From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gis.net>
Subject: BHA: Meanings
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 20:44:00 -0500


Hi Howard--

Hm, well speaking sort of off the top of my head, maybe it's that
"expressed" is ambiguous.  If you mean something beyond represention within
consciousness, then perhaps "expressed" isn't the best term.  On the other
hand, if you broaden "expressed" to that extent, then do *unexpressed*
meanings even exist?  Your statement that "Meanings ... are causal, if they
are, once they are expressed" implies that meanings pre-exist their
expression, but I'm uncertain what that means.  (That's a real question, not
a rhetorical one.)  I understand what it means to say that *signs* -- which
may become understood -- pre-exist their interpretation, but signs involve a
triadic relationship, one part of which is a mind to interpret the sign
(though it may do so unconsciously).  It's the mind that makes the sign mean
something.  Without the mind, no meaning, but rather the capacity for
meaning.  However, I don't follow the argument that meanings themselves
exist independently of minds.  But perhaps I'm just being dense, or missing
the point that you're trying to make.

I think the argument that signs require minds in order to be meaningful does
create an awkwardness in the discussion of objectivity, since the sign is
objective but the meaning is not -- but nevertheless meaning is *causal*,
and therefore real.  (Admittedly, I'm never quite sure what "objective"
means.)

Sorry if this response is a bit muddled, at the moment I don't have time to
write more carefully.

Best, T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-mail.com
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Howard Engelskirchen" <howarde-AT-twcny.rr.com>
To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
Sent: Friday, 19 December 2003 7:54 PM
Subject: BHA: Re: Re: "The Real" and what is point of whacking
anti-realists?


> Hi Tobin,
>
> I'd love it if you'd expand your quibble into more.  As it stands, I don't
> get it.  If unconscious thoughts affect behavior, then they are
> 'objectively' expressed.
>
> Also, I don't really have to deal with the issue of mental causation here,
> do I?  If reasons are causes, they are the causes of a causal being and
are
> manifested as the powers of that being.  That is, the objectivity (in the
> 'part of the objective world' sense) of the being whose causes they are is
> not in question.
>
> Howard
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gis.net>
> To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
> Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 7:06 PM
> Subject: BHA: Re: "The Real" and what is point of whacking anti-realists?
>
>
> > Hi Howard--
> >
> > > Meanings, for example, are causal, if they are, once they are
expressed.
> > > Their causal force goes with their objectivity and, perhaps, vice
versa.
> >
> > I'll have to quibble here: meanings have causal powers whether expressed
> or
> > not (unconscious thoughts can affect behavior), and whether "objective"
or
> > "subjective" (subjective meanings are of course the ones that drive a
> > person's present actions).  Perhaps the question needs to be
reformulated
> > somehow?
> >
> > T.
> >
> > ---
> > Tobin Nellhaus
> > nellhaus-AT-mail.com
> > "Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce
> >
> >
> >
> >      --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
>
>
>      --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---



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