Where does meaning come from?

Awesome James

That will allow me to build a mental map.

Your example makes sense and I can see logically where meaning fits in as an expression of information.

Thank you very much.

:sunglasses:

The above helps me understand the structure you’re using better. Puts me somewhat in mind of Bernardo Kastrup’s whirlpool metaphor in Why Materialism is Baloney.

My notion of the significance of an iota of information is radically different, though. I may be wrong, but maybe you steer away from a realist and toward an idealist perspective because the paths from quantum to macro realities appear to be interpreted by most as supporting this paradigm?

But the iotan point of view addressed to date is incomplete. One way to look at it might be that information describes our internal sense of existence but not reality. Existence is made up of iotas and their constituents, particularity and value, or I=P^V. But this can’t explain everything. The big picture of reality includes Form (F)where, F+I(P^V) = reality.

Form is an awkward term for modern usage, but is just meant to describe the external “organizing principle” imposed on the internal informational existence we occupy. I think the concept hardest, maybe impossible, for me to synthesize with Affectance Ontology is that of value. For me, information itself is, at the end of the day, just a front for, or the “face” of, value. Value is (for me anyway) hiding at the bottom of the layers of abstraction, i.e., it’s difficult for me, not to imagine but to conceptualize reality as complex associations and interactions of assorted values—but that’s where I end up when I peel back the layers.

Form is pure, absolute Truth. Reality for me is in the end a compatibility of value structures. Form is conceptually known in the material sphere as the laws of science or physical laws or “non-contact” forces of gravity, electromagnetism and strong and weak nuclear forces. From a human perspective, the laws ordering matter aren’t absolute. Nuances have been measured in the force of gravity in certain situations, and Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory is reported to work on macro, but not micro, levels. But there is enough evidence from centuries of scientific study to reasonably claim that absolute rules and laws govern and supervise the goings on of the material realm. These laws—as Form—provide sufficient evidence from the persistent reliability of their use over many centuries to recognize the distinction between their veracity and our deficiencies in knowledge to distinguish all possible variables involved in measuring them. It can be stated with reasonable conviction that absolute laws whose intricacies we’re not yet fully aware of preside over matter.

James B. Saint stated,

For me, value on all levels underpins reality. Factual and moral are two aspects of the same thing at work: prescriptive and descriptive value. The Affectance and assorted videos [like all videos] are nothing more or less than value depictions using the same myriad ‘measurement values’ in the technology used to convey them from thought to pixels. Descriptive value is normatively inert but lends itself to easy identification and manipulation (empirical connection). Prescriptive value endues all organic material, is easy to spot but very difficult to measure.

The compatibilist organization is easily seen in the material: macro structures change while the immutable truth-values of its sub atomic constituents whose force-values (or measurements if you prefer) are ordered according to, or supervised by, the equally immutable truth-value energies of Form. Thus, F+I(P^T)=reality. In the end, everything is value, value produces “fields” of information (in which, to use En-De’s metaphor) bubbles of meaning arise and merge.

Prescriptive value has one very significant difference from all the aforementioned: the content of prescriptive value that endues each human [the soul] is, unlike all the rest of value in reality, falsifiable, seemingly by the affectance (if I may borrow your terminology Mr. Saint) of its own conceptual/perceptual manipulations, i.e., the power of the will. The soul viewed as information-in-reduction would thus be interpreted as possessing “fragmental falsification”. Falsifiability thus conceived would, cumulatively speaking—and in the same compatibilist interactions noted above—seem to account for a broad number of effects, from the change in normative values of societies and cultures as the prime dynamic behind all human behavior. Where falsity applied by minds to material entities [as in the earlier examples of the decaying fruit or crumbling house] is purely subjective and relative, the falsification of the soul’s informational content exerts an actual pressure in intellectual consciousness (which we call morality or the moral).

I’m not sure how or if the admittedly interesting and sophisticated idea of Affectance Ontology can find compatibility with a view of reality in which value is the highest form of existence. I don’t deny that an iota could be and probably is a mental construct of PHT, but in Affectance Ontology that’s all it could ever be, while it may have degrees of actual existence [to the degree it works as an explanatory process] in a realist universe.

Let’s suppose just for the sake of argument that this encompasses the foundation of…meaning?

