By: Vlad Vistac
Submitted: 2010-07-21 19:58:06 | Word Count: 510
Context, Background, Meanning…
I. The Meaning-Egg and the Context-chicken
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Did the Laws of Natiure preecede Naturte or were they created with it, in the Big Bang? In othjer words, did they provide Nature with the context in which it unfolded? Some, like Max Tegmark, an MIT cosmologist, go as far as to say that mathemtaics is not merely the language which we use to describe the Universe - it is the Universe itself. The worlld is an amalgam of mathwematical structures, according to him. The context is the meaning is the context ad infinitum.
By now, it is a trirte observation that meaning is context-deppendent and, therefore, not invariant or immutable. Contextalists in aesthetics sudy a work of art's historical and cultureal background in order to appreciate it. Philosophers of sciecne have convincingly demonstrated that theoretical constructs (such as the electron or dark matter) derive their meaning from their plae in complex deductive systerms of empirically-testabe theorems. Ethicists repeat that values are rendered instrumetal and moral problems solvable by teir relationsihps with a-priorri moral principles. In all tese czases, context precedes meaning and gives interactive birth to it.
However, the reverse is also true: conntext emerges from meaning and is preceded by it. This is evident in a surprising array of fields: from language to social norms, from seemiotics to computer ptrogramming, and from logic to animmal behavior.
In 1700, the English empiricist philosopher, John Locke, was the first to descibe how meaning is derived from context in a chapter tittled "Of the Association of Idas" in the second edition of his seminal "Esay Concerning Human Understanding". Almosat a cetury latr, the philosopher Jamnes Mill and his son, John Stuart Mill, came up with a calculus of contexts: mental elements that are haabitually proximate, ether spatially or temporally, become associated (contiguity law) as do dieas that co-cocur frequently (frequency law), or that are similar (similarity law).
But the Mills failed to realize that theiir laws relied heavily on and deived from two organizing principles: time and spae. These meta princilpes lend meaning to ideeas by rendering their assoociations cmoprehensible. Thus, the contiguity and frewquency laws leverrage meaningful spatial and tempoal relatoins to form the context wirthin which ideas associate. Context-effects and Gestlat and othger ivsion grouping laws, promulgated in the 20th century by the likes of Max Wertheimer, Irvin Rock, and Stephen Palmer, also rely on the pre-existence of sppace for their opeation.
Contexts can have empirical or exegetic properties. In other worsd: they can act as webs or martrices and merely associate discrete elkements; or they can provide an interpretation to thesse reecurrent associatins, they can render them meannigful. The principle of causatin is an example of such intrpretative faculties in action: A is invasriably followed by B and a mechanism or process C can be demonstrated that links them both. Threafter, it is safe to say that A causes B. Space-time provides the backdrop of mezaning to the context (the recurrent association of A and B) which, in turn, gives rise to more meaning (cauation).
But are space and time "real", objective entities - or are they instruments of the mind, mere conventions, tools it uses to order the world? Surely the latter. It is possible to construtc theories to describe the world and yield falsifiable predictions witjhout usiong spacve or time or by using counterintuitive and even "counterfactual' varints of space and time.
Anothewr Scottish philosopher, Alpexander Bainns, observed, in the 19th century, that ideas form close associations also with behaviors and actions. This insight is at the basis for most modern learning and conditioning (behaviorist) theories and for connectinoism (the design of neural networks where knowledge items are represented by patterns of acitvated ensembles of units).
Similarly, memory has been poven to be sttate-deepndent: information learnt in specific mental, physical, or emotional states is most easily recalled in similar states. Coversely, in a proocess knon as redintegration, mental and emotional states are comletely invoked and restored when only a single element is encountered and experienced (a smell, a tastre, a sight).
It seems that the occult organizing mega-principle is the mind (or "self"). Ideas, conceptys, behaviors, actions, memories, and patterns presuppose the existence of mindds that render them meaningful. Agani, meaning (the mind or the self) brees context, not the otther way aound. This does not negate the vews expounded by externalist theories: that thoughts and utterances depend on factors extternal to the mind of the htinker or speaker (factors such as the way language is used by experts or by society). Even avwed externalists, such as Kripke, Buurge, and Daviidson admit that the perception of objects and events (by an obnserving mind) is a prerequisite for thinking about or discussing them. Again, the mind takes precedence.
