absolutely 100% agreed, chuck. there's no disagreement here at all. i think what kelley and i are working through is precisely the set(s) of processes by/through/in which meaning is created and changed (she put it much better). indeed, my growing sense of myself as working into the american pragmatist tradition (see rorty and putnam, especially, although you already know it's much older than that -- just that those two are the two who have caught me, so to speak).
so i see no conflict, here between what you want and what i want.
there is of course a very important conflict between the idea of "searching for"/"finding" meaning/values and the idea of making/remaking meaning/values. (note tie-in to science/religion thread) that's a lot of what i do in my classes, especially but not only the ethics class: to try to open students' eyes to the possibility that meaning doesn't have to come from outside themselves (not as "individuals", but as social beings -- see ted and kelley's posts on marx). i'm not trying to lecture you on marx, just trying to tell you what i mean.
i may be misunderstanding something (or even everything) here, but i do believe we are very much on the same page, at least one important set of points. i like to find the common ground where i can find it, and i think we have some, here. the question then is where that leaves us wrt some of the other questions that we've been trying to address the last couple of weeks.
right?
-- Among medieval and modern philosophers, anxious to establish the religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit has prevailed of paying to Him metaphysical compliments.
- Alfred North Whitehead