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DiscussionOnMeaning

Temporary; When we can think of a better page name, or perhaps some summary, then we can move this there, or just put the summary there.

This page came out of discussion on InformationKnowledgeAndWisdom.

…continuing:

I hate to recommend this only because it's almost trite to do so, but I'm probably of a generation who simply read it: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Persig covers a lot about objectivity and subjectivity that I wouldn't try to rehash here. In short, if there's an objective reality, we as humans don't have direct access to it – everything is subjective to us, everything is interpretation. There can be no other way. So arguments about an objective reality are kinda pointless, because even if it exists we can only have our subjective perceptions of it.

I'm very firmly on the side of there being simply no universal meanings, not because the chair I'm sitting on doesn't exist or Mickey Mouse doesn't exist, but because existence isn't about meaning. Meaning and interpretation are intertwined, you can't have one without the other. And because interpretation is an intensely personal thing (it's done solely within one's head, and nobody can know entirely how one understands something), meaning is also personal. You and I can agree that Mickey Mouse exists (in whatever way a cartoon character "exists"), but what Mickey means is different for each of us. We could talk about it for several hours to come to an agreement about what Mickey means, but we'd never be able to be sure that we agreed entirely because meaning is very nuanced. And you and I ostensibly come from the same culture and speak the same language.

No, I simply don't buy universals, not at all. Shared meanings within the realm of pragmatic use, but that's not the same thing. I think you have to differentiate between existence and meaning. We both understand that Bill Clinton exists, but what something means is up for grabs, because it's up for interpretation. Even the colloquial meanings of "interpretation" lend that idea weight.

I also think it's very dangerous to believe in universal meanings. This is the kind of thinking that leads to cultural arrogance, bigotry, fascism, all manner of problems. It's the idea that everyone does (or should) think the same way about something. That's not pragmatism, that's authoritarianism, i.e., believing one has some measure of authority on a subject enough to project one's understanding on the whole of humanity. What people believe about life, death, abortion, the environment, government, etc. varies across the world, and there's never been a lack of despots willing to tell a majority that their views are univerally held, or should be (and that those that don't hold those views are immoral, corrupt, misled, misguided, etc.). These people then accuse people like me of relativism. Well, I'm quite happy to accept that label – the contrary point of view is damned scary, the kind of hell George Bush and his cronies are currently promoting in the US.

But then again, the way you say it, it seems as if it were entirely impossible to talk about anything but science. And yet we rarely do in real life. It seems to me that we spend almost our entire life "within the realm of pragmatic use." In fact, I think if you just assume that Lion was talking about pragmatic use, your entire argument falls appart. Looks like a strawman to me, because Lion didn't say that he wanted to solve our most difficult problems in the world. He also admits that there are certain borderline cases ("shimmering" at the edges), but he's not interested in them. He talks about chairs, he says "communication is possible" and "meaning exists" and "people can share interpretation." He's interested in "the realm of pragmatic use," as far as I can tell. And I am, too. The borderline cases should not stop us from using FOAF for pragmatic things, the extreme points of views should not stop us from having opinions, talking about them, etc.

I liked Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, btw. Strangely enough I felt that Lion was doing exactly what the protagonist in that book discovers. There is a quality without a name. If you try to define it, you're doomed because words are not precise enough. And yet we all know what we know. So if you share certain assumptions about the world, you can communicate perfectly. If you don't share all of your assumptions, it gets harder. But Lion said so himself in his post. So basically I feel that Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance taught me a different story: Not about subjectivity and objectivity, but about the limits of language – not the limits of meaning or communication for our everyday "pragmatic" lives.

But perhaps we should return to the discussion at hand.

Im with you here:

  Knowledge = Data + Interpretation
  Knowledge - Interpretation = Data

Information as representing change in one's knowledge:

  New Knowledge = Old Knowledge + Information

I'm not sure delving deeper into terminology is going to help us reach pragmatic goals. Does a deeper theoretical (non-pragmatic) understanding of "interpretation" help us solve problems?

So, we are in agreement, then: When you say universal meaning, you are talking about something very different than what the phrase "universal meaning" intuits in me.

Let's call what I think about: "Universal conceivability." It's about the ability to look at something, and reorient ourselves so that we can see it the same way (more or less) as someone else.

It doesn't mean that you necessarily agree with it. But, you can "hold this thing on the porch," so to speak. You don't have to let it into your house. You can look at this idea, and say, "Ah, I see how he is seeing this. I can see why he feels this, I can see why he thinks this, I can understand why he reacts this way." After that, you can decide what you want to do with it. You can accept the new trinket into your home, or you can reject it. You can pull out a trinket of your own, and say, "That one was nice; How about this?"

