Objectivism Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [3]

Edelman (1992: 237):

Objects in the world are not labelled with dimensions or codes, and the way they are partitioned differs from person to person and from time to time…the mind is not a mirror of nature. Thought is not the manipulation of abstract symbols whose semantics are justified by unambiguous reference to things in the world. Classical categories do not serve in most cases of conceptual categorisation and they do not satisfactorily account for the actual assignment of categories by human beings. There is no unambiguous mapping between the world and our categorisation of it. Objectivism fails.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, all meaning is within semiotic systems.  The non-semiotic domain of experience is meaningless in itself, but is transformed into the meaning of semiotic systems, such as 'objects' of the material-relational domain, by processes of consciousness (the mental-verbal domain of meaning).  This is the sense in which:

• the non-semiotic domain ("objects in the world") has no meaning ('dimensions or codes'), 
• the mental-verbal domain ('the mind') is not a mirror of the non-semiotic domain ("nature"),
• the non-semiotic domain ("things in the world") is not referenced by the mental-verbal domain ('thought'), and
• there is no unambiguous mapping between the non-semiotic domain ("the world") and the semiotic domain ('our categorisation of it').

Objectivism is falsified by Quantum Physics, which demonstrates that the non-semiotic domain only becomes construed as meaning (e.g. as particles) through the conscious processes of an observer.