1 Sense and reference

Roughly, sense is meaning and reference is the object to which a word refers. Not all words have an object of reference, e.g. “ouch”; Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, 1953, has many examples

Roughly, sense is connotation; reference is denotation

Roughly, sense is intension; reference is extension

All words have meaning or sense; the sense may be precise or vague

Not all words have reference – certainly not to objects; and not necessarily in any generalized sense; thus not every word is a symbol – in the usual sense

The following possibilities exist:

One word, two meanings; the meanings could be distinct, or similar – have a “family resemblance”

Two words, one meaning or shades of meaning

Modes of family resemblance include: of kind, of accident, of metaphor

2 Analysis of meaning

Here, I am referring to linguistic meaning; not “meaning” in its occasional sense of causation or significance – or other senses

Wittgenstein’s lateral analysis; meaning is determined in use in a common context and that provides for stability and interpersonal coherence of meanings… is a useful concept. Use is a lateral “instrument” or concept: there is no foundation of use except in use – that is except for diachronic analysis which Wittgenstein eschewed. There is no need for perfect coherence in meaning; a perfect system of meaning would signal the end of evolution – incompletions in meaning, the vagaries of languages are not essential defects: they represent possibility and potential. No final foundation – no final anchor; a crisis that is freeing. There is a limit to talk; explanation must stop somewhere; the final foundation is not in more talk but in use or action – it is a flexible foundation, one that can accommodate intended and imposed change. The unmooring of Wittgenstein’s realization – after the vertigo, the freedom; there is no solipsist bubble in which we are trapped and out of which we cannot communicate our real experience

Yet, can we find generalized symbols based, in part, in generalized concepts of symbol? Regardless, Wittgenstein’s approach is not critically affected – but its utility may be reduced or eliminated

The idea of use is related to that of function or functioning. There is a relation to the pragmatism and instrumentalism of Pierce, James and Dewey and to the inseparability of knowing and acting of Evolution and Design and of Journey in Being. Use of signs – gestures, sounds, facial expressions, external signs – has origin early in evolution. Before the sign, and that is very early in evolution, there is only action; then the senses evolve to become cued to surface actions signs for complex internal states. After the simple sign, with development of imagery and the symbolic ability, the sign becomes freed for general use and can have “meaning.” In a positivistic view, all meaning would be reference. But, even in such a view, without the specification of a metaphysics, and that is anathema to the old positivists, there is no universalization of meaning. Meaning, always lies between these extremes and may fall multivalently on the continuum between them

Generally, origins, evolution, diffusion and clarification of meaning are ongoing, interactive processes

Analysis of meanings alone does not constitute philosophy; clarification of meaning… is nonetheless useful to reduce unnecessary confusion and futile debate; and to establish and clarify concepts – in themselves and as preliminary to knowledge and transformation

The meaning of “meaning” is doubly recursive in that the process of meaning applies also to “meaning”

There is a distinction: sentence vs. speaker / interpreter meaning. Speaker and interpreter meaning are wrought with all kinds of psychological issues including defenses and intentional mischief, manipulation and malice; these must be factored out before we can even begin to talk of contextual meaning

Meanings of words are dependent on the sentences and contexts in which they occur. There is an actual context – the general and specific physical, ethnic, social and cultural and, perhaps other aspects. And there is a semantic context – the environment of meaning that is continuous with the cultural environment; this environment of meaning is tantamount to an entire metaphysics. Elucidation of the metaphysics would, in general, be prerequisite to elucidation of meaning. Quine had something to say in this regard

3 Meaning and knowing: theories of declarative meaning

Declarative or assertive sentences are those that assert something; they take on truth values; they are propositional in nature; they depend for their meaning [heavily] on meaning as reference. Note that there is another usage of “declarative sentence” as in “I now declare you husband and wife.” For the variety of sentence kinds, i.e. kinds of speech act, see Kinds of Knowledge where I discuss the relations among meaning, logic and knowledge

Frege and Wittgenstein

Frege in Volume 1, Section 32 of the Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, says that there is both sense and reference for every sentence of his “concept-writing” – the Begriffsshrift. The reference of a sentence of Begriffsshrift is its truth value, and the sense of the sentence is the thought that the sentence expresses. For Frege, the notion of meaning of a declarative sentence is or correlates to the notion of understanding – and to understand a sentence is to have grasped its truth condition

Wittgenstein in Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus:

4.022 A sentence in use [Satz] shows how things stand if it is true. And it says that they do so stand

4.024 To understand a sentence in use means to know what is the case if it is true

4.061 A sentence in use is true if we use it to say that things stand in a certain way, and they do

An alternative

The alternative is not radical and it is included in the above but changes the emphasis. The meaning of a declarative sentence is the state of affairs that it represents

Notes

A phase of discovery and creation is and will be the clarification and specification of meaning; however, meaning and context / theory are not finally and absolutely distinct and the clarification of meaning in, say, science must always await the formulation of coherent theories

Thus the following historical confusions: heat and temperature; momentum and energy. The historical confusion was not a confusion of otherwise clear meanings in the minds of scientists; clear meanings had not been arrived at owing to the lack of relevant coherent and sufficiently complete theories. Once the relevant theories were written, meanings became clear although, perhaps, limited

There is currently a similar confusion about the meaning of “consciousness.” I am referring, here, to the primitive sense of awareness and not to such meanings as “higher consciousness.” Because consciousness does not appear as part of a coherent theory – there is no absolute reason to suppose that it will or should – there is doubt as to a proper definition of consciousness. Perhaps, as for force, the anthropic sense of consciousness will later be replaced by something more operational in nature – for the purposes of theory. There, currently, a number of alternatives; but, in the absence of a coherent framework, none of the alternatives stands out clearly. So, I currently find the anthropic sense to be most pertinent: consciousness is awareness, not mere operational or functional awareness, but subjective awareness. But, in the absence of a commonly accepted theory, all operational concept-definitions must be regarded as tentative, as not providing a well-founded meaning or concept. I have gone beyond this in the Metaphysics of Presence

There is discussion of concept and theory meaning in Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness

4 References

Ogden and Richards, Meaning of Meaning