The meaning of "meaning"

Does meaning exist in our minds or is it something that can be substantiated in the physical world?

This is a big question and philosophers have struggled with it for a long time. The philosophical problem that I am asking is, "Are there symbols that have inherent meaning, or are symbols imbued with meaning ex post facto?" Is meaning intrinsic or extrinsic? Is it layered onto things or is it natively there?

In the extreme physical realist interpretation of reality, the universe has no intrinsic meaning and the only thing that persists after observers stop observing is matter. In such a universe, all meaning, text and subtext is non-existent.

Duality is the atom of meaning

Notice what happens though when one introduces thought into a universe. Suddenly, relationships between masses in the universe become apparent to minds with pattern recognition capabilities. And now, one can begin to ascribe meaning to observations. In my opinion, the critical feature of meaning is perceiving duality in an object. Note, that I have not said anything about the realism of this duality, just that it must be perceived. Duality is a pre-requisite for meaning. Comprehension of the physical nature of the event and the higher level meaning must coexist in an observer's mind simultaneously.

I think a few examples will help illustrate my point. The observation that mass, as such, exists in the universe is not enough for meaning. Seeing the thing is not sufficient. A phagocyte "sees" a bacteria invader and engulfs it, but I would hesitate to claim that it attributes some meaning to the engulfing or experiences it on any other level. Similarly, a thermostat "perceives" that it is "too cold," but could we honestly claim that it attributes any meaning to the phenomenon?

I would argue that in the above examples, we must say that those may be interesting relationships to an observer, but the objects in the system relate to one another in a physical sense and do not invoke any higher level relationships as far as they are concerned.

What do we mean when we claim "meaningfulness"?

The critical point in this discussion is that while we of course must follow the rules of physical objects since we ourselves are physical in nature, the really interesting stuff, the stuff of consciousness and humanity, occurs at a higher level. That is to say, while we can perceive the physical reality of a mark on a page, or the digital readout on a thermostat, meaning is derived from the fact that we perceive simultaneously the dual nature of the mark or the readout and the semantic content of the message.

Does duality exist in the physical reality of nature?

Here is where it starts to get pretty interesting. We certainly know from double-slit experiments that electrons, photons and other quantum objects have duality. This illustration, by Douglas Hofstadter, is the best that I know that artistically captures the multifaceted relationship between the perception of duality by an observer of 'light' as both a 'particle!' and a 'wave!'!*


The fascinating thing here is related to the sheer number of ways this statement can be read. As read by an English speaking observer, the message has at least three levels. 1. As marks on a page, 2. As a sentence about light being a wave and 3. As a sentence about light being a particle. But there are more! 4. The observer can experience this as a statement about the duality of light. 5. She can experience it as an analogy about the true nature of light, which has a certain existence initially (as just marks on a page) until an observer, much like herself, makes an observation and the marks become a particle or wave or both. 6. Now inside the message (via 5), she can see the statement as a commentary on the nature of observation and art and meaning and it expands from here!

We can go on from here, but it is interesting to note that once multiple levels are allowed/perceived, as they must be for meaning to be derived in the first place, that very over-determinism, which is a pre-requisite for meaning itself, necessarily obfuscates the message's meaning.

* I obtained Douglas Hofstadter's drawing from the wikipedia entry for ambigrams. These are amazing pieces of art, for which, Douglas Hofstadter coined the term. I hope this short essay will be an impetus for you to check out ambigrams further and read one of his books that feature them. I recommend Metamagical Themas and Gödel Escher Bach.