King's Indian

This is a spin-off from a post by John Page on the Some remarks on Continental Philosophy Thread. It will look at some ideas about reality as suggested by:
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...656#post856656
(Before starting, though, one quick point to clear up: John, I think we're using two different meanings of the term "binary",”. I hope to discuss your meaning, which I will paraphrase as “referential ambiguity” more thoroughly below, but the one I was using was more to do with "binary opposition": ie, a paraphrase of Luiseach's “Stubborn either/or tendency")

As I don’t want to get myself into a muddle too quickly, I’ll divide the following under headings:
Language
On definitions:
The statement: “The phrase ‘A smilie means this picture to the right of the words, ’ is a definition” may be open to criticism (Not that anyone has stated this, BTW). This is because the word “this” functions as a pointing finger, a contextual reference, and when used in a phrase only conveys the meaning specified in that immediate context. If the phrase is transplanted into another, however, the pointing finger may find itself indicating something else entirely. Of course, this opens up its applicability for usage generally. For example, by writing the phrase down in a book on paintings to the left of a reproduction of “The Mona Lisa”, the fact that its original meaning has been lost would not be evident (It might be a rather sarky comment pencilled in the margin by an art student). Only if you knew its provenance, starting from here (Where? See below) would you know it as a phrase whose true meaningfulness belongs in another context. In contrast, the definition of a term aims to be applicable only to that term and its proper context. It does this, I think, by making itself a tautology of the term defined as much as possible. One may say that a definition’s meaningfulness increases with its precision. A “parsnip”, for example, may be defined as “a biennial, umbelliferous plant”, adding as many distinctions necessary to separate it from similar plants. In this case, such a definition, written down next to Mona Lisa, would not re-attach itself to its new context, and may be said to lose meaning. In one sense, then, a word’s meaning (the precision of its definition) increases in inverse proportion to the range of applicability of that word, but in defining our reality, applicability may be more important than meaning.
On Meaning:
The definitions of meaning that I’ve come across all relate to concepts like intention, purpose, design. What is intended of course is signification, sense, etc. This doesn’t imply that something has to be conscious, or have a goal to have meaning. Although we may say things “mean” something, we know that the thing is not an agent, but a patient in this process. (The agent being a self-aware entity of some description, and I am assuming common-sense examples)
On Context:
To say that “this”, as I did above, serves as a kind of index (and so useful in almost any context) I would have to apply the same criterion to the word “here” itself. This may seem paradoxical, but the fact remains that this word, which may be applied by any self-aware entity in its immediate context in order to denote "presence", is applicable anywhere and according to my previous assertion, meaningless. In a way, we all know this through common experience: “Where are you?”; “Here.”; “..?”. “Now” may represent an analogous, but not identical form of this. “So-and-so said do it now.”; “When did he say that?”. To say, then, that “here” and “now” have little meaning seems necessary in order for language to exist. Otherwise there would be as many specific “here and now”s as there are contexts and no generally applicable terms (no “parsnip” as such, but an almost uncountable number of terms for all the parsnips that ever were, or could be). But it also seems necessary for reality too. Any context, to be so defined, (to have meaning) has to have the potential to be real because it may always be someone’s immediate context. “To be so defined”? “To have meaning”?
Reality
How may we define reality? To give it meaning? I don’t think it is possible to even approach an answer to this without the concepts “I”, Here” and “now”. This is because our reality (when using everyday concepts) is usually expressed in the first instance in terms of presence. We may then extend this definition; from our immediate context, present to ourselves, to other places and times that we may remember, or anticipate. As a matter of fact, contexts where “I, here, now” strictly don’t apply. This is made possible by the lack of specificity in the meaning of the terms “I”, etc. But notice what this does to the concept of reference (“referential integrity”). If definition does indeed strive toward tautology, then the reality that I experience cannot be defined with the fullest precision by anything other than itself. To return to the quotation at the top of the page: The example of the referential ambiguity of the “smilie” has been posited as how two people (John Page and I) may come to some agreement on external reality. To make the example more understandable, he has assumed a context where we are present to each other and the “smilie”. Although I understand his example, he has done it by referring to a hypothetical reality that is not, never has, and can never be real. We may compare notes in each other’s presence concerning the “smilie”; we certainly cannot compare notes in such a way concerning a hypothetical shared "reality" itself. The meaning of reality by way of reference to the idea of here and now must lack something specific, or otherwise “here” for me would mean “this room, in this flat, in this Croydon”. What allows the possibility of an agreed definition about reality using that which is not real? How may we refer to reality, meaning, etc without being forced into the cul-de-sac of lack and tautology?
The way I want to proceed, in thinking about our shared reality, and how meaning (with relation to my paragraph about meaning above) may be attached to common objects, is by looking at some ideas about “reflection”.
Before that, I want to make sure that I’m not too far ahead of myself, so I welcome any comments.
Take care.
KI

