And Even More Random Thoughts: Consciousness and Meaning

What do we mean by meaning? It has to be the slipperiest question of all.  

Here's one online dictionary definition: (Noun) "What is meant by a word, text, concept, or action." In other words, meaning is what is meant. Or (Adjective) "Intended to communicate something that is not directly expressed." Miriam Webster puts it this way: "Conveying or intended to convey meaning." So meaning intends to convey meaning? Seems like an impossible question to answer without a tautology ie. an argument that circles back on itself, and ultimately conveys nothing (Tautology: "A phrase or expression in which the same thing is said twice in different words.")

In philosophy (and language sciences) the study of meaning is called Semantics. The focus of science is on how 'something' works, and in the case of semantics it's how language conveys meaning. So, without actually providing a definition of what 'meaning' is, Semantics tries to understand the mode of conveyance. Meaning is integral to language, which is why some people who study semantics never bother to ask if there is something behind it. They think that by studying semantics they are already studying 'meaning'. But in fact meaning exists without language. Meaning must precede the conveyance of it. Meaning is the raison d'etre of language. I want to tell you something because there is a meaning (in my thoughts, in my body, in my feeling, that I want to put into words). Semantics doesn't answer the main question: What is meaning and where does it come from? 

My readings on consciousness (most recently Nicholas Humphrey's "A History of the Mind", and neurologist Anil Seth's "Being You") seem to present an answer. In a previous post about the consciousness loop I wrote, "...our response to the external world (stimuli) is based as much on what we project as it is on what we take in - another word for that is 'meaning'." This merits further explanation. The 'loop of consciousness' describes how the brain processes perceptual stimulation. It's a loop because it's a two way process, in which stimuli is affecting the brain on the way in, but also simultaneously producing an affect on the way out. This interactive 'double-check' on perception provides evolutionary advantages. It's not simply a verification of the internal representation of the external world ie. the picture we see in our minds of the external world, which constitutes an inadequate and indeed incorrect characterization of what is actually happening in our brains. Rather, we are actively creating the world when we perceive it in what Seth calls a 'controlled hallucination'. He uses the word 'hallucination' because it describes a type of perception, one that is a projection, but it's a 'controlled' one because of the way we are actively shaping it, both in the way we perceive it, through layers of emotional and intellectual filters and lenses, and the way we are physically engaged in it, literally with our bodies, moving ourselves and objects around in time and space. It's in this interaction where 'meaning' comes into play. We can now understand that 'meaning' is the product of feedback. It's what meaning actually 'is', a layered processing of information associated with consciousness. Viktor Frankl, the well-known psychiatrist and author of Man's Search For Meaning, famously wrote that the primary purpose of life was to find meaning. By this reckoning it appears that meaning would be something to be searched for and 'found', by effort or volition, as if it were a product of freewill. In Frankl’s estimation, as a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, the search for meaning is the ultimate act of freewill under conditions of almost total constraint, deprivation and suffering. But in reality it has nothing to do with freewill at all. Meaning is a description of the conscious brain's circular mechanism of processing information in the manner in which it generates a perception of the external world. And just as we 'see' the external in a certain way based on meanings, we are also physically altering it too, which in turn re-calibrates our 'meaning' of it. Most sentient creatures are limited in this regard while homosapiens have the most evolved capacity for this, which is the ultimate evolutionary advantage. Not just to be subject to the external environment in which we live but to shape it according to our meanings of it.