Meaning and Definitions

Building Definition

e know a definition when we hear one. It describes the idea behind a word within a context. When we look up a definition in a dictionary, we’re looking at the most common take on the word. Many professions rely on words whose definitions are known within the context of that profession. Some books begin with definitions which define what the author means throughout his body of work, or within the current book.

Pinning down what a definition is and what it is not, is a little harder thing to do. A definition illustrates the meaning of a word. So definition and meaning are joined at the hip.

It is a mistake to concoct a naive definition of meaning on my own. Meaning didn’t begin with me. I can only observe the what the word meaning suggests in my mind, and what other people say about it. But, the best I can suggest a meaning of the word meaning And the best I can do is suggest that a word has meaning if it communicates something between us, speaker and listener, or writer and reader.

Here, I want to avoid formulating a theory of meaning that collapses under its own weight. I do not want to follow the path to destruction blazed by the mid-20^th-century school of philosophy called Logical Positivism. I want to avoid a theory of meaning that is so fine that it cuts itself in half on the backswing. I’ll get to the flaws of Logical Positivism further down the page, because I want to demonstrate why it does not accomplish the goal of defining meaning.

Right now, I just want to point out my objections to authoritative theories of meaning created by an individual or a group.

So let me start out by chalking out a rough meaning of meaning:

Quit Yer Moanin’

eaning connotes a mean or a means between two minds. The meaning of the word, itself, is so obvious that I think the positivists missed it in their hurry to root out some meanings they didn’t like.

Before I get too far down this road, let me admit that my use of mean and meaning is etymologically unsound. Meaning is similar to moan, and comes from the Indo-European root mei-no- (to intend); meanwhile, mean and means come from the root medhyo- (middle).

However, the intellectual idea behind the word “meaning”, warrants more than a simple utterance—like a moan. All that a moan brings is categorized as meaningless by many others, especially those in the Logical Positivist camp (discussed ahead).

Also, more lies behind it than an intention. We tend to see an intention as remaining in the head of the person, while a meaning comes out to the wide open world, for inspection. Surely, we later identify an intention based on the way we put the words together to form a meaning. But unless there is a common thread between speaker and listener, we cannot rightly speak of meaning.

Sure, I can get mad if, in another language, you say something that sounds like “blockhead”, but until I understand the language— you’d be right in calling me a blockhead for thinking I understood what you said. Meaning can only be judged from a similar vantage point to the speaker.

I wanted to briefly mention that communication comes from the same root that common does. And that sign, those things to which we attribute meaning, comes from the same root as standard. And of course we know that standards are artificial constructs to communicate a single message consistently.

So despite its heritage as moaning, meaning has a more modern alliance with words those words, which hover around the neighborhood of common and standard symbols.

Are You Positive?

bove, I mentioned the work of Logical Positivists undertook to establish a theory of meaning. I also said that it had been a failure. Thus, it might be nice to know what it was, and how fittingly it can be called a failure.

Therefore, I will give a short introduction to the school. I will briefly discuss the upshot of two of the school’s writers: Rudolph Carnap, a Austrian of the Vienna School (the main group in Logical Positivism), and Bertrand Russell a contemporary who lived in Britain and agreed with the basic idea, but usually submitted his ideas under the name Logical Empiricism. Nonetheless, Carnap acknowledges Russell.

Many sources name Rudolph Carnap second only to Ludwig Wittgenstein in revving up the Logical Positivist engine. Carnap, in his fundamental essay for the school, puts forth three rules of meaning. According to the purpose of these rules, a word can only have meaning if it complies to one of those three rules. All other words are meaningless.

Carnap explains why the idea of a meaningful sentence must be reined in, and presents the three criteria as a rule set that does just that. He expresses his suspicion fuzzy thinking has gotten philosophy into the mess it then found itself in.

Martin Heidegger wrote that “The Nothing [noun] nihilates [verb, believe it or not!].” Carnap said that such a statement could be seen perhaps as poetry, but could not be considered a legitimate statement about anything. Because it was, after all a statement about nothing.

Carnap insisted—and I agree—that statements must not contain an acting non-entity. The confusion follows, thought Carnap, from the idea that nothing was a legitimate noun. As it sounded like a noun, it invited various misuses, like making it the subject of a sentence.

