🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov11.153723.16796@news.unige.ch>,
swann@divsun.unige.ch (SWANN Philip) writes:
>Perhaps you can explain why such a bizarre thing as a theory of
>meaning should exist? What would it look like? What would it be used
>for? What would it mean?  (could it mean anything?)

In an attempt to stem the sniveling, I'm going to reveal my own
reasons for wanting to find a grand unified theory of meaning.

First I should clarify exactly what I "mean" by `meaning' in this
technical sense. For me, the noun `meaning' refers to the convertion
of stimuli into understanding or comprehension of the stimuli -- or to
the product of such a convertion. The verb `to mean' refers to the
typical way to comprehend a certain set of stimuli. This definition
follows from the assumptions that (1) linguistic stimuli convey the
same sort of meaning as all other kinds of stimuli, and (2) the
meaning of all kinds of stimuli are represented in the same way. One
could say that meaning is what cognition works on/with.

(A wee bit of vague, crudely worded evidence for this claim: people
are more likely to recall an item from knowledge than to recall the
stimuli from which they inferred that knowledge. Also, people are very
good at integrating all the stimuli from their senses, linguistic
faculty and memory into a unified item of knowledge.)

It seems reasonable to approach this problem with the assumption that
knowledge consists of the same STUFF as meaning. This would allow a
humanly intelligent system to amend incoming meaning to its already
standing base of knowledge without much further work. It would also
facilitate the production of utterances.

So IF it turns out that this is the correct way to conceive of
meaning, AND that knowledge can be construed as lots of items (?) of
meaning, THEN we will have come a long way toward understanding human
cognition.

As always, feedback is encouraged,
Jake.
--
Reinheitsgebot <-- "Keep your laws off my beer!" <-- gal2@midway.uchicago.edu