THE MENTAL ARCHITECTURE OF MEANING. A VIEW FROM COGNITIVE SEMIOTICS (original) (raw)
Related papers
2019
conceptuality has a hierarchical structure comprising nested levels. The three generic and principal forms are concepts, schemata, and the culminating reticulate. The concept is an elementary unit of meaningfulness within this hierarchy; it consists of a discrete construct built by ratiocination. The schema is the next subsuming level of cognitive meaning that encompasses concepts and structures their “contextual meanings,” e.g., a common noun qua concept within the denotation schema. Schemata qua abstract interpretive frameworks are epitomized by the various scientific models and theories. At the apex of conceptual meaning, the reticulate represents the totality of semantikal structure within an individual mind, i.e., the implicit articulation of all universes of discourse. The reticulate is the “total meaning” that constantly informs wakeful thought, an articulated cognitive universality always implicitly accessible in its relatively seamless aggregate to one’s conscious purview. ...
Philosophia, 2010
Modal epistemology has been dominated by a focus on establishing an account either of how we have modal knowledge or how we have justified beliefs about modality. One component of this focus has been that necessity and possibility are basic access points for modal reasoning. For example, knowing that P is necessary plays a role in deducing that P is essential, and knowing that both P and ¬P are possible plays a role in knowing that P is accidental. Chalmers and provide two good examples of contrasting views in modal epistemology that focus on providing an account of modal knowledge where necessity and possibility are basic access points for modal knowledge, and Yablo (1993) provides a good account of how we have justified beliefs about modality. In contrast to this tradition I argue for and outline a modal epistemology based on objectual understanding and essence, rather than knowledge or justification and necessity and possibility. The account employs a non-modal conception of essence and takes objectual understanding of essence, rather than knowledge of essence to be basic in modal reasoning. I begin by articulating account of objectual understanding, on which objectual understanding of F is not equivalent to propositional knowledge of F. I then argue that an epistemology of essence that uses property variation-in-imagination is better construed as a model that delivers objectual understanding of essence rather than knowledge of essence. I argue that this is so, since the latter and not the former runs into a version of the Meno paradox. I show how this account can be applied to two issues in modal epistemology: the Benacerraf problem for modality, and the architecture of modal knowledge.
Field and Dynamic Nature of Sensemaking. Theoretical and
2013
In this paper a dynamic and semiotic model of meaning (DSMM) is presented. According to it: a) meaning is the emergent product of a field dynamics; b) meaning consists of the way signs iteratively combine with each other in the local circumstances of communication; c) meaning is bivalent, i.e. it emerges from the iterative mutually constitutive tension between two components: an observable side, the Significance in Praesentia (SIP), namely the portion of the world used as sign, and a latent side, the Significance in Absentia (SIA), namely the pertinent gestalt of linkages among signs defining the condition of interpretability of the former. In the second part of the work some methodological implications of DSMM for the study of meaning are highlighted. In particular, emphasis is given to the wisdom of adopting a methodology being able to model the contingency and situativity of socio-symbolic phenomena.
Shifted Comprehension and Psycho-semiotic Distinctions of Its Means
Psychology Research, 2018
The paper contains a theoretical analysis of communicative means comprehended at diverse levels of psyche. The comprehension is understood as an involving of received information into internal systems of cognition, valuation, and skills of the subject. Together with the objects directly given for the feeling, the objects represented by various semiotic means are comprehended as well. Such indirect, or shifted, comprehension can occur at different levels and be realized not only with help of verbalized logical concepts, but also by "infralogical" images and schemes. Particularly, along with ideograms and pictograms as the means intended for upper levels of interpretation, one can speak also about perceptograms and even sensograms aimed for comprehension at perceptual and sensorial levels, correspondingly. The norms of regular connections between the means of comprehension from diverse its levels can be considered as codes with representative and communicative functions. Depending on the psychical levels, to which elements and structures of their expression and content planes belong, one can distinguish a number of psycho-semiotic types of these codes.
1983
Lundh, L.-G., 1983. Mind and meaning. Towards a theory of the human mind considered as a system of meaning structures. Acta Univ. Ups. Studia Psychologica Upsaliensia 10, 205 pp. Uppsala. ISBN 91-554-1487-7. Various theoretical approaches to the psychological problem of meaning are analysed and criticized, and a theory of meaning structures is introduced and successively elaborated. A person's meaning structures are said to constitute his or her world-the world as it has meaning for the person. The system of meaning structures has a structural orga,1ization, but also a quantitative, affective aspect. Structurally, it has extension and intension. "Extension" refers to the world as it is differentiated and categorized by the person's meaning structures; "intension" refers to these structures considered as mental structures, involving a temporal integration of events, e.g. in the form of expectations. The quantitative, affective aspect is seen in the fact that an object or action may have more or less meaning for the person. "Memory" refers either to the meaning structures as such ("semantic memory"), or to a reactivation of the constellation of meaning structures which were activated at the time of the original event ("episodic memory"), or to the time during which activated meaning structures remain in an active state ("short-term memory"). It is argued that there are various kinds of short-term memory-various levets of activation. One such levet is the conscious level-the levet of selective attention, with its limited capacity. It is argued that meaning structures develop prior to conscious awareness, and that the activation of meaning structures goes on continuously at a preattentive levet. Conscious perception and conscious thought are the result of selectively attending to some portion of what goes on at this preattentive levet. The development of conscious attention makes possible a conceptualization of the person's meaning structures, whereby the extension is transformed into conceptual structures, and the intension into propositional structures. A person's concep tual structures define his "logical space", i.e. the thoughts which he is capable of having. A person's propositional structures represent his habitual ways of thinking-certain "paths" in his logical space. Finally, some methodological implications of the theory are discussed.
New Philosophical Approach in understanding
New Philosophical Approach in Understanding the Context Through Application of Theory of Probabilities in Construction of the Meaning
The present study tries to philosophically approach the context through the application of the concept of probability in the construction of the meaning. Actually, the semantic stimulates many meanings depending on the general awareness level of the receiver. In this area, we may wonder if the receiver can exactly understand the real semantic as meant by the sender. We may ask a philosophical question here, “is it possible to transfer the meaning or the semantic objectively?” My suggestion is that when the semantic, as a signal here, has been detected by our brains, it is going to be filtered and reformed again. We may argue that this is the real meaning, or this is our perception. Within our minds, we create our perceptions, and awareness levels are generated accordingly. In this context, we would like to include the concept of probability to formulate the meaning. In other words, in the mental space, there are large numbers of entities that have relative importance in our minds. This importance is characterized by being not constant among persons, and varied even for the same person based on his psychological state, educational level, and life experience. We would like to put focus on the concept of ambivalence. I think personally that the ambivalence is hypothesized within the mental space more than being a reality. The probabilities by which the meaning rotates around the axis of semantics would determine for what extent we are going to form our perception. This understanding defines our philosophy in judging things. In this study, we think that ambivalence is not necessarily available and can be understood as different entities in our mental spaces. I believe that we can have a better understanding of religious books because the text stimulates many entities in the mental area of the reader. The probabilities of constructing the meanings are widely occurring, which may lead to ambivalences depending on how the receiver can understand or formulate his mental space. Accordingly, implementing this approach will make the text alive.
Explores the central role in Wittgenstein's later work of his opposition to a 'mechanistic' conception of understanding. Offers a diagnosis of Kripke's skeptical paradox on this basis. Forthcoming in Hyman and Glock (eds.), A Companion to Wittgenstein, Wiley-Blackwell.