CHAPTER X

PRACTICAL MEANING

Each of the dimensions of meaning discussed thus far has a practical, opera­tional aspect.

Objects referred to by signs are known to us, and contribute to the forma­tion of meaning only to the extent to which they are created by practice and have a practical purpose. The fact that signs are the result of certain specific practical operations and are the point of departure for new operations is an essential part of their defmition. These two elements can be separated only temporarily in a theoretical analysis and examined separately, but in the subsequent synthesis they must necessarily be conceived as a unity.

Perceptions, thoughts, feelings, images, and impulses are not mere given events and processes as the automatic result of external and internal stimuli. They are also operations - perceiving, thinking, stimulating or restraining feelings, desires, etc. The more man advances, develops, throws off his primi­tiveness and animality, and becomes a social being, the more pronounced the creative element in even the most elementary forms of mental life. A developed, cultured, social man transforms his senses I: he creates an eye capable of noticing beauty, an eye which in a special field of phenomena is able to perceive details that usually remain completely unnoticed. He creates an ear able to listen to music, or to hear the words of foreign languages. (For anyone whose maternal language is not English, a great deal of time is required to develop an ear capable of hearing Shakespeare in the original. This is true even if one knows the language well enough to read and understand the plays - and this applies in general to listening to speech in a foreign language). If a man is able to create his senses, he is even more capable of developing his ability to interpret sense data: in viewing lightning an educated man sees an electric spark in the sky; the primitive sees a divine act. Repre­sentation, thought, judgment, and inference are unquestionably forms of conscious actiVity. Thus far we have defined a concept chiefly as a disposition (aSSOCiated with a particular symbol) to think of an object under particular conditions. A second possible interpretation of a concept, one put forth by the behaviorists, stresses the practical character of a concept: a concept is a set of rules for operating a symbol. In the case of feelings there seem to be the fewest elements characteristic of practice, such as: freedom, conscious

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320 ANALYSIS OF MEANING

choice, effort to overcome barriers. One might say that feelings arise spon­taneously - they overcome us more than we freely create them. But this is only partially correct. While our emotional life is partly determined by anatomical, physiological, and social factors, a developed man does not assume a completely passive stance toward his feelings. He exerts effort to control them - stimulating them, repressing them, sublimating or trans­forming them from one type to another. Moreover he creates in himself a personality whose elemental emotional reactions are different from those of primitives. Sensibility is not a mere given: it is created.

As to language, it may also be conceived as a structure of objects or a system of relations among signs. In speaking about linguistic meaning, it is this side that we have kept uppermost in mind. But language is above all the activity of speaking and writing, i.e. a system of operations with signs. In this sense linguistic practice is an integral ~omponent of almost every practical process. This holds true even for individual practice, to the extent that it is purposeful, planned, and organized. It is possible, of course, to act impulsively and instinctively, but activity in this sense is not characteristic of man. Man thinks about his activity, sets goals, chooses means, makes assumptions about possible problems and difficulties, and calculates conse­quences. Such thinking is not possible without language - as a form of thought, language is an integral component of planning activity, and thereby an element of the character of the practical operations to be undertaken on the basis of planning. Language plays an even greater role in social practice: here it is not just a factor which exerts an indirect influence, as a factor of planning, but serves directly in organizing the activity of individuals into an integral whole, either in cooperation or in other forms of social interaction.

When one conceives of practice in these broad terms it is understandable that, in addition to other dimensions of meaning, every sign has a practical meaning and that anything, apart from other conditions, that fails to meet this necessary condition cannot be considered a sign (or, accordingly, a symbol). What would follow from the statement that a sign has no practical meaning but that it possesses other dimensions of meaning? Absence of practical meaning implies the following:

1. No practical operations are relevant to the object designated by the sign. We do not know how to produce the object or what to do with it. Nor do we know what practical experience may test statements about it. In this case one must conclude that we do not really know the designated object and that we do not have any good reason to assert that it exists at all.

