Some groundwork: All understanding, both pure from mere thought with no real object, or empirical from perception which requires real objects, follows from the judgement whether or not certain concepts belong to corresponding thoughts or perceptions, such that the logical law of identity holds, and suffices for that which rational agents call “meaning”. It is the same as, “because of this, this is the case”.

That being said, the thesis asks after shared meaning, which is the same as, for at least two rational agents, each understanding is asked to summarize whether or not “does this correspond to this”. That which is being shared does not necessarily arise from either of those understandings, but it just as easily could, re: two people interpreting a common object, or two people interpreting each other. Either way, whatever is being shared does not contain the meaning, it merely contains the properties which enable understanding to judge the applicability of concepts which will then identify the meaning.

In addition, if it is the case that judgement uses the logical laws, from which identity is given necessarily and thereafter validated by experience, given from rational epistemology, it follows that the properties of shared objects subject to mutual understanding may not necessarily be the source of meaning itself, for the simple reason experience may not be extant such that concepts are not even available to judge identity. Insufficient experience may still suggest certain arrangements of properties indicate a possible meaning inherent in it and susceptible to being understood, but can say nothing whatsoever as to what that meaning actually is.
(Where experience fails, concepts are still available by means of pure reason. Under these conditions however, any meaning would be no more than mere imaginings, possibly even illusory, and any truth would be lost)

The problem then becomes, in the case of remote sharing, whether the understanding of the creator who imparts his conceptual identities to the eventually shared object, carries over to any subsequent perception and understanding, or, which is the same thing, whether the properties of the object hold the meaning as belonging to it. This further reduces to whether the properties, if they do hold meaning, is what the remote understanding is dealing with, or is it the original meaning of the creator who imparted the properties that the remote understanding is dealing with. Because these may not be the same thing, re: misinterpretation, where the subsequent understanding misjudged the intent of the creator, from cognitive bias or prejudice or mere expectation, the two kinds of meaning may not be the same, which indicates the true meaning must lie in the understanding of the creator and the object only represents it.

All that to say this: the notion that meaning lies exclusively in understanding does not prove meaning doesn’t reside outside it. Nevertheless, any theory that claims meaning lies outside understanding must still incorporate understanding somewhere in that theory.

Anyway......you asked, I answered. Critique as you see fit.

Matter is always either thought about or perceived when people speak about it. — Noah Te Stroete

This is correct, from both a rational and epistemological point of view. It is true a human can never speak of that which is not present in thought, or present to perception. There simply is no other way for humans to speak of anything.
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In this sense, it is impossible to speak of something extra-mental. — Noah Te Stroete

Perhaps “....impossible to speak of something not first mental”, would be a more favorable thesis. Impossible to speak of something extra-mental carries the burden of implying the extra-mental is unavailable to us, which we both understand as not being the case. THAT the extra-mental is available to us is always given; WHAT the extra-mental is, that is available, may be susceptible to discussion, hence not given necessarily.

If you’re a descriptive moral relativist, all your moral qualifiers are *is* statements, in the anthropological, re: objective, domain, which presupposes a cultural or social regimen. If you’re a normative relativist, your moral statements are *ought* statements, in the rational, re: subjective, domain, which has no cultural presuppositions.

Morality is not taught, it is self-determined. What is taught is the actionable requirements of individual members consistent with a given social structure. Morality is the personal justification as to whether or not to so act, the ground from which *ought* statements arise, under certain necessary conditions.

There are moral laws, and even if they replicate a particular civil code, their derivation and their consequences are completely different. The civil law from inter-subjective agreement the means with order and harmony its ends, the true moral law from a freely determinant autonomous will the means with conforming non-contradictory volitions its ends. Civil law makes no amends for tolerance at all; moral law permits tolerance in other rationalities but not of itself. All law integrates a consequence; the consequence of disobedience to civil law is inconvenience, the consequence of disobedience to moral law is shame.

Humans *desire* socialization, they do not *need* it, as witnessed by homesteaders or “mountain men” in 1800’s American western frontier, “ronin” of feudal Japan, and any kind of social outcast. To say that socialization is the cause of morality, or that morality is the consequence of socialization is not supported by either descriptive or normative moral relativism, nor any established meta-ethical moral theory. (That I know of)

Pain and pleasure are feelings, and no feeling is a cognition. All moral predicates are cognized, hence cannot be derived from feelings. But feelings are nonetheless inescapable for otherwise rational agents, so must be accounted for as a possible influence on moral dispositions, and determined as to whether or not it is possible to negate such influence by positing a greater influence. The only rational method for negating a feeling is with a principle, and a principle sufficient to negate a feeling absolutely must be undeniable, otherwise we can never justify our own morality. The principle in its turn, is predicated on the moral doctrine abiding in the agent, of his own choosing, all of which sustains the theory of moral rationalism.