Say Mattis saw a bird. You haven't seen the bird, but Mattis has.

And now, Mattis can tell you about seeing the bird. "It was red, it was so beautiful, it had it's right leg up like this, and was twittering like so." If Mattis draws, he can give us more detail. He can draw sketches, and he can do all these things. If he had a camera, he could have taken a picture of us, or a video, and share it with us. Mattis is poetic; He can write down poetry, to repeat the emotional experience of seeing the bird for us.

So, now we know (more or less) what the bird was like.

"Universal Conceivability."

Now, I will demonstrate how this does not lead to facism:

One among us, (not to name names,… AlexSchroeder!) in particular, hates this bird. I mean, Alex absolutely, positively, despises the bird.

He says, "Ugh! It's so ugly! I hate it! I don't want it! It is odius!" He sees it, and he starts throwing rocks.

So, while we have communicated the meaning of the bird, and while we can communicate it with however much fidelity we'd like, the communication is not mind control. We haven't made Alex like the bird. In fact, he may hate it even more.

Poor bird. Alex is so mean that way!

So, this is the ability to share a conception. That is, if we want to, we can lock meaning together.

Pragmatic? Well, people talk.

Facist? I don't think so.

Actually, I think it's the opposite!

I think that there's strength in the ability to look at something, and communicate the experience of it. That is, all those good things we like- Communication, Democracy, Freedom, yadda yadda yadda- I believe they come from this very ability. Without it, we wouldn't be able to understand anybody. And I doubt that there'd be much incentive to not kill each other. I mean: How could we even care about each other, if we can't put ourselves in other peoples' shoes?

When we think about putting ourselves in other people's shoes, we tend to think of it in the following terms:

  1. I am 5 years old.
  2. I hit Tim.
  3. Tim cried.
  4. Mom comes over, and says, "Put yourself in Tim's shoes."

But I want to push this further than that:

I want to say, that if I have an idea that I am envisioning in my head, then I can do things, and you can do things, such that the idea is copied into your head.

And, I'm going to say something pretty radical here, by the standards of this conversation so far:

I'm going to say that I believe perfect discrete replication is possible as well.

Woah-ho-Ho! If that ain't not post-modern, I don't know what is. Isn't. I mean.

The very idea of MurrayAltheim trying to communicate a meaning to me; It seems like you must have, at some level, some faith in this thing that I am working to communicate.

(And, no: A failure to communicate, to me, does not mean that communication doesn't work.)

If you accept that there is something that you want to communicate, and if you accept that you can say what it is, and if you can accept that I can understand what you are saying, and if you accept that I can in turn repeat this to someone else, and the message can be understood in whole, then: I think that validates what I am saying. That we can copy ideas, that we can share a conception. (That is: Shared Conceivability.)

That is how I initially interpreted the phrase "Universal Meaning."

Lion, that long chain of communication breaks at almost each link, though we have no choice as humans but to accept the "pragmatic" outcome of our ability or inability to communicate. No (to answer Alex), this is not a strawman. It's basic 20th century philosophy. I can accept there is something I want to communicate (that goes without saying, i.e., without intention I would not say anything); I can never be sure that I am actually able to articulate what it is I am saying clearly enough to be completely unambiguous; I can't accept that you will understand what I am saying (much less, trying to say); and that I'm absolutely certain that in repeating it to someone else you will change it. You've played the childhood game of getting in a circle and whispering the sentence you heard in one ear to the person next to you, until at the end it is unrecognizable. This doesn't even get into complicated meanings or any kind of true transmission of knowledge, just the simple act of interpreting on input and interpreting on output.

We only believe we share a conception. Even in an environment where everyone receives almost the same instruction, say, in a church, or a boy's school, any individual's understanding of the received instruction will be quite different, as each person is quite different in temperament, interest, personality and experience.

One can define successful communication as the ability to establish sufficient meaning between two people, such that the receiver will act or understand in accord with the received message. Even ignoring failed communication for a moment, where the resulting action or understanding is not in accord, when I bring up the term "universal meaning" I am trying to establish that underlying all of the individual meaning held within all of the living individuals (ignoring the insane, or perhaps just those we disagree with), there is no universally-help idea. To believe that universal meaning existed would require one of three possibilities: either that it exists but we do not have access to it (which renders it pointless); via some rather remarkable faculty, certain individuals (like prophets or wise men or seers) have access to this universal knowledge, but that the wider population does not due to some innate inability; or finally, that as humans we don't traffic in layers of interpretation, we directly communicate concepts to each other.