2. A concept expressed with the sign should be conceived in the traditional

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manner as a mental entity, as an element of a Cartesian spirit (res cogitans). Modern psychology can tell us nothing about the existence of such entities. When we are not thinking about marriage, there is no mental entity which would contain all the essential characteristics of marriage and would be localized somewhere in the cortex. One can only say that my cortex is so organized and functionally predisposed that it possesses a certain readiness for activity under certain particular conditions. The psychological correlate of this physiological process is the operation of thought - in this case thought of marriage as an objective institution. The linguistic correlate is constituted by the operations of interpreting and using the word 'marriage.'

3. Language should be comprehended only as a system of signs, as some­thing given. But we create signs and manipulate them. Accordingly even the most abstract mathematical symbol has practical meaning in the sense that one can do something with it to satisfy a theoretical purpose.

While the strongest conditions for considering an entity a sign is reference to an object or possession of the objective dimension of meaning, the weakest condition is possession of practical meaning, for all other dimensions imply it. Operational meaning is actually the fundamental component of meaning, just as practice is the fundamental category of cognition. And just as all the other epistemological categories - of objective reality on the one hand and of the subject on the other - may be obtained by an analysis of practice, so are all other dimensions of meaning contained implicitly in operational meaning. It is only by analyzing practical meaning that one can separate the other dimensions of meaning and explicitly express them. If we wished to define in most general and concise terms the complex phenomenon of meaning (at the price of precision), it would read as follows: the meaning of a sign is the practice by which it is created and which its use serves.

It should of course be remembered that by practice we ate referring not to active operations alone but also to the object transformed by the opera­tions, and to the (individual or social) subject that is acting.

Thus far our discussion has touched upon the following elements of practice, as broadly conceived:

(1) the relation of a sign to the designated object (objective meaning), (2) the relation of a sign to the mental dispositions associated with it

(mental meaning), and (3) the relation of a sign toward other signs (linguistic meaning). There are two elements we have not yet investigated, and they are: (4) the relation of a sign toward the operations by which it originated

and which it stimulates, and

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(5) the relation of a sign toward the community of subjects whose inter­action it affects.

These two elements are closely connected and should not be separated in an analysis of meaning, for from the very outset we have conceived of meaning as a social phenomenon, and only operations of a social character are relevant to it.

Accordingly in this chapter we will discuss practical meaning as social practical meaning, with the following defmition:

The practical meaning of a sign is its relation to a set of social operations which its use implies (or which are relevant to it).

To clarify this definition we must derme more precisely three of its concepts: (1) operation, (2) social, and (3) the relationship of implication or relevance between a sign and the corresponding operations.

(1) Operation we take to mean the conscious, purposeful alteration of a state of affairs. It therefore follows, first, that (for our purposes) we have restricted the concept solely to the activity of conscious subjects and to activity leading to the attainment of a goal. Automatic, unconscious reactions are excluded from the scope of the concept of operation. Thus the practical meaning of the symbols which psychoanalysis investigates is not in the relationship toward unconscious processes which lead to neurotic symptoms, lapses and dreams, but in the relation to conscious operations which lead to the establishment of connections between unconscious processes and outward behavior. For example the practical meaning of the symbol of forgetting names is the set of operations by which one may determine that people who forget names of people feel antipathy toward them.

Second, we have in mind both physical and mental operations, for both may be characterized as an alteration in the state of a physical object (in the former case) or of a mental state (in the latter). Since physical operations are methodologically more accessible to study and can be known directly; one should attempt to define practical meaning in terms of them whenever possible. But this is not always possible. The practical meaning of a meta­physical statement or a methematical formula which has not yet found a use does not consist in any sort of physical operations. Yet they are not lacking in all practical meaning - mental activity is needed to imagine what such symbols are attempting to communicate to us. The construction of ideal objects, such as monads, ether, or Kant's transfinite sets is unquestion­ably one type of practice (mental practice).

