The Meaning of Meaning

What does it mean for a word to have meaning? This simple question affects almost everything we do, every day. Now here’s something mind-blowing: For the past 2,500 years (including up to the present) most of the people studying this question (“How is it that words have meaning?”) have analyzed meaning from their armchairs, content to assume, and then conclude, that meaning is best studied by defining words in terms of other words, without considering human biology.  Long distinguished careers have come and gone without making the human body an essential part of the analysis. Philosopher Mark Johnson describes this failure:

The overwhelming tendency in mainstream analytic philosophy of language is to begin with concepts more-or-less well formed, and then to analyze their relations to one another in propositions and to objects of reference in the world. This leads one to overlook the bodily origins of those concepts and patterns of thought that constitute our understanding of, and reasoning about, our world . . . when I found myself immersed in linguistic philosophy as a graduate student in the 1970s, I did not even realize that I had been plunked down in a landscape that had been invaded by the body snatchers.
Johnson, Mark. Embodied Mind, Meaning, and Reason (2017).

You would think that this overlooking of the human body when discussing meaning would be impossible, especially



over the past few decades, during which new cognitive science findings are everyday occurrences. Isn’t it obvious that the oral and written words we use, the grunts and scribbles we produce, don’t have any inherent meaning? Isn’t it obvious that it is only when those grunts and scribbles interact with a human body that those grunts and scribbles trigger meaning? Well, apparently not.  It hasn’t been obvious for thousands of years and it is still not obvious to many people. Why not?

Here’s my suspicion.

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Where Did That Time Go?

What's a good way to spend an evening? Watching "The Pentagon Papers" (Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks) and discussing the history and legalities of this excellent film with a college student named Charlotte Vieth. Nineteen years ago I was helping baby Charlotte to take her first steps and introducing her to ice cream. Somehow, it has now come to this very different sort of activity. It makes me think of that common lament of parents: "The time goes so fast." Yes, indeed, it has, regarding both of my daughters (Charlotte and her big sister, JuJu Vieth). Luckily, we have lots of photos to prove that those intervening years actually happened, year by year.

Now the passing of time no longer clicks by in seconds, but in semesters and quarters in Chicago and Denver. Whenever I get to welcome home my adult-children after they've put in several months of hard work, these are not merely satisfying times. I don't think life gets any better.

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More Quotes

I love good quotes. It's like finding a a novel compressed into a sentence. Periodically, I share some of my favorite quotes that I have collected. Here's my latest batch of offerings:

“Today I broke my personal record for consecutive days alive.” - Anon

“Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress.” ― Alfred A. Montapert

"If you wish to make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe"? - Carl Sagan

“To understand everything is to forgive everything.” ― Buddha

“You can do so much in 10 minutes’ time. Ten minutes, once gone, are gone for good. Divide your life into 10-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity.”
-Ingvar Kamprad, Founder of the furniture brand IKEA

"If you want to be a millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline." - Richard Branson

“Matter tells space how to curve, space tells matter how to move.” ― Albert Einstein

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” ― Mark Twain

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” ― Edward R. Murrow

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On Gibran, Silence and Friendship

I have been able to find increasing amounts of solitude lately. Part of this is that my daughters have been away at college, but there have been other reasons that I will merely characterize here as opportunities for growth.

Spending more time in solitude has enabled me to desynchronize from my surroundings, which has allowed me to reintroduce myself to myself (the Fundamental Attribution Error be damed!). The quiet is also fertilizer for groves of spouting thoughts that are much more colored and varied than those philistine thoughts that push their way out when we are trapped in environments of commotion.

Last year I had the opportunity to travel to Lebanon. While there, I toured the Kadisha Valley north of Beirut. It truly felt like a holy place based on its deep history. I knew I was following in the footsteps of the many others before me as I hiked through the valley. I took the following photos while there, including the bottom photo, a grove some of Lebanon's ancient cedar trees (they are so revered that they appear on Lebanon's flag).




I thought of these images as I read Maria Popova's article, "Kahlil Gibran on Silence, Solitude, and the Courage to Know Yourself."  Gibran was born along the Kadisha Valley in a town called Bsharri.  As I hiked, it seemed to me that the Kadisha Valley was exquisitely designed for evoking poetic thought.  That's how it was for Gibran.  Popova features an excerpt from Gibran's 1923 classic, The Profit, on the topic of solitude:

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.


Gibran also explored silence in the context of friendship:

Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace. When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.” And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart; For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.


I was touched by these inspirational verses.  I hope you have enjoyed these writings too, as well as these photos.

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