When people talk to each other and nod their heads in agreement, the agreement is tacit, not essential (i.e., of essence). We obviously do this all the time, what you're calling pragmatic. The fact that we do communicate in ways that preserve some measure of meaning does not prove that we actually communicate without interpretation, which would be necessary in order to accept that universal meanings either existed or could be communicated. It's not been my experience (as Alex says) that when two people share certain assumptions they are necessarily able to even communicate better than those who don't, much less communicate perfectly. Schisms form even within very tight communities, where the belief that each person did share those same assumptions led to feelings of betrayal when upon further investigation it turned out that at some greater level of detail their individual beliefs were actually profoundly different. It's like in Lion's bird scenario, where rather than say "red bird" we spend a half hour trying to be absolutely certain we're talking about the same bird (so much for plain talk), everyone walks away thinking they're talking about the same red bird. A week later, somebody posts a photograph online and suddenly everyone realizes that it wasn't the same red bird, they just thought it was. How is this purported "failed communication" different from "successful communication" except where the anomaly or misunderstanding has simply not yet been discovered?

oh, and by "fascist" I meant the idea that everyone simple does or should have the same belief. Fascist in the sense of intellectual totalitarianism, "there can be only one way of thinking."

I don't know what to say. If I agree with you here, then there seems to be no point in arguing. Variability in details, changes of time, ambiguities, stubbornness, irrationality, imperfection – I see it in my daily life. And yet I don't draw the same conclusions.

Your main thrust seems to be that, because we don't have a perfect rosetta stone of meaning, that there is no universal meaning.

I believe that your true argument is against the idea of universal interpretation.

That is, that there is no set of symbols that have a universally agreed upon meaning.

However, that is very different than saying that there is no such thing as universal meaning. That is: That the things that are properly interpreted, by shared rosetta stone, can actually be agreed upon.

Everyone I know who's understood that "1+1=2" has actually understood the same "1+1=2," to my way of thinking. There is no other "1+1=2." At an atomic encoding level, I'm sure we encode it and work with it in different ways: I doubt any two brains are exactly alike. (Though I do think they are very similar.) But beyond the level of the brain, I think everyone has the same understanding of 1+1=2, and that it's an example of shared meaning.

I am maintaining that there is universal meaning. That I can communicate an idea to you, and you can understand it, in it's complete entirety.

I have yet to see any convincing arguments that would sway me from this position.

You can parade mis-interpretations and failed communications all day long, in front of me. It still does not convince me that people do not share meaning when they successfully communicate.

I mean, even to argue by the term "failed communication" admits the concept of "successful communication."

Side points:

  • Your ring of children should play a new game, which I affectionately call, "Shannon!" In this cooperative game, the kids compete to successfully deliver a message. If every child gets the message right, then they all get to share a birthday cake, ice cream, and candy. (Three of my daughters favorite things.) The game escalates in difficulty: Adults add new restrictive rules about how the kids can communicate. "Okay, now all adults will scream at the top of their lungs, and kids have to stay 10 feet away from each other. Communicate, or you don't get any candy."
  • I will not articulate an argument with this bullet point. This bullet point consists entirely of a mysterious auditory track. "Wait- what did he mean by..?" "I'm not sure if she meant,…" "What did you mean by-..?" "OH! So that what you meant!" "I'm sorry, could you repeat that for me?" "No, the other part-…"
  • An answer to your question: "How is this purported "failed communication" different from "successful communication" except where the anomaly or misunderstanding has simply not yet been discovered?" (drum roll) I will tell you exactly how the failed communication is different than the succesful communication. (drum roll continues) (tension builds!) (..!) (STOP!) In the case of the failed communication, the people did not successfully communicate the exact same bird that they were looking at. In the case of the successful communication, the people did successfully communicate the exact same bird that they were looking at. Ta da!

But back to the central idea:

I think that what you are really observing is that there is no universal interpretation.

But I think you are mistakenly believing that people can't actually understand each other.

I mean, I still haven't heard an address to: "Look, we're talking."

I am trying to understand the source of your error.

Because you are invoking facism, and forced agreement, and things like that, and given our historical context, I believe that the error works like so:

  • "If you concluded that people can actually understand each other, and that there is such a thing as shared meaning,…"
  • …then you are probably going to believe (or invoke) the false notion that words like "moral" and "True" are interpreted in the same way, everywhere,…
  • …and that these symbols, like flags, should be used because everyone believes that what is Moral or True is Good,…
  • …and that people who disagree with some people's definitions are going to be shouted down,…
  • …on the false conclusion that such words can only be interpreted in one way.
  • …thus leading to oppression and cruelty and Facism and all those things that we hate.

