What it is, I think, is that in events which have meaning, or relations between potentially meaningful facts have meaning only if a subject is involved. It is the subject which relates the fact of the sentence to the fact in the world. It is important not to get stuck in the difficulties which come from thinking of thoughts as some kind of special event, here-- the mind-body problem is a quagmire as deep as Iraq. But there is a special role played here by a subject. I wrote yesterday that:
"Wittgenstein believed that the power to see, grasp, understand the connection between these sets of facts is the defining action of the self. The self recognizes a 'logical form' which is shared, primarily, by facts and the sentences which refer to them, and secondarily by all of the various facts which reflect the same form as the sentence."
I think today that 'defining action' may be going too far, although the ability to recognize sameness and difference certainly is central to the action of a subject. And today I want to say that meaning depends upon the action of a subject, either as originator of the meaningful sentence or as interpreter of a sentence in 'writing' somewhere. This may sound trivial, but really, having evidence that there is some role for a person beyond generating biochemical events based on sensation is necessary unless we want to abandon our ordinary ways of thinking about ourselves altogether. This recognition of similarity may not be much, but, in a materialist world, it may also be all that is left of a soul, and the freedom which we associate with it.
7:42:18 AM 
|
|
