On Jul 22, 2009, at 9:31 PM, jeremy hunsinger wrote:
> That's fine and good if you think essences exist and are real
> properties of things apart from any interpretive faculty that
> interacts with them. Some people accept that, and most people i'd
> say operate on some construct of that ideation of non-modality of
> essences. Others don't, and that is where I think you would call it
> 'constructed' but perhaps a better term is realism but that realism
> is predicated on a different construction of what exists. In the
> latter case, what exists is not 'properties' of things' but
> 'relations' amongst things. These relations are almost always
> positions capable of being interpreted.
Jeremy: I guess you missed the " intent" of these words: "Naming
things ... enables the information associated with the name to be
interpreted to a situation or prior knowledge and to expand
information to whatever extent that the named entity can support."
This has nothing to do with "essences" but it does focus and reduce
the information that the mind will consider. Human beings apply and
interpret nominative entities however they recognize or choose them.
Relationships reguire entities (whether signed or not) to relate.
Relationships between such "cognitive objects" or the informational
entities they identify are constructed or communicated as holistic
constructs ie sentences, images, artifacts . Social constructions of
meaning tend to treat relational constructions as nominal objects to
be related, compared and analyzed for their goodness of fit
(consensus) or lack thereof to the purpose at hand whatever that might
be. Without the relationships available through syntax we would be
stuck with "nominations" devoid of the structure they need to become
situated and meaningful in our (interactive) experience. Or so I
believe.
I apologize to all for getting the rhetoric overheated.
Chuck
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