Philosophy

cto @ bwl.gg (lunchbreak.com), 80M+ users (bdut.ch) 🙏 built @remindme, @mintit, @gpt, @healthbot, farcantasy.xyz

Design and software at Apple. Also into AI, philosophy of mind, ethics.

Then it is neither a 6 or a 9, it is worm pattern.

the correct answer (I think): 

1) the intention of making the mark is a factual question (could have been intended as either or nothing at all)
2) what the mark can be interpreted as can be either 6, 9, (or something else) but we have social conventions around appealing to intention, 1, to settle it

Symbols exist to communicate ideas, and the communicator of the idea is the creator. That's why we care about intent.

'6' and '9' are ideas larger than their arabic numerals. Focusing on intent is a key underpinning to how communication works at all.

Or a worm did it, and it means the worm crawled that way.

Sure, assigned interpretations exist and are real, but to wrap back to the original image, there does exist a truth, meaning the interpretations can be true or false, and not all equally valid.

My point is a little more subtle. I claim that symbols can be assigned interpretations. They don’t have meaning intrinsically. What the intent of a mark is is a related but separate point.