Katy asked:

What significance does "meaning" have in postmodern philosophy? How does it differ from other
branches of philosophy?

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Post-modernism describes a wide range of philosophy, but as far as meaning is concerned the
post-modernist takes a stance against logic, realism and truth as correspondence to reality. Meaning
is created, made, rather than about something beyond the word. So a theory of reference such as
that proposed by Kripke, or the account of sense and reference as put forward by Frege, are rejected
as theories of meaning. Traditional theorists presuppose that there are determinate states of affairs
and things out there in the world which we talk about. The postmodernist, on the other hand, things
that we have a creative and changing language and that this is not determined by the way things are
out there in a world that is independent of us. Postmodernists are against theories, really, so they
cannot be held to have a "theory" of meaning. Meanings shift and slide away, they suggest, they are
supple and they are supplementative. They are indeterminate. This seems to be anti-meaning, but
meanings do suggest and imply beyond accepted senses.

Post-modernists do not agree, because they have no theory to agree upon, nor is there a particular
post-modernist stance. Post-modernists are into irony and interpretation and vary in degrees
weirdness. But Richard Rorty, who is relatively readable says "We need to make a distinction
between the claim that the world is out there and the claim that truth is out there. To say that the
world is out there, that it is not our creation is to say, with common sense, that most things in space
and time are the effects of causes which do not include human mental states. To say that truth is not
our there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are
elements of human languages and that human languages are human creations." (Contingency, Irony
and Solidarity). That is acceptable to non-post-modernists, and Rorty has said (Ironists and
Metaphysiciansin The Fontana Post-modernism Reader) that post-modernism is compatible with
nominalism, which is an anti-realist theory of meaning acceptable to analytical philosophers. It is also
compatible with historicism. Both theories reject truth and knowledge as elements in meaning since
we create our own language. Both theories are compatible with the characterisation of meaning as
part of a language game allowing that meanings can change over time. In both cases the meaning of
a term or proposition is determined by reference to our conceptual scheme, terms are translatable
and meanings are elucidated by other concepts, rather than by states of affairs in the world.

This characterisation of postmodernism, however, allows in theory. Nominalism and historicism are
theoretical constructs, and the very strong postmodernist, such as Derrida, would find such theories
of meaning unacceptable. A strong post-modernist moves away from the concept of meaning as that
which can be reduced to theory. Although nominalism and conceptualism and the whole idea that we
make meaning indicates that meanings are not determinate because they can change, the stronger
postmodernist thinks that writing can introduce new words and ways of thinking., Words can be
created and meaning is creative, and so we have writers like Heidegger, Derrida and Levinas who
introduce new words, the meaning of which is supposedly irreducible to and non-translatable into
determinate concepts.

However, that newly introduced words and concepts define new ways of thinking isn't any refutation
of realism. Nominalism isn't a refutation either. Newly introduced words and concepts can supplement
realism because words are supple, they suggest and can be used metaphorically, but they can be
taken as supplementary only insofar as realism about meaning exists. If all we had was
postmodernism there would be no determinate meaning and we wouldn't have a grasp of basic
meanings on the back of which postmodernism rides.

Realism and nominalism share in the idea of common understanding and given that we have an
understanding of what words and concepts mean, we can trifle in postmodernism, introduce
derivative words, veer in and out of interpretative suggestions as our fancy takes us. But we can only
do this if we accept some form of conceptual determinacy. Derrida's position is that intentional
content, the meaningfulness of words, the terms in which we think, isn't exhausted by theory of
meaning.

Rachel Browne