Carnap, as well as others of the school, thought that there should be a way to differentiate the real things from seeming things. So, he set out the following three rules of meaning:

1. Referents have meaning. The word stone has meaning if you can say x is a stone. (I believe he credits this to Bertrand Russell, who will be mentioned just presently.)
2. Logical constructions have meaning.
3. Mathematical constructs have meaning.

It was rather unfortunate that he described as rules of meaning. This mistake would haunt the school for the rest of its days. Many a Logical Positivist has tried to dig themselves out of that hole because it suggests that verbs have no meaning. Those rules allow for nouns, pronouns and adjectives, but ignore verbs and adverbs. Adjectives qualify under the first rule, substituting the adjective for a noun. In other words, “yellow” is meaningful if we can say x is yellow. But, under the stated system, a verb or adverb lack any way to assert themselves as meaningful.

But that observation aside, problems with the rules cut deeper, and conflicts with Carnap’s reasoning in the text appear. I’ll get to those just ahead.

His rules, also, do not go far enough. In discussing, meaningful and meaningless words Carnap talks about two sources of confused meaning. The first is the use of negative concepts, and the second is the use of unstable terminology. The first idea will be dealt with at another time, the second provides my argument against the LP (Logical Positivistic) idea of meaning.

To illustrate a floppy word, he makes up the word toovey. He says that if you continue to redefine the word—that first it means one thing and then another and another that it proves that word, toovey , is meaningless. I mean this is really a principle that is a criteria for #1.

Note that I can speak the words “x is toovey”—and it only makes sense that if I bothered to dream the adjective up, that I intended to apply it to a given x. So the idea gets me nowhere. Instead, Carnap explains in his text, why I must not be allowed to say that anything is toovey: The word lacks a precise definition, without a single idea, the word is ambiguous.

That criteria seems sound to me. (How ironic that it forever creates for me a meaning for the word toovey for me...)

I Object

Accepting Carnap’s judgment does not mean that I cannot have another basis to complain about the same word. In fact, I do have such a basis, and it stems from the idea of common ground that I mentioned above.

If you keep changing the meaning of the word, how do I know what you mean? Therefore, it lacks a common reference and is meaningless. If we could nail down even one typical meaning, we could even allow it another contradictory meaning, as long as we both knew how to specify which meaning we were invoking.

In the same way, if I tell you how Carnap used the word toovey, then that word can be used between us. I’ve established a common reference, we have a common understanding of the word, and we then can use it without fear that it had no meaning prior to our agreement.

Meanwhile back in England, Bertrand Russell considers truth in the form of Logical Atomism. He says that truth is a matter of capturing in in words the way things are on their most basic level. Carnap’s first rule clearly borrows from this idea.

However, Russell continues the feat of sawing off his own head, begun by Carnap. Russell’s Atomism has implications only to the first rule. That is that a word has meaning only if it can name an object that exists. Physical existence is the only context in which truth or meaning is discussed.

What is not so certain are the other two rules. There is no physical placement of items such that logical constructs become true. Logical constructs are just the way that humans think, to get all materialistic on you. The atomic facts are that synapses fire, energy is exchanged between neurons, the lungs exhale, the vocal chords vibrate, the lips, teeth and tongue shape the air as it comes out sounding like ‘Or’.

Quite to our chagrin, a very similar thing happens to shape the word toovey regardless of whether we’ve fixed a meaning upon it or not. In fact Heidegger’s infamous statement comes out in much the same fashion. The thought that 2 + 2 = 5 will always be accompanied by synapses firing. And nothing in the physical realm make it any different from the thought that 2 + 2 = 4.

Besides that, in what way is an “And” atomic?. An And is a conjunction of two or more ideas! It fails any attempt to consider it atomically! The same thing holds for an “Or”—and we might as well forget about “Implication”!

Mathematics is all about non-atomic thinking. It doesn’t matter if you follow the modern idea, where the set is the fundamental idea, or if you cling to the traditional view that the number is central. If I am considering things in a set, I am considering nothing atomic. Russell points out that we cannot even consider the set a definite thing with his critique of naive set theory known as Russell’s Paradox.

