Yes..'meaning' is a side issue which might arise in the case of problematic action decisions. Further social transactions (extending the action context) tend to resolve potential ambiguities

Translation problems between languages yield some interesting examples of 'action dilemas', a pertinent example being the word 'representation' itself which can be translated as either Vorstellung or Darstellung in German which have differential connotations within both Kantian and Heideggerian philosophy.
(indeed, i believe one German philosopher, possibly Hegel, even said 'you can't do philosophy without German !)

And 'truth' is surely a word which potentially triggers what happens next...as in a courtroom verdict...or whether to heed a weather forecast....or whether to embrace religious observance.

To All

Having recently joined this forum seeking a more contemporary approach to 'philosophy', I am somewhat disappointed in what I find.

On the specific issue of 'meaning', where, I ask, (following die Kehre ), is the discussion of Wittgenstein's adage 'meaning is use' ? Where I ask is discussion of the major shift to nonrepresentationalism in language ?...or where is Derrida's point that 'meaning' even for the author of text, dynamically shifts ? (merely dismissing that 'Derrida' on this won't do !).

Hence my accusation of 'dancing' (or as Wittgenstein might have called it, Geschwätz)

You qoted T Clark's statement about what we call the universe being observer-dependent. For me, his point is self evident without the need for an appeal to contextual 'truth' which impacts on 'agreement about terms'. In short, it is for me the recognition of a quest for a vantage point transcendent of the synthetic dichotomy 'observer-observed' which is only philosophical action worth taking,
(That action has been variously attempted and shows some promise in investigating, for example, Wittgenstein's approach to meaning.: Ref [Rosch "Prototype Theory".)

In the case of 'talking about meaning' I remain bemused that you can't see that your exhortation for 'things to be clearly stated' is equivalent to the apocryphal 'turtles all the way down' assertion !

To All
There are one or two respondents here who are observing 'the dancing' for what it is. I refer to those to whom it is obvious that 'meaning' is inextricably enmeshed in the praxis of living. I suggest that it may be only by communing with the neologisms used, or the analysis of living in references like those I cited, that they might avoid being drawn back onto the dance floor.

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'.

Ah!...a foxtrot into what we call 'the past' !...what could be called retrodiction, the bedfellow of prediction which helps fuel those confidence levels !
I doubt whether it would be worth going into 'time as a psychological construct' (Einstein) or 'things are just repepetitive events' or 'past and future are parochially ordered like up and down'(Rovelli), whilst you are wearing your comfortable philosophers dancing shoes.

No, thats more incestuous 'word salad'. What is 'knowledge' or 'belief' other than 'degree of confidence in the results of potential action' ?.
...dance on by all means....!

To whom was the ad hom suggestion addressed ?

Options — fresco

You fail to get my point because you fail to understand that talking about language is in essence an infinite regress equivalent to pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.
The only 'given' we can start from is that we are clever primates with a complex set of socially acquired behavioral gestures ,we call 'human language' which segments what we call 'the world'. The abstract persistence of 'words' (internalised gestures) act as place markers for focal aspects of that shifting flux we call 'things' allowing us to attempt to predict and control aspects of our world relative to our lifespans and our pattern seeking. Place markers are not 'representational' of 'things in themselves', they are contextual memory aids within potential action plans.
'Meaning' is about the internal visualization of a 'potential to act'.
The meaning of 'chair' is (usually) 'potential to sit upon'. The meaning lf 'unicorn' is 'potential to observe a picture of, but never enounter, a type of animal'.
(References: Heidegger ...'caring'. Merleau-Ponty...'affordances'. Maturana...'languaging' is a behavior which coordinates behavior'.)

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'.

Since 'meaning' is contingent on 'speech acts' , your title 'let's talk about meaning' could be construed as 'lets eat our tongues' !
BTW, an attempt to divert 'meaning' onto a property of 'things' seems equally mentally incestuous to me since 'thinghood' already presupposes that aspect of language behavior we call 'naming' (the first or nominal level of measurement)', which is used to denote significant focus of human attention.
In short, 'meaning' is about 'what matters' both individually and socially and we attempt to organise that shifting state of affairs via a socially acquired combination of gestures we call 'language'.

On the basis that one definition of 'psychosis' is 'an inabilty to function in normal social life', then the only implication with respect to 'reality' would be on the basis that 'reality is a social construction'. This ties in with my anthropological point above, that in some cultures an individual that we might label 'psychotic', in their own culture might occupy a position of social standing (like 'witch doctor'). We might also note that totalitarian regimes like the former Soviet Union tended to label dissenters from their imposed social reality as 'psychotic'.