That is: "You are either with our interpretation, or you are against our interpretation, and there are no other interpretations."

Now, here are two things I situations I can imagine being true, if my understanding is right:

  1. MurrayAltheim understand that, in reality, there is, in all reality, such a thing as shared understanding. Even the discrete and complete kind. But, he does not trust people with such knowledge, because it's easy to draw the wrong conclusions from such an idea. Because there is this seductive idea, that not only is there universal meaning (…no objection…) but that there is also universal interpretation (sound the alarms!). Since that's such a dangerous idea, we're going to cover up the initial premise, or at least, conceed it only after a great deal of dialog, to make sure we're talking with "safe" people. We are sort of "securing the conversation," as it were.
  2. MurrayAltheim has been emotionally swayed by how horrible facism is. Murray wakes up in the morning, reads about preachers that say, in the name of Love, we should hate, say, gay people, or at least hold them in disdain, disregard, or otherwise push them down under the water. Murray is a (dare I say it) sensible (did we just admit right and wrong?!) person, and doesn't like this. Maybe he even loses hope some times that the situation is redeemable. Regardless, one of the culprits seems to be this idea that "there are universal laws of the world," since the people who are saying these wretched things are arguing just that way. Since we strongly dislike the way the arguments are turning out, and that's the way those guys are arguing, then it must obviously be wrong.

A third possible situation: Maybe we are simply misunderstanding each other. But even if we are misunderstanding each other, I think that the depths and duration of the misunderstanding requires some attention. I mean, I talk with a lot of people, and they intuit the ideas of what I am saying rather quickly. That it feels like you resist understanding what I am saying- that raises a flag to me.

I think that there's a lot of history behind the conversation that you and I are having, a long history that goes back at least as far as the Enlightenment. (Before then, I imagine it kept going back and back and back, we just don't have as obvious flares up in the sky as the Enlightenment.)

Some people call discussions like this, "Just bull." They call it a "Bullshit session." I think differently. I think that those people who see "just bull" are souls inhabiting gears that inhabit wheels that inhabit still larger wheels. They invariably have an opinion, and they have invariably made a choice, though they cannot voice it, though they cannot articulate it, and though it may never reach their conscious attention. I am not an elitist: I am the same way. Only, I'm a cell in the body that, at this time, performs the role of articulating such things, and paying attention to such things. Back to the "Just Bull" people- They will say "this is just bullshit, it doesn't mean anything," and then the very next day, go to work under the rational of a series of explanations that is actually grounded in the very conversation we just had. They choose clothes and pick work that works under the program of their identity that was constructed by the society and arguments they grew up in, or defected from. (While it shouldn't bear on this particular discussion, I do believe in mystery, I do believe in free will, I do believe in spirit.) The genetic material (metaphor) of their life is under the influence of such arguments, and such understandings, if at a subconscious level.

The forces of cultural imperialism are, truthfully, (I agree,) terrible. But so are the forces of absolute relativism. We dosed our society with relativism because we were (and are!) commiting crimes because of our ignorance. Society needed to turn inward, and recognize differences, and think out alternative models for thinking about other cultures.

And we have alternative models. Some good ones, too! But now the acid of postmodernism is denying all truth, all understanding.

Science works because we can replace a false understanding with a better one. But this strain of relativism, and even the complete denial of all meaning and understanding, is terribly destructive. It is like a strange, former, scientist, who saw Einstein replace Newton, and shout: "There is no truth! How is Einstein's any differen than Newtons?! Why should I believe in Einstein's theory, when Newton's theory was wrong?" This expatriated scientist then, goes to every young scientist, and tries to convince them that it is of no use to embark in science, that all science is the teaching of ignorance, and that we should completely reject scientific inquiry and the word "True" should be stricken from our language, because, invariably, it is falsehood.

Question: How can the ex-scientist even be shocked? If everything is false, then why any concern at all? To put it in the language of moralism: If there is no morality, then why the heavy hearts, and sense of betrayal? To feel a sense of betrayal, is to feel that something good is lost, is that not the case? But for there to be something good, there has to actually be something that is good. If the drunk philosopher cries into a brown paper bag, "Oh, we're just so confused," then perhaps someone should lift up the drunk, and say: "Yes, you are confused, but don't worry, it will be over soon. Let's just lay off the brown paper bag for a few moments, and collect our thoughts again. Focus!! Let's check our thoughts, let's comb over our initial assumptions.

"It was brave of you to identify the falsehood when you saw it. Thinking that everything was false was an understandable mistake. But we have real work to do, and to do it, we need to come to our senses."

Anyways, that's how I see it, that's what I'm guessing is going on. That's part of why this conversation matters to me.

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