What is the meaning of meaning?
This is a pretty straightforward question to answer, but we must supply some background information before we can do it.
1. Understand the concept of models and modelling. Think of a map. A map is a model of a town. A model is built through the processes of deletion, distortion and generalisation. A map is a model of the town because it is generated through these three processes: not everything is uncluded in a map (e.g., trees and people or even houses). This is the process of deletion. Moreover, a map is (usually) two dimensional and much smaller (although to scale) than the town it models. These are examples of distortion. Therefore, we can be sure that the map os not the town, but a model of it. Likewise with a toy airplane. No matter how realistic it may look, it is clearly a model, since it has plenty of deletions (no working engines, the pilot usually has no legs, feet or fingers) and distortions – very small size (although to scale) when compared with the real thing, made of plastic rather than metal alloys and so on and so forth.
2. Now brace yourself for a shock. We have no idea what “reality”is. All we have are our sense perceptions. But our sense perceptions can be easily shown to be a model. Take sight. It has huge deletions (we only see from red to Violet – any electromagnetic frequency outside this very limited range is invisible), and huge distortions (vision is bidimensional for starts). Therefore our vision is but a “model” of reality, not reality itself. Likewise with hearing and the other senses. Moreover, each individual sense is integrated in a complex mind model – for instance, perception of depth , or three dimensionality is the result of touch combined with vision. We could call this our sensorial experience of reality. But we should be careful not to start believing that the map is the town. Most people seem to be unaware that sensorial perception (the integration of individual sense perceptions to make up a mental model of reality) is not reality, but simply a model of it. Just like any town is far more complex and infinitely more complete than any map. So, “sensory perception” is but a map. And this map is all we have.
3. Language is also a model – a model of our sensory model of reality (that is, a metamodel). Again it is easy to show that language is generated form sensory perceptions via the three modelling processes: distortion (language is “digital”: it comes in discrete packages of information called “words”), is full of deletions (most sensory perceptions cannot be put into words in any satisfying way), ando f course generalisations are huge in language (“all generalizations are false, including this one”). We are constantly modelling our sensory experiences through language to ourselves (our “inner dialog”), and we use language as a model of our sensory experiences in order to communicate such sensoryu experiences (our modelo f reality) to others. Once language is shared in this way, it structures and limits our models of reality (our sensory expereince), so that native speakers of the same language end up with the same inner experience (model) of reality. Calling the grass “green” creates the dellusion that everyone sees green the same way, since everyone uses the same word to label what they feel visually when they look at grass. Language therefore – and in a very literal way – creates reality. As a consequence people who speak different languages live in very different “realities”, since their sensorial experience will be very different. Hence the basic difficulty in translation, and the fact that certain words in one language have no couterpart on another language: the models of reality do not overlap in regards to those words.
4. Most people think of translation as a language to language operation. But actually really good translation is to listen to language as a model for an inner sensorial experience, identify that experience, and then remodel that experience back into the other language. Sometimes this is impossible because there is no sensorial overlap.
5. Now we can deal with the meaning of meaning. Meaning (of a word), is simply the sensorial experience (model of reality) it models. Therefore the meaning of “table” is the object in reality that we have access to through our sensory experience of it. The meaning of nouns is pretty straightforward: the word is a label for something, and the meaning of the word is that something it labels. In short, the reverse process of modelling. We model through deletion, distortion and generalization. Model goes from town to map. We attach meaning by going from map to town: we undelete, undistort and specify the generalisations. (Meaning of relational words like articles, prepositions, conjunctions, etc. is the same concept as long as we remember we are not modelling objects, but relationships between words, and meaning of verbs must refer to actions rather than objects.)
6. There is another word for this reverse path (from model to what is being modelled), and that is
interpretation. A score of music is a model of the sensory perception which models the music inside the composer´s mind. Interpretation is the process by which we go from the score back to the music. Modelling is always easier to do than interpretation (we take away things in modelling, we have to put them back when interpreting). Interpretation is the process of attaching meaning to a score. It has nothing to do with feeling all sorts of emotion when playing and externalising such with body language (e.g. Lang Lang, Keith Jarret, Fazil Sai, which is not to say one should be stopped froim doing it, just that we should use another word for it, so as not to confuse the true
meaning of interpretation, which is simply the reverse of modelling) .
7. This is why dictionaries are not as useful as one may think. Dictionaries go from words to words. Meaning should go from words to whatever the words are modelling.
Now that we have figured out the meaning of meaning, and we truly understand understanding how about thinking about thinking?
Best wishes,
Bernhard.
Topic: What's the meaning of the word "meaning"?