guest_of_logic: Even if I agreed that it were a "localized" (why use the American spelling?) meaning, such a localised meaning can very easily be reframed as a universal/necessary truth of the same type as 1+1=2. Can you see how?
David: I can't, no. But feel free to give it a try.
It's simple - it can be framed like this: "There is a possible world in which a particular person at a particular time apprehends the particular meaning [insert 'localised' meaning here]". Now, the statement is a universal and necessary truth, because, out of all possible worlds, such a possibility necessarily exists.
Going further (which, depending on how 'localised' the meaning is, we won't always be able to do), we can frame it as: "There is a possible world in which multiple people at a multiple times apprehend the particular meaning [insert 'localised' meaning here]". This universalises the truth - and the meaning - further, and separates it further from any individual mind.
Going even further (which, again, we won't always be able to do), we can frame it as: "There is a possible world in which all people all the time apprehend the particular meaning [insert 'localised' meaning here]". This universalises the truth and the meaning as much as it can be universalised without stripping away references to particulars.
guest_of_logic: From that universalisation, it's easy to see how meaning itself (independent of the universalising truth in which it is couched) can be regarded as mind-independent, in the same way that 1+1=2 is.
David: A particular logical truth, such as 1+1=2, is true for all minds and all perspectives, whereas a particular meaning is dependant upon a particular mind and a particular perspective. As such, logical truths possess an objective quality that meanings lack.
As I've demonstrated above, though, "localised" meanings can be turned into universal logical truths. Granted, given that they refer to particulars, they are not as
truly universal as such logical truths as 1+1=2, but here's where I can make good on what you just quoted me as saying - we can take the universalisation above even further, by stripping away all references to particulars (except that of a possible world), and simply write:
"There is a possible world in which there exists a meaning [insert 'localised' meaning here]".
Going the whole hog, we can arguably even strip out even reference to a possible word, and simply write:
"There exists a meaning [insert 'localised' meaning here]".
As for objectivity, I deal with that in my elaboration further below.
I think that perhaps Dennis has (and perhaps you have too) misunderstood what I mean by mind-independent. I'm
not trying to argue that context, including the context of the mind in which the meaning is apprehended, is always irrelevant to the informational content of the meaning, but that much should be obvious - I'm not an idiot. Instead, by "mind-independent" I mean that:
1. meaning, consisting in information, can be seen as existing independently in the abstract,
regardless of whether it is currently being apprehended by a mind, and that
2. the informational content of all meaning (that can be seen as existing in the abstract) is implicate in reality - in other words, that minds do not "create" meaning but instead "apprehend" it, just as minds do not "create" the truth that 1+1=2, but rather "apprehend" it.
David: One person looks at a hinge on the door and sees a useful joint that connects the door to the wall. Another person might see it as an interesting example of engineering. Yet another might see it as a musical instrument that has a nice sqeak, or as a lump of metal that could be melted down and used elsewhere. An ant might see it as a bridge. A spider might see it as a convenient place to attach its web. So what is its meaning, really? It depends on your point of view.
guest_of_logic: Doesn't all of this point to a richness of meaning rather than a paucity? I definitely don't get "meaningless" from all of that.
David: It points to the diversity of subjective meanings and the lack of objective meaning.
I phrased my question as I did because I'm concerned with the repetition on this forum of the notion that everything is "meaningless". Can you agree that this multiplicity of meanings is exactly the opposite of "meaningless"?
In any case, I'll elaborate on my line of thought a little more and maybe you'll be able to follow it. It blurs the distinction between "subjective" and "objective" meaning by suggesting that even apparently "subjective" meanings are objectively implicit in reality. I'm not intending to reduce the distinction between these two words ("subjective" and "objective") to meaninglessness, though - I can still see a role for "subjective meaning" as referring to a meaning that, in terms I'm about to elaborate on below, has not been "accessed" by more than one person (or that has only been "accessed" by a very few people). Nevertheless, that "subjective" meaning is in another sense "objectively implicit" in reality - it is an "access" of that objectively implicit meaning. Anyhow, I'll get on with the elaboration, trying to keep it in terms that you might be comfortable with.
You will, I expect, agree that we can describe events and objects, and that some of those descriptions are statements of meaning. Now, I hope that you will agree that there are objective ways to make statements of meaning about an object or event. I'm thinking, for example, of such an objective statement of meaning as: "The object on the ground over there absorbs all wavelengths of light visible to the human eye except red, meaning that a normally functioning (i.e. non-blind-or-colour-blind) human eye will perceive it as red in colour". This, I think we can both agree, is an objective, mind-independent statement of meaning. I think, too, that we can both agree that it is, as I have been trying to argue, a meaning that is
implicit in reality - it is true and meaningful regardless of whether any mind is currently apprehending it.
Now, we can add in elements to make it more subjective. We can, for example, add in the element that the object was used for a time as a cup by a particular family. So, we can make a new statement of meaning: "The object on the ground over there was used as a cup by this family, so that it is associated (a type of meaning) in objective reality with the drinking of water, and that by virtue of their perspective, this family have access to that meaning". Here, through the reframing, we can see that even a subjective meaning ("red object means 'drink water'") can be seen as one that is objectively implicit in reality i.e. in the reality of what has occurred in the past between objects in reality; in this case, between the red object and the family - the family simply "accesses" (or "accedes to") the implicit meaning rather than "creates" it.
We can apply this process, or at least an extended variation of it, to any level of apparent subjectivity of meaning, framing that meaning so as to make clear its objective implicitness in reality. Take, for example, the higher meaning that an artist associates with his/her artwork. We can account for the objective implicitness of the simpler (let's call them "lower-order") meanings out of which the more abstract (let's call them "higher-order") meanings are formed in the exact same way in which we accounted for the association by the family of the red object with the drinking of water: an objective association exists with some object or event in external reality, from which the person (or other people who later communicate this meaning to him/her) "take" meaning.
Now, we can account for the objective implicitness of the higher-order meanings as follows: once the lower-order meanings are established within people's minds, they become part of a reality that is analogous to the "physical" reality in which the red object existed: a "conceptual" reality of lower-order meanings. In the same way that these lower-order meanings are implicit in the objective associations between events and objects in "physical" reality, so the higher-order meanings are implicit in the objective associations between lower-order meanings in "conceptual" reality.
So, the artist "apprehends" (or "notices" or "recognises") an association between the lower-order meanings of two words in his/her poem (an association that is objectively implicit between those words), and chooses that as the meaning that he/she wishes to convey to other people. In pleasing support of - or, at the very least, lack of disagreement with - my argument that this meaning is objectively implicit in reality is the fact that, very often, other people
will "access" the same meaning that the artist intended to communicate.
And so ends my little sketch of my thesis. It took a little longer to explain than I had anticipated, but hopefully it's clear now. As with much of what I post to GF, I post in the spirit of offering an alternative to what has been framed as "the" way to see things: that reality is ultimately meaningless; my argument here is intended to show that this is not necessarily the only way to view things, that it is possible to instead see reality as brimming with embedded meaning.
Even if it has no value to anyone else, I hope that at least cousinbasil appreciates it. Enjoy.
[Edited to clarify the red-object-as-cup example]