First, we need to examine “meaning” itself, and expose a
mistake, a very basic mistake, in how many people think about
it. To say that some event means something without at least some
implicit understanding of who it means something to is to
express an incomplete idea, no different than sentence fragments
declaring that “Went to the bank” or “Exploded.” Without first
specifying a particular subject and/or object, the very idea of
meaning is incoherent. Nature is concrete reality, we presume,
something more real than abstraction. But if nature is more real
than abstraction, what use is abstraction? Perhaps it is the
case that abstraction is more real than "nature". Perhaps
abstraction can be used to extend what is effortlessly given to
us. Perhaps abstraction can be employed to usefully transform
what is now presented to us without effort as the object. Maybe
we can perceive with our (collectively-expanded) imagination
levels of reality that are hidden, not so much from our senses,
as by our senses. We think w