SUO: Re: Comment #9 "Meaning"
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Schoening, James R CECOM DCSC4I wrote:
>
> Let's address Bill Burket's comments on the essential role
> of the human mind in the specification of 'meaning.'
>
> Bill Burkett comments:
>
> As I stated above, I think it is a big mistake to
> divorce the SUO from human minds. Do so would be
> similar to assumed objectivity of physical sciences
> (i.e., independence of natural phenomena from observer)
> that was discredited by, for example, Heisenberg's
> Uncertainty Principle (the observer affects the
> thing observed). Our goal in the specification
> of the meaning of the components of the SUO must
> include the recognition that a precise definition
> that means the same thing to all people at all times
> is impossible and seek instead to simply try and
> maximize it.
>
> Bill prefaced this comment with the following background:
>
> I believe that "meaning" and "knowledge" only exist in the human mind.
> Every externalization of this "stuff" is merely a representation that
> has no inherent meaning. (A corollary to this is that I believe that
> that anthropomorphizing of computer systems is a self-defeating mistake
> because by confusing the roles of machine and human it interferes with
> clear understanding of what computer systems can and can't do. Terms
> like "Inference engines" and "knowledge representation" refer to clever
> data processing to my mind (and my apologies to those whom this statement
> might offend :-) .)
>
> * I believe that whatever-it-is that happens in a human mind that
> is "meaning" is a real-world phenomena that should be part of the
> world view that backs the SUO we develop. (Thus, "possible worlds"
> do exist in the real world as mental phenomena.) Said another way,
> I think it is a big mistake to omit the human mental element from
> our account of "meaning" in the SUO because that is the only place
> in the universe where "meaning" really means anything. (Because
> if human minds didn't exist, the question of whether or not there
> is any "meaning" out there in the world is completely moot.)
>
> * Any physical manifestion of meaning - i.e., physical representations
> intended to recreate the a selected phenomenon in my mind within the
> mind of another person perceiving the representation - is at best an
> imperfect and imprecise mechanism.
>
> =========end of comments from Bill Burkett====
>
> Any responses? If accepted, how would this change the Scope and/or Purpose?
>
> Jim Schoening
SUO,
I am of two minds about this question of meaning,
as are most of the people that I have encountered,
once they begin to think about the issue in earnest.
For one, there are the "denotative" meanings or the "references"
of a sign, expression, text, oeuvre -- let's stick with "sign"
for short -- notice that I speak of them in the plural, since
I believe that singularities are extremely exceptional cases.
These are the objects and objectives in the world that a sign
really refers to for the sake of a particular interpreter.
For another, there are the "connotative" meanings or the "senses"
of a sign. From my point of view, a perspective that I borrow
from the pragmatic theory of signs, these are just more signs,
alternative, associated, equivalent, implied, or interpretive
signs in relation to the initial signs, but signs all the same.
But what you have to understand, in order to understand these
pragmatic folks, is that these so-called "interpretant signs"
include among their variety the whole array of interpretive
acts, impressed affects, mental concepts, cognitive ideas,
and anything else that can take up the appropriate role in
a certain sort of three-place relation, one that places in
relation its domains of objects, signs, and interpretants.
Thus, you could think of a particular sign relation,
in extensional terms, as a relational database with
three columns, headed "Object", "Sign", "Interpretant".
This is where you can begin to finesse the issue of
mental representation, that is, to work around what
would otherwise be a host of troubling metaphysical
questions, the likes of which we are not likely to
be anything like wise enough to solve at this time.
For looking at things this way allows one to take up
a "formal and relational" (FAR) point of view, that is,
a perspective from which only the forms of the relations
are of pressing concern, not the nigh impossible questions,
for us in our present station between absolute ignorance and
relative knowledge, as to what the invariant essences are, or
what the permanent substances are, or what the ontology of ideas,
whether platonic, cartesian, lockean, kantian, freudian, and so on
is really, really like in real life.
I have an old paper on this topic, the pragmatic theory of signs, and,
not so incidentally, its relation to the pragmatic theory of inquiry.
It was written for quite another audience, for sure, and I realize
that the time for summer reading has just disappeared, but a few
parts of it may still be of interest in the current connection.
Anyway, here is the link, for what it's worth:
<http://www.shss.montclair.edu/inquiry/fall95/awbrey.html>
Jon
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