Meaning in philosophy

Summary

In semantics, semiotics, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and metasemantics, meaning "is a relationship between two sorts of things: signs and the kinds of things they intend, express, or signify". The types of meanings vary according to the types of the thing that is being represented. There are: the things, which might have meaning; things that are also signs of other things, and therefore are always meaningful (i.e., natural signs of the physical world and ideas within the mind); things that are necessarily meaningful, such as words and nonverbal symbols. The major contemporary positions of meaning come under the following partial definitions of meaning: psychological theories, involving notions of thought, intention, or understanding; logical theories, involving notions such as intension, cognitive content, or sense, along with extension, reference, or denotation; message, content, information, or communication; truth conditions; usage, and the instructions for usage; measurement, computation, or operation. Truth The question of what is a proper basis for deciding how words, symbols, ideas and beliefs may properly be considered to truthfully denote meaning, whether by a single person or by an entire society, has been considered by five major types of theory of meaning and truth. Each type is discussed below, together with its principal exponents. Correspondence theories emphasise that true beliefs and true statements of meaning correspond to the actual state of affairs and that associated meanings must be in agreement with these beliefs and statements. This type of theory stresses a relationship between thoughts or statements on one hand, and things or objects on the other. It is a traditional model tracing its origins to ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. This class of theories holds that the truth or the falsity of a representation is determined in principle entirely by how it relates to "things", by whether it accurately describes those "things".