what it means is in what it means?

[gib]

@Along The Way

Are we looking for a description of meaning or are we looking for a felt experience?

What is the “meaning” of description? Why do we want to “know” something in the sense of being able to represent that knowledge to us via symbols?

If I cannot feel meaning, then it seems to me that no definition of meaning will suffice for my understanding. So again, what is doing the seeking here? Is the drive to experience meaning doing the seeking, or is the drive to represent the word “meaning” doing the seeking? Are you trying to draw a map of meaning? Or are you trying to explore the territory of meaning.

I’ll throw out one possible definition of meaning.

Meaning is Being.

Yes, meaning=being. I think that by answering these questions, we are, in a way, drawing a map of meaning, even if the answer refers us to the territory. It’s like if you explore a territory and you discover something (meaning) and then you go back and tell your friends: “I explored the territory and I found X” ← those words are like a map, except they take the form of spoken words, not drawing on paper.

[Amorphos]

Meaning is Being.

Ok, so is there such a thing as non-meaning and non-being? Is pure info - data, anything at all like being? Are bricks [aside from in a modern art exhibition] being? Is an electron being? Don’t we have to add something to it for it to be more than just an electron?

Gib

it makes no sense to ask: what underlies being such as to support its existence. It must be such that it supplies its own existence just from being what it is.

Why? We exist in a universe born from nothing, so if we consider the contradictions which inevitably arise between e.g. mind or being, and not mind or being - like a rock or an electron, there can be nothing which originates both unless there is something in an electron that is the same as being? I am leaning towards the notion that nothing is base, and there are no same origins to both physics and mind, not directly, like an universal aspect or element.

However, there is another sense in which you are correct to suppose there must be an origin from which mind derives–that’s temporality. Every instance of mind requires a temporal origin. We see this best when we look at thought. Every thought is derived from a prior thought. And this is also a good example with which to see how necessity and justification ties into meaning and gives rise to “flow” ← the process by which mind unfolds and metamorphosizes. Every thought has a meaning. That meaning is what gives rise to other thoughts. With syllogisms, for example, we see that we derive the conclusions from the meaning of the premises. We say that if all X’s are Y, and if this is an X, that means it is a Y. The initial thoughts (the premises), in virtue of what they mean, give rise to the flow of thought, a flow governed by the necessity of logic.

The information in our brains can be separated from mind itself though, like one can record words and actions or a computer can replicate given informations. So info is more akin to rocks and electrons, whereas mind is not present in those things but in thought relates to them or their utility. There’s a difference and a separation.

Now, when it comes to experiences like sensation and perception, the origins of these experiences come from something prior to what we can claim to be consciously aware of. But I still say it’s an experience nonetheless. If each experience justifies or necessitates the next in the flow of experiences (like premises do a conclusion), then what justified/necessitated the first?

That’s a finite chain in an infinite reality, not to mention that not all chains connect. Put all things and all personhood [mind, experience etc] in the cosmic blender and you get no personhood and no things, yet the result would be an emptiness which contains everything [= one not 0]. ergo the paradox of existence is that you may then arrive at two or more completely different things from the same origin, because the origin isn’t anything specifically [is empty]. Buddhists may say that emptiness and mind are the same, but I’d suggest that’s not true, we have to be able to arrive at different and non-complimentary items e.g. rocks and thought. Then if mind and emptiness are the same [surely ‘mind’ is more than emptiness?] that would mean electrons and rocks are synonymous with thought and being, and there are no contradictory factors. If there were no contradictory factors there would only be nothing, but existence exists, so nothing doesn’t [at least not at once].
1 is one thing, if you add something experiencing it to the equation then it is two things, no? Unless the original one - as you infer is experience. So how do we get to non experienced physical entities, and what is experience if there is nothing being experienced ~ not two things there.

All I’m trying to get across with my theory of mind is what they all have in common–they can all be reflected upon as having this experiential aspect, and aspect that allows us to at least conceptualize them a mental things

They are all observers. Good point before that about the ability of mind to know; how can mind know something that isn’t mind. Perhaps info knows other info because its composed of observing particles, though that in my mind doesn’t imply a third party. An experiencing thing experiences of a thing I.e. from an external view point looking in. Rocks don’t observe other rocks, even though all the particles within them are observing one another. Existence has many strands of info and it doesn’t all connect, there simply is duality regardless of a given unity.
_

[Arcturus_Descending]

Amorphos,

The way I look at it, and I may be wrong, but isn’t “thingness” too broad a scope?

