Where does meaning come from?

Not at all. You may copy our conversation wherever you wish. You may even use my name.

I forgot to tie my last post to the point I was making. What does the difference between knowledge and experience have to do with incomprehensible meaning passing to comprehensible meaning? Any kind of meaning can be experienced, but only comprehensible meaning can be known. Take the ball bouncing off the wall we talked about earlier. If my theory’s right, then it has some kind of experience that we cannot comprehend. But the ball has other physical effects that lead to our awareness of the ball bouncing off the wall. Light rays are constantly reflected off the ball and stream into our eyes. Those light rays are transduced into chemical and electrical signals. Those signals travel up the optic nerve until they hit the visual cortex. When that happens, we see the ball. But each of those intermediary steps is a physical action just like the ball bouncing off the wall. If my theory’s correct, that means each of those physical actions also comes with a subjective experience of some kind. Not the same as that had by the ball/wall system, but something unique to the exact character of the physical action. As each physical action gives way to the next physical action, each experience in turn gives way to the next experience. The meaning therein “begets” the next meaning. It “entails” it to use my vocabulary. The visual perception of the ball bouncing off the wall that we finally see is the first experience in the series that is finally comprehensible. This just means it is the first experience for which there can be knowledge of that experience. We can know that we are experiencing it. Of course, it takes further processing in the brain for the visual experience to become knowledge of what is being visually experienced, which is just to say the meaning of the visual experience must “beget” or “entail” the knowledge, but now it can be done.

gib

I appreciate you and the many interactions that we have now had - You are a very kind person gib.

That is great - I really appreciate that. I was in need of awesome content and what better than content that is interactive?

I am still yet to take you up on your previous suggestions so I am still for now going to answer with the old knowledge that is my own from my head with temporarily no further consideration.

I do believe meaning is something that happens anyway, that the animal understands meaning whether it is a calculated understanding or a known understanding - but what is known anyway? In another thread I discussed another layer:

  1. Unknown
  2. Inception
  3. Known

Now I will add the contextual layer which brings a meta understanding for us humans which transcends the animal level of known. First we incept the unknown so that it can become known but it is only known the second time around that the inception is to become perception known as known - we as humans are able to think about incepts and transform them into percepts - but there is no substitute for experience and solid theory.

I will leave that there for now with the intention that it will ignite conversation.

Your theory sounds interesting, lets keep talking about this. You seem to be talking about mirror actions - we have a set of neurons for those and that is where empathy has its roots - these neurons are quite weak to begin with and over time strengthen in the impressionable years to create in us the monster or the preferred wonderful person. Two lots of processing I am led to believe is all it takes for experience to become knowledge - at this stage it is rudimentary and is in need of further experience/meta-experience.

It seems we are traversing some of the same ground with two different methods, which is why I say that all versions of reality are pointing at the truth.

encode,

You are too kind in your assessment of my kindness. :laughing:

BTW, over in the rationality thread, I posted this:

I like to get permission before I grab someone’s quote and start plastering all over the place. I guess this is an example of my kindness.

Also, I noticed that every time I quote you in my responses, I see this:

encode's list.png

What kind of device are you using to post? Why does it always insist on prepending an empty list to your posts?

Hi gib,

I like to use the empty list to move the first part of my post down one line - the padding phpbb uses is not enough for my liking.
I think that is why Arc calls me Mr List.

You are welcome to quote me - in fact you can have that as a present - you have done plenty for me.

What I am most grateful for is the way I am made think to structure certain parts of my pattern theory for mind.
Which I am still not happy with.

:wink:

Brilliant!!! :astonished: =D> :laughing:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEzG8t4-x34[/youtube]

???

You do realize that you can insert as many blank lines as you like, just by pressing . Right?

You should try that some time.

I just did. Why do you think there are so many spaces under “gib wrote” in my last post?

Is your browser removing the spaces?

I meant at the beginning of your post, before anything is written.

.

.

.
Hi encode_decode :laughing:

Me too.

In that case, you’re right.

Woaw! Again! Cool avatar! Another girl in the rain, crying I presume. Long black hair. Monochrome just like your last one. Can’t quite make out the rest. How many has that been? Three in a row, I believe, with rain?

You’re a theme girl, aren’t you Arc? I remember your green eyes line of avatars. One of them was even crying IIRC. You had a couple anime ones before the rain, didn’t you? I think even the first rain one overlapped with the anime theme.

Ah, the phases we go through. The avatars people choose can sometimes be a little window into the pit stops and the scenery they visit on their life’s journey.

But anyway, back to meaning… :arrow_right: :arrow_right: :arrow_right:

Meaning?

Where does that come from?

:laughing:

Hi Arcturus Descending

Same here . . .

