Well many people claim that to be caught up in conceptuality is not to live at all. If you refer back to the OP, isn’t it possible that that’s what Ladyjane is saying?
anon,
Look at a litlle post history of LJ. If profundity is there, I, and most others have missed it. The meaningless threads aren’t the first nonsensical threads. Couple that with the almost worship of Colin Leslie Dean and the warning bells start ringing. I suppose you can read into her missives anything you like, but if she is trying to communicate something, she’s doing a damned poor job of it. Why? How could any of us know? This is the internet and words and a few smilies is all we have. At some point nonsense is nonsense…
anon,
Look at a litlle post history of LJ. If profundity is there, I, and most others have missed it. The meaningless threads aren’t the first nonsensical threads. Couple that with the almost worship of Colin Leslie Dean and the warning bells start ringing. I suppose you can read into her missives anything you like, but if she is trying to communicate something, she’s doing a damned poor job of it. Why? How could any of us know? This is the internet and words and a few smilies is all we have. At some point nonsense is nonsense…
I’m not sure what to say, Tentative. I’m trying to discuss something fairly particular, using a quote from Ladyjane. But you seem so enraged by Ladyjane that you barely touch the actual topic at hand. Or maybe you find something distasteful about the topic of what “meaning” is? If the mere mention of Ladyjane or Colin Leslie Dean disturbs you so much that you can’t think straight, maybe you could simply continue the conversation started in . I guarantee that thread to be Ladyjane-free (so far). 
Conversely, we could discuss some of the topics covered in here in this thread. I confess that would be a bit overwhelming for me though. You’d probably have to discuss Grice, Kripke and Davidson with those who have actually read their works. Perhaps a few people here have, but I’m not one of them.
Of course if you’re not actually interested in the topic, there is no need to take part at all.
anon,
A bit of hyperbole… I’m not enraged, not even amused. It’s a reasonable expectation that if you post in ILP that there is some small amount of explanation of your posts if you wish to have any credibility. Anyone can post obscurity. It’s done all the time with predictable results. I’ve granted the notion that all is meaningless in the bigger picture, but that has nothing to do with our ability to create meaning for ourselves while we are alive. If there is a point to saying all is meaningless, show it to me. I suspect that all of us has acknowledged meaningless at some point, but then go on to create meaning. That the problem wih life. It’s the only game in town.
Not hyperbole, likely just misunderstanding.
Anyway, I’ve tried to show what it could mean. And this thread doesn’t have to be about Ladyjane. I didn’t mean it to be in the first place, though it’s ok if it is.
I read your referenced thread and can you see that explanation= assigned meaning? That’s what we do as we explain anything to anyone - including ourselves. We create meaning. That which is meaningless defines itself, does it not?
The notion of meaningless generally arises from one of two conditions (I can’t think of anything outside of them, actually – but I’m probably missing something): a breakdown of communication or nihilism.
The former arises when mutual communicators think that the symbol they are using represents the same thing and, after somewhat lengthy conversation, find out that they haven’t been. This happens a lot in discussions involving fairly intangible, culturally-loaded things like “god”. Since this is an English board, we are culturally acclimated to think of the concept of “god” along Judeo-Christian lines so concepts of “god” that fall outside of that tradition can be rather confusing. For example, when we think of Poseidon, we normally think of some dude with a trident. And while that would be a common representation of Poseidon, the actual phenomenon is the Mediterranean. From a Hellenic perspective, those two elements are inseparable so if I believe in the Mediterranean (which I do) I would also believe in Poseidon. The representation of Poseidon and the Mediterranean aren’t engaged in some sort of obscure hypostatic union, they are merely symbols for the same thing. Despite believing in the Mediterranean, I consider myself an atheist so any conversation with a member of the Hellenic faith would be meaningless because we’d be talking about completely different things. They’d think me an idiot for not believing in the fucking Mediterranean Sea and I’d think them an idiot for believing the Mediterranean Sea is some dude with a trident.
The latter is related to the former but is internalized. As the name suggests, nihilism is defined by rejection. Rejection doesn’t exist as an isolated phenomenon but rather in reaction to something else. As such, nihilism is defined by the very system it seeks to supplant – or at the very least it is defined by the system that it rejects. This usually arises when people take an idealized version of any given system, observe that the system in actuality fails to meet those ideals, and then say the entire system fails because of its lack of perfection – and all of this is done while also trying to argue that the notion of perfection itself isn’t real. Nihilism is confusing and rock-dumb in that regard.
Me
an
ingle (no ish about it)
ssness (preceded, of course, by Me, being existence)
…damn, just broke my lurking streak…
Wiki’s entry on non-linguistic meaning is actually pretty interesting.
