>>Why do words have meaning? Because we say they do! <<
This is sort of the superficial, everyday understanding of "meaning".
What I was hinting at was MEANING of the variety that (as an analogy) makes it so that the pursuits we do in the first place (such as social conventions and sentences having meaning or not because we say they do) ha…
>>Why do words have meaning? Because we say they do! <<
This is sort of the superficial, everyday understanding of "meaning".
What I was hinting at was MEANING of the variety that (as an analogy) makes it so that the pursuits we do in the first place (such as social conventions and sentences having meaning or not because we say they do) have a Truth Valence or "worthiness" (if you will) to them. This is of course an analogy- The implication being that "the sort of MEANING that these pursuits have is akin to the deeper underlying meaning sentences and propositions have in formal language when we evaluate them"
Anyhow, the point raised was that Materialism (regardless of the variation) cannot give a proper account of this "MEANING". You can certainly get a relational, sociological and "customary" understanding of lower tiers of "meaning" (a la the "because we say they do!" sort of stuff), but "MEANING" as such will be elusive in such a system.
Therefore, the honest materialist who accepts that his model/system fails to say whether or not such a "MEANING" exists or not... he will have (at the moment he makes that admission directly or indirectly) Destroyed his entire Project definitively.
Yes, it is the "superficial, everyday understanding of meaning" and that, IMO, is all there is.
If one tries to attach other meanings to words, one is making up new words, which philosophers do all the time and why I get annoyed with them. Set up a world the way you want it and then, of course, your conclusions will be right. Everything that might contradict has already been excluded.
This is fine in science. We exclude everything but the phenomena of interest so as to understand just that without interference but we don't expect reality to be so kind. We may need several theories.
Rigor in science is fine because we're translating concepts into math and back again. Some of these ideas never existed before and need their own words. However, "entorpy" isn't just another word for "chaos". It's the amount of heat lost from a heat exchange per degree temperature change. The "universe" isn't going to die of entropy. (We have "cliamte chagne" for that. Ha!)
But if you can't explain it ordinary language derived from reality, I think you're just making things up, like "Atlas Shruggged'. It was a novel. I couldn't get thru it. But I did suspect that Dagny would hook up with Galt.
Julius Evola commanded a very erudite style but he never made up words that I know of. He was articulate and he knew what he wanted to say.
"4th Political Theory" is sheer aggravation, not because Alexander Dugin is so smart, but because he really hadn't gotten his ideas sorted out. In "The Great Awakening vs eh Great Reset" he must have either found a good editor or finally discovered exactly what he wanted to say which is what I sort of thought it was but the later work was pleasure to read and the language ordinary and simple.
The deeper meaning most are looking for is just validtion of what they'd alrady decided.
"Cherish those who seek the truth. Beware of those who find it." Voltaire
If the superficial form of "meaning" is all there is then... <<Yes, it is the "superficial, everyday understanding of meaning" and that, IMO, is all there is.>> ... <-- Denote this as X.
X is a Descriptive statement (i.e. of the form "A is B"). So X is either able to prompt certain sequences of Action from said Description (in yourself, others or a combo of the two) or it cannot do so.
Example: The Descriptive statement X *should be able to* prompt in me, you , others, etc (some combo of this) the action of "changing one's mind". Namely toward the view: "Yes, only superficial meaning exists".
If you are correct, then X is unable to do so a la having no "MEANING" of the sort over and above the superficial, and we get a contradiction. Namely, somehow "superficial meaning is all there is" and yet... X is able to prompt in me, you, others, etc aforementioned action (at the minimum).
No statement I make can "change your mind" or promt any action. You're the one who does that. The only meaning is whatever convention assigns to those words which is why legalese and technical writing are so demanding and rigorous i.e., so we can take action iaw wiords. One cannot say, "But that's not how I understood it."
If your understanding is not iaw with convention, you are wrong, not the piece even if it isn't the best example of the art. (and there is a lot of that about!)
Here, "supeficial" means unambiguous.
Ambiguity is what happens from trying to impose some universal theory or philosophy upon reaity when the more limited the theory the more accurate it is.
Bronsted-Lowry is another way to look ar Arrehnius acids and bases and both are simple.