In keeping with the analysis of practice presented in Part I, we may

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distinguish the following six types of operations: (l) the production, des­truction, or transformation of objects; (2) the establishment or elimination of social cohesion; (3) written or oral operation with signs (speech); (4) the creation and interpretation of experience; (5) evaluation; and (6) thinking

(2) To say that an operation is social means that there is a community of subjects who participate in carrying it out and exercise influence upon others. A social operation is reciprocal if the component parts carried out by some individuals play a mutually stimulating role upon the activity of other individuals in the community. If this is not the case an operation is nonreciprocal. For example a telephone conversation is a reciprocal operation as two collocutors in alternation stimulate verbal reactions by the other. But speech via radio is not primarily a reciprocal operation (although in some cases an audience may reply to a speaker by writing letters, voicing criticism, etc.).

Charles Morris distinguished three types of reciprocal behavior: coopera­tive, competitive, and symbiotic, according to whether the behavior of the individual organisms aided or prevented others in attaining a common goal, or merely stimulated others to activity in the absence of a common goal. (Morris cited the example of an animal which draws the attention of another to the presence of food in sufficient quantities to satisfy the hunger of both.)2

Morris' classification may be adopted, and accordingly we may distinguish cooperative, competitive, and symbiotic operations.

(3) When we say that sign A implies a set of practical operations B or that a set of practical operations B is relevant to sign A, we are expressing one of the following relations between A and B.

First of all B may be a set of physical operations by which one produces, modifies, or eliminates a set of real objects. If thereby a social need is met, sooner or later society will create a sign (A) by which to refer to a given type of real objects, implying the practical operations (B) necessary to create or modify them. For example to a primitive the word 'fire' meant an object that could be produced only by long and agonizing activity - rubbing two sticks of wood together - and thus had to be kept constantly lit so as not to go out. To twentieth-century man the word refers to an object which can be produced in a twinkling by striking a match. What we have termed the objective and practical meanings of reality are inseparable: the very con­ception of an object encompasses the appropriate practical activity.

But this activity is not always that of creating or modifying an object. It may also be separation from it (if it is dangerous), taking action to neutralize

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its effect, utilizing its useful effects, measuring it, testing its properties, etc. The practical component of meaning is variable and depends significantly on the situation and the intention of whoever uses the sign (the intention is manifest through a gesture, emphasis, facial expression, the linguistic context, etc.).

In spite of all these variables, in all instances of this kind practical meaning is constituted by the physical operations we perform in one of the various possible practical relations toward real objects; thereby we react to the external situation, and alter it in accordance with our needs.

Mental operations constitute another component of practical meaning: these are operations we perform in order to comprehend the meaning of a sign and in order to know that object it refers to. These operations are, first and foremost, conceiving an object and testing its existence with the organs of sensation, or in other words relating conceptions of the designated object to practical experience.

For example we would not have any word in our language designating infinite objects if meaning were always constituted only by physical opera­tions. All physical operations lead us into particular relations solely with fmite objects. We arrive at the concept of infmity only by imagining the unlimited extension of physical operations, by adding new units, dividing parts into their component parts, by continuing decrease without ever reaching zero.

We see, then, that not even all real objects (the infmite is real) can be defmed practically by physical operations alone. This applies particularly to ideal and imaginary objects (absolutely empty space, the mathematical pendulum, the first man on Mars). All these objects are constructed by our mental operations; they are not given in reality (although elements of real objects have entered into these mental constructions). Of course the question arises of how far we can go in our mental constructions without crossing the boundary of comprehension. What in fact is the criterion of compre­hensibility of the meaningofa sign?

The traditional viewpoint is: the meaning of a sign is comprehensible if one can form a representation of it (an image or idea in the Lockian sense). Of course in that case it would be necessary for the designated object to be actually constructed by a limited number of mental operations. In modern science this traditional view is held by those who recognize meaning in an abstract theory only if one can build an appropriate model, as for example a model of the atom, a model of the relativity of space and time, etc. In theoretical methamatics a similar view was advanced by the intuitionist

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school (Brouwer, Heyting, Weil): recognition is accorded only those mathe­matical entities that can be consJructed by a fmite number of actual opera­tions. Since this does not apply to infmite sets, the intuitionists disputed the value of Kantor's theory of transfinite sets.

