Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by psychoslave 1726 days ago
>Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Would my opinion be that you are wrong, it would not imply that:

- I'm right about you being wrong;

- my own view is right and spread it would be an act of correction.

> I meant that words are like signs; they point at the real thing.

Nothingness doesn't point at anything real by definition.

> We must be careful not to confuse the sign for the thing itself.

Nor the sign with an interpretation act stimulated by some sign.

> We can't simply rearrange words and assume that what this new sign, this new combination of words points to, is "real".

Words don't exist outside some interpretation process, by the way.

>Edit: First the thing exists, then we use a word to refer to it.

That's a bit trickier. Because before someone use a word to refer to something, this word didn't exist. Naming things is a performative action. Through words, not only can you gain new knowledge that you can challenge through non-verbal actions, but they change the reality itself as it introduces new relationships in the world that where not present before there were used as a reference tool.