Lewis acids and bases will get yo into organic chemistry.
Oxidation Reduction replaces the whole acid-base idea with electromotive force and we're into batteries although Brinsted-Lowry is the smart way to adjest pH in teh swimmjng pool.
Capitalism describes a system of investment, manufacture and profit but governments also do it, some better than others, but that can be said of private corporations as well.
And, how aren't large corporations "collectives"? At a certain point in size, individual ownership disapperas like it does in state corporation or any municpal project.
Do stock holders have any more say than tax payers? Somtimes less, I would say.
Innovations? Ah, "Mahatten Project"? The ME 163 "Komet"?
Ayn Rand tried to make some univserasl philosophy of "captialism" and "collectivism" into an evil : a pseudo-religion, assigning "meaning" to words like "profit" and "altruism" that they didn't have. It was as much a slight of hand as anything Marx came up with, a Prussian Jew who translated Frederick's "Kamarilla" via the French Revolution into his "holy cause" complate with an Apocalypse and 2nd Coming.
Well, I guess wehave to hand it to Marx for "slight of hand" or, at least, a lot more of it.
But that's how desperate COld War "capitalists" and Republicans were and still are, as though "meritocracy" didn't impinge on "equality".
>>No statement I make can "change your mind" or promt any action. ...<<
It's not the "utterance", but rather the proposition and/or the statement *as such* I was speaking about. I would agree with you if it was the former; but the latter is very different. If there was not "Gap" with regard to Descriptive qualities (i.e. "able to pinpoint") and Active qualities (i.e. "able to prompt"), then Formal Language would be the inevitable, Deterministic evolutionary endpoint of Natural Language in every Human Society.
However, not only do we not see this, but rather we see the Collapse of Formal Language systems (the 20th century failure of the Positivist movement was the start, now it has only accelerated) because of their overall inability to find within themselves the Normative standards which justify their own field to begin with.
It's not an accident that "Science" is collapsing as we speak (I can go on a tangent on Stanford and others being caught red handed falsifying all sorts of stuff, but I will desist on that); this is the inevitable result of the "Normative-Descriptive" Gap coming to the fore. And it will only get worse.
>>Why do words have meaning? Because we say they do! <<
This is sort of the superficial, everyday understanding of "meaning".
What I was hinting at was MEANING of the variety that (as an analogy) makes it so that the pursuits we do in the first place (such as social conventions and sentences having meaning or not because we say they do) have a Truth Valence or "worthiness" (if you will) to them. This is of course an analogy- The implication being that "the sort of MEANING that these pursuits have is akin to the deeper underlying meaning sentences and propositions have in formal language when we evaluate them"
Anyhow, the point raised was that Materialism (regardless of the variation) cannot give a proper account of this "MEANING". You can certainly get a relational, sociological and "customary" understanding of lower tiers of "meaning" (a la the "because we say they do!" sort of stuff), but "MEANING" as such will be elusive in such a system.
Therefore, the honest materialist who accepts that his model/system fails to say whether or not such a "MEANING" exists or not... he will have (at the moment he makes that admission directly or indirectly) Destroyed his entire Project definitively.
Yes, it is the "superficial, everyday understanding of meaning" and that, IMO, is all there is.
If one tries to attach other meanings to words, one is making up new words, which philosophers do all the time and why I get annoyed with them. Set up a world the way you want it and then, of course, your conclusions will be right. Everything that might contradict has already been excluded.
This is fine in science. We exclude everything but the phenomena of interest so as to understand just that without interference but we don't expect reality to be so kind. We may need several theories.
Rigor in science is fine because we're translating concepts into math and back again. Some of these ideas never existed before and need their own words. However, "entorpy" isn't just another word for "chaos". It's the amount of heat lost from a heat exchange per degree temperature change. The "universe" isn't going to die of entropy. (We have "cliamte chagne" for that. Ha!)
But if you can't explain it ordinary language derived from reality, I think you're just making things up, like "Atlas Shruggged'. It was a novel. I couldn't get thru it. But I did suspect that Dagny would hook up with Galt.
