The Dawn of the Age of Meaning…
Transcending the Crisis of Modernity and Post-Modernity
“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain … In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar”…
- Richard Feynman
The dawn of the Age of Meaning can be traced back to the late 19th and early 20th Century where a fundamental question was beginning to be revisited.
Why is the universe we inhabit intelligible?
The emergence of Semiotics reflected this open inquiry into the intelligibility of the universe — the Saussurean Semiotics of the European Structuralists and profound insights through Peircean Semiotics that brought a metaxic semiotic interpretation to our understanding of Reality.
A breakthrough that could ultimately possibly explain (via recognising the metaphysical distinction between Being in the World and bringing Meaning to the Mind) the incoherence in our current understanding of Quantum Mechanics despite the vast instrumental utility value of these ideas leading to major transformational advancements in technology including inter alia lasers, semiconductors, transistors & modern electronics,superconductivity, LED & OLED displays, nanotechnology, solar cells, magnetic resonance imager etc etc…
New ideas that could lead Western Civilisation:
- out of the cul de sac of Post-Modernity;
- to resolving the crisis of Modernity;
- beyond the endemic embracement of Marxist ideology (incl. the indoctrination in education); and
- to reverse the emergence of a New Totalitarianism controlled and enforced by an increasingly globalist progressive secular liberal orthodoxy.
Extending our knowledge beyond our existing understanding of the nature of Reality anchored in the Human Mind, the Primacy of Human Consciousness and the Primacy of Man — Nietzschean Perspectivism, Nominalism, Cartesianism, Marxism, Constructivism, Modern Gnosticism and Idealism.
Man’s Participation in Reality
“Let the mind be enlarged… to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries contracted to the narrowness of the mind”…
— Francis Bacon
What if Conscious Man does not construct Reality (e.g. Sophism and Cartesianism) but Man participates in Reality?
A publication that lays out the Scientific Method that became the foundation for the Scientific, Industrial and Digital Revolutions that would follow.
Ideas that would profoundly disrupt the existing intellectual paradigm.
At the time, Bacon was critical of the intellectual orthodoxy’s understanding of the nature of reason anchored in deductive reasoning and Aristotelean Term Logic, which he believed had become rigid and inhibited our progress in revealing new knowledge.
He recognised that such reasoning could be grounded in false assumptions (axioms) and simply perpetuate pre-existing beliefs (e.g. dogma and ideology).
Instead, he proposed a novel approach advocating for a new method where scientific inquiry should be based on a systematic and organised approach of observing, experimenting, and then sythesising data collected from the natural world through observation.
The importance of empirical evidence and inductive reasoning, where general conclusions are drawn from specific observations.
“Physics is when nature checks your math”…
— Martin Bauer
Induction is the process of generalisation (abstraction and reductionism), which is based on a sufficient number of specific observations or examples to determine a value.
It combines logical processes of abstraction with intuition and a hypothesis.
“Induction makes you feel guilty for getting something out of nothing … but it is one of the greatest ideas of civilisation”…
– Herbert Wilf
It is inherently probabilistic in nature, given Conscious Man’s understanding is confronted by the complexity, uncertainty and emergent qualities of our Material World.
The limits of observation (i.e. finite phenomena) simply cannot entirely eliminate all uncertainty (e.g. Knightian Uncertainty).
It, therefore, remains a contingent explanation (i.e. a best explanation) based on the available evidence and understanding.
These ideas would see Sir Francis Bacon becoming widely regarded as the father of empiricism, inductive reasoning and the scientific method.
Bacon had provided a powerful intellectual framework for not only generalising and abstracting our experiences in the World (i.e. new forms of knowledge) but as a process methodology (i.e. actualisation of potential) that through these generalisations and new knowledge could be used for prediction and action (i.e. potentialisation of actual ) the world (i.e. the conversion of this new knowledge into new technologies and the creation & manipulation of the World).
