Theories of Meaning

Umberto Eco’s The Open Work deals with the making of art. Open work has two constituents: a) multiplicity of meanings and the participation of audience. Artists generate the work of art allowing the audience to fabricate numerous meanings. Work of art as an open work is contingent and the openness toward meaning determines its contingency. A work of art may be open from the audience point of view because interpretation is encompassing and occurs at various levels of human perception. Thus we perceive meanings in a work of art with various perspectives. Eco explains open work as an artwork in process or dynamic progress without any fixed conclusion/ending or meaning. He underlines the necessity in differentiating the association between the work of art and its creator. This paper is an attempt to interpretively read Umberto Eco’s concept of open work, meaning and information.

Meaning-making is at the center of all human communicative events. Communication is an exchange of meanings encoded in written or spoken words, non-verbal cues, signs, symbols, and so on. Creating, exchanging, and interpreting meaning is ingrained in human nature since prehistoric times. Language is the most sophisticated medium of communication. It is through language that we set meanings or in other words — refer, define, and signify the things in nature and the ideas in our mind. (Griffiths, 2017)
The term ‘meaning of meaning’ was first coined by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski in 1923. According to him meaning is related to multiple phenomena. It has various facets and these features are related to the external world (extra-linguistic factors) and the linguistic properties (phonetics, morphology, syntax, and semantics)
The concept of meaning is vast and has many moving parts. Questing for the answer — ‘what is the meaning of meaning’ makes us take a multi-disciplinary approach; from linguistics, philosophy, neurology, to semiotics. In this essay, I will reflect on the meaning of ‘meaning’ from a multidisciplinary approach, discuss the challenges of doing meaning, and the role of context in understanding the meaning of words and sentences.

Since the claim of this journal issue points out a potential relationship between the (theatrical) notion of “performance” and the notion of “semiotic practices”, rather than to the semiotic notion of “performance” as such, an intended side effect of the article is to supply an indirect answer to the reason of such a choice. After having briefly introduced the paradigm shift from theatre studies to performance studies having taken place over the last five decades or so, I attempt to outline the large theoretical framework in which this shift occurred, by adding two cognitive-semiotic layers to the conventional dyad of orality-literacy — that is, “performativity” and “electracy”. In the last section, I focus on cognitive neuroscientist Merlin Donald’s theory of three stages in the evolution of the human mind in order to explain the notion of “action-metaphor” as the “performatic” and non-linguistic source of human meaning-making processes.

The article proposes a typology of meaninglessness based on the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce: meaningless as indecipherable; as incomprehensible; and as uncanny. Each type is exemplified with reference to anecdotic semiotic experience gained while riding Japanese buses. Meaninglessness, however, is not insignificance. Insignificance is a much more disquieting anthropological condition, which the article describes with reference to two symmetrical processes: on the one hand, the euphoric passage from significance to insignificance, a passage meant as the “birth of new meaning”; on the other hand, the dysphoric passage from significance to insignificance, a passage which coincides with the alienation of human existence. Through several examples take from present-day societies, the article advocates for an active role of semiotics in warning human communities against the “emergence of insignificance” and its potential of violence and exploitation.

Suffering is not something merely to be coped with; it holds important transformative power. Yet, it is important that suffering is not idealized or viewed as something that is, in itself, good. While suffering is not something to be sought, through embracing the sufferings that cannot be avoided the suffering often can be transformed. Meaning is one of the most important constructs in working with suffering from an existential perspective. As Viktor Frankl (1959/1984) stated, “suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning” (p. 117). Meaning does not necessarily take the suffering away, but it changes the way that individuals experience suffering. Not all forms of suffering are the same, nor are all forms of meaning the same. From a clinical perspective, the therapist works with client to help them to explore the various realms and aspects of their suffering. However, without a good therapeutic relationship and a competent guide, the journey into suffering can cause harm instead of healing. Not all forms of meaning are able to help a client sustain through and transform the experience of suffering. Superficial or imposed meaning by well-intentioned others often are not sustaining meanings. Therapists working with the client’s suffering need to be able to recognize the varieties of types of suffering as well as the varieties of types of meanings in order to help clients transform their experience of suffering.

