I don’t believe that the points you make about internal context and the lack of that context necessarily means that “all meaning is subjective”, nor that contextual information is inherently meaningless. In order to impart information that modifies the meaning of a word, the context must have meaning. So to, because you can elaborate on your point of view, and those utterances can have a meaning that allows your interlocutor to have a greater understanding of your meaning by approximation, tells me that the meaning is not purely subjective or totally inaccessible, only hidden.
Adding this having read your post. I think I agree that it is impossible to speak of a sematically invalid statement, but that is because I am locating the meaning outside the statement, rather than applying validity or invalidity to the statement itself. ‘Colourless green ideas sleep furiously’ certainly means something to me, and not just as a first order sign about Chomsky. The example of this, par excellence, is Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky.There’s a great section in Goedel, Escher, Bach about translating the Jabberwocky into different languages—even though it is a nonsense poem, it clearly means something when you read it.
It is interesting to think about why a statement might be found more or less meaningful by people in general. I asked ChatGPT for a summary of Eco’s Theory of Semiotics, and it included this passage:
‘Eco emphasises that meaning is not inherent in signs but is produced through codes—systems of rules shared within a culture. Interpretation depends on the interpreter’s familiarity with the relevant codes.’
I think this is important. My post doesn’t engage with why there are common patterns in words. As I mention in my other comment, I see this as a cultural, emergent thing that I was treating as out-of-scope, concentrating instead on how individual communication works.
Jabberwocky is my favorite poem. People who know me well hear that and are completely unsurprised :-)
I am locating the meaning outside the statement, rather than applying validity or invalidity to the statement itself.
This is critical, I think. In daily life I make up words all the time, and the people around me with whom I share the necessary context and are also native English speakers have no trouble intuiting what they mean.
Interestingly, my first draft was closer to your point of view, but I talked myself out of it! I convinced myself the kind of information that is in the words/context is a different type of thing than meaning. I haven’t had time to read your link yet, but will do later.
Here are my quick thoughts:
1. As mentioned, words/context are information, but not meaning. A message written in code is meaningless without knowledge of the code, and in this case everyone has a slightly different decoding method. If my method decodes a message to mean the opposite of yours, that implies the meaning is in the method. This is not a hypothetical – people interpret statements in diametrically opposed ways all the time.
2. Subjectivity is a matter of degree. Because we live in the same world and interact all the time, we will share a lot of meanings, and this will make them look somewhat objective. We can, in this sense, speak of an emergent, global meaning for words (‘words are defined by their use’), but we interact with this indirectly, through other individuals, and I think it is also a different kind of thing to the meaning I am talking about in this post.
“we live in the same world and interact all the time, we will share a lot of meanings, and this will make them look somewhat objective”
Ironically enough, although this may not have been your intended meaning but what crossed my mind was whether our culture is creating a further divergence between the meaning people assign to words/phrases or further amalgamating and uniting them, particularly in regards to social media and the internet.
On one hand as more people are exposed to the same media which is on par with globalisation and our current monoculture, Wouldn’t it make logical sense more people will recognise these meanings and references en masse? Take for example a song, I don’t know maybe “Gamnam style.” with 5.6 billion views you’d think most people would associate these words within the song to the same cultural zeitgeist, no? However, as you said “The ocean, in this analogy, is [people’s own unique] world model”
I do think here all 5 billion people may have assigned their own personal meaning to the song. Some may have listened to it to grieve a family member, some may have listened to it with their family, others may not even have close family and simply listened to it with friends, and the list goes on with interpretations.
Now the question lingering here is—even if we don’t take into account social media echo chambers and confirmation bias- Is it impossible to ever reach a similar shaped iceberg among a group of people, EVER? Is it doable or does personal experience dabble into this and obfuscate meanings assigned to words even further?
And how does globalisation and so called “mass” media play a part? or is its effects dulled by echo chambers and the specialisation of pop culture today to the point where (I’d argue) Pop culture was never “Pop” at all cause everyone assigned different meanings to what they experience?
Ironically enough, even here I have perfectly demonstrated the use of the theory you mentioned as my use of broad terms like “globalisation” and “monoculture” might carry pejoratives and negative connotations to specific groups of people with certain political stances. I do certainly hope you get what i mean though. ;) It seems more like a paradox to explain. Oh well, I guess all we can do is try.
