A proposition is a statement of fact.
A Fact may be defined as the Secondness which consists between anything and a possibility, or Firstness, realized in that thing.
— Peirce, EP2:271
A proposition is a symbolic Dicisign or informational sign, which ‘must profess to refer or relate to something as having a real being independently of the representation of it as such’ (EP2:275).
Thus every kind of proposition is either meaningless or has a real Secondness as its object. This is a fact that every reader of philosophy should constantly bear in mind, translating every abstractly expressed proposition into its precise meaning in reference to an individual experience.
— Peirce, EP2:279
In fact, then, meaning can only grow from the ground of experience, from reading the time of your life.
They said to him, ‘Tell us who you are so that we may believe in you.’
He said to them, ‘You read the face of the sky and of the earth, but you have not recognized the one who is before you, and you do not know how to read this moment.’— Gospel of Thomas 91 (tr. Lambdin)
Real meaning and true guidance grow in the soil of experience as ‘the total cognitive result of living’.
What you plant well can’t be uprooted.
What you hold well can’t be taken away.Cultivated in yourself, virtue becomes real.
Cultivated in your family, virtue grows.
Cultivated in your village. virtue multiplies.
Cultivated in your state, virtue abounds.
Cultivated in your world, virtue is everywhere.
Thus view others through yourself,
view families through your family,
view villages through your village,
view states through your state,
view other worlds through your world.How do you know what other worlds are like?
Through this one.— Daodejing 54 (Red Pine, repunctuated)