In this survey article, I focus on whether 2D semantics can fully capture the epistemic and semantic phenomena that seem central to individuating meanings. After outlining the motivations for 2D semantics as a response to externalist thought experiments, I argue that the approach faces an internal tension in fully vindicating the traditional role of meaning. I contrast the 2D theory's broadly descriptivist approach to meaning individuation with a relational approach.

Hur påverkas vi av massmedia? Hur påverkas du, jag och våra medmänniskor av den information som sprids via massmedia – tidningar, tv, radio, film, annonser på bussar och i tunnelbana, cd-skivor och dvd, internet, etc, etc. – till snart sagt varje vrå av våra livsvärldar?

Som en av medieforskningens ”stora frågor” kan denna undran tyckas meningslös. Problemområdet är allt för stort. Att begränsa frågan till ett exklusivt massmedium—i detta fall den svenska löpsedeln och dess citat—är därför en praktisk nödvändighet.

Tesen i detta arbete är att löpsedlarna påverkar läsarens uppfattning av det normala och att de gör detta genom att läsaren av löpsedelscitaten måste ta till sig det sagda på ett speciellt sätt. Läsaren delar den citerades perspektiv för att förstå vad som sägs och detta innebär att läsaren i någon mån måste acceptera de värderingar som ligger till grund för den citerades handling.

I och med denna detta utgör löpsedlarnas påverkan ett exempel vars relevans sträcker sig utanför såväl det svenska som det rent journalistiska medielandskapet.

The first two sections of the Tolstoy chapter from my book The Meaning of Life and Death. Ten Classic Thinkers on the Ultimate Question, London: Bloomsbury 2019: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Meaning-Life-Death-Michael-Hauskeller/dp/1350073644/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=hauskeller&qid=1608612783&sr=8-1

Cultural appropriation can be understood as involving members of one culture taking or adopting objects or practices which ‘belong’ to another culture in the sense of being affiliated or connected to that other culture in a unique or special way. But what constitutes this ‘belonging’ precisely? This paper proposes that belonging, in the targeted sense, is determined by meaningful connections between an object or practice and the relevant culture – i.e. connections that could be described as the thing’s ‘meanings’. Such meanings primarily include relations of causality, teleology, and symbolic representation. After expounding this account, the paper closes with a word of caution. The term ‘belongs’ is sometimes ambiguous, indicating both affiliation and legal or moral property rights. Despite this, belonging as affiliation or meaningful connectedness is not equivalent to rightful ownership. Nor does the former, by itself, entail the latter.

Works of fiction have characters, who perform actions, which make up the plot of the story. In this chapter, following some recent work in cognitive linguistics, I develop a tentative qualitative analytical framework for using the categories of action, character, and plot to analyze the meaning of ordinary language utterances. I propose a preliminary list of action levels, character types, and plot functions, which can be used in analyzing discourse using this framework, and apply this apparatus to the analysis of two conversation transcripts. Examining ordinary talk in the terms proposed here helps substantiate a radically enactivist and dialogic conception of linguistic meaning by extending an action-based account of the meaning of full linguistic utterances to also cover utterances’ content.

The concept of meaning and communication is the core of the so-ciological conception of Niklas Luhmann. As he claims, “Meaning is co-present as a reference to the world in everything that is actualized... Society is a meaning constituting system” (Luhmann Niklas. Theory of Society. Stanford University Press, 2012, vol. 1). He considers the issue of a correlation of mean-ing with other concepts of his theory of social in almost all of his works. Obvi-ously, on this occasion the linguistic issues also became matters of considera-tion. Language, however, is associated by Luhmann not so much with the production of meaning as with communication. The concept of a linguistic sign as some fixed connection between the signified and the signifier is transformed by Luhmann into a dynamic operation of juxtaposing communicative and cogni-tive characteristics, as a medium between cognition and communication.
Понятие смысла является стержнем социологической кон-
цепции Никласа Лумана. «Общество – это система, конституирующая смысл», – утверждает он в работе «Общество как социальная система»(М., 2004, с. 54). Cоотнесению смысла с другими понятиями его теории социальных систем посвящены специальные разделы во всех его основных трудах. Разумеется, при этом затронута и проблематика, связанная с язы-
ком. Язык, однако, соотносится Луманом не столько с формированиемсмысла, сколько с коммуникацией. Понятие языкового знака как некоторой закрепленной связи между означаемым и означающим преобразуется Луманом в динамическую операцию соположения коммуникативных и когнитивных характеристик – как медиума между сознанием и коммуникацией.

