OK, Michael, I think we have pretty good agreement on just this point:
We may get around the problem, if we take meaning as the possible
senses people can make, not the sum total of all people currently
living, but the generalized possibility. Then every sense is a concrete
(personal) realization of meaning, but it is also different--this is
just the way Il'enkov allows the concrete universal and the many
concrete particulars to be related, in a genetic way. This way we have
all people involved in constituting meaning, but none of the people
actually have to have the same as anyone else. We have a truly
dialectical articulation of meaning and (personal) sense, fully
psychological.
-----
LSV refers to meaning as "the most stable pole of sense". I take
it to be a polysemic artifact that people use to coordinate with
each other.
I believe this speaks directly to the issue that Mary raised a couple of
days
ago and which my response seems to have killed off. What is the relation
between artifact and discourse? It also relates to the point I tried to
make,
apparently unsuccessefuly, about where meaning disappears to when
I begin to speak in a language you do not know and where, therefore,
it came from-- prior experiences of joint activity mediated by "the" word
("word" in LSV often has to be interpreted broadly).
So, yes, meaning is more stable over time, a mini "semiosphere" so to speak,
while sense is the concrete/personal realization of meaning. That personal
realization is likely to have plenty of affect in it, whether or not affect
was
visible on the surface of the discourse.
thanks
mike
On 7/27/05, Wolff-Michael Roth <mroth@uvic.ca> wrote:
>
> Hi Bill,
> I am just coming back from a bicycle ride. I have been thinking about
> the same issues. Especially I was sitting down to write about
> majority--this, too, is problematic and here is why:
>
> Most people in this world share the meaning of "force" and velocity
> with Aristotle; few share it with Newton, physicists like myself, a few
> chemists, and then a few others, perhaps. Now you (one, we) are in
> trouble, for we would have to accept the majority position as the
> shared meaning, but this is not the scientific one.
>
> The other thing I wanted to say has to do with "the law" (as written in
> a law book) and dictionary. This, too, cannot be the meaning you are
> talking about, for, written, the former is reduced to linguistic
> meaning and is no longer psychological, as you, LSV, I etc. want it.
>
> We may get around the problem, if we take meaning as the possible
> senses people can make, not the sum total of all people currently
> living, but the generalized possibility. Then every sense is a concrete
> (personal) realization of meaning, but it is also different--this is
> just the way Il'enkov allows the concrete universal and the many
> concrete particulars to be related, in a genetic way. This way we have
> all people involved in constituting meaning, but none of the people
> actually have to have the same as anyone else. We have a truly
> dialectical articulation of meaning and (personal) sense, fully
> psychological. . .
>
> Michael
>
> On 27-Jul-05, at 3:47 PM, Blanton, William E wrote:
>
> > Michael,
> >
> > I suppose it is shared diversity of sense. Like the US citizens,
> > Canada must have agreed to agreed with the meaning established by the
> > representative judiciary, parliament, or whatever. The diverse senses
> > do exist. But when meaning is contested, the coordinating tool is the
> > meaning of the law. I would guess that its meaning rests a vote and
> > even dissenting opinion. that represents sense of the minority. The
> > disent. At that level, majority sets the meaning to coordinate civic
> > behavior. Over generations, senses may be transformed to meaning. What
> > a slow process, this thing of meaning.
> >
> > I wonder what the conditions are for having a meaning. We seem to get
> > by with sense when we are dealing with very important issues. For
> > example, if we get blown away with the next hurricane and want to sue
> > the builder, do we engage in everybody's sense of a building code or
> > what the meaning of a building code? A building code might have
> > different meanings from one defined border to another, however.
> >
> > I guess we all get by with sense, but when it becomes important we
> > seek meaning.
> >
> >
> >
> > BB
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > So is this shared meaning of "marriage"? If we believe the media, then
> > "most Canadians" share it to be "the union of two people" whereas there
> > are, I don't know how many, for whom it is "the union between a man and
> > a woman."
> >
> >
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> >
>
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