Julius Evola commanded a very erudite style but he never made up words that I know of. He was articulate and he knew what he wanted to say.
"4th Political Theory" is sheer aggravation, not because Alexander Dugin is so smart, but because he really hadn't gotten his ideas sorted out. In "The Great Awakening vs eh Great Reset" he must have either found a good editor or finally discovered exactly what he wanted to say which is what I sort of thought it was but the later work was pleasure to read and the language ordinary and simple.
The deeper meaning most are looking for is just validtion of what they'd alrady decided.
"Cherish those who seek the truth. Beware of those who find it." Voltaire
This does not work.
If the superficial form of "meaning" is all there is then... <<Yes, it is the "superficial, everyday understanding of meaning" and that, IMO, is all there is.>> ... <-- Denote this as X.
X is a Descriptive statement (i.e. of the form "A is B"). So X is either able to prompt certain sequences of Action from said Description (in yourself, others or a combo of the two) or it cannot do so.
Example: The Descriptive statement X *should be able to* prompt in me, you , others, etc (some combo of this) the action of "changing one's mind". Namely toward the view: "Yes, only superficial meaning exists".
If you are correct, then X is unable to do so a la having no "MEANING" of the sort over and above the superficial, and we get a contradiction. Namely, somehow "superficial meaning is all there is" and yet... X is able to prompt in me, you, others, etc aforementioned action (at the minimum).
Therefore, you are mistaken my friend.
No statement I make can "change your mind" or promt any action. You're the one who does that. The only meaning is whatever convention assigns to those words which is why legalese and technical writing are so demanding and rigorous i.e., so we can take action iaw wiords. One cannot say, "But that's not how I understood it."
If your understanding is not iaw with convention, you are wrong, not the piece even if it isn't the best example of the art. (and there is a lot of that about!)
Here, "supeficial" means unambiguous.
Ambiguity is what happens from trying to impose some universal theory or philosophy upon reaity when the more limited the theory the more accurate it is.
Bronsted-Lowry is another way to look ar Arrehnius acids and bases and both are simple.
Lewis acids and bases will get yo into organic chemistry.
Oxidation Reduction replaces the whole acid-base idea with electromotive force and we're into batteries although Brinsted-Lowry is the smart way to adjest pH in teh swimmjng pool.
Capitalism describes a system of investment, manufacture and profit but governments also do it, some better than others, but that can be said of private corporations as well.
And, how aren't large corporations "collectives"? At a certain point in size, individual ownership disapperas like it does in state corporation or any municpal project.
Do stock holders have any more say than tax payers? Somtimes less, I would say.
Innovations? Ah, "Mahatten Project"? The ME 163 "Komet"?
Ayn Rand tried to make some univserasl philosophy of "captialism" and "collectivism" into an evil : a pseudo-religion, assigning "meaning" to words like "profit" and "altruism" that they didn't have. It was as much a slight of hand as anything Marx came up with, a Prussian Jew who translated Frederick's "Kamarilla" via the French Revolution into his "holy cause" complate with an Apocalypse and 2nd Coming.
Well, I guess wehave to hand it to Marx for "slight of hand" or, at least, a lot more of it.
But that's how desperate COld War "capitalists" and Republicans were and still are, as though "meritocracy" didn't impinge on "equality".
>>No statement I make can "change your mind" or promt any action. ...<<
It's not the "utterance", but rather the proposition and/or the statement *as such* I was speaking about. I would agree with you if it was the former; but the latter is very different. If there was not "Gap" with regard to Descriptive qualities (i.e. "able to pinpoint") and Active qualities (i.e. "able to prompt"), then Formal Language would be the inevitable, Deterministic evolutionary endpoint of Natural Language in every Human Society.
However, not only do we not see this, but rather we see the Collapse of Formal Language systems (the 20th century failure of the Positivist movement was the start, now it has only accelerated) because of their overall inability to find within themselves the Normative standards which justify their own field to begin with.
It's not an accident that "Science" is collapsing as we speak (I can go on a tangent on Stanford and others being caught red handed falsifying all sorts of stuff, but I will desist on that); this is the inevitable result of the "Normative-Descriptive" Gap coming to the fore. And it will only get worse.