That is because, he suggests, Lincoln found "transcendent meaning in the carnage" and affirmed that meaning for both sides.
In our study we could affirm the meaning of SPECT-CT in foot and ankle surgery.
The right panel of figure 3 shows the proportion of correct responses ('sensible' responses) to each type of sentence (affirming the dominant meaning and affirming the subordinate meaning of the homograph).
That wouldn't explain the millions of other people who go skiing, scuba-diving, bungee-jumping, skydiving, free climbing, horse riding, snowboarding, base jumping and all the other stupid things that they call "life-affirming", meaning they were happy afterwards not to have died – a happiness made possible only by the pretty high chance that they would.
Some have found Ballard's landscapes repetitive and obsessive, but for me they have enormous power because they invest scenes of desolation with life-affirming meaning and beauty.
"The life-affirming meaning of the DEKY acronym, which is Don't Ever Kill Yourself, is that a troubled kid of today, taking refuge in the nightlife, aspiring to be an artist can use the video as a literal road map to go find their kinfolk!" Sagan said in an email to THUMP.
Half of the sentences affirmed the dominant meaning of the homograph, one-half the subordinate meaning (an additional set of sentences contained a noun with one meaning).
Now a state appeals court has affirmed his conviction, meaning he may face another 13 months in jail.
But he added that the new theory was "plausible, and it certainly affirms my own meaning system; I think they're onto something".
"Theologically, it fits into a kind of long U.U. tradition of affirming the essential goodness and meaning of an individual's life, and of life itself," he said, "as opposed to seeing life as preparation for something else".
As Wittgenstein affirms "the meaning of a word is its use in language" [69: 43].
