Philosophy Stack Exchange
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Questions tagged [meaning]

The relationship among signs and the kinds of things they intend, express, or signify; a concept central to semantics which is the study of how meaning comes about.

Whatever it is that makes what would otherwise be mere sounds and inscriptions into meaningful instruments of communication and understanding.

The philosophical problem is to demystify this power, and to relate it to what we know of ourselves and the world. Contributions to this problem include the theory of speech acts, and the investigation of communication and the relationship between words and ideas, and words and the world.

[Source : Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy]

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Is there a point to arguing about the meaning of words?

Firstly, I should mention that I am not sure, whether this the right place to ask such a question, but I am trying it anyway. Furthermore, one could say I come from a mathematics background and I am not familiar with common terminology in philosophy…
Stefan Perko
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How does Putnam's twin earth thought experiment disprove functionalism?

In the twin Earth thought experiment Putnam determines that meanings are not in the head. Later interpretations, by himself and by others, take it to falsify functionalism. It seems to me that the argument can't disprove functionalism, and even that…
Amit Hagin
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Meaning in use and naturalisation of intentionality

What is the relation between pragmatism and intentionality? Two different enterprises in philosophy seem to be well established and yet contradicting: Inferential Pragmatism: from Wittgenstein and Sellars to Rorty, Brandom and Mcdowell, There's an…
Amit Hagin
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What does "is true" mean in the phrase "a philosophical position is true"?

I have run into an online discussion about philosophies and world views (theism, atheism, humanism, nihilism, and all the other "isms") where phrases like "*ism is true" and "*ism is false" are used. What do they mean? For example, let's say…
Eva
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What is the difference between responsibility and commitment?

I was recently looking at philosophy of responsibility, and something interesting which I had not thought about before, was that the way we use "responsibility" includes things not necessarily caused by you. Let me explain with an example: You're…
JSavant
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Understanding Grice's Theory of (Non-Natural) Meaning

I am trying to understand Paul Grice's famous essay "Meaning". So consider a computer system which is fed a dictionary of every English word in existence. The computer system then randomly spits out a finite number of words. Let us suppose this…
George
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Should "meaning", as we experience it, be considered qualia?

By qualia - assume as defined in [wikipedia]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia, give or take ( up to you ) By "meaning as we experience it", perhaps I could just say "meaning", but i want to differentiate from "definition" or how a concept "fits"…
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Comedy we play everyday and pretend everything is fine?

I am sure it has a name or is covered by a movement, and I am sure that many philosophers have already talked about this, but I have this on my mind more and more everyday. It is obvious, but how can we literally ignore the fact that we are in the…
BestAboutMe
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What are the relations between externalism (Kripke, Putnam) and holism (Quine) about meaning?

Three points are not clear to me about the relations between semantic externalism (Kripke, Putnam) and holism (Quine): Is there a way according to which externalism and holism can be held together or are they inherently contradicting each other? It…
Amit Hagin
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Do Wittgenstein and Quine give the same criticisms of semantics?

What is the connection between the criticisms offered by Wittgenstein and Quine of meaning and language? Are both philosophers generally criticizing the same semantic theories with similar arguments, and if not, are there any cases of genuine…
Esse
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Is there an idea of linguistic realism similar to moral realism?

The better way to phrase it is: "Are there objective truths about language?" -- this question is parallel to the question of moral realism: "Are there objective moral truths"? One way to interpret moral subjectivity is that it implies that "what…
Dave
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Is verificationism dead?

A long time ago, I was taught that logical positivism, though very productive in explicating what it means for one science to reduce to another (e.g. chemistry to physics), died because the verification criterion for meaning could not itself be…
James Grossmann
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Can there be a sufficient account of meaning without an account of intentionality?

Much has been said in recent philosophy in criticism of representationalist theories of meaning. The idea is that any representation can represent what it will only in a prior, limiting context. Pragmatists focus on such a context as being one of…
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In laymen's terms, What is the meaning of 'meaning' in the the question "is there meaning to life"?

Every now and then people talk about whether there is meaning to life, including myself. However recently I have realised I have assumed the definition. My understanding of it is that it is asking whether there is an objective value, or objective…
Ray Kay
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When is Mathematics not about counting?

A comment on an answer I posted asserted that "Mathematics is NOT always about counting". My thoughts were that if there's a unit (inches / milligrams / light years etc), then someting is being counted. An exception would be if you're describing…
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