Mister Sketchy’s Note on Meaning
A new guiding up-to-date book about Meaning in the excellent serie A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 124 pages, price 12,50
Straight-thinking
that thinks logically or clearly capable of sound judgement, rational, clear-headed but not sparkling
Text Oxford English Dictionary – Example of making special Specific Meaning about thinking straight
What actually means or is meaning? The meaning of words, sentences, phrases and other language acts? How do we understand the meaning of words? How is that possible and how does it work?
Meaning, how many meanings has this word? How many meanings does the word dog have? Or the word crazy, it can of all meanings also been understood as even a compliment.
I am sitting on my balcony, the garden of my past, in the shadow of a tree, taking a sip of Australian chardonnay, and I think about this abstraction that for centuries has been a challenge for philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein: what is Meaning? I am not really charmed by this formal definition I’ve found in the dictionary: ‘What is meant; what is intended to be, or in fact is, signified, indicated, referred to, or understood.’
It’s okay, this definition, it gives a hint of the complicity, but I do not like it much, because there’s more, much more. This new book by Emma Borg and Sarah Fisher tells you what it is all about when we talk about Meaning. When you have finished this book you will feel like you have been walking in a labyrinth.
Sketch of mister sketchy nicknamed the philosopher. A person who meets difficulties and complex matters with calmness and composure.
Language the heart of my existence
When I was young I created words myself and I learned how semantics works, structures in formal and experimental narrations, thanks to language I discovered my creative energy. I was hooked on poetry and I worked like a maniac to build up my vocabulary, eventually reaching out for the 60.000 words max available for the human brain, not only to be superior compared with the mainstream, but I was motivated to get high in special atmospheres, however idle all of my efforts were constructed as in an attempt to understand the world, how it has hidden realities apart from the obvious phenomenons of every day life. I became aware of the natural functions of words as they do relate to meaning and truth, and they refer to something in certain particular realities, in logic systems but also in the labyrinth of meanings, which is the habitat of language when clarity about truth and lies is missing.
I knew the actual world I lived in, really was nowhere without language that connects everything together. Roots and roofs, Language is a fundamental force of being. There’s no future in the world without it. But who knows, maybe language is an illusion of meaning. AI is coming to tell us more. How? Only AI knows, it definitely will chance the meaning of knowledge as we know it.