The Intelligible Universe
The emergence in the late 19th and early 20th Century of American Philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (regarded as a modern day Aristotle) represented a further intellectual paradigm shift, although until this day the implications of his ideas are yet to be widely understood and absorbed.
Continuing further down the path that Bacon had begun to take.
Further inquirying into the question:
What if Conscious Man does not construct Reality (e.g. Sophism, Cartesianism, Marxism, Nietzschean Perspectivism ) but Man participates in Reality?
Peirce’s breakthroughs were far-reaching and profound.
They included advancements in our understanding of semiotics, relational logic, abductive reasoning ( i.e. completing the triadic of reason (abductive (Peirce), inductive (Bacon), and deductive (Aristotle)), developing a triadic understanding of consciousness anchored in phenomonology and being in the world (primisense, altersense and medisense), introducing a new category of thought — relationships of the whole — modes of being (firstness, secondness and thirdness) and in doing so completing the triadic categories of thought (ontological (Aristotle), epistemological (Kant) and semiotic (Peirce)).
However, the most profound foundational ideas developed by Peirce were anchored in renewing Western Civilisation’s understanding of Reality as an interdependent relational process (where meaning is mediated via signs).
It represented a profound “jump-state” shift beyond Modern and Post-Modern Philosophy that had been increasingly orientating Reality through the subjective prism of the Conscious Self — a Primacy of Man whether that was Idealism orMaterialism or through the combination of both (Dialectical Materialism).
Modern & Post-Modern ideas that were manifesting themselves in numerous and sometimes catastrophic ways including inter alia:
- Mathematisation of Nature (Heidegger);
- Cartesian Mechanical Machine World View (Descarte);
- Mechanisation of the Human Mind (Dupuy);
- Emergence of a Technology Society and Technology System (Jacques Ellul);
- Various forms of Marxism and Modern Gnosticism — Communism, Fascism,Secular Progressive Liberalism and Atheism;
- Intelligence as Computation (e.g. Artificial General Intelligence and the Singularity);
- Industrial Age engineering disciplines being extended to emergent dynamic complex living systems (Geoengineering, Bioengineering, Genetic Engineering, Computer Engineering (Artificial General Intelligence) — an “apparent” Fourth Industrial Revolution;
- Knowledge Work being increasingly separated (disembodied) from the embodied nature of Work;
- The separation of knowledge into increasingly specialised and distinct education disciplines & silos; and
- Emergence of a Semiotic Industrial Complex to control and shape the mediation of Man’s interpretation of Reality (hence — Hyperreality, Hypernormalisation, Simulacra, Simulation, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality). A World where Truth Claims were increasingly Managed or a Social &/or Political Construct (e.g. Peer Reviews in Academia — Marxist Legal Positivism in Law).
In contrast to this, Peirce’s ideas were revealing that the intelligibility of the Universe was a relational process that reflected Man’s participation in Reality and the mediation, interpretation, transformation & adaption of meaning.
Human consciousness as a participatory metaxic semiotic process that allows for:
- the interpretation of mind-independent reality via
- a mind-dependent representation, leading to learning, knowledge formation, habits and the actualisation of potential.
A distinction between:
A New Paradigm — The Dawn of the Age of Meaning
“If we glance at the most important revolutions in history, we see at once that the greatest number of these originated in the periodical revolutions of the human mind”…
— Wilhelm von Humboldt
In Resolving the Quantum Paradox — Beyond Bohr : Rethinking the Copenhagen Interpretation — The Mediation of Meaning from Being in the World to Generalisations and Universal Abstractions of the Human Mind an attempt was made to begin to bring a sense of coherence to the Copenhagen Interpretation that is central to our Scientific Understanding (or lack thereof) of Quantum Mechanics.
An interpretation that begins with our embodiment and entangled being in the World ( Being in the World — Heidegger) and an Intentional Consciousness (Husserl) — the Conscious Self is not closed but where consciousness is fundamentally relational and interactional (always engaged with the World and the objects therein).
An interpretation that views the wave function in quantum mechanics as an abstract human mental construct — a metaphor for meaning and knowing that represents human being in the world (Dasein) as described by Heidegger.
