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Article 3381 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Generosity, a theory. ( Never MIND ! , "the mediu
Message-ID: <1992Feb1.195159.8328@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 2 Feb 92 00:51:57 GMT
References: <koboi4INNa3n@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> <1992Jan31.000712.8292@husc3.harvard.edu> <koj9v9INNn24@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
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In article <koj9v9INNn24@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> 
silber@orfeo.Eng.Sun.COM (Eric Silber) writes:

>In article <1992Jan31.000712.8292@husc3.harvard.edu> 
>zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

MZ:
> It's all explained above, but I feel generous today, so I'll reiterate.
> The question of "In virtue of what does the meaning mean?" must be posed at
> each level of the intensional hierarchy.  The reason for the infinite
> regression consists in the fact that the representational function of the
> sign is taken to be dependent on its expressive capacity, or on some sort
> of direct connection to the object it denotes.  The cogitator's awareness
> (or, if you wish, computation) of each member of the infinite hierarchy of
> meanings is never an issue; on the other hand, the meaning's residence (in
> some intelligible sense of the term) in his mind (or whatever physical
> structure is supposed to pass for such) surely is.

ES:
>Nous Autres:
>
> Remember McLuhan's conundrum, "the medium is the message" ?
> I do not believe that the King's decrees have clearly "dispatched"
> the prospect that the way in which the "meaning" inheres in the mind
> of the cogitator is via the specification and activation of a possibly
> infinite computation.  The REPRESENTATION, in the brain, of such a 
> computation IS the "meaning"/"structural association" at issue.
> Underlying this theory of meaning would be congenital Ur-meanings
> which are hard-wired, axiomatic bootstraps. 
>
> "the meaning's residence (in
> some intelligible sense of the term) in his mind" (the cogitator) 
> may be fullfilled by a cerebral representation which ENTAILS some
> finite OR infinite computation.

Please note that I am certainly not suggesting that the representational
mind eo ipso performs an infinite computation somehow connecting its
internal representations to the objects represented by them.  As I
explicitly stated, my intention was to give a reductio ad absurdum of
materialist semantics.  Please try to disregard the conventional
connotation of the term `meaning': my problem has to do with a simpler,
more fundamental question: how can a material sign, be it a name, a
declarative sentence, or any other symbol like a computation, stand for
something else, i.e. an object in the broadest possible sense, a
proposition, or a truth-value.  To say that the sign represents solely in
virtue of "the specification and activation of a possibly infinite
computation" is not to say anything terribly meaningful, since the
computation itself, insofar as it is taken to be a material event, rather
than a denizen of the Platonic realm of Ideas, must then be taken as yet
another sign, and so on.  If you must seek a classic antecedent of this
argument, one can be found in Plato's Third Man argument in the
"Parmenides".

`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'
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: Qu'est-ce qui est grand, fort, faible...                 doesn't   :
: Connais pas! Connais pas!                                 think    :
:                                                             so     :
: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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