At 05:38 PM 2006/02/08, James N Rose wrote:
>Igor,
>
>Your witty sarcasm is probably closer to the
>way-of-things than you would be comfortrable
>admitting.
>
>Meaning is not 'created whole-cloth' .. but it
>-is- an emergent -- in that it arises when one
>system or tier encounters and coordinates information
>with itself and environs.
>
>But more explicitly, 'meaning' is -extracted from-
>information potentia .. which is or has-been made
>.. utile for another system or systemic adjunct .
>
>Meaning arises in situations of purposeful APPLICATION.
>And -that- does not require ... 'mind'.
>
>If you want to restrict the definiiton of 'meaning'
>to human pertinence only, then of course 'mind' would
>be a present component and a likely 'requisite', but,
>in generalist standing, 'mind' is not required for
>'meaning'.
>
>
> > Igor Rojdestvenski wrote:
> >
> > Dear colleagues,
> >
> > Something is certainly lost in translation.
> > Is there a meaning outside the mind?
> > Is it not that WE create a meaning in the
> > process of discourse?
> >
> > If yes, then in the chemical (or any other)
> > hierarchies there are no meanings,
> > but a possibility of a meaning, should an
> > appropriate mind come nearby.
> >
> > If not, then we need to define meaning before
> > we start discussing such involved questions.
> >
> > Maybe my education is not enough to perceive
> > the subtleties, but I think that I am unable to
> > understand, whether meaning is preserved or not
> > before I receive a clear definition of meaning.
> >
> > Otherwise it is too vague, and we may as well
> > do a very simple trick.
> >
> > Just find something that is preserved in
> > chemical hierarchies, and then call it meaning :))))))
I also worry about the last issue Igor raises, and I have expressed
it recently in the context of sociality adding new degrees of
freedom. In some cases it does, and in other cases it doesn't. We
need to have a principled way of distinguishing the two. Likewise
with meaning. Here I agree with Jamie, that meaning will be an
emergent phenomenon (again we need a principled -- and this at least
means testable -- way to distinguish emergent from non-emergent and
emergent phenomena). If we don't keep to some testable principles we
end up arguing only about how words are to be used, and here nobody
can be right -- such argument is pointless. Trying to find the real
meaning of X, whatever X is, harks back to a sort of magicalism where
words themselves have power (not to say that words cannot have power,
but that is a testable hypothesis as well).
On the issue of mind and meaning. Suppose that Jamie is wrong (I
don't think so, but for the sake of argument), and meaning only
exists if there is mind. I would say that it is equally plausible
that there is mind only if there is meaning; in other words meaning
is a logical precondition for mind. Then we would have "If there is
mind then there is meaning, and if there is meaning there is mind".
This would make the two coextensive, modulo some grammatical
niceties, but it would not make them the same thing. If we were to
hold this hypothesis then, we would need to explain their
relationship. If the relationship is by definition, then we have
achieved nothing but to say how we will use the words, and there is
no explanation, but a stipulation. On the other hand, we might want
to argue that the connection is empirical. We should then be able to
test it. We can't just go out and see if each is coextensive with the
other, since this would beg the question. Instead we need to find
suitable definitions of mind and meaning so that they are not
logically dependent on each other (or else we fall into the
definition triviality trap). Once this is done, it becomes an
empirical question whether other things have meaning in the way that
mind does. So the question of whether there is meaning in chemical
hierarchies becomes an empirical question.
Another interesting question: if it should turn out that meaning does
coexist only with mind and always with mind, then why is this so? I
think the answer would tell us a lot about both meaning and mind.
Even if there are mindless meanings, there is still a substantive
question of why meanings that come with mind and vice versa do so: is
there something special about these meanings that we can test for in
many cases? Can these cases be extended? Again, the answers can be
quite revealing. However if the linkages are merely a construction
resulting from how we use words, then I submit that anything
"learned" would be pretty trivial, telling us more about language
than about anything else. This is the fallacy of much of analytic
philosophy -- it purports to be about the analysis of concepts, but
if it relies only on linguistic evidence, then it does not tell us
about concepts (meanings), but about how we use words. We should,
after Wittgenstein, not get caught up in this seduction by language.
It leads at best to what Putnam calls "magical theories of
reference", or else to the demise of reference as a useful notion
completely (its trivialization).
In summary -- testable hypotheses -- testable, testable, testable.
Without that, we have at best distinctions with no pragmatic
difference. That means no information.
Cheers,
John
Professor John Collier collierj@ukzn.ac.za
Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa
T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031
http://www.nu.ac.za/undphil/collier/index.html
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Received on Thu Feb 9 08:04:23 2006