See above ^^. you are right, that thingness is too broad, red is a thingness not present in light.

Looking at it in another way, “thingness” is not broad enough. What does it explain!
Red is not present within light? Maybe you meant something else. Otherwise, then why are we able to see that color?
Why is the tomato red, why is the grass green, why is the orange orange, why is the sky blue or a shade of blue, why does the rainbow appear? Is there red within it? lol

You are a thingness not present in the body or brain. It is counter intuitive, but the thingness cannot be exposited by knowledge or any third party version of it.

Consciousness is a “thingness”, is it not?
We may not be quite sure at this time exactly what it is or where it resides, but don’t most philosophers and scientists sort of intuit that the “I” is a part of consciousness, still permeates both the body and the brain and the mind? Or at least we interpret it that way.

It is counter intuitive, but the thingness cannot be exposited by knowledge or any third party version of it.

Exactly - just like the iceberg. We need to go deeper and deeper into the exploration of meaning.

If you could express those first six words differently, how might you express it? I’m trying to get at your meaning. Maybe what you mean by “meaning” here is the sum total of who you really are ~~ which facts and information about yourself or one’s self doesn’t explain that sum total.

No not the sum total, that would be a collection, but I am one.

Can’t you be “one” and at the same time a "collection?

[gib]

@Amorphos

@gib

it makes no sense to ask: what underlies being such as to support its existence. It must be such that it supplies its own existence just from being what it is.

Why?

Let’s suppose there was something deeper that underlied being, something that could be referred to in order to explain being. Then we would ask: what explains it’s being? ← In other words, we would have to assume that it has being as well. But then that same thing would have to underlie its own being, for that’s the very thing we’re trying to explain. It leads to an infinite regress.

When we ask: what underlies existence such that everything that exists is explained, we’re asking: where do our inquiries into existence finally come to rest? The only way that something could satisfy that criteria is if it not only explained everything that is based on it, but explained its own existence at the same time. “Being” is the word we use to refer to this thing.

@Amorphos

We exist in a universe born from nothing, so if we consider the contradictions which inevitably arise between e.g. mind or being, and not mind or being - like a rock or an electron, there can be nothing which originates both unless there is something in an electron that is the same as being? I am leaning towards the notion that nothing is base, and there are no same origins to both physics and mind, not directly, like an universal aspect or element.

Then my question to you is: would nothingness then be a “thing”? If nothingness really is the origin of both matter and mind (I assume you mean “mind” as conventionally understood), then it must really be a “something”, a something which has the power to give rise to at least mind and matter.

@Amorphos

The information in our brains can be separated from mind itself though, like one can record words and actions or a computer can replicate given informations. So info is more akin to rocks and electrons, whereas mind is not present in those things but in thought relates to them or their utility. There’s a difference and a separation.

So you mean the signals in the computer circuits or the ink on paper taking the form of symbols ← this is information? There are those who would agree with you–they would say that information can exist physically in the world, independently from a conscious mind. Words written on paper, for example, would count as information even if there were no one around to read them, no one who could understand them.

I’m of the opinion that something can only count as information if there is a consciousness capable of interpreting it to have a specific meaning. If you came across an alien language, for example, it would most likely be meaningless to you, just a scattering of random symbols, but to one of those aliens, it would be full of meaning. This means at least that information is relative–that it is information is relative. This is why I take meaning to be in the apprehension of information, in the abstraction of meaning from things like symbols, words, signals in computer circuits, etc.

