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Date:         Sat, 22 Aug 1992 22:18:30 PDT
              <QUALRS-L@UGA.BITNET>
From:         rotha@SFU.CA
Subject:      Re: michael's tree
Comments: To: QUALRS-L@uga.cc.uga.edu
              Aug 23, 92 11:01 am

I am here at home and handicapped because I can't print out either
Gary's or Don's comments.  And without a hardcopy, I just *don't get
it.*  BUt to the comments about reality one and meaning which
encompases more than all them meanings of the human, the criter, and
the deer.  You see, we all seem to experience oursleves as thrown into
this world where we find ourselves with our common sense which seems
so ideally fit to cope with the world--I guess I accept the horizon
which language seems to impose on our experience, though we are able
to extend these horizons.  To posit meaning beyond seems to me a
similar quest as those who posit GOD to imbue this world with meaning
beyond that which we construct.  I am not discrediting such an
attempt, I just feel that for me it is not necessary, and I feel
perfectly fine in a world bound by the experience available to me, and
by language games that allow me to make sense in various ways.

((I will be able to say more on this later when I am through
constructing this case study.  I interviewed and collected notes,
reflections and essays from two students (as part of a larger study on
epsitemology) in which I want to show the attempt by the two students,
one of whom is the co-author, to deal with two seemingly
incommensurable worlviews, science and religion.  So  I have a bunch
of articles by scientists who integrated the two and who are talking
about meaning beyond that which we construct))

As to gravity, it also is a construction.  It works well, and lets us
predict a lot of things.  BUut the ultimate thing which we experience
is falling, and we fear it, rightly so.  So gravity is a powerful
construct because it summerizes large numbers of experiences of people
falling, and even those observations a little beyond our planet, and
we even got people on the moon.  But there is no reason why another
construct wouldn't do equally well.  In fact, I can take a Hamiltonian
approach and just talk about energies.  I never need to invoke gravity
and yet get just as good predictions as I get with gravity--all this
to indicate that gravity is just a construction, while the experience
of falling is very real--or rather hurting.

I was also wondering about the meaning apart from us in terms pf
Peirce's triad.  Doesn't this triad imply that for meaning there must
be an interaction between sign, that which the sign refers to, and
that which interprets the sign--or did I misread (mis-construct)?
And, from my experience as an educator, the universe might be perfused
with signs, but we don't "see" them--take as example the tracking
skills of a bushman as compared to our own skills in that environment.
To the bushman there are signs where there are none for us, and the
bushman's reading is probably quite complex and there is immense
meaning not available to us (I read a few ethnographies about
bushmen).

I will read the GS' critique tomorrow in the office and try to give a
more thorough reply.

Michael
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