A mediation of meaning by human consciousness and the beginning of the process of bringing to the mind (cognition) meaning, being and knowing.
A process that reflects the participation of human being in reality and human engagement with the world.
Heidegger argues that human beings do not just passively observe the world but are actively engaged in disclosing meaning through their interactions.
Before the collapse, the wave function represents a potentiality — a state where meaning is open-ended.
The collapse represents the mediation of meaning through interpretation, where one possibility is realised (actualisation of potential) as part of the process of human knowing.
A physical and metaphysical Metaxic Semiotic process of bringing an Intelligibility to Being.
A New Paradigm — Unifying Physics and Metaphysics through Semiotics
“Since we cannot change Reality, let us change the eyes which we see Reality” …
- Nikos Kazantzakis
If we take the viewpoint that meaning-making is a fundamental symbiotic relational process of reality that reflects Man’s participation in Reality that actualises possibility (Meaning (Semiotics), Being (Ontology) and Knowing (Epistemology)).
Then our understanding of Reality may be once again undergoing a Copernicus moment of radical change.
A Reality that can be expressed through the highest category of human thought — that of Being.
A Univocity of Being that is common to the Contingent Being of Man (Created) and the Necessary Being of God (Creator).
The Determination of Reality through the Actualisation of Meaning
The following is a preliminary outline of an interpretation of Reality broken down into the key states of Actualisation of Potential — Actualising Meaning, Being and Knowing.
1. Open-Ended Being — Infinite Being — Possibility of Being
- In quantum mechanics terms, a system remains in a superposition of all possible states until some relational interaction causes it to decohere or collapse (e.g. observation and measurement).
- From a Heidegger phenomenological perspective, openness is a characteristic of Dasein (Human Being) — an openness towards Being and one that perceives the Beings before it. For example, when Human’s hear a sound they do not simply hear a raw sound but the Being of it (e.g. a bird sound). This Being is always open-ended, undefined until disclosed through engagement. This is consistent with Dasein’s role in making meaning emerge from raw potential. [Note: Peirce’s Semiotic Triadic could be viewed through a similar understanding of Being and mean-making. The Observer, Sign (e.g. Bird Sound) and Object (Bird) are in a semiotic triadic relationship of meaning-making — an intentional consciousness (Husserl). Therefore, Open-Ended Being could also be interpreted as an incomplete triadic where the Object is not present — a possibility of being.
- The pre-actualised state can be thought of as the ontological horizon — where Being is a field of possibilities not yet shaped into definite meaning.
2. Mediation of Being through the Metaxic Semiotic Nature of Consciousness — Decoherence via the Altersense (Secondness) as Filtering of Possibility
- According to Charles Sanders Peirce, consciousness can be understood not as an independent ontological realm but a semiotic process that mediates via phenoma of experience between the indeterminate potentiality of Being (Firstness — possibility, quality, feeling, immediate & indeterminate) and its structured actualisation (Secondness — actuality, existence, resistance & opposition) through interpretation (Thirdness — law, generalities , habit formation).
- Human Consciousness (Peirce — Primisense, Altersense and Medisense) represents the process of mediating between the continuum of Open-Ended Being (Infinite Being — Possibility of Being) & Finite Natural Beings. One that transforms indeterminate Open-Ended Being into determinant states of Being.
- This phenomonology of being process of bringing a derminant state of Being to the Human Mind can be understood through Peirce’s Categories — modes of Being, his understanding of human consciousness (Primisense, Altersense and Medisense) and Semiotic Triadic. In other words, it is the triadic relation that enables the intelligibility of Being.
- From an ontological perspective, the structuring of Being can be understood through Peirce’s categories:
- Firstness (Pure Possibility) reflects the Open-Ended Being or the indeterminate realm of infinite potentiality experienced in Being in the World.