That’s an interesting question! I think it’s instructive to consider the information environment of a medieval peasant. Let’s speculate that they interact with a max ~150 people, almost all of which are other peasants (and illiterate). Everyone lives in the same place and undertakes a similar set of tasks throughout their life. What shared meanings are generated by this society? Surely it is a really intense filter bubble, with a thick culture into which little outside influence can penetrate? The Dothraki from Game of Thrones have a great line – ‘It is known’ – which they use to affirm something widely understood. This is a ritual rather than an explanation, because everyone within the culture already knows the meaning of whatever it is that has been said.
Comparing this to modern society, one of the biggest differences is the firehose of information we constantly consume, which is unique for each person. More than this, because it is global, the same information gets consumed in different contexts by different people (e.g. your reference to Gangnam Style). I think this leads to a kind of a hierarchical structure. On the one hand, we also have filter bubbles, which are getting more bespoke and personalised every year, and can lead to neighbours in possession of wildly different world models. On the other, unlike the peasants, we have to regularly coordinate and interact with people outside our bubbles. So you get this high-level set of Schelling points people coalesce around, like fashions and conventions, that allow us to have meaningful interactions with people we don’t know very well, but often only to a shallow depth. This sometimes looks like a drab monoculture. Then there is a lot in-between: little pockets of thicker shared meaning generated by families, sub-cultures, organisations etc, the coherence of which constantly have to be reaffirmed to survive the information firehose.
In sum, I think this cashes out as lots of thin shared meanings underpinning massive diversity, albeit in a highly complex structure. Although, I should caveat this with the fact that I would probably struggle to recognise our more deeply held shared meanings, in the whole fish recognising water sense.
Thanks for the prompt reply, I’m going to add one last thing to this discussion:
“I should caveat this with the fact that I would probably struggle to recognise our more deeply held shared meanings, in the whole fish-recognising-water sense.”
Aha, this is where I think human language limits us, since it’s our secondary nature to make assumptions and pre-judgements (to keep conversations going) that fit in neatly with mass-accepted beliefs or “Schelling points,” as you referenced. Making too many assumptions can hurt deeper connection, I fear, because stereotypes—although holding some level of truth—hold condensed representations that dehumanise and treat labels like caricatures. Think, for example, of any modern or old identity label: gay, polyamorous, conservative, female, etc. As their meanings drift through time, so will their collective connotations held by different groups of people, because every single word I mentioned has had unique meanings and ‘caricatures’ in the past and will continue to evolve in meaning. In linguistics, I think this is called semantic drift—such as semantic weakening and bleaching—though take my words with a grain of salt. I’m no linguistics grad (at least not yet ;) ).
I do wonder how the future is going to progress, because I fear we will eventually return to our primitive, cave-like bubbles, and society will eventually fracture into many smaller ones. Perhaps I’m too much of a cynic, but this “shallow” shared meaning, as you said, will break down. Because let’s face it—how long do collective shared ideas stay locked in place and last? They usually break down, and I do think, with the modern day and age, the only two possibilities that I see are either a return to or a rise in one united dogmatic institution (example: the Catholic Church) or the complete opposite—anarchy—because “neighbours in possession of wildly different world models” is terrible politically for the health and progress of society, in my opinion.
Other than that, much thanks for your response, and I do agree with you—it all boils down to us interacting with more people with different mindsets and beliefs today (tolerance and liberalism can take their credits here). But overall, I do think the specialisation of information will have an effect on society as a whole, especially with the rise of AI, which is more likely to give personalised and uniquely catered responses to an individual based on what they want to see and hear (preach to the choir, essentially). I mean, just look at the new Grok update—it’s literally shelling out Musk’s pseudoscience :(
All in all, the real question is whether this model of understanding sticks with us because it helps us deal with the barrage or “firehose” of information daily by personalising it, or if it tears us apart more and creates further divisions in society till it tears apart due to a lack of common ground and shared understandings.
I must admit I am a little pessimistic, and consider the anarchy side of the equation much more likely than consolidation. Modern society as a bunch of protocols is effective at managing diversity at scale, but it was built in a different age. You could only diverge so far from your neighbours, because who else did you talk to? With the internet and now AI, the production process of shared meaning is shifting in a fundamental way, and I’m not sure where it leads.
