🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov5.173352.20400@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
+In article <73753@hydra.gatech.EDU+ cegtitd@prism.gatech.EDU (Tim Dodd) writes:
++If a concept is defined in such a manner that it cannot in principle
++ever be shown to pertain to a component of reality, that concept is by
++definition meaningless. 
+
+     This seems to depend, to a great degree, on your definition of 
+     'reality'.  You may well define it so that anything that is 
+     not reality is meaningless.  If, however, you define it so that reality
+     is equivalent to the domain of science,  things that are outside
+     do not lack innate 'meaning.'  In fact, it is arguable that *any*
+     concept of which one can conceive has 'meaning' simply in the conception,
+     regardless of the nature of 'reality'.
+
+                             dale bass

"Meaning" refers to the mapping between words and the objects to which they
refer.  If a word is defined in such a way as to preclude even the possibility
of establishing that its referent does in fact exist, then there is no
semantic mapping and hence, no meaning.

Words can also refer to concepts.  A word can be regarded as meaningful
if the concept it refers to exists, but if there are no real referents
for the concept, then the concept is meaningless in the same way as a
word would be.

Since there is no law disallowing the existence of meaningless words or
concepts, one can in fact carry on quite detailed and apparently learned
discussions of great technicality over concepts which are in fact meaningless.
Philosophers & theologians often do this without giving even a thought to
whether their subject pertains to anything outside their conceptual
universe.

It is not difficult to fall into a mode of thought wherein it is implicitly
assumed that just because we have a word for something, that word is
necessarily meaningful (i.e., refers to something real).  If we wish to
acquire the truth, this is something which must be guarded against.

You cannot render something real by altering the definition of "reality".
To do so amounts to nothing more than playing with words and imparts no
useful information.  Indeed, loose terminology can be very misleading
to the unguarded mind.

Tim
-- 
Tim Dodd, Research Scientist, Georgia Tech:  cegtitd@prism.gatech.edu