The Meaning of Meaning

ions have universal value, still requires the aid of instances, analogies and metaphors. The fewness of these abstractions saves the linguistic situation. If we employed, say, a hundred radically different types of connections (still a small number) the task of limiting the misunderstandings due to the variety in our references would have proved impossible. The fundamental connections being thus so few, the task of a theory of definition narrows itself down to the framing of a list. All possible referents are connected in one or other, or several, of these fundamental ways with referents which we can all succeed in identifying. We must not assume in referring to any given fixed point of agreement from which we find we are able to start that we do more than agree in identifying this. We must be careful to introduce our startingpoints in such a way that they do not raise fresh problems on their own account. That is to say, we must select them with reference to the particular universe of discourse in which our definienda fall. This, if we wish to indicate what we are referring to when we use the word 'Beauty' we should proceed by picking out certain starting-points, such as nature, pleasure, emotion, or truth, and then saying that what we refer to by 'Beauty' is anything lying in a certain relation (imitating nature, causing pleasure or emotion, revealing truth) to these points. How this may be done is shown in detail in the following chapter. When someone asks where Cambridge Circus is, we say, "You know where the British Museum is, and you know the way down Shaftesbury Avenue. if you go down Shaftesbury Avenue you will come to it." We may notePDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor THE THEORY OF DEFINITION (i) The starting-point must be familiar, and this can in practice only be guaranteed when it is either something with which we are directly, not symbolically acquainted (we do not merely know its name), or something with a wide and vague extension involving no ambiguity in the context in which it is used. Thus anyone in Kensington Gardens with a quarter of an hour to spare and a desire to view Cambridge Circus, if told that the said Circus is beyond Leicester Square, will postpone his visit as readily as if he were told (equally vaguely for another purpose) that it is in Soho. (2) For the stricter purposes we shall almost always require starting-points taken outside the speech situation; things, that is, which we can point to or experience. In this way we can utilize in our symbols the advantages of gesture languages mentioned above. Thus it is easier to point to an Antimacassar, when one of these safeguards is present, than to describe it. The importance of starting-points having thus been indicated, namely, to act as signs by which the required referents may be reached, we may now enumerate some of the main routes which are useful in finding our way about the field of reference. The sign-situations here involved, we must not forget, arise only through and upon many other simpler interpretations of the kind discussed in the preceding chapters. It is easy symbolically to make the situation which arises when we define appear simple, but if we realize the delicacy of the processes and adaptations required we shall not place overmuch trust in face-value comparisons of symbols (the usual method), but will attempt instead to consider what actually is happening. When in a discussion we are asked, 'Can you define your terms?' or complain 'I do not understand what you mean by the words you use,' we endeavour to discover some route by which understanding, :.e., identification of referents, may be secured. A person thoroughly acquainted with his subject PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor ii6 THE MEANING OF MEANING and with the tcchnique of Definition should be able, like the man up aloft in a maze, to direct travellers from all quarters to any desired point; and it may be added that to go up the ladder and overlook the maze is by far the best method of mastering a subject. Although in no case, as we have already seen, are relations to be regarded as part of the stuff of nature, and although when we appear to speak of them we are merely using them as tools, which does not involve actual referents corresponding to them, yet when they are so used there are various distinctions which it is desirable to make as a matter of convenience. At the beginning of our inquiry we described the relation which could be said to hold between symbol and referent as an imputed relation. To have described ¡t simply as an indirect relation would have omitted the important difference between indirect relations recognized as such, and those wrongly treated as direct. Thus the relation between grandfather and grandson is much more indirect than that between father and son, and can be analysed into two paternal relations-' being the father of the father (or mother) of.' Few people would suppose that a direct relation was here involved, since all family relations are highly indirect. But love, hate, friendship, sympathy, etc., are very commonly spoken of and regarded as direct, though on examination their indirectness is at once discovered. The whole of social psychology is, however, infested with imputed relations of this type, for an explanation of which such hypotheses as that of group-consciousness are often invoked The distinction between simple and complex relations on the other hand is somewhat different. Indirectness ¡s only one kind of complexity, and direct relations need not be simple. For Instance, the relation of 'being a benevolent uncle to' is complex; it is a blend of the two relations 'well disposed towards' and 'avuncularity.' The similarity between one pea PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor THE THEORY OF DEFINITION 117 and another is complex, being a blend of similarities in respect of greenness, hardness, edibility, etc. These considerations, elementary though they may appear, are of use whenever we have to treat of relations. The routes, then, which we seek in our endeavour to reach a desired referent are the obvious relations in which that referent stands to some known referent. The number of possible relations is indefinitely large, but those which are of practical use fortunately fall, as we have already explained, into a small number of groups. So that as a preliminary classification1 we get such a list as this :-