I don’t believe that the points you make about internal context and the lack of that context necessarily means that “all meaning is subjective”, nor that contextual information is inherently meaningless. In order to impart information that modifies the meaning of a word, the context must have meaning. So to, because you can elaborate on your point of view, and those utterances can have a meaning that allows your interlocutor to have a greater understanding of your meaning by approximation, tells me that the meaning is not purely subjective or totally inaccessible, only hidden.
I suggest you check out some work of semiotics, such as Umberto Eco’s Theory of Semiotics, which goes into how words and utterances have meaning. I’ve previously argued that its impossible to speak of a semantically invalid statement. https://nicolasdvillarreal.substack.com/p/higher-order-signs-hallucination
Adding this having read your post. I think I agree that it is impossible to speak of a sematically invalid statement, but that is because I am locating the meaning outside the statement, rather than applying validity or invalidity to the statement itself. ‘Colourless green ideas sleep furiously’ certainly means something to me, and not just as a first order sign about Chomsky. The example of this, par excellence, is Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky. There’s a great section in Goedel, Escher, Bach about translating the Jabberwocky into different languages—even though it is a nonsense poem, it clearly means something when you read it.
It is interesting to think about why a statement might be found more or less meaningful by people in general. I asked ChatGPT for a summary of Eco’s Theory of Semiotics, and it included this passage:
‘Eco emphasises that meaning is not inherent in signs but is produced through codes—systems of rules shared within a culture. Interpretation depends on the interpreter’s familiarity with the relevant codes.’
I think this is important. My post doesn’t engage with why there are common patterns in words. As I mention in my other comment, I see this as a cultural, emergent thing that I was treating as out-of-scope, concentrating instead on how individual communication works.
Jabberwocky is my favorite poem. People who know me well hear that and are completely unsurprised :-)
This is critical, I think. In daily life I make up words all the time, and the people around me with whom I share the necessary context and are also native English speakers have no trouble intuiting what they mean.
Interestingly, my first draft was closer to your point of view, but I talked myself out of it! I convinced myself the kind of information that is in the words/context is a different type of thing than meaning. I haven’t had time to read your link yet, but will do later.
Here are my quick thoughts:
1. As mentioned, words/context are information, but not meaning. A message written in code is meaningless without knowledge of the code, and in this case everyone has a slightly different decoding method. If my method decodes a message to mean the opposite of yours, that implies the meaning is in the method. This is not a hypothetical – people interpret statements in diametrically opposed ways all the time.
2. Subjectivity is a matter of degree. Because we live in the same world and interact all the time, we will share a lot of meanings, and this will make them look somewhat objective. We can, in this sense, speak of an emergent, global meaning for words (‘words are defined by their use’), but we interact with this indirectly, through other individuals, and I think it is also a different kind of thing to the meaning I am talking about in this post.
“we live in the same world and interact all the time, we will share a lot of meanings, and this will make them look somewhat objective”
Ironically enough, although this may not have been your intended meaning but what crossed my mind was whether our culture is creating a further divergence between the meaning people assign to words/phrases or further amalgamating and uniting them, particularly in regards to social media and the internet.
On one hand as more people are exposed to the same media which is on par with globalisation and our current monoculture, Wouldn’t it make logical sense more people will recognise these meanings and references en masse? Take for example a song, I don’t know maybe “Gamnam style.” with 5.6 billion views you’d think most people would associate these words within the song to the same cultural zeitgeist, no? However, as you said “The ocean, in this analogy, is [people’s own unique] world model”
I do think here all 5 billion people may have assigned their own personal meaning to the song. Some may have listened to it to grieve a family member, some may have listened to it with their family, others may not even have close family and simply listened to it with friends, and the list goes on with interpretations.
Now the question lingering here is—even if we don’t take into account social media echo chambers and confirmation bias- Is it impossible to ever reach a similar shaped iceberg among a group of people, EVER? Is it doable or does personal experience dabble into this and obfuscate meanings assigned to words even further?
And how does globalisation and so called “mass” media play a part? or is its effects dulled by echo chambers and the specialisation of pop culture today to the point where (I’d argue) Pop culture was never “Pop” at all cause everyone assigned different meanings to what they experience?
Ironically enough, even here I have perfectly demonstrated the use of the theory you mentioned as my use of broad terms like “globalisation” and “monoculture” might carry pejoratives and negative connotations to specific groups of people with certain political stances. I do certainly hope you get what i mean though. ;) It seems more like a paradox to explain. Oh well, I guess all we can do is try.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this,
Hazel.
