Just to take the above list of Western values, how is 'rational thinking', 'scientific thinking' and 'modern technology' a trait of only the West? — ssu

Do they necessarily mean that those are uniquely western values?

I do my best to avoid saying that all of any widespread behavior should be interpreted to denote some particular mental content, because that never pans out. Different people think about the "same thing" in different ways.

Saying you don't care about ontology if it isn't presupposed or irrelevant suggests that you do care what it is if it is presupposed or irrelevant.

What I'd like discuss is specific values held by the people of the forum. I'm trying to put together a list of what I think my central personal values are. — T Clark

Ah . . . You're basically looking for folks' "Your Top 10 (or 20 or whatever) Values" lists? Mine would be something like (just in alphabetical order as I'm phrasing them):

Adventurousness, including intellectual curiosity
Appreciation of things for what they uniquely are
Avoidance of overreaction, especially when the reaction in question would penalize or punish others
Compassion/helpfulness/stewardship
Creativity/imagination
Easy-goingness/mellowness/relative lack of complaining, nagging, etc.
Existential authenticity
Friendliness
Iconoclasm/lack of desire for sacred cows/willingness to critically examine anything
Laissez-faireness/lack of a desire to control others/lack of a desire to pressure conformity
Love and passion
Open, honest expression and ability to deal with the same without getting upset
Patience
Pursuit of hedonistic desires, including freewheeling, polyamorous desires
Sense of humor/fun/play

But you care about ontology only if it's irrelevant?

Why not then just stare at a loaf of bread and imagine all the plots of all the stories you want perfectly tailored to your own tastes and desires? What's the point of having any art at all? — NKBJ

Whereupon you've apparently forgotten that we're talking about interpretations of something that we're not making up.

The interpretations come from us, they come from individuals. We "make those up" so to speak. What they're interpretations of is not something of our own devising. They're something someone else created (well, usually--you can also interpret your own artwork, of course).

I'm not saying that the interpretations aren't interpretations. They're still in response to some particular artwork. They're someone telling us what they see the artwork's meaning(s), significance(s), symbolism(s) etc. to be.

And the same individual is going to respond to different artworks in different ways, as well as different individuals responding to the same artwork in different ways, as well as the same individual responding to the same artwork in different ways on different occasions. But an individual isn't likely to have just any and every arbitrary phenomenal mental content in response to just one arbitrary item, no matter what it is. That in no way implies that there's any content that can't occur as an interpretation to some individual, however.

If ontology isn’t presupposed or irrelevant, I don’t care what it is. — Mww

Haha (or were you not joking?)

If the interpretation is made up by the reader, then the reader should be able to read Jack and Jill and derive the entire story of Hamlet? — NKBJ

Sure. There's no content that's not possible as an interpretation.

The interpretation is certainly made up by the reader. What they're interpreting isn't made up by the reader.

It's not clear to me what you're asking in this thread.

It seems kind of like "Here are a few random comments about values. Go!"

Because it's bound by the actual words on the actual page, Silly — NKBJ

Obviously an interpretation--of literature, say (so that we're talking about words)--isn't identical to the words on the page being interpreted. "Jack and Jill went up the hill" isn't an interpretation of "Jack and Jill went up the hill" (and even if it were, it wouldn't be the sole interpretation).

So how is it bound by the words on the page?

Because otherwise there are limits to interpretation. — NKBJ

How would that work? "If the art isn't just made up in the mind by each reader/viewer, then interpretations can not be forwarded endlessly because . . . "

I honestly haven't any idea how you might suggest filling that sentence out.

Cool. You can do ontology without using language? — creativesoul

Sure. It's a bit harder to communicate it without language, though--at least to communicate it very precisely.

They can’t be, they are purely speculative. Nothing about either of those is subject to the scientific method. But they can still be logical. — Mww

I don't do ontology by speculation or purely by logic.

If interpretation is endless as well as purely subjective, then do you think the art is actually just made up in the mind by each reader/viewer? — NKBJ

The short answer is "No," and I'll stick to the short answer to not confuse things.

Why would you think that's suggested?

I'm not at all an idealist or representationalist. I don't think that either idealism or representationalism are at all empirically supportable.

So we got into a tangent about so-called "rigid designators." I said I don't believe the distinction holds any water, because of the subjectivity of representation, reference, etc. Then Mww wound up saying, "There is no source other than ourselves for anything whatsoever," which I don't at all agree with, but then added, "That we’re conscious of, anyway," which I read as saying "In terms of consciousness qua consciousness."

Hmm . . . I wasn't even talking (or thinking about) ethics there.

You spoke of sources relevant to human thinking — Mww

In the case at hand, the phenomena only occur as thought.

That only applies to all phenomena if we restrict our context to thinking about things.