Numbers fair no better. They homogenize members, and ignore specifics in order to consider disparate things together as a quantity. How can we bother to speak about the atomic details when we forgo them for the goal of obtaining a non-atomic quantity?

Add to that fact that the second half of Russell’s essay was a conjecture on how Russell suspected the world was, underneath the sheet, and we can clearly see Russell’s head lying on the floor by the time we leave him.

Tongue Twisting

ogical Positivists ignore that language is not an exact specification. It is a system of metaphor. The word language actually comes from tongue. At one time the word tongue used to mean more than the organ in your mouth. The continuing use of the poetic tongue shows this.

Truly, I can’t taste anything with this tongue. If we kept the original flavor of the word, then surely tongue is toovey. A tongue is both an organ and a sequence of possible actions with that organ, or a standardized format for using the organ to make sounds? It sounds so disparate that, like a Positivist, I cannot conceive that we are talking about a single thing here.

But we need a word to describe what we do with our tongue. Quite simply, most of of the words that I have used have gone through a number of contortions to stand before us as the symbol that we know them as today. There is no formal proof which I am prepared to offer to you to prove this to you. I just trust that with honesty and good will you can see my point.

Allow me to perform some gyrations which will make my point clear. Keep in mind that a word is always defined by its synonyms, which have similar meanings but not quite.

• Language is a system of metaphor
• Tongue is a placing-together of beyond-carriers
• Tongue is a united street of farside-carts

If that is the case, it is by definition impossible to construct the perfect language of the Logical Positivists’ dreams. You cannot nail down in a rigid specification an organ that is meant to express whatever a one human feels they need to convey. This is all the more reason to suspect their methodology—which to me was suspect shortly after I understood it.

There are certain things in Carnap I find seductive. There are certain assertions by Russell I find seductive. But there are plenty of items which I find inconsistent between the two and within each one’s own work.

Finishing the Act

rom another of Carnap’s assertion, he and Russell must be talking about the same thing. Fuzziness was introduced into language by too many people not knowing precisely what they were talking about. Thus the solution was to get rid of dimly understood ideas.

This creates a condition which Logical Positiivsim must satisfy. Other competing conceptions do not have to satisfy this criteria more than is reasonable. But Logical Positivism has set itself up as the sole standard of meaning, and therefore walks a finer line than I do. (See My Double Standards in the side bar for questions.)

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, I direct your eyes to the center ring, where Rudolph and Bertrand get ready for the stunning denouement of the daring Sawing Your Own Head Off act!

When I compared Carnap to Russell, I saw that Carnap’s last two criteria had no Atomic Truth to them. There is no physical placement of items such that logical constructs become true. Logical constructs are just the way that humans think, even to a materialist’s understanding.

What I saw was a weakness in Carnap’s rules: three separate constructs were strung together with no common thread except that Logical Positivism required all three to be true. Their problem is that even though they were trying to give a rock-hard identity everything they were ignoring their less concrete implications.

This is further pointed up by Russell’s obliviousness that his writings implied that relationships exist, despite the lack of any mechanism in Russell’s atomic truths for them to exist. Even Russell's own set paradox cast doubt on whether we can speak of relationships as things. Yet finding relationships is something that we do quite easily.

Despite those objections, if we suggest that meaning can have multiple, partitioned meanings, we have a additional problem: which meaning are we talking about? And, what do we then mean by meaningless in an absolute sense?

Perhaps we can say that a word is meaningless is if falls outside of any of those criteria. But what does that imply? Why are we worried about meaninglessness?

If I tell you that a desk is a non-cat/non-part-of-speech/non-drinking-fountain what have I told you about a desk? I have told you that it does not catch mice (perhaps), that you shouldn’t expect to find one in a sentence diagram, and that it doesn’t hang from public walls to provide refreshment.

There is something common that is being implied here—though not stated—and perhaps not state-able. But, let me introduce yet another objection, from Carnap.

We Don’ Need Not Steekeen’ Negatives!

Carnap contended that negatives were inferior to positives. “desk” is a positive classification. If I tell you an object is a desk, then I have said something roughly testable about it. However, had I just referred to a desk as an object which was non-cat/non-part-of-speech/non-drinking-fountain, you would never have gotten the picture of a desk.

