OK, I’ll admit I was wrong,

[Young Master Smeet]

OK, I’ll admit I was wrong, there is still a little fresh mileage in this:

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

I’m sorry, but we define ‘things’ all the time without ever once thinking of ‘No-thing’ — whatever that is.For example, here is a definition of ‘horse’:

But that defines horse in terms of other Things: that slippery chain of metaphors and metonyms eventually leads to no-thing.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

I’d like to see the non-metaphorical proof (which, if you are correct, will have to be written in a non-human language) that “human language…[is]…ultimately metaphorical.”

Since there is no intrinsic connection between signifier and signified the only real reference is to historical locutions – every word is meaningful only in the context of where it has last/usually been used, and is thus a metaphor for itself.  As I’m sure you’ll know, denotations are actions of naming, simply to refer to a cigarrette is to enact the fact that the object in question is like unto the object previously referred to by the term cigarrette.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

2) I didn’t snip it. I apologised later for missing it — did you alter your original post on edit?

Apologies, I read your next post after I finished mine.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

3) The point about gravity does not alter my argument in any way. Unless you think gravity acts instantaneously across all regions of space and time, then most things in the universe, past, present and future, can’t be connected, let alone interconnected.

They can be connected, over time, but, if space/time is absolute, then not  synchronically.  However, that does no disprove connection (or, rather, interconnection), if I were tied to you by a (very long) piece of elastic, that was incredibly stretchy, we could go our whole lives without ever feeling any effect from such a laggy band, except one day, after many years, when it reaches its limit.  We would still have been connected for all that time.Now, as for connected, I would say I’m using it in the sense that my actions will have an effect upon another object through transmission: connection does not have to be direct or immediate.  Or, put another way, I equate connection with casuality, which, in the context of the big bang theory means everything is connected in common cause and its transmission through the cosmos.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

So, let’s imagine that you move house, and want to be connected with the internet. You ring your favourite IP and ask them to connect you with the web. The person on the other end of the phone, who has read Dietzgen and believed far too much of it than is good for any human being, tells you that since all things are connected, you are still connected to the world-wide web, so why are you ringing her.

She would be right, in a banal sense, that since the humans I interact with are connected to the web, and I can (and do) use it through them, I am connected regardless of whether I am in possession of a portal or not.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

I think you need to re-read the material on light cones, since that tells us that there are vast regions of space that we will never be connected with each other or with us — unless, once more, you are using ‘connected’ in a new, and as-yet-unexplained sense.

And I think you need to re-read it, those points are synchronous space/time co-ordinates of absolute position, in the ‘real’ universe, over time the effect does spread, and, if the universe is limited, then all points in space will be eventually effected by an event in space/time.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

Unfortunately, you neglected to prove that light is everywhere — or why this shows everything is connected — except in your odd sense of ‘connected’, which you have yet to explain.

I don’t need to prove that, since I’ve never asserted it.  So much for linguistic philosophy.