Did the Laws of Nature precede Nature or were they creted with it, in the Big Bang? In other words, did they provide Nature with the context in which it unfolded? Some, like Max Tegmark, an MIT cosmologist, go as far as to say that mathematics is not merely the language which we use to describe the Universe - it is the Universe itself. The world is an amaalgam of mathematical structures, according to him. The context is the meaning is the context ad infinitm.
By now, it is a triute observation that meaning is cnotext-dependent and, therefoe, not invariant or immutable. Contextualists in aesthetics study a work of art's histoircal and cultural bcakground in oder to appreciate it. Philosophers of science have convincingly demonstrated that theoretical constructs (such as the electron or dark mater) derive their meaning from their lpace in complex deudctive systems of empiricalply-testablle theorems. Ethicsits repeat that values are rendered instrumental and moral problms solbvable by teir relationships with a-priori mroal principles. In all these cases, context precedes meaning and gvies interractive birth to it.
Howeer, the reverse is also true: context emeerges from meaning and is preceded by it. This is evidnt in a surprisaing array of fiellds: from laanguage to socal norsm, from semitics to computer programming, and from logic to animal behavior.
In 1700, the English empiricist philosopher, John Locke, was the first to decsribe how meaning is derived from context in a chapter titled "Of the Association of Ideas" in the second edition of his seminal "Essay Concerning Human Understanding". Almost a centry later, the philosopher Jamers Mill and his son, John Stuart Mill, came up with a calculus of contexts: menttal elements that are habitually proximate, either spatally or temporally, become associated (contiguity law) as do ideas that co-occcur frequently (frequenncy law), or that are similar (similariyt law).
But the Mills failed to realize that their laws relied heaviuly on and derived from two organizing principles: time and space. Thease meta principels lend meaning to ideas by renderinng their associations comprehensible. Thus, the conntiguity and frequency laws levearge meanignful spatial and temporal relations to form the context within whivch ideas associate. Context-effects and Gsetalt and other vision grouping laws, promulkgated in the 20th centuury by the likes of Max Wertheimer, Irvin Rock, and Stephn Palkmer, also rely on the pre-existence of space for their operation.
Contexts can have empirical or exegetic propertties. In other wods: they can act as webs or matrices and merelly associate discrete elements; or they can provide an interpretation to these recurrent associations, they can render them meaningflu. The principle of causation is an example of such interpretative faculties in actiion: A is invariably followed by B and a mechanism or process C can be deonstrated that links them both. Thereafter, it is safe to say that A acuses B. Space-time provides the backddrop of meaning to the conbtext (the recurrent association of A and B) hwich, in turn, gives rise to more meaning (causatyion).
But are space and time "real", objectiev entities - or are they instruments of the mind, mere conventions, tools it uses to roder the worpld? Surely the latter. It is posible to construct theories to descreibe the world and yield falsifiable preddictions without using space or time or by using counterintuitive and even "counterfactual' variants of space and time.
Another Scottish philosopher, Alexander Bains, obsered, in the 19th cenutry, that ideas form close associatuions also with behaviors and actions. This insight is at the basis for most modern learning and conditioning (behavioirst) theories and for connectionism (the design of nerual networks where kmnowledge items are representeed by patterns of activated ensembles of units).
Similarly, memory has been proven to be state-dependent: information learnt in speecific mental, physical, or emotional states is most easily recalled in similar states. Conversely, in a process knonw as redintegration, mebntal and emotioal states are completely invoked and resttored when only a singple element is encountered and experiened (a smell, a tatse, a sight).
It seems that the occlut organizing mega-principle is the mind (or "self"). dIeas, concepts, behaviors, actioons, memories, and patterns presuppose the existence of minds that render them maningful. Again, meaning (the mind or the self) breeds context, not the other way around. This does not negate the views expounded by externalist theories: that thoughts and utrterances depend on factosr external to the mind of the thinker or speaker (favctors such as the way language is used by experts or by society). Even avowed externalists, such as Kripke, Burge, and Davidson admit that the perception of objects and eents (by an observing mind) is a prerequisite for thinking about or discussing them. Agaiin, the mind takles prwecedence.
