What does this statement mean to you?

I came upon this statement reading a philosophical dictionary and I am wondering what others think of it.

“Signification comes before interpretation.”

Does anybody have any ideas to what it’s meaning is?

Before you can interpret something it must mean something to you. Or rather it must strike a chord within. In other words if you notice it, it must have a meaning even before interpreting it.

Yeah, I’d say pretty much the same. It hits you as having some worth before you begin to probe it. You know how you come across an idea and it just really strikes you. Sometimes you just think ‘there’s some truth in that’. Perhaps it taps us on our logos receptors. :smiley:

It means that you get a sign or a symbol of a thing before your faculties of interpretation begin to make what they will of it.

Root before application.

Interpretation is dependant on the state of being-known, something must be known in order to be interpreted. Interpretation can only occur on things that we know.

“Significance comes before interpretation.”
Think of how many dreams you have in a lifetime compared to how many of them you actually remember. Only the ones that are vivid in your memory have any significance to you. They are the ones you are more apt to ponder and make some sense of.

So in order for us to interpretate somthing it must first hold significance.

Do people here believe uncertainty holds significance or is that some other classification?

( I really do thank you all for your wonderfull suggestions of what such a statement means.)

I took a seminar type course once about “strategic implications of uncertainty”. I think that uncertainty can be significant.

Significance, in the sense that you presented it, is a different classification that uncertainty. Significance refers to the regard given to an object, uncertainty refers to the lack of certainty regarding charateristics of the object. Significance can certainly be jeopardized by uncertainty, in that something can be so uncertain it’s significance cannot be properly regarded. But I think that in order for something to be uncertain it must have some significance, because uncertainty would be a concequence of interpretation (interpreting the object as uncertain) which seems to be commonly understood as dependant on significance.

Which is it then?

Are there any schools of thought that deal with such a issue?

What was brought up in the seminar?

I’d say people falsely assume that we control language, when instead language is a necessary pre-existing source of meaning, with interpretation only possible thereafter.

I think it means that there has to be something to interpret before you can interpret it. That signification makes possible interpretation.

Good, good. Let’s have a look.

Kriswest, you must remember that the meaning of a thing depends on an interpreting process. A phenomena that “jumps out” at you has a greater degree of difference in appearance, so it is noticed sooner. This doesn’t mean that the thing has any meaning yet.

But how are the signs and symbols understood if not by the “faculties”?

There can be no meaning prior to intention, and there is no intentionality without arranging motives and ends- one decides “this box is there”…and this fact about the world is meaningless. When one decides "this box is there and it is…etc., " the thought becomes meaningful.

The purpose of objects in the world is something different than the properties of the objects in the world, but the properties are always noticed before the object becomes familiar. The “signs” and “symbols”, then, are only property markers…objective facts about the appearance of the phenomena. They do not mean anything, though.

Just look at the base word. Sign. Signifying something means to re-establish a settled meaning. If you saw something only once…you would not be signifying anything when you saw it…since you never saw anything like it before. In the future, a similiar object, when seen, would signify, to you, the past experience of something like it.

A “sign” is a representation of an object, but not the object itself. It has to be a figure in language or a symbol which is used habitually in graphic language, such as imaging.

But you could never see a sign of a sign, before you saw the sign. But you could see a sign for “falling rocks ahead” while driving and recall, in your mind, a brief image of rocks falling, after you “signify” the sign with what it means.

Look at the properties of being like Sartre did. They are all ontologically equal with no more or less meaning pending on the amount of properties an object has. Signifying a meaning is the same as interpreting a meaning, when all objects consist of these contextual properties that are meaningless in themselves.

So I think nothing can have “significance” by itself or before interpretation.

maybe it’s something like tihs

the significance of “significance comes before interpretation”, to me is, the understanding of it represents the possibility for me to intellectually express myself, and also it’s a possible insight into the nature of mind which is also something i’d be interested in.

yet, even though i know that much, i still have to interpret the damn thing. for example, what the heck does he mean my signification.

Could you explain that further? It sounds intriguing.

I’m saying that when we ask about the definition of a term, we have to consider either its original use, or, all the possible uses combined and isolate instances only where a useful context is impossible, in order to determine what, and only what, a specific term can mean. Since we cannot find the first use of any word (for then we would have to find the first use of the words which define the word we are considering), we have to allow some play in language…and this can create difficulties, which deconstructionists just love, I understand.

We have of course heard both terms, interpret and signify, used to convey a similiar meaning abstractly. For example, if I handed a person a page during a conversation where he was just asked to “confirm” something, and upon handing it to him I say “can you signify this”, he would most likely believe that this meant “confirm it”. Likewise, if I said “interpret” instead, he would have assumed the same. This context here opens up boundaries and language possibilities which creates a huge gap in “possible useful words” where words can be used that can be used in other circumstances…and mean something quite different.

So in this sense we can say that the two terms are basically antonymous. However, notice that the meaning of the term as it was used gathers a large part of its reality from the context and setting where the language was used. What was said previously by the person and myself, handing him the paper, …these two things set up an expected range of possible meanings, and either of the two terms, signify and interpret, would work and result in the same thing. So, technically, the terms are not at all different in certain contexts…since the resultant conditions are the same.

But without these contexts, I could hand him the same page spontaneously and ask him to interpret it. He would either look at an image or read some words, then explain to me what he is thinking. If I asked him instead to signify it…he would ask “signify what”. Here, he couldn’t mistake, or edit rather, my using “signify” instead of interpret. In the former case he could.

Not just deconstructionists.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2 … aver_model

What facts do you find significant enough to change theories???

Does that fact space and time are side effects of matter somehow show that matter is also caused, and also isn’t a constant. But then quantum fluctuation also shows this.