Yuventius asked:

What is the meaning of "meaning"?

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Haha... I'm only going to touch this one with the proverbial 10-foot pole. Take a look at: Ogden, C. K.,
and I. A. Richards. The Meaning of Meaning.8th ed. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.,
1968. That will get you off to a reasonable start on 3000 years of debate, anyway.

Steven Ravett Brown

All sorts of things can have meaning. Humans invest objects, gestures and actions with meanings, so
"meaning" doesn't just refer to linguistic meaning. A handshake (in some cultures) can "mean" a
greeting, a farewell, a reconciliation, an agreement, and so on. Clearly a number of other concepts
are relevant: understanding, explanation, belief, convention, appropriateness, context, etc.

But philosophers have concentrated on linguistic meaning, and especially on the meaning of
declaratory (or propositional) sentences. They have tended to associate the meaning of a statement
with its truth conditions. So, the meaning of "The pencil is red" is its reference to the fact that the
pencil is red. Whether or not this is an adequate account of declaratory sentences, it is certainly not
adequate for sentences that do not express propositions that are to be taken literally. We need an
account, for example, of irony and metaphor. We also have the problem of understanding how the
meaning of individual words and the meaning of sentences that incorporate those words are related.
Which is prior?

An important distinction is between the "semantic meaning" of the sentence and the "speaker's
meaning". If you ask a child what colour that pencil is, not knowing that she is colour blind, and she
thinks you are pointing to a green pencil and answers that is it red, she may have answered your
question correctly, accidentally. The semantic meaning and her own meaning have divided. If we say
that the meaning is first and foremost what the speaker has in her head, then we will be entering a
maze of questions about internalism (such as those raised by Wittgenstein). If we say that meaning is
first and foremost whatever the external truth conditions are, regardless of the speaker's beliefs or
intentions, we are severing the link between meaning and mind. The consequences of that need
thinking through.

Graham Nutbrown

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