Carnap concluded, although not in these words, that the problem with Heidegger’s ado about Nothing, was that it was negative. Negatives don’t clearly define things as much as positives do. Carnap concluded that if you could not make a positive statement about something, then the concept was meaningless.

This deftly dispensed with ideas such as supernatural, which says it’s apart from nature, but not how or what it actually is. Therefore, it is meaningless.

Forever making the not the second-class citizen of Rule #2. We understand from Carnap that a meaningless concept conjoined in a logical statement with a meaningful statement was made meaningless:

Either God is non-helical or Neil Armstrong was an astronaut.

This statement lacks meaning because it's composed of two meaningful parts (the astronaut and the logical operator “or”) and one meaningless part.

However the ship of meaning leaked. I can take a meaningful word, operate on it with a not—which either had meaning or wasn’t really a logical operator, contrary to the common notion. The ship wasn’t just scuttled by infiltration from meaningless stowaways but by the operation of its own members.

If two meaningful words can join together to create a meaningless concept, what are the rules for avoiding such a conflict? We can make a special case out of not, sure. But why are we lumping it into the same class of meaning as more reliable logical operators?

But let’s accept that despite our bewilderment, not does have such a standing. Then what are we saying about “without meaning”, “not meaningful”, or “meaningless”—there must be something positive that we are saying about meaningless words, or we violate the principle that Carnap proposed.

What the three categories of meaning have in common is that they are not meaningless. But what does that mean? Let’s suppose without proof, that meaningless is a valid word, it still does not make the concept “not meaningless” meaningful.

We’re at a dilemma here. Either meaningless is nothing, or there has to be more in common with meaning than what we’ve stated, or negatives are more innocent than Carnap thought, or the system is unworkable or at least unclear.

If the system is unclear, it is fuzzy. Fuzziness was cited as one of the sources of meaninglessness. If Carnap overstated negatives, that makes his conception of meaning just as fuzzy. We may easily agree that “x is a rock” is an exemplary statement, but when someone says a rock is a bird-like object, we don't think he knows what he’s talking about, and were not sure what exactly he’d put in the role of x. Sure seems like some fuzziness is going on, at least in the mind of the speaker.

In order to say that something is meaningless once and for all, we must insist that we have found the only three categories for meaning. There can be no others. But since each category has a blatantly different application we cannot say what exactly qualities a set must have in order to be another meaning group. If any other categories of meaning exist, than words classified as meaningless, because they do not belong to the named three categories, are not actually meaningless.

Therefore it is the contention of Carnap’s system that only three categories of meaning exist. Without a single binding thread, how can we conclude that other rules do or do not belong to this set.

Therefore, it makes it highly unlikely that the criteria for meaning can be fully partitioned, as I suggested above. Which means that a universal standard of meaning must exist which is unstated—and therefore perhaps not well understood. Yet it cannot be a lack of understanding, because such a thing creates meaninglessness, therefore it must be something unstated. So what is it?

Russell is not as reticent as Carnap. Russell clearly states that describing states as they are is meaningful. We see the correlation here. The not is again a culprit. Because a not statement must describe actual agents in the way things are.

The not is only valid description of the way things are if we can say that it is valid to describe things they way they are not. This of course is not atomic, because the nothing physically exists in that conjunction to describe. If I say that my desk is not a cat, there is no reason to call cat-like-ness into the equation. The hint of cat only comes from the perspective that we overlay onto the situation and is not represented by anything involving the desk—in fact, it’s specifically not represented by the situation.

No concept of Atomism can possibly hold, unless Atomism allow for non-physical constructs. It is not clear that Russell’s construction can be opened up to do so. It seems primarily built to support matter as reality.

Partitioned or not, we get a sense that meaning in Logical Positivism (meaning_LP) is a special case. I can talk about what they mean by meaning. I can and have already partitioned it to a separate group. Meaning_LP has no effect on other types of meaning. If meaning itself cannot be balkanized, meaning_LP becomes only a symbol of “what the Logical Positivists thought meaning was.” I believe that I have already demonstrated why it cannot be all meaning. At least it cannot be proved to be.

