Concept
Meaning (philosophy)
Overview
nature of meaning in the philosophy of language, semantics, methaphysics and metasemantics
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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The word "dog" bears no resemblance to a dog, but its effects, like those of an image of a dog, resemble the effects of an actual dog in certain respects. It is much easier to say definitely what a word means than what an image means, since words, however they originated, have been framed in later times for the purpose of having meaning, and men have been engaged for ages in giving increased precision to the…
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind
The chapter “LECTURE X. WORDS AND MEANING” is titled for Meaning; names Meaning several times.
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).
John Dewey, How We Think
The chapter “MEANING: OR CONCEPTIONS AND UNDERSTANDING” is titled for Meaning; names Meaning several times.
7. _Language._ To exemplify the inversion of symbol and meaning, consider language and the things meant by language. A word is a symbol. But a word can be either written or spoken. Now on occasions a written word may suggest the corresponding spoken word, and that sound may suggest a meaning. In such an instance, the written word is a symbol and its meaning is the spoken word, and the spoken word is a symbol and its…
Alfred North Whitehead, Symbolism, its meaning and effect
Names Meaning several times; states what Meaning is.
Philosophers who discussed Meaning (philosophy)
- Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Giordano Bruno
- Heraclitus
- Roland Barthes
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- A. J. Ayer
- Philosophical Investigations
- Willard Van Orman Quine
- Saul Kripke
- Gottlob Frege
- Peter Hacker
- Stephen Neale
- F. C. S. Schiller
- Greg Restall
Related ideas
- Belief
- Contextualism
- Emotion
- Cognition
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- First-order logic
- Ferdinand de Saussure
- Bhartṛhari
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Grammar
- Argument
- Philosophy
- Abrahamic religions
- Hans-Georg Gadamer
- Word
- Interpretation (logic)
- Intension
- Al-Ghazali
- John Searle
- Internalism and externalism
- Waverley (novel)
- Japanese language
- John Stuart Mill
- Literal and figurative language
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Aesthetics.