[MD] meaning, awareness and understanding

[Scott Roberts]

Kevin,

Kevin said:
Several current threads appear to be connected in that they ask the question
which came first?  What's much less fuzzy are the answers.  The arguments 
are
very definite.  Step away from the source of everything, whether God, 
Dynamic
Quality or Essence, and you find arguments that say meaning proceeds from
something less indefinable but no less elusive, e.g., Grace, 
pre-intellectual
awareness, actualized Essence (sorry Ham if I got this wrong).  The only 
thing
they have in common is their claim to an overarching explanation.  Or do 
they?

When I began writing this I wanted to address what I saw as different
explanations for the existence of meaning.  And then it occurred to me that 
the
different explanations I was seeing may not all be addressing the same 
thing.

Meaning, awareness and understanding?  They're not the same thing, are they?

Scott:
I've been arguing that they are the same, that meaning (value) implies 
awareness, and implies intellect (and -- as per the MOQ, both awareness and 
intellect imply value). That value implies awareness seems to me a 
no-brainer. That it implies intellect comes from the phrase "static pattern 
of value". Intellect is the creation and processing of patterns -- no 
intellect then no pattern -- if one assumes that all patterns are "of 
value". To put it another way, simple reaction (as is hypothesized, say, of 
an amoeba confronted with acid) is not a pattern of value. So what I am 
saying is that any such reaction is meaningful only with respect to some 
context, but all reactions are within some contextual pattern, and to fit 
the particular within the general pattern is intellect.

- Scott