What is meaning ? Is it “mindstuff” ? Is it “immaterial” ?
Meaning is not material or immaterial. It is the way objects are related with the language.
Meaning is description of the objects in the world in more understandable, detailed and agreeable manner. If you know meaning of dog, then you should be able to describe what it looks like in general (e.g. four legged mammal with furs), and what it does (viz. barks, runs, chases balls etc). It can also be described in other ways such as it is a type of pet.
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Meaning is a mark’s structure tracking a non-mark object’s structure.
Truth is the ‘mark’ meeting its ‘mark’: a fit that holds, no divergence between the two.
Falsity is hamartia, in its oldest sense: missing the mark. The miss isn’t a deficiency in the object. It’s a failure of aim.
Meaning is the fit itself — which is why truth and falsity are no separate mystery. Only its two faces: holding, or coming apart.
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Meaning is linguistic in nature. Socrates used to ask about meaning. “What is the meaning of justice?” “What is the meaning of good?”. If you know the meaning of something, then you should be able to describe or explain in language, when asked about it.
I just asked the question to see how you’d approach it. I like your answer. Words are one kind of object that we use to coordinate our approach to just about any kind of object, including words.
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Are you thinking of isomorphisms ? That makes sense to me.
So this makes me think of accomplishing a task ( like getting a practical situation addressed) but also the mark-hitting of good poetry. Some words “ring true.”
To me it looks like skill or phronesis, our sense that the word/arrow hits the mark or not.
I like the way you phrase it. The false word doesn’t stick. It peels off. And then there is the word that “covers.” It looks like a stick from a distance.
Yup. If you asked me what is the meaning of time or infinity, then I don’t take the question as a request to bring and show time and infinity waving them in front of your face.
I take the question as a request to explain or describe in more understandable manner verbally or in written message.
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Heidegger analyzes holding and coming apart in terms of binding and separating, but he comes to a different conclusion. For him, meaning isnt fundamentally a relation of correspondence that either succeeds or fails. Rather than being produced by a mark matching an object, meaning is an articulation that simultaneously gathers and differentiates. Drawing from Aristotle, he says that Logos is both gathering together (bringing something into unity, showing it as something) and setting apart (distinguishing it from what it is not, opening differences and boundaries).
…every logos is synthesis and diairesis at the same time, not either the one-say, as a “positive judgment”-or the other-as a “negative judgment.” Rather, every statement, whether affirmative or negative, whether false or true, is equiprimordially synthesis and diairesis. Pointing out is putting together and taking apart.
Heidegger tells us that in the manner of positing as point of view, as pointing out, forming the thinking of theoretical proposition, one is at the same time “putting together and taking apart”(synthesis and diairesis) . But this way of binding and separating externalizes and formalizes itself(via “the analysis of logos in an external “theory of judgment””) as a “relating”, a “system of coordinations” BETWEEN representations.
Heidegger inquires: “what phenomenon is it then WITHIN(emphasis mine) the structure of the logos that allows and requires us to characterize every statement as synthesis and diairesis? What is to be got at phenomenally with the formal structures of “binding” and “separating,” more precisely, with the unity of the two, is the phenomenon of “something as something.””
As an “ontologically insufficient interpretation of the logos”, what the mode of interpretation of propositional statement doesn’t understand about itself is that thinking of itself as external ‘relating’ makes the propositional ‘is’ an inert synthesis, and conceals its ontological basis as attuned, relevant taking of ‘something AS something’. In accordance with this affected-affecting care structure, something is understood WITH REGARD TO something else.
This means that it is taken together with it, but not in the manner of a synthesizing relating. Heidegger instead describes the ‘as’ as a “confrontation that understands, interprets, and articulates, [and] at the same time takes apart what has been put together.” Transcendence locates itself in this way within the very heart of the theoretical concept. Simply determining something AS something is a transforming-performing. It “understands, interprets, and articulates”, and thereby “takes apart” and changes what it affirms by merely pointing at it, by merely having it happen to ‘BE’ itself. Thus, the problem of the primordial grounding of the ‘is’, and the analysis of the logos are the same problem."…if the formal characteristics of “relation” and “binding” cannot contribute anything phenomenally to the factual structural analysis of the logos, the phenomenon intended with the term copula finally has nothing to do with bond and binding.”
A hammer is meaningful only because it is gathered into a network of references (nails, building, repairing, workshops, projects), but also because it is differentiated from those other things. The “as-structure” (“I encounter this as a hammer”) already contains both synthesis and distinction.
So for Heidegger every disclosure of meaning involves both a unifying or binding moment and a differentiating or separating moment. Truth and falsity as correspondence between mark and object are derivative and secondary notions. Having said that, I don’t disagree that compatibility and incompatibility are intrinsic to all events of meaning. Heidegger argues that all understanding is affectively attuned.