The opposing, formalistic point of view is that the meaning of a sign is comprehensible if one can explicitly cite the operations by which it is constructed, so that anyone else can carry them out and arrive at identical results. Kantor could defend his transfmite sets by arguing that they are obtained by the familiar operations of addition and multiplication with infinite sets. The symbol w2 would have a defmite meaning and would be comprehensible by virtue of the fact that it is obtained by the simple operation of multiplying an infinite set by itself.

The traditional viewpoint that sees the criterion of comprehensibility in the possibility of forming an image of an object is very attractive. Pictures, diagrams, and models greatly facilitate understanding because our abstractions are directly connected to certain elements of the material world perceptible to the senses, of which the image is formed. But an unconditional and univer­sal requirement for them would introduce too much restriction into the language of science and would eliminate certain extremely fruitful concepts such as 'curved space,' 'particle-wave,' etc.

On the other hand, if the explicit formulation of all operations necessary to construct an ideal object mentally were a sufficient criterion of com­prehensibility and if we could say that everyone who had succeeded in performing all necessary operations with a sign in accordance with directions had understood the meaning of a sign, we could have to acknowledge that the computers have the capacity of comprehension, since they are capable of doing this - even more rapidly and precisely than man.

In effect man comprehends a symbol by foreseeing the practical con­sequences of its use, with some of these consequences necessarily being possible physical operations with real objects. The fact that someone had comprehended a meaning is evident in his ability to explain it to others. (It is not sufficient only to be able to use the appropriate sign.) When physicists tell us that the a 'hyperon' is a particle heavier than a proton and comprised of a neutron and a meson, we comprehend the explanation, assuming that a means exists to measure these particles (like all other objects possessing mass) and that the particles are comprised of smaller and lighter parts. The basis of our comprehension and our ability to explain to others are here the practical operations of measuring and dividing the material objects we encounter day to day. Of course these are imagined phy~ical operations -

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at least a part of the conception of hyperon and of every other abstract concept necessarily reduces to such operations.

This requirement is less severe than the demand for pictures and models. A model is a unit comprised of real elements perceived by the senses. Each of these elements without exception is known to us thanks to certain physical operations. For example in the Rutherford-Bohr model of the atom there is not a single element we could not construct physically. The Heisenberg-Dirac conception of the atom cannot be presented in a model. All we can say about it is that certain objects which have models and which can be constructed physically logically follow from it.

Thus far we have spoken only about comprehension and the criterion of comprehensibility, rather than about cognition and criteria of cognition. The latter are more severe because, first, they entail actual performance (rather than a possibility) of the appropriate physical operations. What is more important, the physical operations must be such that the given abstract symbol is a necessary condition of its explanation. In order to comprehend the hyperon, it is sufficient to represent to oneself the division of a tiny particle into two smaller ones whose weight can still be measured. We can comprehend something about an object whose actual existence we do not know. Knowledge, however, implies belief in the existence of what we know, consequently it implies practical verification of the results we achieve by thought. One can speak about cognition of the object referred to by the term 'hyperon' only after one has actually carried out a very special type of physical operation whose result can be explained only by assuming the existence of hyperon. One must cause the disintegration of the nucleus of an atom in a Wilson chamber in order to record it and see that portion of the photograph which, according to our present knowledge, cannot be intepreted except as the disintegration of a heavy, complex particle into a neutron and a meson. We know when we are able not only to use the appro­priate symbol correctly and to explain its meaning, but also when we can list the operations by which the existence of the designated object has been verified.