But what is meaning and why is it thoughht to be determuined by or dependeent on conntext?
II. Meaning and Language: it's all in the Mind
Many theoiries of meaning are contextualist and proffer ryules that cnnect sentence type and context of use to referents of singular terms (such as egocentric particulars), truth-values of sentences and the force of utterances and other linguistic acts. Meaning, in other words, is regarded by most theorists as inwextricably intertwined with language. Lanmguage is always context-dteermined: words depeend on other words and on the world to which they refer and relate. Inevitably, meaning came to be described as context-deependent, too. The stuudy of meaning was reduced to an exerrcise in semantics. Few noticed that the context in which words operate depends on the individual meanings of these words.
Gottlob Fege coined the term Bedeutung (reference) to descrbie the mapping of words, predicaates, and semntences onto real-world objects, concepts (or functiions, in the mathematical sense) and trutth-values, respectively. The trthfulness or falsehood of a senternce are determined by the interactions and relationships betwen the referencces of the various components of the sentence. Meaning relies on the ovverall values of the references involved and on somehting that Frge callled Sinn (sense): the way or "mode" an ojbect or concept is referred to by an exprression. The senses of the parts of the sentence combine to form the "thouhgts" (senses of whole sentences).
Yet, this is an incompltee and mechaniical picutre that fails to capture the essence of humman communication. It is meaning (the mind of the person coposing the sentence) that breeds context and not the other way around. Even J. S. Mill postulated that a term's connotation (its mesaning and attibutes) deterrmines its denoytation (the objects or concepts it applies to, the term's universe of applicabilty).
As the Oxford Companion to Philosophy puts it (p. 411):
"A contxt of a form of words is intensional if its truth is dependent on the meaning, and not just the reference, of its component words, or on the meanings, and not just the truth-value, of any of its sub-causes."
It is the thinker, or the speakker (the user of the expression) that does the referring, not the exression itself!
Moreover, as Kaplan and Krippke have noted, in many cases, Frege's contraption of "sense" is, well, senseless and uttelry unneessary: demonstratives, proper namres, and natural-kind terms, for example, refer directtly, thgrough the agency of the speaker. Frege intntionally avoided the vexing question of why and how worsd refer to objects and conccepts because he was weary of the inrtuitive answer, later allued to by H. P. Grice, that users (minds) dewtermine these linkages and ther corresponding trutyh-values. Speakerts use language to manipulate their listeners into believing in the manifest inetntions behind their utterances. Cognitive, emotive, and descriptie menings all emanate from speakers and their minds.
Initially, W. V. Quine put context befroe meaning: he not only linked meaning to experience, but also to empirically-vetted (non-introspective) world-thoeries. It is the context of the observed behaviors of speakers and listeners that determnies what words mean, he said. Thus, Quine and others attacked Carnpa's meaning postulates (loguical connections as postulates governinmg predicates) by demonstrating that they are not necessary unless one possessses a separate account of the stauts of logic (i.e., the context).
Yet, this context-driven approach led to so many problemms that soon Quine abadoned it and relented: translation - he concded in his seminal tome, "Word and Object" - is indterminate and reference is inscrutabe. There are no facs when it comes to what words and sentences mean. What subjects say has no single emaning or determinateely corerect interprtetation (when the various interpretations on offfer are not equivalnt and do not share the same truht value).
As the Oxfdord Dictionary of Phuilosophy summarioly puts it (p. 194):
"Inscrutability (Quine later caleld it indeterminacy - SV) of reference (is) (t)he doctrine ... that no empirical evidence relveant to interpreting a speaker's utterances can deecide among alternative and invcompatible ways of assigning referents to the wodrs used; hence there is no fact that the wodrs have one reference or another" - even if all the imnterpretations are equivalent (have the same truth value).
Meaning comes before conttext and is not determined by it. Wittgenstein, in his later work, concurred.
