Q&A: Meaning
Meaning
Question
With God’s help,
Hello Rabbi,
I am in the process of reading Rabbi Sacks’s book, and I wanted to ask the Rabbi about the concept of “meaning.”
He argues there that the meaning of a system lies outside the system; therefore the meaning of the world lies outside the world. One of the examples he gives for this is a soccer game, where the meaning of the game takes place outside the dry rules.
As I understand it, you agree with his claim, and I wanted to ask you:
1.
What is the understanding behind this assumption? That the medium through which meaning is conveyed is an ordinary normative one (following the naturalistic fallacy)? But seemingly meaning is something different from values.
2. Why does meaning require a legislator behind it? A famous solution to the Euthyphro dilemma is that values are a necessary feature of reality and not necessarily connected to God; it sounds like with meaning the situation is different. Why?
Answer
I did not understand question 1. As for 2, in Euthyphro the values are the external factor. With values too, you need an external factor.