So, you start out by saying that there is no x aside from F, where the scope seems to be universal, and the claim thus controversial . . . But then you suddenly clarify that you're restricting the scope to y, which is definitionally F.

Yes, without a doubt. There is no source other than ourselves for anything whatsoever. That we’re conscious of, anyway. — Mww

That's like saying "There's no source for anything whatsoever other than suspended pigments applied to canvases. That we can paint, anyway."

Yeah, and in this case it gives the impression of "I don't know--why don't you look it up! There must be something you could find that suggests what I just claimed if you look hard enough."

In this particular case, no other sign, of this given color, shape and location, ever has any other purpose than to signal an action with respect to what the sign represents. Therefore, necessity is satisfied, and the designation is rigid. Sorta like....if this is all it can be, it must be necessary for it to be that. If sufficient compliance is attained, universality is possible. — Mww

There's no purpose period except for an individual thinking about something in terms of purposes. Same with representation. Since different individuals can and do think about things differently, as well as potentially the same individual on different occasions, there is no rigidity.

Which one of those would you say are good evidence of it being unhealthy?

If we're simply saying that it's possible to hurt yourself should you do particular things, that's true, but it's true of anything, including eating, walking to your bathroom, etc.

If you're asking me which one I'd say, I'd say that interpretations are endless just in case they keep arriving, otherwise they're not. Same as with anything else.

???

How do you go from "I wasn't saying anything about x" to " You want to claim y about x"?

That’s a good point. However, I think Terrapin only uses the term “objective” to mean “extramental”. — Noah Te Stroete

And what it is for me to say "He understands me" is for me, from my perspective, to think that his comments make sense relative to what I'm saying (from my perspective).

Oh right, it was "endless". — NKBJ

The only reason I brought up "endless" was because YOU thought I was saying something about that.

I wasn't. I wasn't saying anything about whether interpretations are endless or not. I have no idea why you would have thought I was saying something about that.

I also find it amusing that someone who claims that all interpretation is subjective and neither true or false is so concerned about my understand what you "really" meant by some statement or another. — NKBJ

"really" is a term of emphasis. I can give you my definition of what understanding is.

I just did a search for me using the term "limitless" anywhere on the board in the last month, and there's only one post, in a different thread, where I'm quoting a phrase someone else used. So I don't know what you're talking about.

Because the designator is not universal and necessary with respect to its representation, it isn’t rigid? — Mww

Right. What the heck would "rigid" amount to if a designator is variable?

The world ends if you don’t stop at the stop sign? We both know that’s not true, so those can’t be the criteria for rigid. — Mww

That part doesn't make sense to me. Supposedly one of the criteria is that a term always refers to the same thing, in all possible worlds, but a term that doesn't always refer to the same thing isn't going to meet that criterion.

It would be nonsensical to say they could. Who would claim that? — Noah Te Stroete

Yeah, I agree. I don't know why NKBJ got stuck on the idea of "limits of interpretation," though, so I'm just trying to play along.

What did you read as me saying something about limits of interpretation? Obviously you thought I was saying something about that, but I don't get why.

"Interpretations can't occur extramentally" is another limitation I'd agree with.

It matters because it's all that I'm claiming.

I didn't say anything like "There are limits to interpretation." That was your contribution.

I'd agree with it since you brought it up, but only in the sense of, for example, "An interpretation can't be not an interpretation." I'd agree that that's a limit to interpretations if you want to focus on that for some reason.

If you stopped at the stop sign, the rigidity of the designator is validated. If you didn’t, the designator is no less rigid, but you disregarded it for whatever reason. All the designator needs, is for what it represents to be understood, not necessarily agreed with. — Mww

There's zero rigidity to "what it represents" though.

Let's start by seeing if you can understand what I'm claiming.

I'm saying that interpretations are mental phenomena, and only exist as mental phenomena.

I'm also saying that the fact that interpretations are only mental phenomena is not itself only a fact about mental phenomena.

Do you understand that so far?

I’m comfortable allowing rigid designator to stand as a distinctive representation of a concept. A stop sign can be a rigid designator. — Mww

I just can't make any sense out of saying/supposing that anything would be rigid. To me that is not at all how reference, meaning, etc. work, and it's very obvious that it's not how they work.

And if it's otherwise just supposed to be saying something about identity, then it's a very convoluted, confused, misleading way to say something so simple that it's not worth saying.

I don't understand a lot of the content of Mww's posts, either, but so far I'm just attributing it to very different paradigms than my own that I figure would be impossible to sort out in this context.

I, for one, have no problem with starting at 50% - 50%. My problem is with the nonsense that atheists, theists, and "agnostic tending toward deism" add to the problem to get at something other than 50% - 50%. — Frank Apisa

For the God question, it's not as if there's no data to go on. 100% it's the case that there's no evidence of a God, not to mention that the very idea of it is absurd/incoherent.