Significant philosophical disagreements stem not only out of holding differing ideas but also out of holding differing degrees of interpretation of the same ideas. That's why beliefs frequently come in strong/hard versions versus weak/soft versions. Surprisingly, the distinction between the strong and weak interpretation of "meaning is in the eye of the decoder" indicates a lot about someone's whole philosophy. If two people are divided on this, they're probably divided on more too.
The weak interpretation should be undeniable: meaning is affected by the decoder fairly often. They're part of the context, and any single symbol's perceived meaning can be greatly modified by whatever context it's in. For instance, the meaning of "boot" to UK listeners can be unlike its meaning to US listeners. Or words that are offensive to one society can be relatively less offensive in another. Or a film that enchants one viewer can be dumbfounding to another; meanwhile its writer and director might have had another intent altogether.
However, in my view—and in the view of countless other thinkers now and in the past—the relationship runs deeper. I side with the stronger interpretation: the meaning is literally in the decoder (...just not in the eye). It's an event of a decoder. This event is the meaning's real essence (locus). And it probably occurs a multitude of times in a multitude of decoders, unless the meaning truly is novel. The converse is that a symbol without a decoder cannot have meaning.
Linear B is an illuminating case. It's a puzzling and old form of writing that was discovered by archaeologists. It wasn't well-understood at first, and several insights led to success some years afterward. In order to be consistent with my view, I'm forced to assert that all the tablets of Linear B didn't have real meanings for an extended period. Bluntly put, once the original writers/readers all died there weren't meanings for centuries, until the breakthroughs that enabled scholars to translate the symbols. Of course, they had excellent reasons to expect that they could reconstruct coherent meanings eventually. The source markings had the characteristics of language elements; they repeated in lengthy sequences but not in an unchanging or a random pattern.
Despite how it appears, distinguishing "they found the meaning" and "they reconstructed a meaning" isn't pointless hair-splitting. If someone objects to the idea that the meaning itself exists purely in the decoder at the time of decoding, then they face a deluge of sensible follow-up questions. Where else is the meaning? How is it created and destroyed? Does it move or metamorphose or duplicate? Why can it be perceived differently?
Because these questions revolve around the metaphysics of the objector's alternative notion of meaning, their answers reveal whatever stuff they prefer to tack onto physical reality. Again, this is a striking contrast to simply accepting that meaning is an event of the decoder. Then everything involved can be matter alone and standard physical phenomena. The meaning consists of the state of the decoder's matter after the task of decoding has changed it.
In effect, symbols are like the steps to follow to shape the decoder into an internal arrangement that embodies the meaning. At a low level they function like pressures, sometimes quite subtle, on the motions/physics of particular segments. Having the ability to elaborately shift in response to symbols is how something qualifies to be a decoder. Even decoding is transcoding, in which the result's new code is the inner code for meaning used by the decoder's substance.
The crux, previously mentioned, is that the symbols are matter, the path that the symbols take to the decoder is a path taken by matter or energy, e.g. waves of sound, and the consequences of the received symbols in the decoder happen in matter. This overall picture has obvious appeal to people whose views leave out popular supernatural concepts such as souls and eternal realms. It's relatively less common to stubbornly combine an irreligious stance with a metaphysical understanding of meaning. One possible fusion, which echoes panpsychism, is that matter in general has a "mind property" in addition to its detectable properties.
On the other hand, regardless of the number of issues avoided when meaning doesn't have an extra-special kind of existence, the important issue of telling apart subjectivity and objectivity becomes a little problematic. How can meaning ever be objective at all if it's the subjects' matter? The challenging answer is that it's certainly not by default. Greater levels of objectivity are progressively earned through diligent work to connect meanings to objects rather than only subjects.
Thus the meanings that are most objective are precisely those that have been most thoroughly backed by such work. Ideally the full details of the work are then communicated and recorded so that everyone may judge how much objectivity has been earned. The meaning of "the nation of Suriname is north of the nation of Uruguay" is considered highly objective because recent maps are plentiful, trustworthy, and in unwavering consensus. For this reason the action of viewing a South America map verifies that the meaning is tied into objective reality, regardless of how many subjects the meaning is formed in at any moment. If a meaning can be reliably applied in relevant actions, then it's objective enough. It doesn't need a mystical external abode. The metaphorical eye of the decoder suffices.
Linear B is an illuminating case. It's a puzzling and old form of writing that was discovered by archaeologists. It wasn't well-understood at first, and several insights led to success some years afterward. In order to be consistent with my view, I'm forced to assert that all the tablets of Linear B didn't have real meanings for an extended period. Bluntly put, once the original writers/readers all died there weren't meanings for centuries, until the breakthroughs that enabled scholars to translate the symbols. Of course, they had excellent reasons to expect that they could reconstruct coherent meanings eventually. The source markings had the characteristics of language elements; they repeated in lengthy sequences but not in an unchanging or a random pattern.
Despite how it appears, distinguishing "they found the meaning" and "they reconstructed a meaning" isn't pointless hair-splitting. If someone objects to the idea that the meaning itself exists purely in the decoder at the time of decoding, then they face a deluge of sensible follow-up questions. Where else is the meaning? How is it created and destroyed? Does it move or metamorphose or duplicate? Why can it be perceived differently?
Because these questions revolve around the metaphysics of the objector's alternative notion of meaning, their answers reveal whatever stuff they prefer to tack onto physical reality. Again, this is a striking contrast to simply accepting that meaning is an event of the decoder. Then everything involved can be matter alone and standard physical phenomena. The meaning consists of the state of the decoder's matter after the task of decoding has changed it.
In effect, symbols are like the steps to follow to shape the decoder into an internal arrangement that embodies the meaning. At a low level they function like pressures, sometimes quite subtle, on the motions/physics of particular segments. Having the ability to elaborately shift in response to symbols is how something qualifies to be a decoder. Even decoding is transcoding, in which the result's new code is the inner code for meaning used by the decoder's substance.
The crux, previously mentioned, is that the symbols are matter, the path that the symbols take to the decoder is a path taken by matter or energy, e.g. waves of sound, and the consequences of the received symbols in the decoder happen in matter. This overall picture has obvious appeal to people whose views leave out popular supernatural concepts such as souls and eternal realms. It's relatively less common to stubbornly combine an irreligious stance with a metaphysical understanding of meaning. One possible fusion, which echoes panpsychism, is that matter in general has a "mind property" in addition to its detectable properties.
On the other hand, regardless of the number of issues avoided when meaning doesn't have an extra-special kind of existence, the important issue of telling apart subjectivity and objectivity becomes a little problematic. How can meaning ever be objective at all if it's the subjects' matter? The challenging answer is that it's certainly not by default. Greater levels of objectivity are progressively earned through diligent work to connect meanings to objects rather than only subjects.
Thus the meanings that are most objective are precisely those that have been most thoroughly backed by such work. Ideally the full details of the work are then communicated and recorded so that everyone may judge how much objectivity has been earned. The meaning of "the nation of Suriname is north of the nation of Uruguay" is considered highly objective because recent maps are plentiful, trustworthy, and in unwavering consensus. For this reason the action of viewing a South America map verifies that the meaning is tied into objective reality, regardless of how many subjects the meaning is formed in at any moment. If a meaning can be reliably applied in relevant actions, then it's objective enough. It doesn't need a mystical external abode. The metaphorical eye of the decoder suffices.
