Russ Abbott wrote:
Now that we've arrived safely in Canberra, here's my loose end.
Haloo down under!
The more abstract way of saying this is that meaning occurs only in a
first person context. Without meaning, all we have are bits, photons,
ink on paper, etc. If you want to talk about meaning at all -- whether
it's the meaning of a first or third person perspective -- one has
already assumed that there is a first person that is understanding
that meaning.
This "complementary" way of describing seems to help (me at least) in
resolving some distinctions between my own experience and the general
shared intellectualization about these things. I have a *distinct*
feeling of "being me" that I cannot shake by noticing that noticing my
self (my body, my shifting ocular POV with my shifting motor activities)
is very similar to noticing not-self (3rd person). The complement,
... noticing that noticing others (3rd person observation) is
intrinsically the same as noticing myself goes down a lot easier and is
roughly what I call "empathy". The former causes me to get caught up
in the differences while the latter allows me to notice the similarities.
Meaning seems hard to pin down without a receiver of meaning... perhaps
this is part of what lead folks to want a God to be the infinite
observer that not only gave all things their existence but also by
elaboration, their meaning.
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