MEANING and IDENTITY: A QUEST for ONESELF Summary The book, essentially, is an attempt to free semantics from the socalled semantics of language by considering meaning as part of our understanding of the world and ourselves, i.e. as part of what, on other occasions (see e.g. Rolandas Pavilionis. Conceptual Systems, Belief and Knowledge. In: Parret, H. (ed.) On Believing: Epistemological and Semiotic Approaches. Berlin N.Y.: Walter de Gruyter, 1983; Meaning and Conceptual Systems, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1990), the author called individual conceptual systems. Thus questions related to the status and identity of meaning, traditionally viewed as part of the semantics of language, are reformulated here as questions related to the status and identity of individual conceptual systems, reflecting nonverbal and verbal cognitive experience of an individual and constituting the (?) meaning of I. Continuous, or continuously built, systems of meaning, or concepts, are taken to result from the interpretation of signsobjects of the world, including ourselves as objects of interpretation, that is, as objects of our own as well as someone s interpretation. Identity of meanings, finally, is reformulated as a question of the identity of a conceptual system, including ourselves as bearers of conceptual systems. The approach proposed to the analysis of meaning has been based on the following assumptions: 1. Understanding of language and of the world presupposes perception of them. This, in turn, implies not only perceptual but also conceptual singling out of an object of perception from other objects by attributing a meaning, or concept, to the object as its semantic representation, as its conceptual picture. Such 1
semantic representations are treated as intentional states of consciousness (mind). The perceived (conceived) objects are signs, and the meaning attributed to them is information the subject of perception disposes of them. Configurations of such signs objects form texts of the world. 2. Meanings of any new signs objects are built up, or generated, on the basis of meanings the subject already possesses of signs objects. The latter serve both as semantic analysers of the perceived (conceived) object and as components of the meaning or structures of meanings constructed this way, i.e. as part of a resulting system of meanings, or conceptual system, of an individual. Such a system serves as basis for interpretation of signs objects, whatever their nature, i.e. as basis of comprehending, understanding them. To understand, then, is, first and foremost, to interpret in a definite conceptual system which may embrace any information about existent or nonexistent states of affairs in the real or any alternative world, including information about the individual, the subject and the object of understanding, herself/himself. Thus to be able to understand any sign object, including the individual herself/himself, is to be able to build a definite structure of meanings (concepts) that is connected by a relation of interpretation with other structures of the system. 3. This property of connectedness, or interconnectedness, of the concepts of a conceptual system, the holistic nature of interpretation, filling in the gaps, building bridges between concepts and thus overcoming distances, differences, contrasts, any other kind of incompatibility (itself a source of meaning), constitutes the essential nature of meaning and understanding, determines the intentional nature of any conceptualization of the world and any judgments about it expressing knowledge, beliefs as well as any other intentional attitude of a bearer of the conceptual system. Signs objects thus interpreted, or understood, may be of any nature, natural or artificial, concrete or abstract: sounds that form language, noise or music; arguments and theorems that form proofs; colours that form pictures; shapes and volumes that form physical bodies; birth and death which form life or, rather, a fundamental incompatibility of human life as an object of understanding, in short, any real or imaginary signsobjects as objects of interpretation. 2
4. Linguistic signs are perceived and comprehended as any signs of the world. However, the fact that they, in the process of learning a language, are used to designate other signs objects already interpreted in a conceptual system, i.e. they are linked with meanings already attributed to these signs objects, makes them signs of signs both interpreted in the same conceptual system. The assumption of preverbal (i.e. prior to the initial language introduction) interpretation of signsobjects is not only valid logically and empirically: linguistic signs could not be introduced, i.e. interpreted, in a conceptual system as signs of signs unless the system already disposed of meanings (concepts) of signs objects to which linguistic signs, as signs objects themselves, are associated to. This assumption implies that, alongside a physical, genetic heritage, an individual comes to the world with a specific semantic heritage, a sort of a semantic endowment that allows the individual to perceive and conceive the world, its signsobjects prior to language introduction. Our semantic existence by far transcends our physical, biological existence. 5. Because of the interconnectedness of the concepts of a conceptual system and its capacity to retain previous conceptualisations as the memory of it, the whole conceptual system is involved in the interpretation of a sign, and this is the sole possibility for the sign to express meaning. It is in this that indexicality as an essential feature of a sign consists: the sign s meaning is an integral part of the whole conceptual system; no verbal formulation can in principle exhaust the contents associated with it. Language does not express any meaning in itself that exists independently of conceptual systems. One and the same language can serve for the further building up and symbolic representation of the content of different conceptual systems. Any language, including natural language, is interpreted in conceptual systems, although and this is not to be underestimated such interpretation largely draws on meanings constructed by means of a natural language. 6. An individual, as a bearer, a subject of a conceptual system is not just an uninterested interpreter of linguistic and nonlinguistic texts, like a mirror pointed to the world, intentionally orientated, although indifferent to what is reflected in it. The need, initially physical, later intellectual, to orientate oneself in the world, to find her or his place and way in it, compels her/him to select from the set of texts 3