How then would one reconfigure it into a discussion of, among other things:

1] an ontological understanding of Existence itself
2] the possibility of teleology in the universe
3] the implications of determinism in a universe governed by immutable laws of matter; the question of dualism – the brain/mind nexus
4] the quandary rooted in Hume’s distinction between correlation and cause and effect
5] the extent to which God and religion are applicable here
6] the extent to which human interactions can be wholly understood
7] the manner in which conflicting human interactions might be reconciled/resolved – morality, ethics, political economy
8] the role that science has to play
9] the role that philosophy has to play
10] all the ones I’ve missed

What would seem to be of fundamental concern to most of us is the extent to which an intellectual contraption of this sort allows us to actually understand the very existence of “I” itself — the part embodied day in and day out in, for example, birth-school-work-death.

Seems when it rains, it pours. :sunglasses:

Ontological descriptions have nothing to do with idealism vs realism. Those terms relate to prospective social planning such as a utopia. Every ontology uses idealized concepts in order to build an understanding. There is no choice in that. So I’m not sure to what you are referring.

Every ontology that I have encountered has been “incomplete” and/or broken (incoherent) … other than my own (of course :smiley: ).

Ahh … tsk tsk…
Define “existence” in an unambiguous, meaningful way (ie don’t simply substitute the word for another nor tell of its make). What does it mean that “something exists”?

It seems that you are describing what amounts to solipsism, “reality is only what I think (and/or value)”.

I can go along with the concept that “we are information based entities”, but not that reality is an information based entity. We mustn’t conflate the map with the terrain, nor the mapper with a god (the socio-political intent).

“Values” to whom? Different minds will have different values concerning the exact same portion of reality. So who would be correct? Or are you going to claim that there is no uni-verse, but rather multi-reality (“to each his own”)?

Now now…
Define “Truth”, again unambiguously and meaningfully.

Now you are back to postmodern Quantum Magi metaphysics. You cannot ever “complete” Quantum Physics, because it depends upon incoherent concepts (duality of particle and wave being the most famous). Even Feynman proclaimed that “no one can ever understand Quantum Physics, so just don’t try - shut up and calculate”. It is entirely the promotion of magic (that which cannot be understood - anti-science). Quantum Mechanics, on the other hand, is merely statistics, void of ontological truth claims (although uses ontologically chosen entities), and thus valid science.

Well, yes, Science acknowledges that it is having problems forming a truly solid comprehensive understanding. I have explained why in various threads. It is an issue of them starting off with an insufficient ontological foundation. For example, what we know of as “forces” do not actually exist on the subatomic level. They are a emergent perceptions (macroscopically they appear to exist and might as well on that level - also known as “superstition”, no different than ancient magic). The universe itself never, ever involves forces. There is only one actual entity that could validly be called “force”, although too misleading, and that would be the “potential force/voltage” named “Potential-to-Affect”, PtA. And that is only a force in the sense that it leads to (“causes”) change, but only in its immediate, infinitesimal surroundings. There is no pushing or pulling on the subatomic level of physical existence.

And your statement (in blue) seems to contradict a prior statement (in red).

Well, we need some common ground language in order to communicate.
Define also “reality” and “value” for me , so that we can talk.

I don’t know what “encompasses the foundation of meaning” means, and certainly not what you personally mean by it.

Well you would have to actually read RM:AO topics sometime to find that out.

First, apologies: I tend to be sloppy with terminology. In future will stick with tenet that reality has degrees but existence doesn’t; reality is the set of all things that exist—existence is the ‘big picture’ that various realities populate.

Second, more apologies: by asking me about my worldview you’re summoning one of the most feared beasts on internet message boards, the terrible long-windedness of Anomaly654. Poor fellow, you might as well have shouted “Release the Kraken!”

No contradiction. Was pointing out that human uncertainty of absoluteness of the scientific laws is based on a deficiency in knowledge, but increasing accuracy over centuries of scientific investigation suggests the absolute nature of said laws [or of some such set of laws governing existence] whether we have full knowledge of them or not.

I was under the impression that they are philosophical constructs of reality that are commonly adapted to religious, political, etc. worldviews. But you’re right, I shouldn’t drag them into ontological discussions.

Defining truth is impossible for me or anyone to do unambiguously. Nothing can be described with certitude including physical descriptions. And “meaningful” to whom? Epistemic/ontological standards differ radically.

I’ll attempt meaningfully.

Gave some basic reasons for interchangeability of information and value earlier, Will skip to the hard part, value, truth and force as I see these as the meat of the issue.

Value definitions:

Conferred or attributed: Value attributed to a thing, process, person or set of circumstances (as in paper and coin money, civil and criminal law, appointment to an office or deterioration of a manufactured product or constructed facility), subject to both natural and artificial mutability.