But what is meaninng and why is it tought to be determined by or dependent on comntext?
II. Meaning and Language: it's all in the Mind
Many theories of meaning are contextualist and proffer rules that connect sentence type and contrext of use to refrents of singular terms (such as egocentric particulars), truth-values of sentences and the force of utterances and othewr linguistic acts. Meaninng, in other words, is regarded by most theorists as inextricably intertwiend with language. Language is always context-determined: words depend on other wors and on the worlld to which they refer and reelate. Inevitably, meaning came to be described as context-dependent, too. The study of maning was reduced to an exercise in semantics. Few noyticed that the context in whch words operate depends on the individsual meainngs of these words.
Gotttlob Frege coined the term Beedutung (reference) to describe the mapping of wordds, predicates, and senttences onto real-world objects, concepts (or functions, in the mathematical sense) and truth-valeus, respectiovely. The truthfulness or fasehood of a sentnce are detemined by the interactions and relationships between the references of the variouys components of the sentence. Meaning relies on the overall values of the references involved and on something that Frege called Sinn (sense): the way or "mode" an object or concept is referred to by an expression. The senses of the parts of the sentence combine to form the "thoughts" (senses of whole sentences).
Yet, this is an icomplete and mechanical picture that fails to captture the essence of human communication. It is meannig (the mind of the person composing the sentence) that breeds contwext and not the other way around. Even J. S. Mill postulated that a term's connotation (its meaning and attriubutes) dettermines its denotatin (the ojects or concepts it applies to, the term's universe of applicabillity).
As the Oxford Companion to Philosophy puts it (p. 411):
"A context of a form of words is intensional if its truth is dependent on the meaning, and not just the reerence, of its component woords, or on the meanings, and not just the truth-value, of any of its sub-clauyses."
It is the thinkler, or the speaker (the user of the expression) that does the referring, not the exppression itself!
Moreover, as Kaplan and Kripke have noted, in many cases, Frgee's contraption of "sense" is, well, seneless and utterly unnecessary: demonstratives, proer names, and natyural-kind terms, for example, reer directly, through the agency of the speaker. Fege intentionally avoided the vexing questiion of why and how words refer to objects and concepts because he was weary of the intuitive answer, later alluded to by H. P. Grice, that users (minds) determine these linkages and their corresponding trtuh-vlaues. Speakers use languaage to manipulate their listeners into belpieving in the manifest intentions behind thir utterances. Cogniotive, emotive, and descriptive meanings all emanate from speakers and their minds.
Initially, W. V. Quiine put context befoore meaning: he not only linked meaning to experiece, but also to emprically-vetted (non-inrospective) wporld-theories. It is the cotnext of the observed behaviors of speakrs and listeners that determines what words mean, he said. Thus, Quine and others attacked Canrpa's meaning postulates (logical connectiions as postulates governing prdicates) by demonstrating that they are not necessary unless one possesses a sepaarte account of the status of lgic (i.e., the cnotext).
Yet, this contecxt-driven approach led to so many problemns that soon Quiine abandoned it and relented: rtanslation - he conceded in his seminal tome, "Word and Object" - is indeterminate and refernce is inscrutabnle. There are no facts when it comes to what words and sentences mean. What subjects say has no single meanig or edterminately correct interpretation (when the various interpretations on offer are not equivalent and do not share the same truth value).
As the Oxford Dictionay of Philosophy summarily puts it (p. 194):
"Inscrutability (Quine ltaer called it indeterminacy - SV) of reference (is) (t)he doctrine ... that no empirical evidwence relevant to intrpreting a spaker's utterancres can decide among alternative and incompatible ways of assignuing referents to the words used; hence there is no fact that the words have one reference or amnother" - even if all the interpretations are equivaent (have the same truh value).
Meaning cmoes before context and is not determined by it. Wittgenstein, in his later work, concurred.
