[iamevil]

What is this thing we call "meaning"? Can it be a point in a vast and complex "pattern space" and the meaning of that point is the structure of all the "paths" that map that point to other points in this same pattern space?

Our act of arbitrary categorization of patterns into "syntax" and "semantics" just seems to obscure that fact that they are just two arbitrary encodings of patterns.

How can we know that one pattern is equal to another pattern in a different encoding? Don't we agree on these mappings with other pattern spaces (read humans)? As we communicate, so do our pattern spaces start interacting, and all we can hope for is a convergence on the mappings sans encoding.

[ehsanu1]

> Can it be a point in a vast and complex "pattern space" and the meaning of that point is the structure of all the "paths" that map that point to other points in this same pattern space?

That's the exact point of contention, whether semantics can be represented by syntax is unknown currently, though it must hold in a materialistic world. If it can't, as some believe, then it isn't an arbitrary categorization.

[iamevil]

Isn't the only issue here that we have here one set of spaces (brains) with that structural understanding (link/edge), and another set without that structural understanding?

It seems that the brains that possess the link are busy implementing it's isomorphic structure in technology, while the brains that do not possess the link are contributing nothing as they are still in a more "primitive" state? (Primitive meaning that they lack the linkage to see that the terms are really structurally isomorphic on the grand scale of things)

It would be interesting to know what input those brains that do not possess the link require to start possessing it.

Can there exist brains that will never make the link?

[gnaritas]

Until there's evidence to the contrary, the materialist world is the only world there is, you can simply call it the world as calling it the materialist world is redundant.

Materialism has ample evidence to support it; dualism has no good evidence, it is therefore dualism that is on trial, not materialism.