I agree with Wayfarer's point that this is a false analogy. The significant issue in 'scientific prediction' is to draw attention or generate 'data' which up to that point prior to the theory, had remained unobserved or ignored.
Nor is the case that 'a failed prediction' would completely 'refute' the theory...rather it would delimit its applicability or lead to modification.

I like the concept of 'morphic resonance', but I suggest we should also bear in mind that for Sheldrake this appears to lead inevitably to concepts of 'holistic consciousness' which have resulted in his advocating 'the benefits' of general ritual religious practices.

What some cultures call 'psychosis' , others have called 'in contact with a spirit world' (etc)..
This implies that 'reality' is a word which denotes that 'statistical consenus' we might expect from humanity possessing a common physiology, and common social and psychological needs which direct perception.

You might find that a Venn diagram with two intersecting circles is simpler to understand than the propositional logic.

If the premise were True, only C would be invalid, therefore if the premise is False, A, B and D are invalid and C is valid.

Think
You might like to read this associated thread.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5901/existence-is-relative-not-absolute

The important question is not "what is truth." It's "what do I do now.

Spot on !

There may be no such thing as 'objective knowledge'. The phrase ' reason for knowing' implies that.
Nor can are 'perceived patterns' be considered 'objective'. It might be better to use 'overall consensus'
from a species pov, instead of 'objective' . The deconstruction of the subjective/objective dichotomy is prominent issue in epistemology..

You may be missing the 'skills' and 'motivational' aspect of 'knowledge'. We know 'that' but also 'how'.
And 'reasons for knowing' can operate at both an individual and a social level. These in turn raise the issue of selectivity of direction of knowledge, i.e. the 'vectoring of epistemology' which is partially encompassed by areas like 'the sociology of knowledge' or the notion of 'paradigms'.

NB Piaget's 'Genetic Epistemology' may be a useful model for discussing those points.

As long as 'pilots' have ultimate control over a plane's technology, then they can validly said to be 'in error' when that control was inadequate. Given current technological advances it might be interesting to do a survey on whether or not passengers would choose the potential option of having a pilot at all. I think I would!

I suggest there are no conflicting 'appearances' ... only conflicting 'potential contextual expectancies'.
The depth signs round a swimming pool are warnings in that respect for those swimmers unaware of 'the apparent depth' issue.
In short, I am saying 'is-ness' is always related to human expectancies.
(Frogs 'expect food to be moving'. They starve when experimentally surrounded by what humans call 'dead flies'. For frogs there is no food source.)

Human knowledge evolves. It involves the coexistence and coextension of what we might call 'observer states' and 'world states'. At any historical stage or area in this process there might occur a hiatus, or impasse, which the observer might call 'lack of understanding'. This tends to be partially resolved by what Kuhn called 'paradigm shifts' involving a mutual restructuring of 'observers' and 'their world view'.

Can there be a transcendent 'vantage point' from which this epistemological evolution can be 'observed'? I suggest 'philosophy' could and should fulfil that role and in particular examine the 'human forces' which drive that evolution like 'enhanced control' and 'rivalry'.

Rule 1
When dealing with 'language' concepts about 'concepts are all we've got !

And 'existence of life elsewhere' still a functional question relative to human 'expectancies' like the utility of abiogenetic speculation. . That is why large amounts of money are spent in trying to answer it.
As for 'reality', pragmatists might argue that this is a word which denotes the concept of 'universal consenus as to what is the case', which is to be expected due to the concept of 'our common physiology'. Kant and later phenomenologists point out that 'things-in-themselves' are either inaccessible, or even a useless concept.
(I acknowledge agreement with the post above which I only read after writing this reply).

I suggest the 'language on holiday' issue here applies to the word 'exist', which is itself a concept like any other. Concepts stand or fall on the basis of their functionality with respect to human planning.
We know 'chairs exist' due to the set of interactional expectancies the word 'chair' signifies.
It is irrelevant to then argue about 'the atomic structure of chairs', because it has no effect on the utility of 'chairs' for us (except perhaps in terms of materials science). The concept 'existence' applied to 'chairs', or 'molecules' or 'gods' implies nothing other than the functional utility of those concepts which varies according to context and user. So molecular contextual users of 'existence' have nothing to say to god contextual users of 'existence' other than to argue about utility. They are both on holiday in 'hotel existence' (probably in the bar!).

Thankyou to all above
It seems to me that the single word most resistant to discussion is 'understanding'.
In that respect it seems ridiculous not to include 'observer states' as a crucial issue.