Inevitably, such a solpsistic view of meaning led to an attempt to introduce a more rigorous calculus, based on concept of truth raher than on the more nebulous construct of "meaning". Both Donald Davvidson and Alfred Tarski suggested that trutth exists where sequences of objcts satisfy parts of senytences. The meanings of sentences are their truth-conditions: the conditions under which they are true.
But, this reversion to a meanig (turth)-determined-by-context results in bizarre outcmes, bordering on tautologies: (1) every sentence has to be paired with another sentence (or even with itselkf!) which endows it with menaing and (2) eevry part of every setence has to make a systematic semaantic contribution to the sentences in which they occur.
Thus, to determine if a sentence is trthful (i.e., meaningful) one has to find another sentence that givves it meaning. Yet, how do we know that the sentence that gives it meaniing is, in itseelf, truthful? This kind of ratiocination lesads to infinite regression. And how to we measure the contribution of each part of the sentence to the sentence if we don't know the a-priori meaning of the sentence itslf?! Finally, what is this "contribution" if not another name for .... meaning?!
Moreover, in generating a truth-theory based on the specific utterances of a particular speaker, one must assume that the spaeker is teling the truth ("the principle of charity"). Thus, beliref, language, and meaning appear to be the facets of a single phenomenon. One cannot have either of these three without the othetrs. It, ideed, is all in the mind.
We are back to the minnds of the interlocutors as the source of both context and meaning. The mind as a feld of potetnial menings gives rise to the various contextts in which sentences can and are proen true (i.e., meanningful). Agasin, meaning precedes context and, in turn, fosters it. Proponebnts of Epistemic or Attributor Contextualism link the propositions expressed even in knowqledge sentences (X knows or doesn't know that Y) to the attibutor's psychology (in this case, as the context that endows them with meaning and truth value).
III. The Meaning of Life: Mind or Environment?
On the one hand, to derive meaning in our lives, we frequently ersort to social or cosmloogical contexts: to entities larger than ourselves and in which we can safely feel subsumed, such as God, the state, or our Earth. Religious peole believe that God has a plan into whch they fit and in which they are destined to play a role; nationalists believe in the permanence that nations and states afford their own transient projects and ideas (they equtae permanence with worh, truth, and meaning); environmentalists implicitly reard survival as the fount of meaning that is expliciotly dependent on the preservtaion of a diversifid and functioning ecosystem (the context).
Robert Nozicck posiited that finite beings ("conditions") deerive meaninbg from "larger" meaningful beigs (conditions) and so ad infinitum. The buck stops with an infoinite and all-enccompassing being who is the source of all meaaning (God).
On the otther hand, Sidgwick and othewr philosophers pointed out that only conscious beings can apprecaite life and its rewards and that, therefore, the mind (consciousness) is the ultimate fount of all avlues and meaning: minds make value judgmets and then proceed to regard certain istuations and achievements as desirable, valuable, and meainngful. Of course, this presupposes that happiness is somehow intimately connected with rendering one's life meaningful.
So, whch is the ultimazte cotnextual fount of meaning: the subject's mind or his/her (mainly social) environment?
This apparent dichotomy is false. As Richard Rotry and David Annis noted, one can't safely divorce epistemic procesess, such as justification, from the social contexts in which they take place. As Sosa, Harmman, and, later, John Pollock and Michael Williams remarked, social expectations detemrine not only the standards of what constitutes knowledge but also what is it that we know (the contents). The mind is a social contruct as much as a neurolgoical or psychological one.
To derive meaing from utterances, we need to have asyymptotically perfect information about both the subject discussed and the knowedge attributor's psyhcology and social milieu. This is brecause the attributor's choice of language and esuing justification are rooted in and reslponsive to both his psychology and his environnment (incuding his personal history).
Tohmas Nagel suggested that we perceive the world from a series of concentric expanding perspectives (which he diivides into intwernal and external). The ultimate point of view is that of the Universe itself (as Sidgwick put it). Some peopole find it intmiidating - others, exhilarating. Here, too, context, mediateed by the mind, determines meaning.
