Frances to Cheerskep and others... When several thinkers give and take ideas together it is essential that there must be contact and exchange and harmony, if eventually they attempt to assent and concur and agree. The use of a common repertory with signs is a means, but it is only a crude start. The signs will bear some information well enough, but whether the signs will yield and endure the results expected is simply a matter of degree. If persons join to discuss and argue a topic, they admittedly should share a clear notion of what each other has in mind with the key terms used. The topic may be very worthy, but without a good method to assure a common clarity of what is intended to be meant by the terms then little progress will be made. In any event, humans as signers must first use assumptions and presumptions and speculations as the initial stage in the communication of information, because they can never know with certainty or exactness the full meaning and truth of a sign, regardless if the situation be artistic or scientific. Whether the meaning is furthermore held to be supported by some philosophic theory of objectivity or relativity or subjectivity there will always be a muddy degree of haze and fog. The source of confusion in agreeing on the combined meaning of a sign can indeed be the different theories used to support the idea, and the different fields of study that the terms and meanings and truths of signs exist in. Nonetheless, there will never be any pure and sure meaning of any positive kind without further interpretation. The global subjective positivism espoused by the mental and notional and nominal camps is often useful as a special theory to support particular issues in selected situations, but as a global approach to address meaning this is a myth that will never exist. The human brain and mind is simply not able to do it. This is why humans must use phenomenal signs that merely seem to bear any real and true meaning. If an idea could be sent from one thinking mind to another thinking mind without signs and their needed interpretive inference, then something other than humans are communing. To insist otherwise is to arrogantly lack understanding and humility and humanity. All any human mind can do is make a good conjectural guess at what may be meant by a sign and held as a vision or notion or nomination in the other mind, and then correctly forgive each other for our natural failures. It is the only human thing to do, because the human can do no other.
PS The discussion about "meaninglessness" and the assumed failure for persons to convey exactly what notion of "meaning" might be held in mind was not a waste of time, because it stimulated others to conclude this very fact of failure, which actually was likely due to the theory of meaning held in mind, rather than to the meaning of the term. Cheerskep wrote... In a message dated 6/29/09 10:57:31 AM, [email protected] writes: What is the point of this entire thread? I had a specific point, a potential utility, for entering this thread. It had little to do with the "text" of the discussion, and much to do with the method: I saw it as an opportunity to compel some listers to see how often they will join in an argument with no clear notion of what the other guy has in mind with a key word. I maintain the A.C. Ewing quote I cited was right on point: That guy commenced a would-be "important" essay about "meaninglessness" without conveying just what his notion of 'meaning' was. (He simply assumed everyone knew what he had in mind when he said it's the meaning of 'meaning' that one saw displayed in Strand Magazine.) So Ewing, and many other subtle, learned, and shallow philosophers of that era who embraced Ewing essay, wasted an immense amount of time on an effort that could not possibly lead to anything conclusive. This is directly parallel to what many listers repeatedly do. And we should not do it because among the muddy results is a waste of time similar to Ewing's.