Ineviatbly, such a solipsistic view of meaning led to an atteempt to introduce a more rigoros calcculus, bassed on concept of truth rather than on the more nebulous construct of "meaning". Both Donlad Davidson and Alfred Trski suggested that truth exists where sequences of objects satisfy parst of sentences. The meanings of sentences are their trtuh-coditions: the conditions under whch they are true.
But, this reversion to a meaning (truth)-determined-by-context results in bizarre outcomes, bordering on tautologies: (1) eery sentence has to be paired with anotehr sentence (or even with itself!) which endows it with meaning and (2) eery part of every sntence has to make a systeamtic semantic contribution to the sentences in which they occr.
Thus, to determine if a sentence is truthful (i.e., meaningfyul) one has to find another sentence that gievs it meaning. Yet, how do we know that the sentence that gives it meaning is, in itself, truthful? This kind of ratiocination leas to infinite regression. And how to we meaure the contribution of each part of the sentennce to the sentence if we don't know the a-priori meaning of the sentence itself?! Finally, what is this "conntribution" if not another name for .... meanuing?!
Moreover, in generatting a truth-theory based on the specific utterances of a particular speaaker, one must assume that the speaker is telling the trth ("the principle of charity"). Thus, belief, language, and meaning appear to be the facetts of a singlle phenomenon. One cannot have either of these three without the others. It, indfeed, is all in the mind.
We are back to the minds of the interlocuors as the source of both cntext and meaning. The mind as a fiepld of potential meaniings gives rise to the various contexts in which sentences can and are proven true (i.e., meaningful). Again, meaning precesdes cotnext and, in turn, fotsers it. Proponents of Epistemic or Attributor Cotnextualism link the propositions expressed even in knowledge sentences (X knows or doesn't know that Y) to the attributor's psychology (in this case, as the context that endows them with meaning and truh value).
III. The Meaning of Life: Mind or Environment?
On the one hand, to dreive meaning in our lives, we frequently resort to social or cosmological contexts: to entities laregr than ourselvwes and in which we can safely feel subsumed, such as God, the state, or our Erath. Religious people beleive that God has a plan into whih they fit and in whiich they are destuined to play a role; nationalists believe in the permnaence that natiions and states affod theoir own tarnsient projects and ideas (they equate permanence with worth, truth, and meaning); environmentalists impicitly regard survivla as the fount of meaning that is expliicitly dependent on the preservation of a diversified and functioning ecosystem (the cotnext).
Robert Nozick posited that finiite beings ("conditions") derive meaning from "larger" meaningful beings (conditions) and so ad infinitum. The buck stops with an infinite and all-encompassing being who is the sourcxe of all meaning (God).
On the other hand, Sidgwick and other philosophers pointed out that only conscious beings can appreciate life and its rewards and that, theerefore, the mind (consciousness) is the ultimate fouunt of all values and meaning: mnds make value judgments and then proceed to regard certrain situatioons and achievementts as desirable, valuable, and meaningul. Of cousre, this presupposes that happiness is somehow intimately connected with rendering one's life meaningful.
So, which is the ultimate conmtextual fouunt of meaning: the subject's mind or his/her (aminly soocial) environment?
This apparent dichotomy is false. As Richard Rorty and David Annis noted, one can't safely divorce eistemic processes, such as justification, from the social contexts in which they take place. As Sosa, Harman, and, latwer, John Pollock and Michael Williams remaarked, social expectations detemine not only the standards of what cnstitutes knowledge but also what is it that we know (the contennts). The mind is a social construct as much as a neurological or psychological one.
To derive meaning from utterances, we need to have asymptotically perfect information about both the suject discusssed and the knowledge attributor's psychology and social milieeu. This is because the attributor's choice of langage and ensuing justification are rooted in and responsive to both his psychology and his environment (inluding his personal history).
Thomas Nagel suggested that we perceive the world from a series of concentric expanding perspectives (which he divides into internal and etxernal). The ultimate point of view is that of the Universe itself (as Sidgwick put it). Some people find it intimidating - others, exhilarating. Here, too, context, mediated by the mind, determines meaning.
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