An ice breaker: What is “meaning” and where do you find it?

[essius]

Despite our numbers, this community seems to be temporarily dwindling in its output. An ice breaker, therefore, seems to be in order.

In our last post, digitig mentioned an interest in the question “of what it actually is to assign meaning; ‘what is the meaning of “meaning”’, if you like” and exclaimed, “That seems to me to be a semiotic question!” I

Comments

Re: My ramblings

[essius]

I love your icon! This makes me think of the despair and meaningless[ness] of I Heart Huckabees...

However, the movie ended on the note that there is in experience both order and chaos, meaning and lack of meaning.

Meaning can be such a broad term. I know I don't entirely like when my students throw it (or derivatives of it) around in papers like magical code, almost like the word "important." Yet I think meaning is the point, well, of everything.

It seems to me that "meaning" has both absolute and relative senses. Assuming there is a God, for instance, such a Being would be meaningful in Himself. However, this meaning will not be apprehensible by creatures lacking intellect and language. Or again, certain structures of reality may have "real definitions," but an animal may care little for what a thing is in itself, in its absolute consideration, and act in accord with its momentary biological concerns.

I remember when I was a teenager I would often earnestly ask people what they thought about "the meaning of life." In college, my

[royinpink]

What comes to mind when you think of the word “meaning”?

triadic sign-relations!

How far does the term extend?

to everything that signifies! some might think this too broad, but i don't see why i ought to be putting divisions in where i don't see any.

Where and when, in your life, have you found the most meaning, and where are you currently seeking after it?

This seems to be a somewhat different sense of the term. Something more like value, or significance, than signification. Otherwise it's freaking everywhere, and there's no use quantifying it. As for value, well, how should one treat that semiotically?

anyway, i find value in studying semiotics, so there.

[royinpink]

No one wants to talk about value. :( :( :(

You know, Saussure used the term value. Differently, but still. And then there's like...Marxist value. And of course there's symbolic capital. But this is a bit different.

[essius]

Having fun surfing Wiki, lately?

[royinpink]

actually, i looked up the wiki pages as i thought of those things, and i haven't read them. but yes, i really like linking things. something about typing "a href" just does it for me. uh, srsly tho, sometimes i try to think about whether and how the concepts of symbolic power and Saussurean value are related and it *blows my mind*. i...need to get out more. i know.

..meaning..

[overflowingcup]

The clock gives meaning to this post, as it is almost another day in the life 'n times of this writer. So, in this sense, meaning is a continuum of moments with each one tied to a specific point in time on the 'time line' if you will. In my life, meaning has been gleaned from mistakes, from pivotal points, from 'light bulb' moments, from bombardments by media, school, other's opinions, biases, judgmentalisms, etc. Even the expression, "etc." has relative meaning for me. In other words, I know what it means but does the listener; and, do I care that others get it, or not? Meaning...it extends throughout everything. It is vague...it is clear...it is relative...it is specific...it vascillates from day-to-day.... How is it that I should care what anything actually means to anyone else? Yet I value what others, specifically 'special others', "significant others", actually think about anything that I find meaning in...i.e., my children's education, lives, their experiences, etc. Meaning has value, at least to me, so it must be egocentric,

Re: meaning

[essius]

Why would you say meaning is arbitrary?

[digitig]

Perhaps, since I started this I should say something about why I see it as an issue.

Essentially, it comes from thinking about the metaphysical assumptions we make before we can do any reasoning. A lot of folks at the moment seem particularly influenced by physical models of the mind seem to be taking a fatalist position, which I believe calls into question reason itself: if our minds are acting essentially as computers, how can we tell that they are "programmed" correctly? We think that (¬A OR ¬B) == ¬(A AND B) but maybe that's a bug in our brain's logic? In order to reason at all, we have to assume that what we perceive as logic is, in formal terms, "valid".

In order to perceive logic, though, it seems that we need to be able to attribute meaning. Without being able to attribute meaning, that expression of deMorgan's law I gave earlier is nothing but a collection of meaningless symbols. Even if I try to just "think" deMorgan's laws, all I have is a set of meaningless brain states.

And here I have the problem. All the models of