Some of your comments here are quite Wittgensteinian, so I recommend his Blue Book or Tractatus, but I’d imagine you’ve already encountered his ideas.
Literary theory has had about a hundred-year discourse over this question, though they’re interested in literary, textual meaning specifically. Still, pretty much all of the proposals to come out of that discourse are what I’ve called “narrow and conquer” strategies—meaning is just and solely what the author intended, or the reader understood, or some aggregate of all reader understandings (perhaps all native readers...), etc etc. (In other words, the “paradox” is solved by narrowing a rich, polysemous identity to a single sense.) I don’t think this is very productive.
I think you’ve hit on the key issue, which is that the meaning of “meaning” is subject to the same dynamics as the meaning of any other word. There are the way that words are used, the way that each individual would or wouldn’t apply a term to an extension (instance); some people take a prescriptivist tact and argue for dictionary definitions. I think the only answer is to get functional-pragmatic and say, “What kind of meaning are we interested in? There are many.”
It’s the set of notes that lead up to Philosophical Investigations! I haven’t read PI so I unfortunately can’t give good advice in choosing between them.
It sounds like you’re right where you need to be though. I’d be curious your takeaways once you finish Investigations!
Some of your comments here are quite Wittgensteinian, so I recommend his Blue Book or Tractatus, but I’d imagine you’ve already encountered his ideas.
Literary theory has had about a hundred-year discourse over this question, though they’re interested in literary, textual meaning specifically. Still, pretty much all of the proposals to come out of that discourse are what I’ve called “narrow and conquer” strategies—meaning is just and solely what the author intended, or the reader understood, or some aggregate of all reader understandings (perhaps all native readers...), etc etc. (In other words, the “paradox” is solved by narrowing a rich, polysemous identity to a single sense.) I don’t think this is very productive.
I think you’ve hit on the key issue, which is that the meaning of “meaning” is subject to the same dynamics as the meaning of any other word. There are the way that words are used, the way that each individual would or wouldn’t apply a term to an extension (instance); some people take a prescriptivist tact and argue for dictionary definitions. I think the only answer is to get functional-pragmatic and say, “What kind of meaning are we interested in? There are many.”
I’m currently reading through Investigations and I’ve read the secondary literature on Tractatus, but what’s the Blue Book about?
It’s the set of notes that lead up to Philosophical Investigations! I haven’t read PI so I unfortunately can’t give good advice in choosing between them.
It sounds like you’re right where you need to be though. I’d be curious your takeaways once you finish Investigations!