Morality, one of two fundamental human conditions, the other being reason, can never be given from examples, which merely demonstrate what morality may or may not do, but not what it is.

Rhetorically speaking......

the objective standard (although obviously it is not an object) is the shared set of mores which have evolved — Janus

Bill of Rights, Magna Carta, the Boy Scout Pledge.....whatever the KKK uses....objective shared set of standards or mores, represented by an object. Any cultural code of conduct.

Those to be taken as objective morality is the categorical error.

I’m not sure he said duty was a moral imperative, but rather a principle which justifies the possibility of moral law. No reason for positing a law if one feels no sense of being bound to it. Stronger and more fundamental than the alleged “moral feeling”, but serving the same purpose, at the root of moral worthiness.

“....litany of irrelevancies and category errors....”

Agreed.

Thanks for showing up.

A command of pure practical reason. Without acceptance of the Kantian notion of duty, however, moral law, and by association, the notion of imperatives, becomes irrelevant, along with the entire deontological rational philosophy.

Which is fine. There are plenty of others.

Do you also object to the notion of moral law?

joe has no right to make any kind of value judgment about bob preference — Rank Amateur

“Right” doesn’t have much to do with it; he is going to make a value judgement because it’s a circumstance calling for him to do it, otherwise he couldn’t think it opposed to his own. But he no right to act on it. He might say, as you did.....OK.
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any qualitative word at all about (...) relative preference- it is no longer relative. — Rank Amateur

It is still relative, it has merely become a public comparison of preferences. He could have kept it to himself, but he didn’t. Saying OK is itself a relativism.
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Because all value judgments imply against some standard, and if you are applying them against a standard they are now objective. — Rank Amateur

If the judgements are acted upon the actions are objective manifestations of the value standard. The standard itself remains internal, hence subjective. Even if the culturally-relative value system is instilled, as opposed to, say, chemically enforced, or even if the agent is a deontologist, he still has the choice of adhering to it. What is now objective is the volition judgement has authorized.

You’re doing fine. Tough subject matter, to be sure.

Dogmatism in the pursuit of truth is no vice! — tim wood

“....This critical science is not opposed to the dogmatic procedure of reason in pure cognition; for pure cognition must always be dogmatic, that is, must rest on strict demonstration from sure principles a priori...”
(CPR, Bxxxv)

Critical dogmatism, in the pursuit of truth, but dogmatism nonetheless.

In a discussion with a moral or subjective relativist, always first determine what exactly is relative to what.

I mean...the keyword here is, after all....relative.

Understanding.

Reflecting back to the strictly human perspective. It’s the ground of all we think we know, and it’s impossible to know anything at all except from that perspective. Still, there’s nothing given in all we know, that suggests we know things as they actually are. We don’t know of any other minds, and if there are any that they will do our kind of math based on our kind of logic or even arrive at our conclusions.

We think it means something that dolphins rub on rocks, surf, and hang upside down. It seems like it should have meaning, but we actually don’t have any right to think that, except to suit our expectations.

Presumptuous bunch, we humans.

Just because we cannot even conceive the fallibility of math isn’t warrant for suppositions concerning other things that are merely possible.

I’d say that about covers it. And all from the absolutely strictest human perspective.

Same team, different parts to play.

Some light reading for you:

http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/consc1/consc1.html

No need. I’d argue differently, but we’d arrive in the same place.

You can’t have one without the other. — Noah Te Stroete

There ya go. Sorta what I was looking for.

Nothing. Drilling down for a sense of how you think, is all. What it means to say “...As if you can even speak of something extra-mental....”

So can we think the extra-mental apart from perceiving?

Agreed. I give the name “burger” to the material presented to my senses, but the label is no more than a certain group of conceptions experience tells me belongs to that kind of sensory material, arranged in that certain way, and no other.

Still, I don’t think you’re going to get away with the notion that “...talking about what the matter that is being “eaten” is extra-mentally is a confusion of how perception works....”, without making some claim about the confusion.

Maybe, but doesn’t it follow from that that I can speak of extra-mental things?

As for what it is like......dangerous ground there. Step truly or the fanatical realists will get you.

Then how did I come to call it a burger? And to qualify its awfulness?

Then what am I speaking about when I tell you the burger I just ate was maybe the worst excuse for a burger I ever had?

Is that to say there is nothing extra-mental to speak of?

Knowledge of modality; knowledge of modes of truth; knowledge of kinds of truth there are, how to find it, how to recognize it, what to do with it.

OK. I’m back in line now. Thanks.

