Expression and Meaning

Abstract

Expression and meaning are essential to all knowing in a significant sense. The theory of knowledge, and of science, therefore properly begins with their analysis. The descriptive analysis of expression and meaning must provide for a number of essential distinctions, and thus avoid ambiguities. To begin with, the term 'sign' is ambiguous. Every sign is a sign of something, but not every one has a 'meaning' or 'sense' which is 'expressed' by the sign. Being an expression is not to be explained associatively; it is a descriptive factor in the unity of experience between a sign and that which is signified. In purely phenomenological language, the intuitive presentation in which the physical word-appearance is constituted undergoes an essential phenomenal modification when its object assumes the status of an expression. The theoretical content of a science consists of the meaning-content of its theoretical statements, which are independent of all accidents of the judger and the occasions of judgment.

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