🚀 go-pugleaf

Having read the last few postings, I'm going to re-start this
thread in sci.cognitive only.

(1) The original poster asked for alternatives to the formal
    and logical theories of semantics, specifically alternatives that
    tackled the symbol grounding problem. He was clearly looking
    for a general theory of meaning (i.e. a semiotics), not a
    particular theory of meaning (such as model theory).

(2) IMHO, the best place to start from is Wittgenstein, since he
    questions the very possibility of such a general theory. There
    are plenty of reasons for scepticism: "meaning" has all the
    flavour of a worn out concept that is falling apart under our
    very eyes. What Wittgenstein points towards is a biological and
    social account of semiotics within which the idea of "meaning"
    is reduced to a place-holder status (along with other mentalistic
    terms). Lots of people (most of whom have never heard of Wittgenstein)
    are working in this direction.

(3) This, it seems to me, is a key issue in cognitive science.

(4) Bert Peeters, as a semanticist, takes me to task for giving
    Stephen Stich instead of Stephen Schiffer as the author of
    "Remnants of Meaning" and accuses me of thereby refering to
    a non-existent entity. I knew what I meant, he knew what I
    meant and furthermore we both know why I made the slip. But as a
    theoretician he makes a lot of assumptions about how proper
    names work and calculates that I can't actually have meant
    what I did mean. Of course he doesn't actually believe the
    results of his own calculations... This is why we don't need
    semantics (;-)).

 Philip Swann