I feel like I should to return to this… I’ve been revisiting Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations… In order to clarify some issues that arose in the previous ‘A Cat Named Schrödinger‘ entry.
What does it mean to say that a thing is “Without Meaning”. It cannot be that the thing in question is a vessel which is empty of a kind of substance that we call meaning. As if it is a difference between there being the physical constructional attributes of a thing, and then the quality or function of it.
To talk about meaning as though it has an object and a content is to entirely miss the point about meaning. Is our language so exact and inflexible?
The meaning gets across, almost entirely to the same degree as it would in ‘proper’ English. It is the case that the linguistic structure fails, but this sentence is meaningful, is it not?
…
We tend to forget that it is our practices and actions that define the terms, that how we use a thing is also how we describe it. Using a language is not like walking a tightrope. Even if there are mistakes; if my grammatical structure is incorrect, or if I miss out on particular words, spell them wrong, or mix in hand gestures, it is entirely possible to still convey meaning.
Furthermore, in reading this garbled English [above], we are not converting individual terms to proper English structures, making sense of it in its proper format and then responding. We read, do, make, say, think all together at all times, all at once. It is one motion, trial and error.
The ability of being able to utter the name of a thing suggests there is already an immense amount of meaningfulness going on about that thing. If were to be without meaning, it would not be recognizable. To be unrecognizable is to be meaningless, the things we can not talk about are the things that are without meaning. There are no examples of meaninglessness because it’s entirely superfluous to talk about the unimaginable.
What you might then further be concerned with is this notion of ‘nothing. One might turn to Leibnez’s question of “Why is there something rather than nothing?”. Even assumes that there is such a thing as a nothing, and that its competition or contrast is something. But if nothing is a something, than what are we worried about? We choose between a nothing-something and a something-something? There is no such thing as a ‘nothing’ really. To even utter that sentence gives it too much credit.
From T.H. Green’s Prolegomena to Ethics:
§70… The most primitive germ from which knowledge can be developed is already a perception of fact, which implies the action upon successive sensations of a consciousness which holds them in relation, and which therefore cannot itself be before or after them, or exist as a succession at all.
There is a universal bias to the viewing of any and all things. It is a bias that can be examined and discussed, but never lifted. For if you were to ‘lift the lens’ so-to-speak, you would not recognize what you were looking at. The recognition of a thing already carries a host of networked meanings. Neither before, or after the other aspects in the network, it is everything together, all at once.
What if I say “I want to hug you…but my intention is to kick you…would that miscommunication carry meaning? and would my communication not then be meaningless since it did not convey the action I intended?
Also:
“To be unrecognizable is to be meaningless, the things we can not talk about are the things that are without meaning. There are no examples of meaninglessness because it’s entirely superfluous to talk about the unimaginable†in this case what if I engage in an action that is meant to be without meaning. For example if I painted a picture…one of nothing in particular that resembles nothing and I do it without it “representing†anything in particular etc. Then how can it have meaning? We know it exists we can see it touch it etc. but there is no meaning attached to the painting therefor it has no meaning. I suppose one could read into the intent and come up with assumptions about it and therefore discuss it…but the reasons and propositions would be incorrect.
i think you’re confusing how i’m talking about meaning… and i’m probably a bit confused too…
there’s a difference between meaning and intent. i’m talking here about meaning in he greater sense of the word.
the act of painting has meaning because you are engaging in an activity of painting, you do ‘painting’ things, and not ’swimming’ things. there is a host of conceptual framework that already goes in to your practise of painting. so the image technically must be ‘about’ something, but it may just be vague or misguided. it might just be about ‘painting’ and ‘colour’. intentions are vague, yes, i agree, but they are not the without meaning in the greater sense.
to ask the question: “what if I engage in an action that is meant to be without meaning?”
meant to be without meaning is not really what you mean, you mean ‘meant to be very vague in terms of my presentation of an idea’. because you can’t do a meaningful activity to somehow accomplish a non=meaningful activity. silly things, are not meaningless things, they are just silly.
think about meaninglessness by answering this question:
“can you think things that you cannot say? do you ever think things that are in a language that is not your own?”
I am a frying pan
Could it not be the case that since perception of all things is relative to the perceiver, that all experiences had by any other person other then your self would be considered meaningless? Since i have my own set of individual truths about what i consider embarrassing frightening etc. you can never know what my experience is and therefore my reality is meaningless because you can never experience it?…you could never speak my language…if you know what i mean
Wouldn’t my experiences formulate my language just as your experiences would formulate yours and without the same experiences wouldn’t we have different language?
@point1: “I am a frying pan” has plenty of meaning, in this case you’re using it to attempt to prove to me that things don’t have meaning. (using meaningful things to prove meaninglessness) also, the words you use have plenty of things to refer to, frying pan, I, am a, etc. are all things that are entirely recognizable, and therefore meaningful.
@point2: you can never know what other people do/make/say/think, but this doesn’t imply that your life is meaningless, because you have nothing else than what is given. if ‘everything’ is meaningless, then it also follows that nothing is meaningless. and so on.
@point3: there no issue. you and i obviously have some sort of friction with one another because we can go on. the sentences make sense to one another, the cues and the discussions. indeed, we are both seperate entities, but we are part of the same world.
jeannine, i think you’re still confusing yourself on the idea that there is a difference between the mind, and the world. that’s the whole point of this schrodinger series is to diffuse that and to suggest that there is no such distinction.
do you ever have beliefs that are false?
yes
i used to think you were special…