An interesting case is that meaning_LP—or toovey—becomes an understandable symbol once I have explained what I mean by it. Not by showing that I can kick it, or deriving it from pre-existing theorems. I need to have your buy-in. Without that, I do not have anything I recognize as meaning.

…And Stuff…

s the Logical Positivists’ meaning meaningless?

No. I wouldn't have mentioned it if I thought that nothing could be understood about it. I'm not as restrictive about meaning as they are. Since they did a good job establishing their criteria with me, I can accept that much of their discussion is meaningful. What I make out of the whole, on the other hand, is exhibited by my continual rejection of their methodology. I believe that I have established what I wanted about the problem of meaning. I can understand Logical Positivism, if there is enough of a reference. Understanding it is separate from validating it—which is another of the flaws in positivism. I can understand even a nonsense word (like toovey) if I am given something to hang it on.

This supports my definition of meaning and not theirs. If you say “Stop using that word toovey! There are good words such as vague or inconsistent, or ambiguous which convey the same thing!”, I'm one of the first ones who will agree that they do have more meaning than Carnap’s word. (My word has more illustrative value.) Dropping the word, because you don’t find it meaningful is buttressed by my definition as well. I do no service to my meaning to annoy you.

This is the same problem I have with definition. Now I can give you a definition of definition: A definition is a attempt to limit—to make finite—the possible meanings of a symbol. A definition restricts a word to one possible sense or phenomenon during the course of the discussion. It also cannot do too much damage to any conventional meaning of that word.

I cannot manufacture a meaning that will stand up to all scrutiny. Therefore, I may well define a meaning which is meaningless to Positivists and Materialists. Since a portion of my intended audience lies here, it makes no sense to make obvious errors which can easily be dismissed by the basic tenets of their school. What I need to do—and needed to do—was use their definition of meaning, it already means something to them, and try to demonstrate that it is not a good one.From here I can suggest an alternative meaning, based on the flaws of the meaning already accepted, which appears to correct its flaws. Again, I cannot demand a definition into existence, it requires the good will of the reader to accept it.

Russell and Carnap were ignoring cognitive reality. By cognitive reality I mean the reality that you cannot lay your hands on. There are no Or’s out there to examine. There are no instances of And where we can say x is an And. They are theoretical, unverifiable, and therefore not falsifiable (as per Popper q.v.). Therefore the skeptic who says that he can only find something meaningful if it appears before his eyes, is deluded. There are a number of useful constructs that are not—and cannot—be observed in reality.

There are a number of items which could be argued do not exist, yet are effective and make their mark upon existence. This is parallels what C. S. Lewis meant by the supernatural. According to Lewis, the natural tends toward disorder, only the the supernatural can introduce order. Words, numbers and logical constructs do likewise. Truly if we can create order—if something that does not exist can be this effective, how much is existence a requirement for having effect?

Let me deal with the objection that you might be having right now. Perhaps, there are different type of existence just as there may be several forms of meaning.

For existence to have multiple manifestations it still must have one common thread which we can call existence. Otherwise I don't see why we would attribute one quality to it, unless we have a perception that that quality can be named.

Part of the work of the Logical Positivists was to put a nail in the coffin of Aquinas’s monster. Aquinas suggested that there were two types of truth, and two types of knowledge. The essential contention of the positivists is that truth only comes through one of Aquinas’ categories, the other was invalid.

Spiritual truth was not in reality truth, because it did not resemble the other truths. But, that’s basically what Aquinas said. So?

So the other type of truth does not exist, because it does not apply under the first—more useful—category.

So, God is meaningless because it has never been seen. Yet, not has meaning despite having never seen one. I cannot partition truth into two categories which do not share criteria, but I can partition meaning into three?

Stunning sleight-of-hand by this Rudolph and Bertrand tandem!

This brings up the contention that discussion is a moral activity. In my side bar, I mention an apparent lack of consistency not for any formal reason, but because it is consistent with my contention that discussion is moral, and that I want to avoid looking duplicitous.

It is clear that I should not speak with dishonesty, and my points should not be made with sleight-of-hand. I will leave this to a later time, and thank you for your patience in following me so far.