In the Beginning Was the…Meaning?

[coberst]

In the Beginning Was the…Meaning?

The great truth of the nineteenth century was that produced by William Dilthey, which was what wo/man constantly strived for. ”It was “meaning” said Dilthey, meaning is the great truth about human nature. Everything that lives, lives by drawing together strands of experience as a basis for its action; to live is to act, to move forward into the world of experience…Meaning is the relationship between parts of experience.” Man does not do this drawing together on the basis of simple experience but on the basis of concepts. Man imposes symbolic categories of thought on raw experience. His conception of life determines the manner in which s/he values all of its parts.

Concludes Dilthey, meaning “is the comprehensive category through which life becomes comprehensible…Man is the meaning-creating animal.” Quote from “Beyond Alienation” Becker

Objectivists claim:

“Linguistic expressions and the concepts they express are symbolic structures, meaningless in themselves, that get their meaning via direct, unmediated correlation with things and categories in the actual world (or possible worlds).”

SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) claim that the underlying error in this comprehension of meaning is that meaning depends in no way upon the nature of the thinking, communication, and experience of the human agent. SGCS takes this to be the central problem with the objectivist approach.

The SGCS approach is far different; it attempts “to characterize meaning in terms of the nature of the organisms doing the thinking.”

Experience is construed in a broad sense; it is construed as “the totality of human experience and everything that plays a role in it—the nature of our bodies, our genetically inherited capacities, our modes of physical functioning in the world, our social organization, etc. In short, it takes as essential much of what is seen as irrelevant in the objectivist account”

Experimentalism, i.e. SGCS, characterizes meaning in terms of embodiment. Conceptual structure exists in a preconception form that is hardwired, it is genetically formed. This structure is in the form of basic-level categories, which are defined by our gestalt perception, and kinesthetic image schematic structures, which are simple structures that enter into our everyday bodily experience.

These preconceptual structures are directly meaningful because they “are directly and repeatedly experienced because of the nature of the body and its mode of functioning in our environment.”

Abstract conceptual structures are indirectly meaningful because they are understood due to their “systematic relationship to directly meaningful structures”.

The word ‘meaning’ has at least two meanings. The meaning of something can be its definition as found in a dictionary; also the meaning of something can be what association it has with me. For example: the Iraq war had some meaning to me as an aware citizen of America but that same war has a great deal more meaning to me if my grandson joins the army and is sent to Iraq.

Is it possible for the word, i.e. language, to come before the meaning?

Quotes from “Women, fire, and Dangerous Things” by George Lakoff

[Angela]

Originally Posted by coberst

Is it possible for the word, i.e. language, to come before the meaning?

Sure! Language is a tool for generating meaning. For instance, there was no inherent meaning in my own life that I was born to boldly generate and facilitate free-flowing love and joy -- until I spoke that meaning into existence. And now that I've spoken it, it's a powerful meaning that has me acting with bold inspiration for living a life I'm in love with.