Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 09:23:30 -0600
From: "Mark A. Foster" <owner-AT-markfoster.net>
Subject: RE: BHA: RE: Realism?


Hi, Dick,

At 09:33 AM 12/5/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>>I would put it a bit differently, but it might be that we mean pretty much the same thing.  Rather than saying that people "have" meaning, I prefer to say that people "grasp" meanings and "interpret" all sorts of things (including words) as having meanings, thereby "attributing" meanings to those words and other things.<<

I agree with that. When I said people "have" meanings, I meant that meanings belong to them. We project those meanings through what Mead called the telescoping of the act.

>>But I would also argue that are patterns in things that are not created by people and that can be discovered by people.  Do you regard this as "essentialism"?  (I do not hold that very claim to have discovered such a pattern is true.)<<

I don't think that universal structures exist in particulars. However, the attributes of those universals can be observed in real essences, life patterns (the actual realm), and *empirical* attributes of particulars. What scientists discover are the attributes of universals, at least to the extent possible by existing empirical methods.

For instance, most evolutionary processes can,I think, be described as intransitive laws or universal principles. Their attributes of those universals can be observed in the human genome (and its similarities with the genomes of other hominoids).

Mark A. Foster * http://markfoster.net
"Sacred cows make the best hamburger" 
-- Mark Twain and Abbie Hoffman 



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