That’s an interesting question! I think it’s instructive to consider the information environment of a medieval peasant. Let’s speculate that they interact with a max ~150 people, almost all of which are other peasants (and illiterate). Everyone lives in the same place and undertakes a similar set of tasks throughout their life. What shared meanings are generated by this society? Surely it is a really intense filter bubble, with a thick culture into which little outside influence can penetrate? The Dothraki from Game of Thrones have a great line – ‘It is known’ – which they use to affirm something widely understood. This is a ritual rather than an explanation, because everyone within the culture already knows the meaning of whatever it is that has been said.
Comparing this to modern society, one of the biggest differences is the firehose of information we constantly consume, which is unique for each person. More than this, because it is global, the same information gets consumed in different contexts by different people (e.g. your reference to Gangnam Style). I think this leads to a kind of a hierarchical structure. On the one hand, we also have filter bubbles, which are getting more bespoke and personalised every year, and can lead to neighbours in possession of wildly different world models. On the other, unlike the peasants, we have to regularly coordinate and interact with people outside our bubbles. So you get this high-level set of Schelling points people coalesce around, like fashions and conventions, that allow us to have meaningful interactions with people we don’t know very well, but often only to a shallow depth. This sometimes looks like a drab monoculture. Then there is a lot in-between: little pockets of thicker shared meaning generated by families, sub-cultures, organisations etc, the coherence of which constantly have to be reaffirmed to survive the information firehose.
In sum, I think this cashes out as lots of thin shared meanings underpinning massive diversity, albeit in a highly complex structure. Although, I should caveat this with the fact that I would probably struggle to recognise our more deeply held shared meanings, in the whole fish recognising water sense.
Thanks for the prompt reply, I’m going to add one last thing to this discussion:
“I should caveat this with the fact that I would probably struggle to recognise our more deeply held shared meanings, in the whole fish-recognising-water sense.”
Aha, this is where I think human language limits us, since it’s our secondary nature to make assumptions and pre-judgements (to keep conversations going) that fit in neatly with mass-accepted beliefs or “Schelling points,” as you referenced. Making too many assumptions can hurt deeper connection, I fear, because stereotypes—although holding some level of truth—hold condensed representations that dehumanise and treat labels like caricatures. Think, for example, of any modern or old identity label: gay, polyamorous, conservative, female, etc. As their meanings drift through time, so will their collective connotations held by different groups of people, because every single word I mentioned has had unique meanings and ‘caricatures’ in the past and will continue to evolve in meaning. In linguistics, I think this is called semantic drift—such as semantic weakening and bleaching—though take my words with a grain of salt. I’m no linguistics grad (at least not yet ;) ).
I do wonder how the future is going to progress, because I fear we will eventually return to our primitive, cave-like bubbles, and society will eventually fracture into many smaller ones. Perhaps I’m too much of a cynic, but this “shallow” shared meaning, as you said, will break down. Because let’s face it—how long do collective shared ideas stay locked in place and last? They usually break down, and I do think, with the modern day and age, the only two possibilities that I see are either a return to or a rise in one united dogmatic institution (example: the Catholic Church) or the complete opposite—anarchy—because “neighbours in possession of wildly different world models” is terrible politically for the health and progress of society, in my opinion.
Other than that, much thanks for your response, and I do agree with you—it all boils down to us interacting with more people with different mindsets and beliefs today (tolerance and liberalism can take their credits here). But overall, I do think the specialisation of information will have an effect on society as a whole, especially with the rise of AI, which is more likely to give personalised and uniquely catered responses to an individual based on what they want to see and hear (preach to the choir, essentially). I mean, just look at the new Grok update—it’s literally shelling out Musk’s pseudoscience :(
All in all, the real question is whether this model of understanding sticks with us because it helps us deal with the barrage or “firehose” of information daily by personalising it, or if it tears us apart more and creates further divisions in society till it tears apart due to a lack of common ground and shared understandings.
Hazel.
I must admit I am a little pessimistic, and consider the anarchy side of the equation much more likely than consolidation. Modern society as a bunch of protocols is effective at managing diversity at scale, but it was built in a different age. You could only diverge so far from your neighbours, because who else did you talk to? With the internet and now AI, the production process of shared meaning is shifting in a fundamental way, and I’m not sure where it leads.