Thankyou for that popularist Rovelli article. The impression I get is that this (commercial) reactonary 'posture' is to suggest 'philosophy' could be a name that might be given to 'a valuable process of hypothesis stimulation and comparison'. Piaget''s constructivist
'genetic epistemology' seemed to give a more succinct account of a state transition process between 'consensual knowledge' and 'world' without the need to name specific swayers of zeitgeist, 'philosophical' or otherwise.
I recommend you read Rovelli's 'The Order of Time' before you give judgement on his opinion on 'temporality', especially when he devotes part of it to show how 'time' can be eliminated from the fundamental equations of physics.

You still don't get it. Nobody except perhaps a religious fundamentalist is likely to question 'the age of the universe', because current views on the matter consensually 'work'. Therefore the issue of 'reasonableness' is vacuous. The question is a 'straw man'. However it is also the case that views about 'time' and 'universe' are human constructs open to revision on the basis of 'better' paradigms. Should those paradigms arise, then it will be 'reasonable' to question our current views.
As far as I know, relative to some of the issues involving 'time' and 'matter' in frontier physics (Rovelli, for example), 'the age of the universe' has zero status in terms of 'interest value'. And when discussing 'vacuity' of philosophical questions in physics, we might bear in mind Richard Feynman's riposte to such questions..'Shut up and calculate !'

I suggest you use the word 'nonsense' as a response the demise of 'the given' identified by pragmatists like Rorty (which equates to 'the 'pulling the rug from axioms'). This implies that 'philosophers' have nothing authoritative to say about the content of 'epistemology' other than why they have nothing to say! So questions like 'Is it reasonable to believe that the universe is 14 billion years old ?' are rendered vacuous, because they are predicated on particular views of 'time' and 'the universe' which are not given, they are human constructs whose reasonable use is contextually bound.
So as for what is 'reasonable' to say, I suggest that 'philosophers' might confine their remarks as to the ethics involved in control aspects of epistemology.

(NB My use of the phrase 'in the spirit of the Incompleteness Theorem' should be self evident. If not, ignore it !)

If the statement, "the only ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth" carries 'meaning' for you (as it does for me), then what we call 'thinking' transcends what we call 'logic'.

You are trying point out to 'absolutists' what to me seems the obvious untenability of their position. It seems to me the substantive problem here is that generally pulling the rug away from fixed axioms (In the spirit of the Incompleteness Theorem) is inevitably iconoclastic of 'philosphical debate' per se.
In short, 'turkeys are not going to vote for Christmas' !

As a pragmatist I consider the 'reality' debate to be futile and I doubt whether 'refinement of limits of applicability of scientific paradigms' can be equated with your term 'accuracy'.

The word 'fact' comes from the Latin facere -to construct. Facts are human consensual constructions based on their expected interactions with what we call 'the world'. Bohr can be paraphrased as saying, ''atomic particles' are the names we give to particular types of expected interaction we have as observers'. There is no 'representation' implied. If 'breaking atomic bonds' is a concept which observers find useful to predict further observation, then it is adopted until found to be inaccurate in that respect. (Consider the demise of 'the aether').

Good analysis !
(...irrespective of my reservations about putting 'existence' on a pedestal !)

I did include retrodiction, which would cover your paleontology query. That is a process where proposed antecedents predict/explain current observations.
But you have avoided my question. The 'desire to know' is clearly advantageous in potential control of one's life, even from the trivial povs of 'being respected' or 'self confidence'. And I suggest 'objects or processes of aesthetic value' always have an element of organizational complexity associated with them which by definition involves 'control'.

Okay...define 'knowledge' without reference to 'prediction and control'.

You don't understand. I am not 'denying' common human scenarios like 'dinosaurs before humans'. I am saying that the act of constructing such scenarios is part of a cognitive process which is particular to the needs of humans In their quest to 'predict (or retrodict) and control' what constitutes their 'lives'. Such a quest involves concepts like 'causality' and 'time' which have dubious 'physical status' from a scientific pov. Maybe they are Kantian a priori's i.e. 'hard wired' aspects of our cognitive processes, but from a philosophical pov, it raises the issue of anthropocentrism colouring what we like to call 'reality'.
That is where non-anthropocentric 'systems theory', for example, could offer an alternative approach to ontology and epistemology, or indeed completely deconstruct them.

We cannot 'know' anything about the 'ontological status' of the entities we conceptualize other than they are 'useful' in our epistemological quests to 'predict and control'. Now it may be that from a transcendent pov that 'life' per se is part of a macro system, since the 'nesting concept' has no theoretical limit. (See second order cybernetics, but note that at least one 'systems' advocate, Bernard Scott, has proposed a limit that he calls 'God').

The entities and systems which they conceptualize.

Humans are the judge of 'interaction'.