Date: Sat, 27 Sep 1997 09:19:22 -0700 (PDT)
From: LH Engelskirchen <lhengels-AT-igc.apc.org>
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re:  BHA: Various things


 
 
Tobin 
 
I already posted a quick response asking you to elaborate on why
you thought the claim that everything is real, absences and all,
was worrisome.  Here's another request for elaboration.
 
First, though, I was surprised at your statement "If we say that a
meaning exists as a referent apart from our representations of it,
can we avoid platonism?"  And you add there are words that lack
referents.
 
For the words lacking referents, Collier's book is very good on
emphasizing why meaning is a mapping from language to referent
rather than a one to one relationship between word and referent
(the fido-fido theory of language).  Helsinki on a map has no
relationship to a place in Finland at all except in reference to
the other symbols on the map, such as, e.g. L.A.  
 
Can meaning exist as a referent apart from representations of it? 
I take your point now, as I get into it, about platonism.  Without
material representations we have lost our materialist ground.  But
what is critical to recognize is that while meaning cannot exist
apart from representations of it, those representations don't have
any necessary meaning and, in particular, dont have to mean what
they usually mean.  The point is that in the PON passage RB's
sentences say the opposite of what we all take him to mean.  So,
no, the meaning doesn't exist apart from its representations, but
it can exist apart from any use of particular representations which
we take to be usual or conventional, etc.  So we cannot collapse
meaning to its representations.  Meaning exists only in its
representations, but cannot be reduced to its representations.
 
(All this I hope we can join further with regard to what a contract
means, but I want to hold that a bit.)
 
Here's the sentence I found intriguing in your post that I hoped
you'd elaborate:  "Without any referents but only
characterizations, communication would indeed be impossible, since
there would be no basis for determining that communication had
indeed taken place."  This seems to me some sort of key to the
understanding I'm looking for.  Can you develop the idea a bit?
 
* * * 
 
Back to the "everything is real" question.  The thing I find most
difficult about this is conceiving of everything in the future as
real.  The future is open and not all that is possible is going to
happen.  Is the future not everything?  Or is the future, at least
some of it, not real?  I know RB would make the claim that aspects
of the future are real.  What aspects?  Why?  All of it?  The
really significant thing about action is that it is necessarily
open to the future.  For that reason you can never say that a
system is closed, even a scientific experiment, except ex post. 
Nobody knows what the future will bring.  So what sense can it make
to say that the future is real?
 
By the way, what would Adorno say about all this?
 
Howard
 
Howard Engelskirchen
Fullerton
 
     "What is there just now you lack"  Hakuin


     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---