Through the economic recession that hit many cities in the last two decades, people have experienced a real crisis at all levels; low wages, currency devaluation, general deterioration in the standard of living. Although some of these cities have historical architecture which supposed to generate high income, but unfortunately they became lost in limbo amid the winds of globalization. Very few decision-makers, who have long-term visions, decide to find a real solution to this crisis through establishing one iconic building project that is expected to make a change to this city from locality to internationality. With judicious eye, this paper, therefore, analyzes three different experiences that proved obvious development; Guggenheim Bilbao Museum, Petronas Twin Towers of Kuala Lumpur, and Library of Alexandria as valuable case-studies and how they changed their cities from locality to be attractive international points on the 'global map of cultural cities'. The paper will study the situation of these cities before and after building the three projects and how their design languages caused an architectural booming that made these cities regain their powerful position all over the world, from the cultural and civilized weight. Finally, the paper sets a group of conclusions. Most important of them is: Changing people's destiny and making them live happier is not so difficult matter, but it needs the right vision that may become true through one building project.

Something has meaning when it has the property of "information about" some part of the world with respect to an end or ends of some intentional system or agent.  Intentional systems are end-directed systems, but not all end-directed systems are intentional.  Not all end-directed systems require information about or meaning to determine their actions towards their ends. We need not invoke intenionality or meaning, for example, to explain the flow of a river down a slope, or the flow of heat down a temperature gradient from a hotter to a cooler region because these processes are explicable in terms of local physical potentials and laws.  MORE...

I am planning a history of the notion of philosophical nonsense and naturally difficult historical and exegetical questions have come up.  Charles Pigden has argued that the notion goes back at least as far as Hobbes and that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant (on some interpretations) and pragmatists such as William James, as well as numerous Twentieth-Century philosophers make use of it.  In this ‘paper’ I put forward for general discussion such questions as whether Hobbes was the first 'nonsensicalist', whether Kant was a 'nonsensicalist' at all, which philosophers if any have considered contradictions to be meaningless and whether Wittgenstein thought that his concept of criterion could legitimately be used verificationistically.  I shall continue to add further questions as they occur to me.

How do philosophical accusations of talking nonsense relate to the layperson’s notions of meaning and meaningfulness?  If one were to explain carefully what philosophical nonsense was supposed to be, would one be greeted with incredulity?  How do people react to being accused to talking nonsense themselves?  Is anything analogous to an illusion of meaning recognised in everyday life?  In dream-reports perhaps?  Or in the utterances of schizophrenics or those under the influence of drugs?  Or in certain jokes and hoaxes?  Are contradictions felt to be meaningless?  I argue that, though it is clear that experimental philosophy could shed some light on these questions, their subject matter creates special difficulties.  First, it is more difficult than usual to formulate questions and produce ‘vignettes’ that do not subtly encourage certain responses at the expense of others.  Second, the fact that philosophical nonsense is a metaphilosophical concept ensures that its investigation is going to be more indirect than would be that of knowledge or intention, for example.

This work is an in-depth study on the philosophy of Madhva, the Dvaita Vedānta. The Dvaita tradition, which chronologically comes after Advaita and Viśiṣṭādvaita, is one of the great Vedāntic schools. Madhva was a Hindu philosopher of the 12th century belonging to the Vaiṣṇava tradition, and emphatically established that Viṣṇu alone is the focal point of entire Vedic writings by employing an unparalleled hermeneutical technique known as “parama-mukhya-vṛtti” (the super-primary meaning) in all his writings. This study unearths this singular concept with the help of Madhva’s commentaries and related Dvaita literature.