:laughing:

Plural

Yeah, that would be devices :laughing: too many computers here and only one tablet and one phone.

Arcturus Descending

What do any of us truly know? Mostly what we choose to believe. Even the empirical cannot be held in certainty without some doubt. Now back to meaning. To say that we invent meaning is to say that the start dust invents meaning if that is where we are from - then even the star dust is from somewhere of something. Elements - what are they but those things that are stable under certain mathematical laws - to change the laws might even change the elements. We do know now, for the time being and with relative certainty that we are here and made of something - energy - and what is energy - perhaps more questions arise than can be answered. We are taking it further back - yes - that is what we are doing - ideas are still tangible unless you can prove them to be otherwise - again I fear we are being poetic and forgetting the displacement of an idea with our brain.

Believe me for everything you agree with or like there is some person who cannot wait to disagree with you Arc.

Your star stuff sounds feasible.

:smiley:

How much do you think we can generalize this, encode? Would it be fair to say the Big Bang invents meaning? And at what point do we introduce intention? Would intention come before the apprehension of meaning or after?

Here is a thought experiment(I am too lazy to offer an hypothesis):

I want to imagine a new universe called “chaos” - “chaos” is full of triangles and all of the triangles combined is objectivity - so objectivity in this universe is all of the triangles that “chaos” contains which is infinity. This universe is a type of field that only contains blank triangles.

Now subjectivity is “magically” seeded - we are not going to care about the details. Subjectivity turns a blank triangle into a black triangle to form veins of subjectivity throughout this infinite universe called “chaos”.

Now lets imagine the triangle and lets refer to the points as atoms instead.

Where:
a = answer
q = question
m = meaning

(a,q,m)

This triangle allows all three atoms to connect to each other and by placing other triangles in connection to the original triangle a more defined being of triangle takes places.

Now if we change the question and answer parts to other “things” that give meaning we can eventually connect all meaning.

We start out with all the triangles at once(a big triangle universe) and get some sort of arrangement that resembles veins moving through the chaos and it is these veins that connect meaning in all its forms. Entropy then is when all the blank triangles become black. Once all the triangles become black the very next cycle they all become blank again. The transition between all black and all blank we call death or recycling.

Now I am imagining a “bigger universe” that has infinite copies of the aforementioned universe and its name is “meta”. So “meta” contains infinite copies of “chaos” and each chaos is a being of sorts. When one “chaos” correlates in any way to another “chaos” we end up with what we call “defined objectivity”.

That is my mental lapse of reason for today.

gib

To say that we invent meaning is to say that the start dust invents meaning if that is where we are from - then even the star dust is from somewhere of something. Elements - what are they but those things that are stable under certain mathematical laws - to change the laws might even change the elements.

Good question. Generalizing this is a big question gib. It is easier to work out the most fundamental laws but to start generalizing at the more abstract level which is in fact what we are is to enter a new realm all together as we are so complex - I do know that each mental effect, affects the next and continues to, based on the strength of its network. The big bang being the theory that it is, uncovers something interesting, which is, a beginning - stardust need not have a beginning but it seems as though we do - we can emerge from a universe that has been here for ever as much as one that came from a big bang - either way, you and I emerge in physical form with certainty and that form is a configured state of the same thing - fundamental substance.

Intentions . . . the baby’s intention is to survive even though it may not be aware of that. We introduce intention before awareness. Before the apprehension of meaning. I do think if the laws change then the questions change too . . . Perhaps intention is a law not unlike gravity mathematics.

Does meaning come from a derivative of the question plus answer? Does meaning follow something. I know questions follow answers or else we can not answer questions - answering comes after - but an answer is already there before the question is being asked otherwise you could not find any answer.

The answer to, how much I think we can generalize this, was there before I answered the question - if I even answered it that is. If not, what kind of questions we ask to get at the answer becomes all important.

So do you see the problem of meaning as reducible to the problem of first personhood? The usual assumption is that there was no “first person” at the moment of the Big Bang. I think most people assume there was no “first person” after the first round of super novas in the universe either (so star dust pre-dates persons). The question really is: when did third personhood (which we assume is the state of all unconscious inanimate matter) give rise to first personhood–and how?

Meaning is quintessentially an apprehended phenomenon–it requires some form of mental process, a consciousness, in order to exist (don’t talk to the externalist).

As for the question of intention–does it precede for succeed meaning (or the apprehension thereof)?–I would say you’re right that intention comes first when it comes to cogitated meaning–that is, meaning apprehending in thought. But then you can ask: if the simple fact of experiencing can be said to imply meaning (for example, in the way that sensory experience is said to imply sensory information (i.e. meaning) being conveyed to consciousness), then meaning must come first, for only upon experiencing can one then intend things.