The word ‘meaning’ has only recently become meaningful for me.

[coberst]

The word ‘meaning’ has only recently become meaningful for me.

 

In school I would ask Sister (I was raised as a Catholic and was taught by nuns) “what does this word mean” and she would give me the dictionary definition of the word. Until a few years ago the word ‘meaning’ had only one meaning and that was the dictionary definition.

 

What has changed in my world is that I have begun studying cognitive science, which has led me down many different intellectual paths in search for answers to many questions that has arisen as a result of my studies.

 

SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) as described in “Philosophy in the Flesh” by Lakoff and Johnson, details a new paradigm for cognitive science. This new paradigm for cognitive science might be called the embodied mind.

 

This new paradigm constructs a world view based upon the empirical evidence that there is no duality of mind/body but that we are in fact an embodied mind.

 

The foundation of SGCS cognitive science rests on the concept of meaning. The concept of understanding rests on meaning, and the concepts of truth, created reality, knowledge, objectivity, and subjectivity follows as a result of our understanding.

 

I did a Google search for quotes about meaning and I will share a few of these with you.

 

http://thinkexist.com/quotations/meaning/

 

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

Hermann Hess

 

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.”

Anais Nin quotes (French born American Author of novels and short stories, 1903-1977)

 

“The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.”

Carl Gustav Jung quotes (Swiss psychiatrist, Psychologist and Founder of the Analytic Psychology, 1875-1961)

 

“Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.”

Alfred Adler quotes (Austrian psychiatrist whose influential system of individual psychology introduced the term)

 

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend - or a meaningful day.”

Dalai Lama quotes

 

“The essence of intelligence is skill in extracting meaning from everyday experience.”

“Meaning is not what you start with, but what you end up with”

Peter Elbow quotes

 

“Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life”

Elie Wiesel quotes (Romanian born American Writer. Nobel Prize for Peace in 1986. b.1928)

 

“What we see depends mainly on what we look for.”

“What we see depends upon what is meaningful to us.”

John Lubbock

 

Meaning is what touches us in a fundamental way

coberst

 

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.”

Hermann Hesse

 

“Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.”

Chuck Palahniuk quotes (American freelance Journalist, Satirist and Novelist. b.1961)

 

“If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it”

Isadora Duncan quotes (American Dancer, best known as one of the founders of modern dance. 1877-1927)

 

“I miss the meaning of my own part in the play of life because I know not the parts that others play”

Rabindranath Tagore quotes (Indian Poet, Playwright and Essayist, Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, 1861-1941)

 

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it [is] he who is asked.”

Viktor Frankl quotes (Austrian psychiatrist and psychotherapist. 1905-1997)

[Michaelangelica]

Yep that's about what I remember from my linguistics essay on "The Meaning of Meaning" I hated doing it. I may have got a C+

This new paradigm constructs a world view based upon the empirical evidence that there is no duality of mind/body but that we are in fact an embodied mind.

Don't many psychologists now see the brain as not the total & only cognition centre? The body is seen, especially the spinal cord and the gut (with more nerve endings than the brain?), as being equally important to the brain.

 

Meaning in history is another ball game. What is historical truth and fiction? How do you know?

[Thunderbird]