How We Think · John Dewey
MEANING: OR CONCEPTIONS AND UNDERSTANDING
Sec. 1. _The Place of Meanings in Mental Life_ [Sidenote: Meaning is central] As in our discussion of judgment we were making more explicit what is involved in inference, so in the discussion of meaning we are only recurring to the central function of all reflection. For one thing to _mean_, _signify_, _betoken_, _indicate_, or _point to_, another we saw at the outset to be the essential mark of thinking (see p. 8). To find out what facts, just as they stand, mean, is the object of all discovery; to find out what facts will carry out, substantiate, support a given meaning, is the object of all testing. When an inference reaches a satisfactory conclusion, we attain a goal of meaning. The act of judging involves both the growth and the application of meanings. In short, in this chapter we are not introducing a new topic; we are only coming to closer quarters with what hitherto has been constantly assumed. In the first section, we shall consider the equivalence of meaning and understanding, and the two types of understanding, direct and indirect.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.