Anomaly654
I now present to you a kind of basis for conversation from my point of view and I welcome yours too.
My only hope for now is that this is an acceptable format . . .
First we should consider what truth actually is: I prefer one of the usual meanings—that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality. But this meaning presents it’s own two problems and they are >> 1. What is fact? and 2. What is reality? The fact part is easy given that it is synonymous with truth but reality is not so. How do we define real given that there appears to be more than one version of it?
I started out with the idea of a more abstract mental impression of meaning - a subjective experience of it - because I believe it ties in with reality, logic and emotion id est my version of mind and its ever changing nature which is in contrast to the ever changing nature of that which surrounds it.
Affecting and being affected . . .
Reality then has an external appearance that is projected internally and modified to become a mental interpretation of what is real. This involves known facts, beliefs, evidence and other imaginings and perceptions - forgive my redundancy.
Truth then becomes hard to nail down to an exactness that we all seem to wish for and hence we spend time in disagreement trying to sort through it. It is evident to me that belief and truth hold great meaning to the individual and yet it is not one hundred percent clear to me whether meaning starts out as external or internal.
So I would change what I originally said to: This mental pathway shows how it can be said that truth, the alchemy of philosophy, is one of the greatest treasures as it leads to the giving of value itself, to self-knowledge, to value-knowledge and perhaps meaning. Everything else of value would be derivative.
What is it that is being eroded? Perhaps an agreed upon truth . . . a truth of the past—I can say with a level of certainty that this is the case but what of what remains? Some truth appears to be permanent like what happens to a person falling out of an aircraft at 20 000 feet.
Now we get to the part that really interests me - your concept that meaning is a natural “byproduct” of information - I once wrote the following as a device for further thought and I think it is good enough to get the gist of where I come from on the topic:
► Everything known was once unknown.
► Everything there is still to know already exists, it is just undiscovered, un-evolved an un-configured.
► Everything can be expressed as information.
► Discovery is just the unknown configured into formation.
► Inception is formation.
► Unknown in-formation is known.
To get my point across I had to play with words a little. If as you say meaning is a natural “byproduct” of information and information is being or “isness” then I would say that information is being or “isness” because everything can be expressed as information and lack of information cannot be and is not.
Meaning is the expressed byproduct of the expressed information of everything that affects and everything that is being affected - all else is not there.
Hopefully you can see why your comment stimulated this line of thought and why I thought your words held merit at the time I said that and from my point of view, still do. I don’t expect a response to this post because as I said to start with I am only laying the foundation from my point of view.
I have said this quite regularly and I will say it to you: apologies for any errors in logic that I may have made in advance.