Actual or inherent: The autonomous possession of accumulated force of truth or falsity by any informational entity that can be conveyed to perception. Limited to aesthetic, practical or utilitarian conveyance in inorganics with the additional presence of moral, normative and ethical content in living entities.

Mutability of attribution: The change of a physical macro informational entity achieved by a process of reconfiguration of its constituent parts.

Mutability by falsification: A change in actual value state of information from true to false or the reverse.

Perceived Falsification Apprehension of negative conditions in the loss of instrumental good(s), as cancer is said to falsify the good of health and life, decay of food perceived as a falsification due to loss of capacity to impart nutrients to sustain wellbeing, or loss of resources contribute to disagreeable life conditions.

Value is conceptually indistinct, covers a pretty wide territory. When the term is sharpened, value in every category consists in one of two possible grades, true and false. Where the concept of value can be moved about in idea to and from nearly anything, truth is more refined, focused and powerful.

Attributed value can be moved from one object or set of circumstances to another, but truth is a condition of existence. Truth in this view has two primary functions. First, from the perspective of perception truth elicits a movement, act, placement, intention or direction of a mind (will) toward any value-bearing object or entity. Second, unlike electromagnetic force where opposites attract and likes repel, value employs the opposite function, truth attracts truth [t ^ t] and falsity attracts falsity [f ^f], while opposites repel [t<>f]; [f<>t]. (Sorry if confusing, don’t know if there are symbols for attraction and repulsion.)
This suggests is that the power or forces present from a physical point of view processing a simple observation of material reality relies on the t^t union between truth-bearingness of a mind and that of the entity observed. Because matter exists only in a true state, there is no falsity in matter to “fool” or cloud the t^t function. I’ve stated before that in Avicenna’s conception of truth in the essence [information] of things explains why the popular theories of truth aren’t actually accounts of what truth is, they only describe what truth does. Correspondence is just the t^t connection between mind and thing (or state of affairs) examined.

The t<>f repulsion is more involved. Falsity is unique to organics, specifically [possibly only] to intellectual agents. The t<>f conflict functions primarily in prescriptive matters, not a philosophical topic so won’t be discussed here.

But falsity also plays a role in intellectual operation with material existence. The assumption here is that the soul is a word that signifies a single informational entity—a human agent—in concurrent possession of two kinds of interdependent value which creates prescriptive energies and realities within descriptive existence. Only the prescriptive value of an agent can be falsified, but this actual falsification can affect reasoning and perception just as a physical brain injury can. On the macroscopic level the brain injury is a perceived falsification because it denies the good of healthy cognitive operation even while the rearranged physical microparticles associated with the brain injury retain their per se truth values. Falsity is perceived in pain and discomfort caused by injury plus loss of function. Actual falsification, because if affects primarily the rational functions associated with moral and ethical decisions, is largely but not entirely restricted to the acquisition and maintenance of moral beliefs. This is why I told En-De I mourn the erosion of societal truth by fragmental falsification; it appears to be adding to strife in virtually all societal contexts. After a few years spent trying to map out correlations, effects and outcomes of the t<>f conflict from a theological approach I stumbled across what turns out to be a secular version of the same concept in psychology. Cognitive Dissonance holds that people, typically expected to be motivated to act consistently with acquired beliefs, values, and perceptions, exhibit psychological inconsistency or disagreement between disparate pieces of information. This inconsistency produces dissonance. This is just the sort of discord found in the t<>f tension. The dissonance is relatively inert in perception in union with the material universe. 4+4=7 produces only a mild tension in the mind, while the violation of truth in prescriptive matters creates a much more robust resistance. To demonstrate I use this thought experiment:

You’re holding a heavy hammer in your hand. Observe your reactions as you imagine striking each of the following as hard as you can, in order:

  1. a large rock
  2. thistles
  3. a flowering lilac bush
  4. an ant hill swarming with ants
  5. a cat
  6. a human infant

A consensus of people of reasonable mental health who, all things being equal, could be called “morally normal”, will sense an increase in the falsification of the prescriptive good of life as the hammer struck each entity in succession. The natural increase in horror and revulsion in damage to the succeeding forms suggests a quantitative falsification, a quality or value unassociated with the rearrangement of matter itself. This prescriptive “resistance” is wholly different in kind than the value of perceived falsifications as reactions to losses of instrumental goods.

Sorry for the length, but background is included for difficulty of trying to convey these ideas accurately. The main thing I’m aiming at is that truth and value have no meaning apart from their perception or institution by intellectual-level or higher minds. Value is more generic and is imposed on features and states of material existence by humans, e.g., the ten dollar bill has value—it’s true that the ten dollar bill is, in normal transactions between buyer and seller, worth exactly ten dollars.

