Re: SUO: What the hell was C S P talking about?
Joe, Jon, Doug, Pat, et al.,
This discussion gets to the heart of the matter: the "mind-body problem"
is unsolvable if you regard the mind as some kind of inscrutable entity.
But if you regard the class of processes called "mental" as abstractions
from observable signs and relations among signs, then you can begin to
restate the problems in ways that can be solved.
Joseph Ransdell wrote:
> I think, in any case, it is clear from his early ambitions that are
> expressed frequently in Volume 1 of the new chronological edition that the
> import of the phrase "all thought is in signs" is to locate thought in the
> observable signs themselves -- such as, say, the signs on the screen right
> now (if you are reading this from the screen) -- as a relational property
> thereof, rather than thinking of signs as taking on sign-value because a
> mind somehow infuses them with meaning from its own "inner" resources.
By analyzing those signs and the relations among signs, you can begin
to define intentions, meanings, and all those verbs that depend on
"mental" processes: thinking, knowing, hoping, fearing, feeling,
wanting, loving, hating, planning, designing, believing, ......
Such an analysis is essential if the SUO is ever going to develop
something that is, so to speak, "meaningful".
John Sowa