Amos

Go ahead, I think I am with you.

To think is to infer, to criticize and to search but to "reflect" is to ponder about what it means to think and try to make our own mind the subject of our thinking. It is a form of contemplation wherein we enter the divine, I would say, or there would be no reality to share. As one Antisthenes remarked: "O Plato, I see a horse, but horseness I do not see." In this sense, it is difficult to see much reality in a "smily" or in a "birthday."

John Page

KI:

Roasted parsnips. Yum.

Here is my description of Reality.

Its all real, we're just arguing about the form as it appears to us!

. <- is real, but we have learned how to copy and transmit the informational content.

Any more <insert picture of a parsnip> left?

Cheers, John

King's Indian

Hello again,
(To digress: just as I was drafting this on Word, that bastard Clipit popped out and asked if I wanted help writing a letter. I hate Clipit. He looks at you and looks at you and makes you end up feeling dirty)
To briefly pick up on a few points:
Amos.As I hope to show you, you anticipate one of my points (in your definition of “reflect”) rather nicely. I actually think all aspects of consciousness have something of the divine about them. Where I think we differ, however, is that this is to me a matter of strict analogy. I agree with your Auntie Sthenes: We do not see horseness. I will try to see if the direction that my thoughts are taking me clarifies the problem of conceptualization. Thanks for your thoughts.
John. As John Searle says, “football games and cocktail parties”. The point I was trying to make above was that you postulated an example where we were present to each other in order to determine meaning (in my previous assertion, a common way of treating reality for us all: If I think about the question of what is truly real, my first thought is to glance around myself). By doing so, your example itself was not real in the same way as presence. Now that I’ve seen your link (with its four-way division of reality by the axes Physical/Imaginary and Known/Unknown), I see your point. Again, I’ll try and fit what I’m trying to say around this, if I can. If we find ourselves discussing something similar in future, may I assume your link to be your default position? (I hope, with some pushing, that this thread will end up as mine). If so, I wonder if you’d mind clarifying a couple of points on your idea of time:1.
In your model, time seems to be a secondary consideration: is this for the sake of argument? On the other hand, the axis known/unknown seems to imply a temporal element (in this I am reminded of a description of some Amerindian language group who envisages the past as “in front”, and the future “behind”. This being because we can see our past, but not our future).
2. Your model of time is divided into past/future, with the actual partition being reality. This also reminds me of Aristotle’s Physics (Book 4), “In one sense, it (the present instant) has been and is no longer, in another, it will be and isn’t yet”. Although I Agree with both of you, it still makes the present a negative concept. It doesn’t seem to accord with sense. I’ll stop now before I start flinging half-digested lumps of phenomenology at you.
(By the way, I always have time for people who write poetry. I myself don’t have the bottle)
“Food, food, food! Is that all you think about?” (I never pass up the chance to quote “Gregory’s Girl”.)
Look after yourselves,
KI.

John Page

KI: Apologies for brief response, am pushed for time!
Yes, but not absolutely . Its just a reference model.
Not negative, more the meeting point between what we have come to know and that which we know not yet. The mind perceives it so because there is competitive advantage in taking that which we know to estimate what may happen in the future.

Cheers, John

Amos

Sorry I missed a day here. Thanks KI but when you say the whatness of parsnips I think about the horseness of a horse because there is more horseness to a horse then there is whatness to a parsnip for the simple reason that a horse is more complex then a parsnip. That is, you can love parnips but you cannot love a parsnip-- even if some parsnips are better than others.

Go ahead, I can see the divine in all consciousness for the simple reason that we must extrapolate our science from omniscience. Athestines or Athestinian? Either way, he knew the difference because he was from Athens.