But value isn’t only a human convention, it’s a pre-existent quality in existence. I see truth as a necessary component of existence. I immediately liked your PtA concept, it seemed to fit well into the informational construct I work within. But as it plays out, as much as I’m able to understand your stuff [am still studying posts here and videos, the concepts are a wonderful mental exercise for me], in the universe I see, truth itself is the power or force, and the truth-bearingness of each iota of information is the dynamic that produces meaning precisely because of the t^t attraction. That’s why I asked you what the mechanism was for PtA to develop points rather than some other symmetry in the transition to affectance; how can power undirected produce symmetry? Though its not currently clear to me why PtA is “motivated to move” from its seeming comfortable position as potential to take the form of affectance, it’s less clear why affectance “chooses” to begin populating the universe in symmetrically clear patterns?

I’m not picking on RM:AO; you may have proper answers to these questions that I don’t yet grasp. I initially ran into this problem with an informational reality. Assuming some arbitrary quantity of truth-force [something very close or maybe identical to PtA] exists in both P and V in an iota of information, it would seem to coarsely follow that various size “bundles” of information are required to form the various entities, abstract and concrete, we find in experience. But why would information have any reason to form separate and distinct entities—same question for PtA-Affectance?

The answer seems to me to lie outside informational reality. Form as an “external” energy source [or set of forces] supervising information as its organizing principle seems able to account for ordering of symmetrical patterning, equilibrium and proportion of information into its various particulars and proper supervision of their participative internal and external connections and interactions.

I used quotes on “external” to address your comment…

The construct I use with Form as an external energy or set of forces need not be interpreted as God. I find the purported laws of science as external ordering process in imminent union with informational reality obvious and uncontroversial, though some deny its(their) external nature. If truth value (and especially truth-bearingness) attains from energy within informational existence I’m not aware of a mechanism for it.

This is a compatibilist paradigm. Immutable Form [Truth, capitalized to identify it as functionally distinct from ordered information] organizes the immutable truth value of material information to produce the mutable realities we experience. In this sense mutation only acts in accordance with Form’s parameters. Same principle holds true for the prescriptive value in intellectual agents, except for me the workings and processes that arise from this portion of reality plays out theologically and includes other value aspects not pertinent here.

So, for me the existence of truth is necessary for the prevention of chaos. If there is a truth-force acting within existence whose source isn’t conveyed, produced, constructed or transmitted by human means then it’s either the product of design by an external source or arises from nothing. But that’s just how I see things. Either way we’re all taking the same train.

Hate to have to stop you already, but I really don’t understand the term “realities”. Before I get into the rest, could you clear up that term for me? I only know of one reality.

Structure intended is: Your reality is the set of all existents, phenomenal [or other] experience and interactions you have, my reality consists of mine. These are sets of things drawn from all that exists [existence] that make up each reality. Both draw from available pool of existence. From a realist perspective, anyway. When we communicate we share bits of each reality.

So when you say that something is “real”, what are you saying? Real for you, but perhaps not real for me?? :confused:

And let me clear up a different issue:
Similarly charge objects “repel” (migrate away from each other). But the substance of the charge itself aggregates. Positive affectance aggregates positive affectance. Once positive particles are formed, each positive particle will maintain its independence from the others by migrating away (aka “repelling”).

When it comes to Truth, the same takes place. Smaller truths accumulate into an ontology, a singular understanding. Divergent understandings are then avoided and kept separate. Scriptures use one ontology (involving spirits, gods, angels, and so on) while materialist science uses different ontologies (quantum reality, relativity, classic Newtonian). One should never mix ontologies, just as the universe never mixes similarly charged particles.

And interestingly, both happen for the same reason. Charged particles are obeying PtA concerns and truth constructs, ontologies, are obeying analogous PHT concerns.

If you are a Philosophical Realist, then your claim should be ‘there is only ONE Reality [as with JSS] with many ways one can correspond truths to such a reality.’ Note the Corresponding Theory of Truth.

“only an approximation of reality” imply there is only one reality to be approximated to.

But philosophically, Philosophical Realism is not a tenable theory and Philosophical Realism is soundly trashed by various Philosophical anti-Realism theories, e.g. by Kant, Hume, phenomenology, etc.

So science is not tenable now, huh.
Sheeesh … #-o

Nah, that is why your view is narrow and shallow.

Philosophical Realism is not tenable and,
philosophically, it is false to claim that Science is a subset of Philosophical Realism.