We see, then, that without mental and empirical operations we cannot speak about meaning at all, and it is via meanings that we know objects and interpret signs. They are based upon physical operations. An essential component of our experience is the change we bring about in objects by our physical activity. We perceive first and foremost what we have had to create or what we have had to struggle against in order to satisfy our basic practical needs. It is a naive realistic illusion that we perceive objects just

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as they are given, in themselves. We perceive what we need in what exists in itself, drawing very subtle distinctions in that area of reality which is of vital significance for meeting our goals, ignoring things in which we are not interested. 3

With operationally comprehended objects, designated by symbols, we carry out more or less complex mental operations and often depart quite decisively from the field of reality. And yet, even when we are quite sure of the nonexistence of objects obtained by these abstract operations, we comprehend them, provided that among their logical consequences there are certain objects yielded by physical operations. In other words, there must exist a logical connection between abstract constructions and physical opera­tions. This connection is much stricter when we wish not only to comprehend meaning but rather to establish truth. Physical operations must be a necessary consequence of abstract constructions and must be actually performed.

Linguistic operations are a special type of operation within practical meaning. In one aspect they are physical, for they consist in the production of written or oral signs in speech. In another aspect they are mental: whoever uses them wishes to transmit information, to express feelings, or stimulate activity. Whoever listens to or reads them exerts effort to interpret correctly and to understand the intention of the speaker or writer.

Language is by no means a dead, uniform system of signs (la langue), but a vital, concrete, specified practice of the operation with signs by particular people in space and time (Ie lang age ). The meaning of a sign is not exhausted by its structural characteristics, i.e. by its normal relation to other signs. Even when we take account of the linguistic context in which a sign is used (rather than just the definition), we still do not have a full picture of meaning. Meaning is not concrete until we take into account the entire practical situation in which communication takes place, i.e. the natural and social environment, the cultural background of the society, the interests and inten­tions of the subject using the sign, and so on.

Accordingly the practical meaning of a sign is not constituted solely of the physical operations by which men modify certain real objects or by the mental Qperations by which meaning is created, understood, and known; it is also constituted by the more or less variable uses of the sign in various linguistic contexts and in various life situations.

We may say, then, that one knows the practical meaning of a sign if the following conditions have been met:

First of all, one should know what can be done with the sign itself, and how it can be used in various circumstances. Knowledge of this dimension

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of practical meaning does not imply the necessary existence of the appropriate conscious processes: when we program the rlies for the use of a sign, a machine is capable of using it correctly even though it does not understand the programmed rules or the meaning of the signs.

Secondly, one sholid know what kind of mental and empirical operations can be carried out with a concept (or proposition), so that one can under­stand it, explain it to others and discover whether it is adequate or applicable. Comprehension includes consciousness of a possible object, the ability to explain some of its essential properties and relations, but not necessarily a belief in its actual existence. This is what cognition entails. But nevertheless one can comprehend and know, i.e. be capable of explaining the properties of an object and citing the physical operations that serve to verify it, without knowing most of its practical purposes. It is one thing to know how to achieve a chemical synthesis, and something else to know how it may be used.

Finally the full practical meaning of a sign is known only by one who knows all the variety of uses of the object designated by it and all the variety of human needs it can satisfy. Here we can, once again, distinguish scientific, theoretical knowledge of various practical applications and knowledge which grows out of one's own practical experience, accompanied by a capacity to actually perform all the necessary physical operations.

Ideal knowledge of the meaning of a sign entails all three elements; it is of particular importance that the ability to use a sign properly and the ability to explain its meaning be coupled with the ability to put the designated object to practical use. Only in this manner can the indispensable harmony of theory and practice be achieved.

NOTES

lOne can find extraordinary ideas about the creation of the senses in Marx's Economic and Philosophiwl Manuscripts. 2 Charles Morris, Signs, Language and Behavior, New York, 1946, pp. 32-3. 3 Whorf, for example, asserts that the Eskimos have numerous words in their language for the various types of snow. On the other hand the Aztecs had no separate word for it, but used the same word to refer to cold, ice, and snow. Sapir cited a mass of data to prove the thesis that the vocabulary of a society clearly reflected the physical and social environment surrounding it. Also, the Nootka of the northwest coast of America have a highly develoepd vocabulary for all aquatic fauna, while desert tribes have numerous terms for various edible nuts and berries. (Language, Thought and Culture, ed. Henle, Ann Arbor, 1958, p. 5.)