My views:

I’m familiar with some of the literature and I’m aware such literature makes explicit the theme “modal knowledge” by actually using the term. I think modality relating to knowledge is a misnomer. There is modality for concepts, logic, and foremost, experience. All those are antecedent to knowledge and are grounds for it, so it would seem that knowledge stands as given or not given as an end, modality belonging to its antecedents alone as its means.

In other words, knowledge is already judged as possible, necessary or impossible. Pure a priori knowledge is already determinable by logic as to whether it will be possible, necessary or impossible. And a posteriori knowledge is already determined by the modality of the experiences relative to it.

I understand propositions like, knowledge is possible, or knowledge is impossible, may be construed as the modality of knowledge, or modal knowledge. These are nonetheless seemingly contingents, always relative to their respective conditions, wherein the modality actually lies.

Or not.........considering my admittedly pre-modern rationalism.

True enough. I was going more for the sense of reason as arbiter than anything else.

“I like cauliflower” is not an opinion, it is a persuasion, grounded in feelings, and cannot be false.

“Califlower is a healthy vegetable” is not a persuasion, it is an opinion.

“Cauliflower is really good with salt, pepper and a ton of butter”, or “Califlower is awful compared to carrots” is not a conviction, it is a belief.

Reason has no say in the first, has the subject’s reason to say as arbiter in the second, and has all concerned subject’s reason as collective arbiter in the third.

Separate out the text of the OP having to do with anthropology and empirical psychology, then the question of the OP can be answered with speculative philosophy.

The two don’t get along well in the same playground.

The idea of the thing, the “I” that I am, is the transcendental object, the only concept without a representation belonging to it. We cannot represent to ourselves the “I” because it is the “I” trying to think of one, which is entirely circular and hence uninformative.

The ideal of the “I” is that is at the same time, both subject and object of reason itself. It is the subject of all “I am...” or “I think...”, etc, propositions, and it is also the representational object of the contents of consciousness such that all the blanks of the “I am...” or “I think...”, etc., are filled in by it, all such objects belong to me alone. In short, it is like, I am determined by all those things that are mine, or, I can only think those things that are mine to think.

The fit on the philosophical spectrum is....transcendental idealism.

Bring your own salt.

The standard(s) of reason are the Aristotelian logical laws of thought, which legislate the form but have nothing whatsoever to do with the content. Logic provides the standard criteria to reason but not the validity of reason’s applied relations.

There is no other standard, but rather, various theoretical speculations on its possibility.

Empirical methods don't judge arguments. — Echarmion

Slippery slope aside, I think I’ll agree. Empirical methods may demonstrate the validity of arguments having empirical grounds, as in hypothesis validated by means of experiment, but particular empirical arguments themselves can only arise from judgements made on relations given from experience or possible experience, and those relations are nothing more than synthetic a priori propositions. I would add, however, empirical arguments can be judged by analytic propositions a priori, relational as well, but having only general empirical content.

No empirical method is capable of judging arguments reason presents to itself, re: morality, the super-sensible, or the logically impossible.

Radioactive is a condition, not a property. If a nucleus has certain properties it will be radioactive and it won’t be if it doesn’t. Being radioactive is contingent, the properties are necessary to identify the object, from which the possibility of being radioactive follows.

you are imagining a scenario without humans, but when you are then trying to look at that which remains, you are looking at it from a human view — Echarmion

Finally. Tacit understanding it is absolutely impossible to do otherwise, and only the rationally inept will attempt it.

I now return me to my regularly scheduled life.

Yes, those. Sorry.

“....transformative familiarity....” I like it!!!

Kant intended his practical philosophy to govern morality, for the most part. Easier to comprehend than CPR, but nonetheless contentious for a book half the size.

In passing, I also hold disagreements with respect to the elucidations of noumena stated above.

at least by means of rational thought, and I don't think Kant understood faith to be a form of knowing). — Janus

He sorta did, kindasorta, in as much as one may arrive at a “false” knowledge, which he also calls “unjustified true belief”, the rational procedure for which he calls the transcendental illusion. He thinks this accomplished by the subject permitting his reason to “exceed the bounds of its proper use” and while it is perfectly legitimate to think the supersensible because reason always seeks the unconditioned, such thinking is not thereby given warrant to assign possibility to its reality, re: the oft-argued yet immeasurably important conclusion: “existence is not a predicate”.

Some interpretations (Guyer 1999) reads “....I must abolish knowledge to make room for belief...”, where Kemp-Smith (1929) reads, “...I must abolish knowledge to make room for faith...”. While not actually considered knowledge per se, whether a priori or empirical, Kant recognizes the “common understanding” as desiring some solid ground for his metaphysical necessities, which he will think as something known to him as being true.

