophical inquiry. The rejection of realism about noumena also leads Hegel, according to Braver, to see reality as “mind-dependent” in another, and more radical, way than Kant had. In particular, relying rather heavily on contemporary “social pragmatist” interpretations, Braver suggests that Hegel ultimately sees Spirit as a kind of “communal intelligence” coming about through the intersubjectivity of a speech community and that the culmination of the system of the Phenomenology in “Absolute Knowledge” expresses the deeply anti-realist claim that “there is no higher court of appeal for our beliefs than our community”
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