The book explores Madhva’s method of hermeneutics and exegetical patterns. It focuses on the first chapter of Brahmasūtras and Madhva’s application of parama-mukhya-vṛtti. It further discusses the hermeneutical issues in some commentaries and independent works of Madhva. The work suggests steps to apply parama-mukhya-vṛtti to different religious texts, taking into account many Western continental thinkers who strike a chord with the thinking of Madhva. It employs an exegetico-interpretative method, and approaches Madhva’s original writings, particularly the notion of parama-mukhya-vṛtti, through exegesis, showing its relevance through interpretation.

This research will open up wide horizons by providing a new methodology to interpret the sacred texts of any religious traditions. It will also contribute to Madhva scholarship by stimulating scholarly exchanges, discussions and deliberations. Moreover, it will facilitate inter-religious dialogue and understanding, particularly in the multi-religious context of India.

What is Semiotics? Is it necessary to life? Which are its applications? What are its relationship with the other sciences? Where is the meaning? How to understand semiotically the pandemic? Which is my favorite semiotician? Which my favorite quotes?

This interview has been realized by Inna Merkoulova for the #studsemioticday of the State Academic University of Moscow.

Această lucrare îşi propune să arăte că John Dewey este un remarcabil filosof al limbajului, care a spus lucruri esenţiale nu doar despre limbaj sau comunicare în general, ci mai cu seamă despre sens (meaning), pe care a căutat să îl cerceteze (alături şi de alte aspecte) în totalitatea manifestărilor sale. Mai mult decât atât – în strânsă legătură cu problematica sensului –, autorul şi-a propus să demonstreze că teoria logică a lui John Dewey, văzută ca „teorie a investigaţiei” (theory of inquiry), reprezintă, în acelaşi timp, o hermeneutică sui generis, care, la rândul ei, poate constitui fundamentul sau punctul de plecare pentru realizarea unui proiect hermeneutic mai cuprinzător.

  Notă preliminară;
  Capitolul I. Introducere: 1. Scurtă caracterizare a filosofiei lui John Dewey. Evoluţie şi impact; 2. Despre receptarea românească a filosofiei lui John Dewey; 3. Intenţiile, cadrul de referinţă şi justificarea demersului;
  Capitolul II. John Dewey despre limbaj în general: 1. Evaluarea limbajului în istoria filosofiei; 2. Naturalismul cultural al lui John Dewey: 2.1. De la absolutism la experimentalism; 2.2. Moralitatea conferită de limbaj; 2.3. Miracolul limbajului; 3. Obiectivitatea obţinută prin comunicare: 3.1. Alteritate şi creativitate în limbaj; 3.2. Despre necesitatea exprimării (libere) în ştiinţă;
  Capitolul III. John Dewey despre sens: 1. Concepţia evoluţionistă a lui Dewey referitoare la sens; 2. Tipuri de meaning în filosofia lui Dewey; 2.1. Un „ocean de sensuri”; 2.2. Despre ambiguitatea termenului meaning; 2.3. Necesitatea unei interpretări unitare; 2.4. Termeni deweyeni pentru diviziuni ale meaning-ului; 3. Despre sense şi experience la Dewey: 3.1. Sensul în funcţie de genurile discursive aristotelice (după Coşeriu); 3.2. Grade ale sense-ului (după Dewey); 3.3. Definirea sense-ului; 3.4. Experienţă; 4. Alte distincţii şi precizări suplimentare: 4.1. Tipuri de semne şi tipuri de relaţii; 4.2. Desemnare vs denotaţie;
  Capitolul IV. Logica lui John Dewey ca teorie a investigaţiei: 1. Câteva caracterizări ale logicii deweyene; 2. Concepte fundamentale ale teoriei investigaţiei: 2.1. Investigaţie; 2.2. Situaţie; 2.3. Simţ comun vs ştiinţă; 2.4. Asertibilitate garantată; 2.5. Configuraţia unei investigaţii; 2.6. Judecată; 3. Contribuţia lui Dewey la clasificarea propoziţiilor logice: 3.1. Propoziţii existenţiale vs propoziţii conceptuale; 3.2. Propoziţii universale vs propoziţii generice; 3.3. Distincţii suplimentare; 4. De la propoziţii la judecată; 5. Deschideri ale teoriei logice deweyene către hermeneutică: 5.1. Un caz asemănător: Logica lui Collingwood; 5.2. O analogie baconiană influentă; 5.3. Ipoteza lui Emmanuel Mesthene;
  Capitolul V. Pentru o hermeneutică integrală: 1. Câteva argumente; 2. De la hermeneutica universală la o hermeneutică integrală 2.1. De la hermeneuein şi hermeneia la hermeneutică; 2.2. Definiţii (şi direcţii) ale hermeneuticii; 2.3. Excursus: O piatră şi trei hermeneutici; 2.4. Hermeneutica universală ca anticipare a hermeneuticii integrale; 3. Despre confirmarea sensului: 3.1. Un caz celebru: reconstituirea doctrinei lui Socrate; 3.2. O confirmare venind dinspre Socrate?; 3.3. De la Platon la Sadoveanu; 3.4. Investigaţie şi confirmare; 3.5. Excursus: Cele trei hermeneutici conjugate; 3.6. O aplicaţie a hermeneuticii integrale; 4. O sinteză;
  Concluzii; Bibliografie generală; Anexă. Citatele din John Dewey în original; Index nominum