Even thought it is true Kant destroyed the arguments of the day for the existence of supersensible entities, he did not argue for proof of their impossibility, but merely showed the legitimacy of a logical negation. As such, he acknowledged faith, but consolidated the rational derivations of it and restricted its applicability to outside the empirical domain.

“....We have noted that a church dispenses with the most important mark of truth, namely, a rightful claim to universality, when it bases itself upon a revealed faith. For such a faith, being historical (even though it be far more widely disseminated and more completely secured for remotest posterity through the agency of scripture) can never be universally communicated so as to produce conviction. Yet, because of the natural need and desire of all men for something sensibly tenable, and for a confirmation of some sort from experience of the highest concepts and grounds of reason (a need which really must be taken into account when the universal dissemination of a faith is contemplated), some historical ecclesiastical faith or other, usually to be found at hand, must be utilized....”
(Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone”, 1792)

For what it’s worth.......

“....Nay, rather I must earnestly warn against such accounts, especially the more recent ones; and indeed in the years just past I have met with expositions of the Kantian philosophy in the writings of the Hegelians which actually reach the incredible. How should the minds that in the freshness of youth have been strained and ruined by the nonsense of Hegelism, be still capable of following Kant's profound investigations? They are early accustomed to take the hollowest jingle of words for philosophical thoughts, the most miserable sophisms for acuteness, and silly conceits for dialectic, and their minds are disorganised through the admission of mad combinations of words to which the mind torments and exhausts itself in vain to attach some thought....”
(Schopenhauer, WWR-1, 1819)

Re: your “Reference is language use. Meaning is prior to language.”

What do you think of Fodor (1975) where the thesis is that mental acts are actual language structures?

I’m of the mind that mental acts are images, and meaning is prior to language, insofar as meaning is merely a judgement on conceptual referents presented to it by reason.

On the other hand, if Fodor is right, meaning won’t be prior to language, at least of the mental variety. Then we’d have to determine if the mental variety is different than the overall objective variety, such that meaning could still be prior to one but simultaneous with or a consequence of the other.

Reductionism 101:
All you gotta grasp is, any attempt to think up conditions without thinking beings, is doomed to failure. It is impossible to think of situations without thinkers because of the absolute necessity of the incidence of the one thinking it up. And the one thinking it up carries the burden of all his consciousness with him. Because he cannot understand the complete absence of meaning nor the complete possibility of eventualities in the world he inhabits, he is not going to properly conceive any world without inhabitants at all. He can’t, because he’s part of in the world he’s thinking as empty of thinkers.

So of course he’s going to insist there’s meaning between the initial producer of it, and the eventual recipient of it. He’s right there during all that in between, because he’s thinking it!!!! So he IS the recipient, just not the one he imagines to be the eventual one. He cannot detach himself from conscious activity in the empty world he thought up, insofar as he pictures, say, Sagan’s brainchild floating aimlessly through space, complete with all it’s contained information, and he absolutely cannot detach himself from his own reason which tells him of its meaning.
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Is that a predictive ad-hom by Kant? — ZhouBoTong

Dunno. You tell me.
“....Dogmatism is thus the dogmatic procedure of pure reason without previous criticism of its own powers, and in opposing this procedure, we must not be supposed to lend any countenance to that loquacious shallowness which arrogates to itself the name of popularity, nor yet to scepticism, which makes short work with the whole science of metaphysics. (...).... and must, therefore, be treated, not popularly, but scholastically....”

“....raise a loud cry of danger to the public over the destruction of cobwebs, of which the public has never taken any notice, and the loss of which, therefore, it can never feel....”

“....A philosophical system cannot come forward armed at all points like a mathematical treatise, and hence it may be quite possible to take objection to particular passages, while the organic structure of the system, considered as a unity, has no danger to apprehend. But few possess the ability, and still fewer the inclination, to take a comprehensive view of a new system. By confining the view to particular passages, taking these out of their connection and comparing them with one another, it is easy to pick out apparent contradictions, especially in a work written with any freedom of style. These contradictions place the work in an unfavourable light in the eyes of those who rely on the judgement of others, but are easily reconciled by those who have mastered the idea of the whole....”

“Easily reconciled” is rather subjective, to be sure. People have been judged as “experts” on the theory, but only relative to each other, and never relative to Kant himself. While it may be reasonable to master the idea of the whole, it is a ‘nuther story to master the whole itself. Which is odd, seeing as how every human ever used or uses reason his whole life, and none of us understand what it really is.
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Doesn't idealism (...) reduce to "it's all in your head" or at least "it wouldn't exist without your head"? — ZhouBoTong

No, not these days, anyway.

You don't think that if we all use the same terms but mean different things, that'll increase the risk getting our wires crossed? — S

Probably. Generally however, that’s not the case. Billions of people communicate successfully most of the time.