Talk:The Meaning of Meaning

First article

This is my first new article edit, though far from complete so far. But I hope the opening quotes alone would be worthy of note and use. Have an insanely good time. --KYPark 18:04, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hey. I don't know if it's a good idea to call the differentiation between ideas, symbols, and the 'real world' an innovation of this book. While the distinction might have been made in this book, it's certainly been around a while. (if the innovative part of their use of this distinction is something specific, it should be made clear) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.230.203.15 (talk) 23:10, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

The meaning of the word

On June 3, 2005, an anonymous person 151.197.218.220 inserted the following capitalized passages under the section Supplementary essays, which would not be a right place for them. On June 17, 2005, Pinzo reasonably reverted to the previous state. Those passages may not be worth part of the article but discussion. So I recovered them from history as follows:

MEANING OF THE WORD....TRUTH!!!

IN 1965 SERVED ON A FEDERAL JURY. PRIOR TO START OF TRIAL, JUDGE REMARKED TO JURY..."YOUR RESPONSIBILITY HERE IS TO LISTEN TO EACH SIDE OF TESTIMONY. YOU ARE TO TAKE NO NOTES. YOU ARE NOT TO DISCUSS THE CASE WITH ANYONE, INCLUDING YOUR FELLOW JURORS. AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE TRIAL, YOU WILL RETIRE TO THE JURY ROOM TO DELIBERATE THE TESTIMONY YOU HAVE HEARD AND REMEMBERED. THEN YOU WILL DETERMINE THE TRUE FACTS OF THE MATTER AND DELIVER A VERDICT."

MY MIND WAS ILL AT EASE WITH THE JUDGE'S REMARKS SINCE I BELIEVED TRUTH WAS FACT. LATER IN THE TRIAL, I CAME TO THE REALIZATION NOT ONE OF US EMPANELED COULD HAVE BEEN PRESENT AT THE TIME THE INCIDENT OCCURRED, SO WE COULD NOT BE IN POSSESSION OF F A C T! THEREFORE, OUR COMMISSION WAS TO LISTEN TO ALL TESTIMONY FOR THE PURPOSE OF DECIDING WHICH TESTIMONY WE BELIEVED TO BE BASED ON FACT. IN SHORTER TERMS, I BELIEVE TRUTH IS DEFINED AS THAT WHICH WE CHOOSE TO BELIEVE. IT MAY BE BASED ON FACT, OR ON FICTION. BUT, IRRESPECTIVE, WHATEVER WE CHOOSE TO BELIEVE, TO US, THEN, THAT BECOMES TRUTH. EAGERLY AWAITING REBUTTAL.

--KYPark 7 July 2005 14:24 (UTC) on behalf of 151.197.218.220

Douglas Hofstadter

Two experts, to explicate Meaning,

Wrote a book called The Meaning of Meaning.

But the world was perplexed!

So three experts wrote next

The Meaning of Meaning of Meaning.

- Douglas Hofstadter

Quoted from Talk:The meaning of meaning
--KYPark 7 July 2005 14:43 (UTC)

Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language
reviewed by Tal Cohen. --KYPark 7 July 2005 15:18 (UTC)

More Creit should go to Hofstadter

I think that Douglas Hofstadter has a little more coming to him on this subject. Years ago I attended a talk by Hofstadter at Xerox PARC in which he talked about the "Meaning of Meaning". I can still remember what he meant, but his exact words have long since escaped me, so forgive me if I get this wrong. But I remember him saying something like "the meaning of meaning is the one-to-one correspondence between two independent systems".

I've remembered that all these years, but over time I slowly realized how profound a thought this was. Its significance is that can connect the philosophic realm of consideration to objective existential entities, thus giving rise to extremely useful connections between concepts which are human and range to what are objective mechanical constructs of our intents and purposes.

To understand this, understand that one can construct meaning about any relationship between any two existential concepts or constructions in a meaningful way by incrementally developing correspondences between the two. That alone is enough to build up a lot of useful meaning!

It is a universal tool, and can help us sort out otherwise obscure relationships. For example, here are some random relationships that can be approached in this way:

• Marketing<>Implementation
• design<>quality
• integrity<>politics
• problem solving<>beauty
• robotics<>equity
• corporations<>understanding of individuals
• pharmacies<>the human condition
• profits<>human value
• democrats<>republicans
• manipulation<>object reality

It is a tool that can be used to help us sort out ANY system that has more than one part in a methodical step by step way to a clear solution by developing a meaning between parts.

For example the Subprime mortgage crisis ended up in over 4 million mortgage foreclosures and the perpetrators were the ones who got bailed out.

If we had just examined the relationships for meaning, we would have discovered the only necessary relationships necessary for a good solution were monthly payments, compound interest, and equity (e.g. fairness to all). You don't have to know anything else in order to figure out a solution that would have been fair and equitable. Everything else was fluff and not necessary for the solving of the crisis.

We would have quickly found what it meant to actually solve the problem. The solution could have come from the simple relationship that if the lender receives his interest, then the outcome for EVERYONE would be equitable. Nothing else is necessary to a real solution... not foreclosures, not unbundling fancy instruments, not bailing out large companies, not prepayment penalties, not huge balloon payments or anything else. It would not have been unfair to undo contracts as long as everyone received what was right and just in an equitable manner just by the lights of fair interest for money loaned.

Some important meaningful relationships would be

• lender interest<>equity
• minimum necessary interest bailout<>equity
• government interest bailout + buyer greatest feasible contribution over time<>lender interest income + buyer equity growth.

So in most cases we could have bailed out interest of the manipulated buyers, giving as much time needed to recover, or develop the means to afford the mortgage.

John K Sellers (talk) 06:40, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

David Bohm & David Peat

Alan Ford & F. David Peat, The Role of Language in Science

David Bohm, has frequently referred to meaning, particularly when talking about his recent experiments with dialogue groups in which "a free flow of meaning" is encouraged. This whole question of meaning, and what we mean by it is clearly of importance and, in particular, the question "What do you mean by language?"

C.K. Ogden and I. A. Richards's classic The Meaning of Meaning8 provides a useful introduction to such questions. Following Odgen and Richards the work of Ludgwig Wittgenstein had made a particularly significant contribution to the notion of meaning in linguistics.9 According to his dictum: Don't look for the meaning, look for the use. Essentially this can be interpreted as saying that meaning is a generalization that doesn't correspond to anything that is actually available in language behavior. What we actually rely upon are individual uses which are themselves interrelated according to a pattern of family resemblances. In this sense words could no more be said to "possess" an intrinsic meaning that is independent of their use than, in Bohr's view, could an electron be said to "possess" an intrinsic position or spin.

--KYPark 7 July 2005 15:29 (UTC)

Circularity

The meaning of meaning actually depends on the meaning of meaning! Kind of circular, like the Ouroboros... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.98.202.34 (talk) 09:28, 26 February 2021 (UTC)