We discussed this about twenty years ago. The third paragraph answers the potato question:
Numerous conceptual errors give rise to the materialist’s oxymoronic/tautological employment of the term `natural selection’. First is the materialist’s inability to ground words in such a manner as to give them a non-tautological meaning. Since there is no inherent correlation between actual words as signifiers, and what they signify (a dog could just as easily be called a grog) the meaning of a word comes not from within the word itself (the placement of letters, or the sound a word makes when spoken), but rather, the meaning of a word is based on contrast and difference. The word dog is
different than the word cat. Therefore we call this animal dog, and that animal cat. The words are dissimilar so we can use them to contrast two
different things. But of course there is no such thing as a dog, since the term `dog’ represents merely a Platonic metaphor naming the most basic essence of an animal for which there are nearly infinite
differences. If someone says they have just acquired a dog, there is no worry on the part of other dog owners that their dog has been stolen by the person stating they have just acquired a dog. It is understood that the person is using a Platonic metaphor when he speaks of acquiring a
dog.
What is generally misunderstood is that all words are Platonic metaphors based wholly on `difference’ and contrast! No word has meaning inherent in it (inside its letters and sounds). All meaning is based on difference and contrast.
Within the contrast/difference necessary for words to possess meaning, we have two major types of difference. There are of course the secondary (or relative) differences, like cat and dog, whereby the difference is a category difference rather than an absolute binary contrast between two terms. But all such relative differences arise only as secondary effects of the ontological cornerstones of difference, which are based completely on a direct and absolute disparity between the two things being described by contrast/difference.
[ii] Light is the antithesis (an absolute binary dissimilarity) of darkness. Being (as in `existing’) is an absolute contrast (an antithetical dissimilarity) to non-being! Good is the absolute antithesis of evil.
All shades of gray, all secondary or relative differences (like cat and dog) can arise only if . . . and after, binary contrasts between absolute opposites are pre-established - never prior to the establishment of these absolute binary oppositions. There’s a natural progression of metaphorical meaning whose absolute ontological base is the contrast between light and dark - being and non-being – alive and dead. In other words, every single word is a metaphor based on some other metaphor, until the chain of metaphor runs into a word that is no longer a metaphorical type, but instead a metaphor/term used to describe a primary thesis/antithesis generating ontological contrast!
If we say the word dog is a metaphor for a type of animal, and the word animal is a metaphor for a type of living thing . . . we eventually grind to a halt with the concept of the animal as a living thing as opposed to a non-living thing. The word `living’ is a primary metaphor in that it is the antithesis of non-living, and no matter how specific we want to get in attempting to break life down into reducible metaphors (like `a replicator of information’ or something like that) we still reach a point of irreducibility when we use the word life. Life is a primary metaphor in that rather than describing a type of some other thing . . . `life’ is a primary archetype establishing the binary dichotomy (ontological contrast), between itself, and its antithesis. This primary contrast is the entity that gives `being’ to things and words.
Unlike metaphors that describe relative differences, the word light is nothing but the antithesis of dark, and dark is nothing but the absolute absence (the antithesis) of light. Light isn’t a `kind’ of anything (or a metaphor of some other thing): it is pure antithesis! Darkness isn’t a `kind’ of anything (or a metaphor of some other thing): it is pure antithesis. Since light and dark are not `kinds’ of things . . . but rather pure antithetical contrast . . . light and dark are the beginning of Being, they are the essence of the finite, of creation . . . the absolute rupturing of the infinite!
[iii]
In the sense of Eastern mysticism, the rupturing of nothingness (infinity) occurs at the first differentiation between light and dark (yin and yang). This rupturing is the birth of the first Adam, the atom, the cosmos, the cosmic play, the babe in the manger, His archenemy Satan, you yourself . . . and the other! The word `light’ . . . ruptures the silence giving birth to the binary dichotomy that Fathers language and thus `Being/existing’! Language is born of the word `light’, and that light (even the word) first illuminates the void/darkness - generating antithesis (between light and dark) . . . and thus the atomic birth of grammar.
Linguistic light (the word or Word) gives `Being’ (existence) by slowly freezing into its antithesis (darkness) . . . and grammar is born! This virgin birth (one parent only – the infinite One – from whose rib the light is pulled) is the beginning of the possibility of the linguistic intercourse, which generates the conscious linguistic body. Light is frozen into matter (a slide (second law of thermodynamics) toward its antithesis: darkness), creating a physical body/sarcophagus which entombs the light, in its mortality (death), and from which the light might be re-born through regeneration. Physical life is housed in matter, and matter is (in a physics sense) frozen light. Thus, the ultimate archetype of contrast . . . the ultimate ontological dichotomy . . . is between light and dark. Light and dark are as far down the chain of metaphors as one is able to go.
God said: `Let there be Light!’ ‘I am the Light of the world!’ `No man cometh to the Father but by me (through me, because of me . . . the Light)’!
Tautological Oxymorons, p. 6-7.
[1] In Julian Jaynes, The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990), p. 48, Jaynes says, `The most fascinating property of language is its capacity to make metaphors. But what an understatement! For metaphor is not a mere extra trick of language, as it is so often slighted in the old schoolbooks on composition; it is the very constitutive ground of language.’
In Aristotelian logic, relative differences are called particulars and absolute differences are called universals.
Martin Heidegger stumbles onto this reality concerning the nature of `being.’ In his book, An Introduction to Metaphysics, (Yale University Press, 1987), p. 79, Heidegger says, `The being which belongs to every essent [`essent’ as things possessing existence] whatsoever, and which is thus dispersed amoung all that is most current and familiar, is more unique than all else . . . Everything else, each and every essent [things which exist], even if it is unique, can be compared with other things. Its determinability is increased by thse possibilitities of comparison. But virtue of them it is in many respects indeterminate. Being, whowever, can be compared with nothing else. Over against being, the only other is nothing.’
