It does not follow from the fact that there is no finder of meaning that meaning is not there. It must already be there in order to "find" it.

I don't agree.

Meaning is applied by the conscious observer.

That we apply meaning to reality does not make meaning contingent upon us. Meaning can be wrongfully applied. We wrongfully predict things all the time as a result of a misapplication of meaning. It is by virtue of the fact that we can be wrong about what things mean that we know that meaning is not necessarily determined by us.



If it were, we could not be wrong.

We are often wrong about what something means to someone else.

We are seldom ever wrong about what something means to us personally.

Re-read the truth thread.

I don't think so.

Meaning is meaningless with no observer(s).

What is meaning, then?

What does this mean?

I take it you don't know?

In tarot systems it means what the reader decides it means.

I ask what meaning was, not the meaning belonging to that card according to tarot card readers.

What is meaning?

Meaning is interpretation.

Intrinsic meaning as in significance?

Intrinsic meaning as in significance?

Hmmmm...

I dunno Art, it seems to me that that may work. I think that meaning is truth/reality based... causality based. I'm just having trouble getting it to work outside of language.

I was just seeking clarity Creative.

I'm just going to talk out loud for a moment if you don't mind ... not sure where it is going yet ...


There is the simplicity of what something means.

Up means the opposite of down. Telephone means a device we can speak to one another on. The label of the thing without any other implied significance.

If I am in a war zone and hadn't spoken to my family in 3 months...I may very likely attribute huge significance to the telephone because of circumstance.

Assigning significance I believe is a very personal thing. What has significance to me is different that what has significance to another. I don't believe that can be intrinsic to a thing or an idea.

Even gold (which is about to hit $1800) has value but is not inherently significant...at least not to me. The word gold has meaning ... it means a colour ... it means a substance ... it means a square on the periodic table.


hence the question ... intrinsic meaning ... to me that sounds like ascribing significance ...

Yeah, those are all language constructs... they have necessarily applied meaning. However, meaning through language is rooted in truth/reality. I mean, prior to creating a name we have an object of thought to be named. If we take this further back...

When we name storm clouds and attribute significance it is because we care. If that significance is one of recognizing causality(storm clouds coming signifies storm coming), then it is one of properly grasping a causal chain of events and putting it to personal use. That chain of events does not owe it's behavior to our terms, rather our terms - if correctly set out - derive their meaning from the chain of events.



I dunno...

I would think that we interpret meaning, and that sometimes we get it wrong. If meaning were interpretation we would not get it wrong.

Interesting idea but I don't see how that could work. You are treating the term 'meaning' as if it is an unchanging thing or some kind of truth.

Perhaps the term "meaning" has more than one meaning.

We interpret wrongly. Meaning cannot be interpretation, or we could not get the meaning wrong. Meaning is directly tied to truth. That is why if a listener knows what would make a speaker's claims true, then s/he knows what the speaker means.