On 7/19/25 1:52 PM, Santafe wrote:
> I guess I should have said, too — since it was the main topic of the thread — how any of this is supposed to help in arguing about “metaphor all the way down” versus “meanings that aren’t metaphorical”.
> 
> By the same argument as I would say deliberative, logical and a-semantic things deserve the status of primitives even if they come into existence by simulation, I would make the same argument for “meaningful through a thick and actively integrative fabric in experience and history of experience” as a distinct category from “metaphor”.
> 
> I would not call the association-based primitive architecture either metaphorical or meaningful.  Both notations of metaphor and meaning seem to me to be narrower, defined in large part through rather complex and high-order contexts.  One can say that there are associations among high-order elements by metaphor, which are evocative of content-similarity production of the-next-thing-in-mind, and I don’t mind being aware of the evocations.  One could even say that there are certain a-semantic formulations that can be painted on both the high-level elements and the low-level primitives with some success.  So maybe something is conserved across large scopes of synthesis between the organization of the two.  But as long as much else ends up differing between the levels, we would want to be very aware of how limited is the part that can admit the two paintings.
> 
> Probably one could make a parallel argument that there are aspects of the high-order notion of (inherently and non-metaphorically) “meaningful” with the triggering conditions for the low-order primitives.  This is probably why correspondence-theory-of-truth people thought they should paint both with the same a-semantic formal tokens, and why semiotics has long had a place in people’s efforts to come to terms with the movements of thought and our experience-itself and our experience of the movements of thought.  But also for the same reasons as before, I would not want to claim the tags that are commonly-paintable across levels carry more of identification or equivalence than they do.
> 
> Anyway, enough out of me for now,
> 
> Eric