As Popper had stated scientific theories are merely polished conjectures as ‘polished’ in tandem with the evidences produced and justified with the Scientific Framework and System.
Science is led by evidence and its justification process not by some dogma of existence.

So you seriously believe that Science doesn’t accept that atoms, for example, are anything but mentally conjured imaginings? That nothing is actually real?

You DO realize that Popper was ANTI-science, right?

What is real to Science is qualified to the Scientific Framework and System and the confidence in that system is based on the assurance testability and repeatable conclusion by anyone.
Whatever is real in relation to Science must be qualified to its inherent Scientific Framework and System (Scientific Methods, principles, peer pressure, etc.)

Who said Popper was Anti-Science?
There is no reason for Popper to be anti-Science except being anti-Scientism.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
What Popper did was to put Science in its proper philosophical perspective after Hume has thrown in a spanner to the prior overconfidence on Science by those who are into Scientism.

Even if that wasn’t just double-talk BS, the fact is that Science cannot function at all unless it accepts that some things are in FACT real. How else could an experiment be conducted and measured? “What we are seeing is just in our minds, so pay no attention to irrational occurrences”. Grant you, the Quantum Magi love that sort of thinking, but they are not Science. They promote magic in the name of science.

Science is completely in the realm of Realism (as opposed to Solipsism), else having “independent experimenting” would be completely irrelevant to them.

Are my thoughts, beliefs or nightmares real for you? They are for me. Yet both mine and yours are drawn from the same pool of existence.

Why does positive, negative or neutral even exist? Not sure what you mean by “substance of the charge”…do you mean charge itself distinct from the affectance charge endues?

This makes sense to me if you mean truth accumulates to larger pools or bundles of truth-bearing entities for minds to apprehend. In my thinking intellectual operation [or “living information” or consciousness] is fragmentally falsified, hindering ability to unite fully with descriptive or prescriptive truths–though the mechanics of each are recognizably different.

Isn’t this your way of articulating the factual-moral divide? I can see developing ontologies along different lines, but at the end of the day material beings routinely make ethical decisions and hold moral beliefs, so there must be a connection somewhere.

The notion of PHT is interesting, haven’t had time to try to follow it through. But seems to me both PtA and PHT need an organizational principle or blueprint, for affectance to produce symmetrically coherent points or for PHT to build to consistent, lucid rules of morality. Because I see truth itself as the source of energy or force, the essence or meaning of truth is organizational stability. In fact, pardon for projecting my definitions on your construct, but PtA and PHT seem good candidates for two aspects of the same truth-force to me. The trick is find the point of convergence.

BTW, I was thinking; seems to me it might be easier to grasp AO if some 3 dimensional presentations of its mechanisms could be produced. Not sure of degree of difficulty.

As far a Science is concern, it can only claim “scientific realness” never absolute realness, i.e.
“Whatever is real in relation to Science must be qualified to its inherent Scientific Framework and System (Scientific Methods, principles, peer pressure, etc.)”

Note there is no absolute realness for Science because Science made provision for a certain degree of uncertainty and falsifiability
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
that its theories can be changed if new justifiable evidences are brought forth and this allowance for change has been going on since Science emerged within human cognition.
Because Science is open for changes, its established scientific theories will never ever be real in the absolute sense but merely relative real subject to the Scientific Framework and System and awaiting changes to the theory or its termination.

So if a change to a scientific theory is necessary or be discarded it can only be done subject to the requirements of Scientific Framework and System (Scientific Methods, principles, peer pressure, etc.) and nothing else.
Scientific facts can only be ‘scientific facts’ and not general facts.

At most Science merely ASSUME general ‘realism’. An assumption is never a fact. Get it?

Scientists don’t give a f… to your claim they cannot function unless some things are FACT in accordance to your views. What is their concern is they must comply with the basic and relevant conditions of what is within the Scientific Framework and System as agreed with their peers.

Why not???
As I had stated as long as experiments and measurements are made within the requirements of the Scientific Framework and System [agreed by their peers], then they are scientifically valid. What is so complicated about this. If there is a non-compliance, it will be rejected in a peer review.

Don’t bring in ‘Solipsism’ which is an idea from the philosophically immatured.
iep.utm.edu/solipsis/#H7
If insisted regardless, Solipsism is an incoherent and stupid idea.

Science does not investigate reality but observable phenomena and specifically their properties and capabilities
Whether they are real or not is not a question it can answer since ontology pertains to philosophy not to science

Agree. How come you are so smart?

Phenomenon is a subcategory of reality, not separate from it.

How come you are not?