encountered and interpreted those which she/he accepts and which are not only meaningful but also significant, represent a value, an interest to her/him. It is in this respect that individual conceptual systems may be more or less similar depending on the cognitive experience and the needs of orientation in the world of respective individuals. 7. It is in this interplay of meanings and their structures coforming individual conceptual systems that subjects of conceptual systems arise, interpreting signs objects of the world, accepting or rejecting them, forming their beliefs, knowledge as well as other intentional attitudes with respect to signs objects, evaluating them, acting one way or another with regard to them. By their origin and status in the conceptual system such subjects may be called semantic subjects in (a relative) difference to physical subjects : together they constitute what is called individuals. So what is the meaning of I when it refers to the bearer, the owner, the subject of an individual conceptual system? The principle of the traditional semantic analysis as applied to I is, generally, that of discerning sense ( the speaker, the first person, the author ) from reference of I. The latter is considered to be dependent on the external circumstances, or context, of the use of I, thus the pragmatic aspect being taken into account. Such a context, apparently, does not necessarily belong but to the real world. However, besides the external, there are internal circumstances, the internal context of the use of I. It is this internal context of the use of I that makes the object of I the subject, or the object subject, of a conceptual system. This could not be said of any other pragmatic term (like here, now etc.): the use of them does not require any internal context. Indeed, by using I one refers to an off branching continuous scale of I points related and coordinated by physical and semantic differences. In other words, physical and semantic differences between I points ( I uttered at a certain space time point and I uttered at another space time point) may range from, relatively, minimal to maximal and cover up different contents of I otherness. The interconnectedness of physical and semantic subjects fixed by I allows us to consider an individual as a constantly changing whole and to speak about a reciprocal, interactive influence of a physical subject upon a semantic one, and vice 4
versa. This interaction may have different consequences, including the most radical ones, to the status and existence of an individual as well as to her/his relationships to other individuals. It is generally accepted that physical identity, or continuity, of an individual is determined genetically. On the other hand, the notion of a physical subject obviously transcends the limits of the real, physical world: firstly, one may consider an actual individual in other possible alternative circumstances, including those belonging to other possible worlds; secondly, one may consider individuals, existing in other possible worlds and donated with, or determined by, different physical properties. This way a symbolically fixed subject as an I point may give rise to a wide variety of identities of an individual. A semantic subject, arising in an individual conceptual system, although related to a physical subject of the individual, is not identical with the physical subject because it is characterized differently; moreover, changes in the individual conceptual system are not identical to physical changes of the individual. On the other hand, the aforementioned heritage principle applies to both of them: in one case one may speak about the genetic heritage, in the other case one is entitled to speak about the semantic heritage. A conceptual system is no tabula rasa: from the very start it is ready to interpret both nonverbal and verbal texts. This is why a semantic subject arising in a conceptual system is not just the result of texts interpreted by the system. As in a case of a physical subject, so in the case of a semantic subject, the semantic subject has its own genesis, roots and story. In analogy to a physical subject, a semantic subject undergoes changes and transformation as a result of interaction with signs objects of the real or some other possible world, including other individuals as well as with a physical subject of, relatively, the same individual: I say relatively, for the individual in question is as much a changing whole of its constituent physical and semantic parts. However, this analogy appears to be rather shaky if one looks deeper into the nature and structure of a semantic subject. The development of a semantic subject does not necessarily correlate with that of a physical subject. I uttered now, in a childhood, in youth, in mature age: what individual, what 5