Artificial intelligence becomes an integral part of human life. At the same time, modern widely used approaches, which work successfully due to the availability of enormous computing power, based on ideas about the work of the brain, suggested more than half a century ago. The proposed model describes the general principles of information processing by the human brain, taking into account the latest achievements. The neuroscientific grounding of this model and its applicability in the creation of AGI or Strong AI are discussed in the article. In this model, the cortical minicolumn is the primary computing processor that works with the semantic description of information. The minicolumn transforms incoming information into its interpretation to a specific context. In this way, a parallel verification of hypotheses of information interpretations is provided when comparing them with information in the memory of each minicolumn of the cortical zone, and, at the same time, determining a significant context is the information transformation rule. The meaning of information is defined as an interpretation that is close to the information available in the memory of a minicolumn. The behavior is a result of modeling of possible situations. Using this approach will allow creating a strong AI or AGI.

Existentialism is a concern about the foundation of meaning, morals, and purpose. Existentialisms arise when some foundation for these elements of being is under assault. In the past, first-wave existentialism concerned the increasingly apparent inability of religion, and religious tradition, to provide such a foundation, as typified in the writings of Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche. Second-wave existentialism, personified philosophically by Sartre, Camus, and de Beauvoir, developed in response to the inability of the polity to serve as such a foundation. There is a third-wave existentialism, a new existentialism, developing in response to advances in the neurosciences that threaten the last vestiges of an immaterial soul or self. With the increasing explanatory and therapeutic power of neuroscience, the mind no longer stands apart from the world to serve as a foundation of meaning. This produces foundational anxiety.

This collection explores the anxiety caused by this third-wave existentialism and the possibility of resolving it through utilizing only naturalistic resources, including those in the natural sciences. It brings together some of the world’s leading neuroscientists, philosophers, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and legal scholars to tackle our neuroexistentialist predicament and explore what the mind sciences can tell us about morality, love, emotion, autonomy, consciousness, selfhood, free will, moral responsibility, law, the nature of criminal punishment, meaning in life, and purpose.

The collection begins with an introduction to neuroexistentialism by Owen Flanagan and Gregg D. Caruso. This chapter sets the stage for the chapters to follow. It explains what neuroexistentialism is and how it is related to, but differs from, the first two waves of existentialism. Eighteen original chapters divided into four sections follow the introduction.
There are contributions by Sean M. Carroll, Gregg D. Caruso, Patricia Smith Churchland, Farah Focquaert, Shaun Gallagher, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Walter Glannon, Andrea L. Glenn, Daniel Goya-Tocchetto, Valerie Hardcastle, Paul Henne, Neil Levy, Ben Morgan, Stephen J. Morse, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Eddy Nahmias, Derk Pereboom, Jesse Prinz, Amanda Pustilnik, Adrian Raine, Naomi Rokotnitz, Edmund Rolls, Maureen Sie, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Peter U. Tse, and Jennifer Cole Wright.