“We create meaning” - this is something I generally and intuitively take to be true. But is it really true? Or if you think that’s a silly question, then how is it that it is true? - in what way? I think this notion needs to fleshed out. I can’t just say that green means stop, can I? In nature green seems to mean go, i.e. I correlate greenery with growth. Though of course I can say that on some chart I make for a presentation green means deficit…
With respect to what I originally quoted from Ladyjane, I’d say we’re talking about some form of nihilism. But I wonder if that nihilism is necessarily characterized as you’ve described it here. Isn’t it possible that by rejecting attachment to conceptuality - by rejecting any kind of correspondence theory of truth - that life can be more fully lived?
What do you mean? 
I feel so proud. 
anon,
[b]ladyjane wrote:to live ie have life
to die ie to not have life
no one knows what “life” is
so you cant speak of die-to not have life
so you whole statement ends in meaninglessness
as colin leslie dean has put it
all products of the human mind end in meaninglessness
even your statement
to live is to die thus life ends in meaninglessness[/b]
anon,
I think I understand what you’re saying here about ‘conceptuality’. But don’t we sometimes have to have an awareness of what we are experiencing in the moment? For that, you have to put a name to what you are experiencing. It isn’t the name that holds meaning but the experience – at the same time, the name allows you to hold the experience within your grasp and shed light on it. I think.
It just somehow struck me that the conclusion he/she came to after all of that – is that life holds no meaning. Unless I’m not reading the last sentence correctly. Punctuation is important for meaning/context, I think and there’s very little of that.
Sine Qua Non… Meaning is the bedrock. Without it then all that is left is meaninglessness. This presupposes that meaning is a human endeavor and that there is no “man behind the curtains”. I’m not much on supernatural explanations. I have enough fun dealing with the apparent world without speculation of any meaning beyond that of human capability.
I think it’s not necessary to “grasp” the experience. I do agree though that conceptuality can aid awareness. For instance, I find myself more likely to notice a certain shade of color if that color closely matches a named color from my youth - i.e. the name of one of the 64 Crayola crayons I had. But that kind of conceptuality, though it can be a useful tool as an aid to awareness can also be or become a hindrance.
She may assert that “life holds no meaning”. I’m not sure. But even then, there is more than one way to understand such a statement. Continually looking to find or create meaning could possibly become a counterproductive thing to do. Perhaps finding meaning is a tool that can used for a while and let go of when that tool doesn’t seem so useful anymore.
Is there anything inherently wrong with meaninglessness? Or did you mean to say that without meaning all that is left is ennui? If the latter, we could discuss that. My latest post to Arcturus touches on my response.
Anon,
Give this a thunk. Is there any way you can say, visualize, or be aware of the concept of meaningless WITHOUT assigning meaning? -ie- In thinking meaningless, you have at the same time created meaning. You cannot not inject meaning into every thought, every scintilla of awareness. Life is comparison/contrast. From the most simple proto-cell, to human sentience, meaning is there. Let’s make it even more simple: To say meaningless, what is the basis of comparison? How would I know the difference between meaningless and meaningful? To say meaningless is a judgement, a comparison, and it’s only antithesis is that which is meaningful. Can you see the circularity and the nonsensical fallacy of saying meaningless? This isn’t to say that we don’t assign the term meaningless to noumena, because we do. Hell, that’s what I’ve been doing in this whole thread. But that is simply assigning levels of importance, it isn’t saying that meaningless is a valid concept.
Uncle Joe says NO!
Well, if I must break it down:
- Me (aka I, transducer of reality)
- An (indefinite article, cf. Aism)
- Ingle (phonicly updated spell – only home, in a word, of meaning for “meaninglessness” per se, having been exjutted out of hookland)
- Ssness (the essentialmost sound of esse, or snake in the grass, …perhaps just tinnitus)
Ergo, I lie within the word I speak of language come to be confined, implying waves of peaking sense made to resemble things to mind. Meaninglessnessaussal8u!ueaW.
Such is to be contrasted with “metheinglessness,” being a much more hegemonic state of utterances, and highly addictionarial (hypostatizing as it does a monolythic level of coherence). The sociological fate of Jaynes’ bicameral mind, perhaps.
As for the sound of being, I am reminded of a meditative state I never achieved, whereupon sacred letter/sounds are said to melt away before one’s eye. Meaninglessness inexcarnate?
To me, the many equivocations of “mean” and “meaning” have long been compelling and provisionally foundational, like an asthenosphere threading between earthly beginnings and ends, and where meaninglessness might infer an endless meaning, or unadulterated process (if ends might be construed as distractive seductions, or temporal appearances not to be mistaken for being true, as in “the aim”).
I may, of course, be quilty of overthinquinq this. (nudqe nudqe)
What do you mean? 