Meaning (philosophy) in the context of "Semantics"

Semiotics is the study of signs. It is an interdisciplinary field that examines what signs are, how they form sign systems, and how individuals use them to communicate meaning. Its main branches are syntactics, which addresses formal relations between signs, semantics, which addresses the relation between signs and their meanings, and pragmatics, which addresses the relation between signs and their users. Semiotics is related to linguistics but has a broader scope that includes nonlinguistic signs, such as maps and clothing.

Signs are entities that stand for something else, like the word cat, which stands for a carnivorous mammal. They can take many forms, such as sounds, images, written marks, and gestures. Iconic signs operate through similarity. For them, the sign vehicle resembles the referent, such as a portrait of a person. Indexical signs are based on a direct physical link, such as smoke as a sign of fire. For symbolic signs, the relation between sign vehicle and referent is conventional or arbitrary, which applies to most linguistic signs. Models of signs analyze the basic components of signs. Ferdinand de Saussure's dyadic model identifies a perceptible image and a concept as the core elements, whereas Charles Sanders Peirce's triadic model distinguishes a sign vehicle, a referent, and an effect in the interpreter's mind.

Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction between sense and reference. Sense is given by the ideas and concepts associated with an expression while reference is the object to which an expression points. Semantics contrasts with syntax, which studies the rules that dictate how to create grammatically correct sentences, and pragmatics, which investigates how people use language in communication. Semantics, together with syntactics and pragmatics, is a part of semiotics.

Lexical semantics is the branch of semantics that studies word meaning. It examines whether words have one or several meanings and in what lexical relations they stand to one another. Phrasal semantics studies the meaning of sentences by exploring the phenomenon of compositionality or how new meanings can be created by arranging words. Formal semantics relies on logic and mathematics to provide precise frameworks of the relation between language and meaning. Cognitive semantics examines meaning from a psychological perspective and assumes a close relation between language ability and the conceptual structures used to understand the world. Other branches of semantics include conceptual semantics, computational semantics, and cultural semantics.

In philosophy and linguistics, the denotation of a word or expression is its strictly literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of having high temperature. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning, in particular connotation. For instance, the word "warm" may evoke calmness, coziness, or kindness (as in the warmth of someone's personality) but these associations are not part of the word's denotation. Similarly, an expression's denotation is separate from pragmatic inferences it may trigger. For instance, describing something as "warm" often implicates that it is not hot, but this is once again not part of the word's denotation.

Denotation plays a major role in several fields. Within semantics and philosophy of language, denotation is studied as an important aspect of meaning. In mathematics and computer science, assignments of denotations are assigned to expressions are a crucial step in defining interpreted formal languages. The main task of formal semantics is to reverse engineer the computational system which assigns denotations to expressions of natural languages.

Information is an abstract concept that refers to something which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level, it pertains to the interpretation (perhaps formally) of that which may be sensed, or their abstractions. Any natural process that is not completely random and any observable pattern in any medium can be said to convey some amount of information. Whereas digital signals and other data use discrete signs to convey information, other phenomena and artifacts such as analogue signals, poems, pictures, music or other sounds, and currents convey information in a more continuous form. Information is not knowledge itself, but the meaning that may be derived from a representation through interpretation.

The concept of information is relevant or connected to various concepts, including constraint, communication, control, data, form, education, knowledge, meaning, understanding, mental stimuli, pattern, perception, proposition, representation, and entropy.

Models of communication simplify or represent the process of communication. Most communication models try to describe both verbal and non-verbal communication and often understand it as an exchange of messages. Their function is to give a compact overview of the complex process of communication. This helps researchers formulate hypotheses, apply communication-related concepts to real-world cases, and test predictions. Despite their usefulness, many models are criticized based on the claim that they are too simple because they leave out essential aspects. The components and their interactions are usually presented in the form of a diagram. Some basic components and interactions reappear in many of the models. They include the idea that a sender encodes information in the form of a message and sends it to a receiver through a channel. The receiver needs to decode the message to understand the initial idea and provides some form of feedback. In both cases, noise may interfere and distort the message.

Models of communication are classified depending on their intended applications and on how they conceptualize the process. General models apply to all forms of communication while specialized models restrict themselves to specific forms, like mass communication. Linear transmission models understand communication as a one-way process in which a sender transmits an idea to a receiver. Interaction models include a feedback loop through which the receiver responds after getting the message. Transaction models see sending and responding as simultaneous activities. They hold that meaning is created in this process and does not exist prior to it. Constitutive and constructionist models stress that communication is a basic phenomenon responsible for how people understand and experience reality. Interpersonal models describe communicative exchanges with other people. They contrast with intrapersonal models, which discuss communication with oneself. Models of non-human communication describe communication among other species. Further types include encoding-decoding models, hypodermic models, and relational models.

Intrapersonal communication (also known as autocommunication or inner speech) is communication with oneself or self-to-self communication. Examples are thinking to oneself "I will do better next time" after having made a mistake or imagining a conversation with one's boss in preparation for leaving work early. It is often understood as an exchange of messages in which sender and receiver are the same person. Some theorists use a wider definition that goes beyond message-based accounts and focuses on the role of meaning and making sense of things. Intrapersonal communication can happen alone or in social situations. It may be prompted internally or occur as a response to changes in the environment.

Intrapersonal communication encompasses a great variety of phenomena. A central type happens purely internally as an exchange within one's mind. Some researchers see this as the only form. In a wider sense, however, there are also types of self-to-self communication that are mediated through external means, like when writing a diary or a shopping list for oneself. For verbal intrapersonal communication, messages are formulated using a language, in contrast to non-verbal forms sometimes used in imagination and memory. One contrast among inner verbal forms is between self-talk and inner dialogue. Self-talk involves only one voice talking to itself. For inner dialogue, several voices linked to different positions take turns in a form of imaginary interaction. Other phenomena related to intrapersonal communication include planning, problem-solving, perception, reasoning, self-persuasion, introspection, and dreaming.

An interpretation is an assignment of meaning to the symbols of a formal language. Many formal languages used in mathematics, logic, and theoretical computer science are defined in solely syntactic terms, and as such do not have any meaning until they are given some interpretation. The general study of interpretations of formal languages is called formal semantics.

The most commonly studied formal logics are propositional logic, predicate logic and their modal analogs, and for these there are standard ways of presenting an interpretation. In these contexts an interpretation is a function that provides the extension of symbols and strings of an object language. For example, an interpretation function could take the predicate symbol ${\displaystyle T}$ and assign it the extension ${\displaystyle \{(\mathrm {a} )\}}$. All our interpretation does is assign the extension ${\displaystyle \{(\mathrm {a} )\}}$ to the non-logical symbol ${\displaystyle T}$, and does not make a claim about whether ${\displaystyle T}$ is to stand for tall and ${\displaystyle \mathrm {a} }$ for Abraham Lincoln. On the other hand, an interpretation does not have anything to say about logical symbols, e.g. logical connectives "${\displaystyle \mathrm {and} }$", "${\displaystyle \mathrm {or} }$" and "${\displaystyle \mathrm {not} }$". Though we may take these symbols to stand for certain things or concepts, this is not determined by the interpretation function.

Philosophy of language is the philosophical study of the nature of language. It investigates the relationship between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, the constitution of sentences, concepts, learning, and thought.

Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell were pivotal figures in analytic philosophy's "linguistic turn". These writers were followed by Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), the Vienna Circle, logical positivists, and Willard Van Orman Quine.