re: [PEIRCE-L] the essence and emptiness of meaning

[John F Sowa]

Gary F,
  
 I enjoy browsing through your Turning Signs from time to time -- mainly 
because you put more emphasis on the questions than the answers.  Any 
particular answers can become obsolete, but questions always remain fresh.  
One set of answers always leads to more questions.  For any truly 
interesting question, there is no such thing as  a final answer.
  
 In my book, Conceptual Structures (1984), the first six chapters had a lot 
of answers.  Many of them are still quite good, but updating them would be 
a huge amount of work.  But Chapter 7 raises the questions and loose ends 
that were not answered. 
  
 One reviewer said that Ch 7 seems to refute everything in the previous six 
chapters.  But it doesn't refute them.  It just points out the many loose 
ends for which the answers are incomplete.  After 38 years, much more has 
been written about those questions, but the answers are just as incomplete 
as they ever were..  The main thing that has changed is that there are now 
many more questions.
  
 See below for the opening paragraph of Chapter 7 and the URL to the rest.
  
 John
  
 --
  
 7. Limits of Conceptualization

No theory is fully understood until its limitations are recognized. To 
avoid the presumption that
conceptual mechanisms completely define the human mind, this chapter 
surveys aspects of the mind
that lie beyond (or perhaps beneath) conceptual graphs. These are the 
continuous aspects of the
world that cannot be adequately expressed in discrete concepts and 
conceptual relations.
  
 http://jfsowa.com/pubs/cs7.pdf

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Aw: [PEIRCE-L] the essence and emptiness of meaning

[Helmut Raulien]

Gary F., List,

 

I like this topic. Maybe "essence" is the meaning of a thing, and a thing does not have a meaning by itself ("There is no thing in itself", who said that?), but a meaning attached to a thing, such as a Saussurian word, merely exists as a structural part of a system (like a language). And the knowledge, that such a structural part, a general meaning, is not for granted and not necessarily universal, perhaps is the said "emptiness". So "meaning" originally is not two-valued, it only appears so, in the context of a system, by not regarding the system as such, but by taking it intuitively for granted. This is a downside of intuition, not seeing the system one is used to, commonly referred to as "operational blindness".

 

By reading "meaning" closely, that is, not taking any system for granted, "meaning" becomes three-valued: Something first means something second for someone or something third- exclusively so in the first place.

 

To take this starting point should not lead to nominalism though: That a meaning is not necessarily universal, does not mean, that there are no general meanings provided by the universe: Of course there are, such as natural laws. But there are also many general (or quasi-general) meanings provided by non-universal systems, such as species, cultures, languages. To call them empty, might that mean, to see, that they are not for granted, and that you cannot rely on them in a universal way? Because philosophy and religion, and something between or being both, like Buddhism, always is looking for universal matters.

 

Best

Helmut

 
 

15. Juni 2022 um 15:10 Uhr
 g...@gnusystems.ca
wrote:




List,

The ongoing updating of points in my online book Turning Signs has generated another mini-essay, this time connecting texts from Buddhist philosophy, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, biology and even physics with Peircean semiotic/logic and phaneroscopy. It may be difficult to follow for those unfamiliar with some of the above, but I’ve included some hyperlinks to contexts that may help to elucidate the terms and concepts involved. I hope it’s not too eclectic to be useful. Anyway it’s at Closure and Disclosure (TS ·10) .

Gary f.

Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg

} Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve. [Wheeler] {

https://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs

 

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[PEIRCE-L] the essence and emptiness of meaning

[gnox]

List,

The ongoing updating of points in my online book Turning Signs 
  has generated another mini-essay, this time 
connecting texts from Buddhist philosophy, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, 
biology and even physics with Peircean semiotic/logic and phaneroscopy. It may 
be difficult to follow for those unfamiliar with some of the above, but I’ve 
included some hyperlinks to contexts that may help to elucidate the terms and 
concepts involved. I hope it’s not too eclectic to be useful. Anyway it’s at 
Closure and Disclosure (TS ·10)   .

Gary f.

Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg

} Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve. 
[Wheeler] {

https://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs

 

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► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP;  moderated by Gary Richmond;  and 
co-managed by him and Ben Udell.