Our human world is largely visual, and auditory.

Meaning is a connection we make between things we value, or discriminate (see and hear). The way we communicate is largely visual and auditory.

If you're blind, you can still function and communicate, if you're deaf a similar adaptation is possible, with both handicaps, life would not be easy.
You would have a sense of extension, but in a space you could not see (or see yourself in) or hear yourself interact with; communication would be difficult.

We need to communicate, not just interact with the external world, but with each other.
In that sense, we, as individuals, are without meaning, or our sense of self is as meaningless as the sense of sight is to a blind person, or communication is to someone deaf and blind.

Someone born with no sight or hearing would certainly face a lot of difficulties developing communicative abilities and social skills, their sense of touch would have to be more adapted, and then perhaps smell and taste.

Communication is a connection, but there's a "meaning" filter at both ends; we only really try to convey thoughts and ideas to each other. There are all kinds of languages, and we each only understand them to some extent, or fluency.

We can only contribute what we think about (because of what we've seen & heard, mostly), to the extent we understand how to be fluent, in any language, i.e. how to dice and slice the information, how to give it meaning.

The tactic is to understand what we say or write to ourselves, then the understanding is that others will see meaning (though not necessarily make the same or any connections).
But this is all we can do - try to understand ourselves, and at the same time, that we can't really understand each other, we can only see and hear each other (mostly).

Without a sense of "otherness", there just isn't any "individualness". We only have individual meaning, because "the existence of other individuals" has meaning.
Or is that all pretty meaningless?:shrug:

Nice.

Welcome to existentialism.

Although I fail to see where relativism comes into it...

Maybe that's later?

Communication is a connection, but there's a "meaning" filter at both ends; we only really try to convey thoughts and ideas to each other. There are all kinds of languages, and we each only understand them to some extent, or fluency.I think we have gotten very used to thinking in terms of distance, locality, separation and media with inherent distortion, but I don't think this is the whole picture. I think there are direct non-mediated connections between things, including between people. I cannot prove this, but I do suspect our overemphasis on separateness in part comes from older science. I am not saying the issues you raise are moot. Hardly. I just don't experience communication or better connection as solely this kind of message in a bottle fallible interchange. I feel we are much more entangled than that - though I won't raise QM issues here and get my head torn off by some physicists, I was aware of the physicists use of that term.

To speak metaphorically, this habitual view is a bit like Zeno's argument against motion. He broke down the motion in evey decreasing sized fractions and it seemed we could get nowhere. With communication you and common practice is not going so far as to say we cannot communicate, but i think dividing up the process misleads us about how effective the whole can be. Also communication is a total experience - body language, voice tone, pheromones, vibe included, let alone whatever is going on in 'psychic' communication. There are immediate and unmediated communications. In fact I think we spend a lot of energy denying what we know about others and what they 'communicate' in the broadest sense of that word. I think we have been trained to turn interactions into games of 20 questions, when in fact direct experience can skip all that. Intellectuals too, and I dare say men, in particular, have a habit of getting lost in the 'content' of words and sentences and are very entranced by notions of communication where words and sentences are seen as containers for meaning. They have forgotten that this is just one metaphor for communication and a limited one. See Lakoff and Johnson in general and also Michael Reddy (Conduit Metaphor).


Without a sense of "otherness", there just isn't any "individualness". We only have individual meaning, because "the existence of other individuals" has meaning. I think I agree. This reminded me of both the doctrine of internal relations and wittgenstein's objection to a private language. DOIR in that we are, at least in part, our relations. We are not these monads intact alone. You are missing our qualities when you 'see' us in isolation. Cut off we are not who we are. And even the chronically alone is not cut off in this sense. As far as private language in the sense that our understanding of our meaning is at least in part linguistic and you cannot have that languaged understanding of meaning without this meaning being tied to others. Language being something developed and suffused with the existence of others and their sense of meaning.

Although I fail to see where relativism comes into it...Well, someone has to, so why not you.

But surely, if there's one of you, and many of us, there's the relativism right there..?
Meaning is relative.
So, therefore, your interpretation (discrimination), of what the OP says about relativism (actually nothing, directly), illustrates my meaning, if you see what I mean.