- Secondness (Actualisation through Interaction) represents the emergence of structured Being, analogous to decoherence, where reality takes form through resistance and interaction shaped by the Bounded Rationality constraints of Human Thought (Aristotle (Ontological) & Kant’s (Epistemological) Categories) and Bounded Experience constraints of Human Action (Environment sensory feedback — Peirce’s Pragmatic Maxim: Meaning of concept shaped by its Practical Effect).
- Thirdness (Interpretation & Mediation) that reflects the semiotic process of consciousness, which does not collapse Being into reality but organises and makes it intelligible through sign-relations. Thirdness reflects the real existence of laws & generalities and capacity for habit formation (a Realism that recognises thirdness as thirdness).
- Peirce’s ideas imply that reality does not independently collapse into determinate Being but requires a semiotic structure that mediates the transition from possibility to actuality. Consciousness is the process of interpretation and mediation that bridges potentiality and actuality. A Metaxic Semiotic that brings Intelligibility.
- Through Peircean semiotics, the unity of metaphysical and physical reality is achieved through the triadic relation — sign relations — between signs, objects, and interpretants. It is within this interpretative structure — sign relations — that the intelligibility of Being emerges, shaping the conditions under which potential Being can become Real Being.
3. The Potentialisation of the Actual (Knowing) and the Actualisation of the Potential (Being)
The conscious process of inquiry of Human Being’s participation in the meaning-making of Being through semiotic signs that mediate relationships between Being (Ontology), Knowing (Epistemology) and Meaning (Semiotics). Semiosis as the dynamic interpretative process of meaning-making (mediated via signs) that actualises ideas. Whereas the conscious metaxic semiotic process provides an intelligibility and interpretabillity of the relationship between Being and Knowing
- Human Being’s participate in Reality through their Consciousness Self.
- The Metaxic Semiotic process of Consciousness provides the intelligibility through its role in decoherence and interpretation. A process that enables Conscious Being’s to participate in meaning-making.
- Through Being in the World (Dasein — Heidegger) Human Being’s participate in Reality — experiencing and disclosing the World. An Interpretative Consciousness (Husserl) where meaning is disclosed from engagement. Dasein’s role where meaning of Being emerges from raw potential. The relationship between Human Being and Being.
- The conscious process originating from Meaning bringing Being to the Mind where
- Ontology reflects that Being (act of existing); and
- Epistemology reflects the bringing-forth that Meaning from Being (the Potentialisation of the Actual). An ongoing process where once something has been decohered into existence, its meaning continues to evolve through interpretation and relationships of sign — relations. This suggests that ontology and epistemology are not static but dynamic — what is actualised is continually reshaped by how it is understood.
Implications of Reality being fundamentally indeterminate until actualised through Meaning
These ideas challenge existing classical materialists and idealist views where either Reality is a fixed independent entity or Reality is simply a construct of the Human Mind.
Instead, it highlights how our understanding of Reality emerges through our participation in Being (a participatory realism) anchored in the emergence of Meaning from Being in the World — experiencing and disclosing the World.
It represents a fresh perspective on the nature and understanding of Reality beyond materialism, physics (brute material forces) and horizontal causality (e.g. modern science & mathematisation of nature). It represents a paradigm shift to the emergence of an Age of Meaning that combines Metaphysics and Physics.
An understanding where the process of Being is inherently creative — not merely a passive unfolding, but an active participation where being, consciousness and participation in reality co-create meaning.
Consciousness can be understood through multiple dimensions:
- a Metaxic Semiotic process of interpretation of Reality. Its pivotal role in understanding how meaning emerges from Being in the World;
- the central function it plays in filtering of possibility and in decoherence; and
- the distinction that can be made between the conscious self (Human Being’s participation in Reality via Consciousness) and the capacity for a broader “beyond the self” interpretation of consciousness that brings together a sense of coherence of Reality and Intelligence — the Being, Knowing and Meaning of all Beings that have ever been in or are currently in existence (a collective consciousness).
If Reality remains in an Open-Ended Being until meaning is actualised (Real Being), then the process of Being becoming Meaning is not secondary but fundamental to existence (i.e. the act of Being). This implies:
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