physical and semantic subjects does it refer to in every of the individualʹs stages, in every of I utterances and in all of them taken together? And what does together mean in this case? With as much ground we may paradoxically say that in its own development a semantic subject is not identical to itself, for there is and can be no unique semantic subject as such: there are many past or future semantic subjects of, relatively, the same individual, the one now denoted by I. It could be said, of course, that now may be taken to comprise any scope of time, eventually, all stages of an individual, i.e. the semantic subject as such. However, even in such a case it is impossible to circumvent the principle constraint: the incompatibility of different states of the individual in different stages of her/his existence. A radical transformation of a semantic subject, as a consequence of radical changes in a conceptual system, cannot unconditionally be paralleled to a radical physical transformation when a physical subject is being contemplated in different possible worlds wherein she/he acquires or loses particular properties, logically incompatible in the same world, but compatible both logically and physically when viewed in different possible worlds. This way we may conditionally speak both about a variety of physical subjects related one to another in, relatively, the same individual, about a variety of likewise related semantic subjects and about a variety of ways physical and semantic subjects are related in, relatively, the same individual. A question may arise: if, in the case of the identification of a physical subject one may rely at least on two criteria, the genetic and/or the naming, baptizing a physical subject (giving a name or a description to a physical subject in the real or in some other possible world and then following her/him in whatever of their changes and transformations), then which criteria apply for identifying semantic subjects? The short answer is: memory, i.e. beliefs, knowledge and other intentional attitudes retained in a conceptual system, to be more precise: beliefs, knowledge as well as other intentional attitudes about beliefs, knowledge and other intentional attitudes contained in a conceptual system. This is the kind of information about the information related to the individualʹs past pictures of the world, including past pictures of the 6
individual herself/himself that allows to speak about different already non existent or not yet existent (this depends on whether we speak about the past or the future) semantic subjects assembled by means of memory into, relatively, the same semantic subject. A change in a semantic subject as a result of changes in an individual conceptual system as well as the principle of interpretation which determines both the nature and functioning of the conceptual system do not allow us to consider in absolute terms notions of meaning, meaningfulness, belief, knowledge and other intentional attitudes that characterize the cognitive capacity and activity of an individual and make up the substance of the contemporary philosophy of language and of various theories of meaning. The contents of I develops and discloses itself together with the constantly changing individual conceptual system that reflects the whole spectrum of an intellectual and physical experience of an individual. By and large, the contents of I represents a variety of non verbal and verbal texts the individual encounters, interprets and creates, texts that create the individual herself/himself. Therefore it may be said that we are, partially at least, as much different as different are the texts, which we come upon and try to interpret. The greater a variety of our semantic heritage, the greater the variety of our semantic experiences, the more different we are. The more similar our physical and semantic experiences are, the more similar are non verbal and verbal texts we interpret and sometimes become victims of manipulation, the more similar we are as individuals, despite our physical differences. Our changing and therefore so difficult to define I, running over a network of interconnected I points, our I represented by the whole continuous scale of off branching I points, the different lines, or directions, of their development makes any attempt to present the meaning of I without a necessary reference to a conceptual system irrelevant and unacceptable. A trip to oneself starts, in every particular case, by a different point of departure. Different usually are our transient stations. Different are our physical and semantic points of arrival. But the greatest wonder and secret consists not in external differences of the various subjects referred to by the I. The genuine wonder and secret are our own, internal 7
differences of the contents of I, what I means in different stages of the trip to the world and to ourselves when, despite changes in our bodies and minds, we still use the same I. A trip to oneself may be conceived in two different ways: looking back, that is reconstructing the contents of I and looking forward, that is constructing contents of I. In the latter case a trip to oneself is simultaneously a trip to the world. Alas, a trip to the world is not necessarily a trip to oneself: the two directions intercrops, but do not necessarily coincide. Even far away on a trip to the world, one may not have made a single step to oneself and may remain rather far away from oneself. To conclude, we should rather not so easily be misled by the socalled uniquely identifying reference of I : in fact what we always have to do with is a most wide spectrum of the references of I. One has always to do with the relative identity of I, or, what amounts to the same, with the relative non identity of I. This way a world made up of clear cut individuals, our everyday familiar world becomes a world where indefinite individuals act, communicate, operate and cooperate, and question our understanding of ourselves, our morals and individual responsibility. Such an unusual vision of the world and of ourselves does not encroach upon the settled order of things in our real pragmatic world. However, it allows us to take another, alternative view of the world and of ourselves, and of our own identity. 8