@Amorphos

That’s a finite chain in an infinite reality, not to mention that not all chains connect. Well, I’m assuming we can at least trace the origins of the universe back to the Big Bang. Put all things and all personhood [mind, experience etc] in the cosmic blender and you get no personhood and no things, Yes, it wouldn’t be “personhood” or “thingness” as we understand them; it would be something incomprehensible, and I suppose to us and the limits of our understanding, that would be equivalent to “nothingness”. yet the result would be an emptiness which contains everything [= one not 0]. ergo the paradox of existence is that you may then arrive at two or more completely different things from the same origin, because the origin isn’t anything specifically [is empty]. Buddhists may say that emptiness and mind are the same, but I’d suggest that’s not true, we have to be able to arrive at different and non-complimentary items e.g. rocks and thought. I’m told that the Buddhist concept of emptiness is not exactly the equivalent of the Western concept of nothingness. It’s more like the absence of noise or the homogeneity that’s left after you get rid of all the heterogeneity. Like if you mix a whole tapestry of colors together, you get white–but white is every color, the opposite of black which is true nothingness. They call it “emptiness” only because of the homogeneity, the lack of “noise”. Then if mind and emptiness are the same [surely ‘mind’ is more than emptiness?] that would mean electrons and rocks are synonymous with thought and being, and there are no contradictory factors. If there were no contradictory factors there would only be nothing, but existence exists, so nothing doesn’t [at least not at once]. 1 is one thing, if you add something experiencing it to the equation then it is two things, no? Unless the original one - as you infer is experience. So how do we get to non experienced physical entities, and what is experience if there is nothing being experienced ~ not two things there.

By “contradictory factors”, I assume you mean heterogeneity–the existence of things along side other things that aren’t the same. You also seem to be talking about “mind” in the conventional sense, not mind as I’ve redefined it in my theory. So I can understand where you’re coming from. Mind, in the conventional sense, is obviously “something”, something that obviously exists. So too is matter. With both coexisting in the universe, you get heterogeneity. The homogeneity you would get by mixing them together (along with everything else that might exist) would be the “emptiness” from which they all originated. It’s like the colors of a rainbow originating from white light that passed through a prism.

The origin would be the “everythingness” in my phrase “little bits of everythingness”. What we experience of the universe and our minds are the “bits”–they are a small set of particular colors. This is why I designate “quality” as the first component of experience. Our minds consist of a small sample of qualities from the infinite pool of all possible qualities–we have not only the whole spectrum of colors in our visual experiences, but the different tastes of food, the sounds of music–quiet, loud, soft, hard–we have different tactile experiences: pain, pleasure, cold, hot, etc.–and we have abstract perceptual qualities: beauty, ugliness, motion, form, depth–and then there are the qualities of our inner experience, experiences like thought and emotion, like memory, desire, fantasy, abstraction, etc. ← All these things are but a tiny sample of the range of qualities that mind in general is capable of. These are the little “bits” taken from everythingness to constitute the human mind. The rest of the universe, consequently, acquires all other qualities that are necessary to sum up to the whole, or the emptiness, the white that our “bits” and all the other “bits” that the universe acquires amount to. It’s like if the human mind was formed from a combination of shades of red and orange, then the rest of the universe would consequently be a mix of yellow, green, blue, and violet (whatever color that turns out to be). But taken together, they still amount to the same white as that which existed originally.

@Amorphos

They are all observers. Good point before that about the ability of mind to know; how can mind know something that isn’t mind. Perhaps info knows other info because its composed of observing particles, though that in my mind doesn’t imply a third party. An experiencing thing experiences of a thing I.e. from an external view point looking in. Rocks don’t observe other rocks, even though all the particles within them are observing one another. Existence has many strands of info and it doesn’t all connect, there simply is duality regardless of a given unity.

Well, my point about knowledge is that in order to know about something, about some experience we have, that experience must “flow”, or become, knowledge about that experience. Sensation seems have this ability. Once we experience sensation, that sensation tends to morph and flow and get translated in our minds until it becomes knowledge of that which we are sensing. However, anything that came before the experience of sensation in the flow of mind (as in universal Mind) doesn’t necessarily become knowledge. It obviously must lead to the knowledge of the sensation just mentioned, but that’s knowledge of that sensation, not knowledge of the experiences that came before that sensation. Therefore, whatever experiences preceded the sensation are unknowable. This leads to an illusion–the illusion that these prior experiences don’t exist, or that whatever gave rise to our sensations aren’t experiences in the same flow of mind, that our sensations are where our minds begin (thus leading to the illusion that our minds are individuated and exist in an otherwise mindless universe).