Meaning of ‘meaning’. What a mess!

Tal: Sure. You know what I mean.

Fal: Not really. I do not understand you meaning.

Tal: Why?

Fal: Crossing along the dictionary, I began to read about the meaning of meaning. What a fight! We have the reference theory telling us that word means that they point to, and others telling us that “it is that makes what would otherwise be mere sounds and inscriptions into instruments of communications and understanding.” The first could be debated and, the second, sounds like rubbish.

Tal: That is very deep.

Fal: We have problems here. I could say ‘an empty hole is full of nothing” and you would understand clearly that empty and nothing point likewise. The sentence could be converted into ‘ A p hole is full of p.’ In other words, ‘p hole = full p’ or, even better,‘A=A’. The sentence is empty of new information, there is nothing here to mean at all. It is meaningless to say that ‘A=A’. Our intuition says ‘No way, Jose. We understand it very well and like it. That sentence mean a lot to me.’

Tal: What about communication?

Fal: Clearly there is neither communicating nor pointing to a real thing in that sentence, but our intuition says that the sentence is really fine. We have a puzzle here. Somebody is wrong.

Tal: But remember, Wittgenstein and his ‘meaning is the usage.’

Fal: Sure, but here thing get messy. For him, meaning is created at the moment of usage. The word ‘play’ means an act on the baseball field and another in the theater. Fore a moment, let us image a lonely rock on the floor that is hidden from every one. Of course, the rock has no meaning for anyone. You hear me. It takes to have one, a person, to have a meaning on hand. Bob comes and sees the rock. He just sees the rock. For Bob, the rock means that there is something with some properties on the floor. That thing has no particular use until Bob sees it as mean to and end. What we got here? First, things means something to someone and second, things not words are meaning carriers.

Tal: And your point?

Fal: We do not need to have a sentence to have meaning at all but a thing and a person facing that thing. It looks more like a communication between the thing and the person than a communication between to persons. Of course, a person could become a thing. Imagine Bob suddenly becoming a cow.

Tal: That would be fun. I wonder what Wit would say about it. It reminds me a lot of Kant.