Posted: Dec 16, 2015 1:59 am
OK then. You're right to say that the identification of meaning is a value judgement, a question of whether or not to care. There's also a lot of meaning around in the sense of information, and information exists whether anyone cares about it or not. I don't think these two senses of meaning are being confused here.
Different people have different thresholds for caring. Cito is content to care about crossword puzzles, EvertVd not so much. If someone doesn't feel their threshold has been reached then you can't reason them across it with meaning in the sense of information. Crank offered science, and the new perspective on the world it offers, as a candidate for something to care about. Robes and sandals could do the same job. It's the equivalent of having a go with a shiny new toy. Caring is not compulsory.
I think that down there in the Mariana Trench you were maybe saying that if one concludes that all this isn't worth caring about because it's a construction then this conclusion is itself a construction. Cito already pointed that out more succinctly. You probably feel that this invalidates the conclusion, or at least (since you can't invalidate a value judgement) makes it inconsistent. We've written pages about this over the years, ever since the Relativism is Self-Refuting debate back at RDF. It's not breaking news.
Different people have different thresholds for caring. Cito is content to care about crossword puzzles, EvertVd not so much. If someone doesn't feel their threshold has been reached then you can't reason them across it with meaning in the sense of information. Crank offered science, and the new perspective on the world it offers, as a candidate for something to care about. Robes and sandals could do the same job. It's the equivalent of having a go with a shiny new toy. Caring is not compulsory.
I think that down there in the Mariana Trench you were maybe saying that if one concludes that all this isn't worth caring about because it's a construction then this conclusion is itself a construction. Cito already pointed that out more succinctly. You probably feel that this invalidates the conclusion, or at least (since you can't invalidate a value judgement) makes it inconsistent. We've written pages about this over the years, ever since the Relativism is Self-Refuting debate back at RDF. It's not breaking news.