This paper argues that Wittgenstein opposed theories of meaning, and did so for good reasons. Theories of meaning, in the sense discussed here, are attempts to explain what makes it the case that certain sounds, shapes, or movements are meaningful linguistic expressions. It is widely believed that Wittgenstein made fundamental contributions to this explanatory project. I argue, by contrast, that in both his early and later work, Wittgenstein endorsed a disjunctivist conception of language which rejects the assumption underlying the question that such theories seek to answer—namely, the assumption that the notion of a meaningful linguistic expression admits of non-circular analysis. Moreover, I give two arguments in favor of the view I ascribe to Wittgenstein: one based on later Wittgenstein's discussion of meaning skepticism, and one based on considerations concerning the identity of linguistic expressions.

In the public administration discipline, there have been a number of important studies on leadership. However, here, scholarly inquiry still lags behind related disciplines such as psychology and business administration. This article contributes by analyzing the role public leaders can play in making work more meaningful for their employees, which in turn positively influences employees’ job outcomes. More specifically, it analyzes the mediating role of work meaningfulness in the relationships between Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) and organizational commitment, work effort, and work-to-family enrichment. Samples from education, healthcare, and local government are used. Results show firstly that leadership strongly influences work meaningfulness, which in turn influences job outcomes. Secondly, it was found that the impact and extent of leadership and work meaningfulness are higher in healthcare and education than in local government. The results emphasize the importance of leadership and meaningful work in the public sector.

My book, "Deflationism & Semantic Theories of Truth",  is available as a paperback via Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0993594549/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0993594549/

To say that the sentence “snow is white” is true, is to say that snow is white, and nothing more.  Because of this apparent redundancy of the truth predicate for sentences, deflationists maintain that truth is a notion lacking in content and therefore not a worthy subject for philosophical analysis.  This book builds on the work of Jeffrey Ketland in demonstrating that semantic definitions of truth for formalised languages, in particular those of Alfred Tarski and Saul Kripke, are richer than their deflationary rivals, in the sense that they enable us to derive results that cannot be derived via deflationary theories.  This deductive power of semantic theories of truth suggests that truth is, contrary to the deflationists’ view, a substantive notion that warrants continued philosophical analysis.

Here I bewail the slapdash and confusing way in which philosophers bandy about the word ‘incoherent’ (and ‘incoherence’ and ‘incoherently’).  To some it appears to mean: inconsistent; to others: pragmatically self-defeating; and to yet others: nonsensical, i.e. meaningless.  And often one is left guessing.

Özet: Arda Denkel'in Anlam ve Nedensellik adlı kitabında önerdiği anlam kuramı, üç temel iddia üzerinde inşa edilmiştir. Bunlardan ilki, "anlam taşıyan bir im ile anlam arasındaki ilişki nedir?" sorusuna kitabın verdiği şu yanıttır: "Anlamlılığın temeli, tek tek bireylerden bağımsız olarak var olan, ancak onların yaşam ortamları içinde bilip tanıdıkları kimi bağlantıların iletişim amacıyla kullanılmalarında yatıyor". Bu iddiaya Dışsal Bağlantı İddiası adını verelim. İkincisi, "anlamı ilgilendiren zihinsel bir boyutun söz konusu olduğu" iddiasıdır. Bu iddiaya Zihinsel Boyut İddiası adını verelim. Üçüncüsü ise, "iletişim ve anlamın oldukça belirgin bir biçimde izlenebilen bir evrim geçirerek sonuçta dil aşamasına ulaşan bir gelişim çizgisi oluşturduğu" iddiasıdır. Bu iddiaya Anlamın Evrimi İddiası adını verelim. Bu makalede, Dışsal Bağlantı ve Zihinsel Boyut İddiaları üzerine eğilmek istiyorum. Öncelikle bu iki iddianın mevcut halleriyle muğlak olan içeriklerini netleştirip bu iddiaların yaslandığı gerekçelerin ayrıntılı bir tasvirini sunacağım. Daha sonrasında ise, Denkel'in anlam kuramının bu iki iddianın tutarlı bir sentezini oluşturamadığını göstermeye çalışacağım.

There are certain thoughts - intimations - that will seem corny, or laughable, and therefore dismissed - and only seriously absorbed into the changing mind when felt, in the shelter of the quietly moving music of the soul.
It is the function of art, and of love, to make this music heard . . . 

  It is not the music of depression - it is the way through.