One can think of validation and invalidation as belonging to the affective dimension of an experience of meaning. Each new event of seeing something as something binds and separates at the same time, which means that we always see it in a new way, on the basis of a unique way in which it is similar to and differs from what came before it.
This unique way manifests as a point on a spectrum of relative inferential compatibility. The new event can appear more or less compatible with our anticipations, it can fit or fail to fit those expectations. But whether it validates or invalidates, it also introduces a new dimension of comparison at the same time (it separates us from the previous context of meaning while binding us to the new one).
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Problem with this view on the meaning of hammer is, it would not be much meaningful in referring to nails, building, repairing, workshops, projects for an auctioneer in the auction house, who uses hammer to pound his table to signal or announce to the bidders the auction item was sold.
And nowadays hammers are not used to repair or build things. They use many different types of electronic device called “nail-gun” to do the job.
Heidegger isn’t trying to ‘nail down’ the meaning of hammer ( sorry for the terrible pun), he is pointing out that we understand things by how we use them, and this use is itself part of a wider context of relational use. So the auctioneer’s network of relevant use will be different from that of the wood worker, but both understand their tools in the context of a wide web of interdependent purposes.
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Sure. It is just the fact that these days, woodworkers have more choice of tools for their job due to tech development in the industry. When building a project, they could choose a type of nail guns, or even wood glue named as “nail glue” instead of a hammer.
For folks like auctioneers, they will only think of a hammer when they were faced with images or words of the antique tea sets, vases, paintings or furniture swapped with a bunch of cash.
It seems a lot more clear meaning would be conveyed, if a hammer was described or explained verbally or in text, how it looks like, and what it can be used for.
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Very nice point, that hammers play different roles in different contexts !
In the “world” of auctions, hammers are symbolic instruments. We might also think of judges banging their gavels.
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Wow, never thought of that. Judges banging their gavels. Good point.
I am going for a few days of vacation, hence will write more when I am back. Happy philosophizing. 
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Isomorphisms? Not. Yes, it makes sense how I put it. Rather, meaning is a mark keyed to a non-mark thing. By “object” I just meant whatever the mark is aimed at. By “structure” I just meant what makes this mark this mark and not another. Isomorphism is a God’s-eye view of two structures, mapped one onto the other. Tracking is what it looks like from inside, when there’s no outside to check from.
Phronesis fits well. It isn’t the catch that happened to come up once. It’s the reading: current, depth, light on the water, the line adjusted with every cast. Truth, not as the single catch, but the sense that keeps finding fish, or takes an empty net as information for the next one.
You caught me. And maybe the water itself was the problem: a medium where there should be none. Ground doesn’t lie that way.
Hamartia is still only part of it. An empty hand is just part of gathering. You feel it right away, nothing hiding there, something in you still reaching.
There is also a leaf that looks like the one that feeds you. It holds up to every check you have at the time. Nothing in you is reaching anymore, you think you’ve already gathered something. The divergence is there, it just isn’t showing itself yet.
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Saying something is necessary. It isn’t sufficient.
You still need the fit to hold under pressure, which is exactly what we do by asking again after every answer.
What you’re actually testing, when you ask someone to explain rather than point, is whether their mark and your mark are keyed to the same thing, not whether meaning has finally arrived once it’s put into words.
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Meaning only needs to be manifested when asked by a language user.
No other times, meaning needs to be actualised or articulated. If you said on the asked meaning more than necessary, it would be redundant and you would be repeating yourself when no one is wanting or needing to hear it, and it would become a muddle.
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You would be running the risk of committing to be an eternally circular broken record-playing machine on the same content of soundings with no possibility of improved lucidity on the meaning to be clairified.
You just need to investigate and analyse on the words in the meaning where not clear, and try to confirm for the clarity.
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The word that wasn’t clear: “sufficient.” I meant it has to be able to fail, not that it has to be checked forever. Confirmed?
Not sure if you can come to absolute agreement on the meanings or definitions on concepts or ideas with other folks. They may accept it, or reject it depending on their ideals or psychological backgrounds or conditions. Maybe meanings and definitions are enough to keep as subjective knowledge.
If someone is determined to reject your meaning or definition given to them due to some mental blocks possibly emotional in nature, then there is little point trying to keep matching or agreeing further. We just need to accept people think differently, and abstract meanings and definitions can be rejected even when making sense, if we could recall how fiercely the concept of “deconstruction” has been rejected in history. I am sure there are folks who reject concept of “dasein” too.
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Acceptance and truth are different questions. Someone rejecting a mark doesn’t mean the mark failed to fit.
Rejection is itself just another instance of tracking, capable of its own falsity, when it’s considered, when there’s actually a mark being checked against the thing.
Not recoil.
Recoil isn’t tracking yet, nothing’s been checked, so it isn’t wrong either, it just hasn’t reached the point where wrong applies.
That’s closer to what @Joshs has been describing: disclosure, attuned, before any mark gets held apart from what it’s about.