What do I mean by meaning

The meaning of meaning

I found formal definitions of meaning quite confusing, presenting it as different types or things without a clear unifying essence. My interest is in a definition that reflects how we use it in everyday life.

We use the word meaning when facing gaps in understanding.

"What's the meaning of this word?" "What do these results mean?" "What is the meaning of life?"

It is as a tool to point to what we don't yet comprehend, even when we can't describe what we're missing. It bridges what we can articulate and what we intuitively know we don't understand.

We also use it to share what we think is missing in others understanding. "This symbol means danger" "This tree has special meaning to me" "The dark clouds mean rain."

Meaning is the information missing to make something coherent. It is what we need to make sense of what something is.

Meaning is subjective and ineffable

Asking "what does an orange mean?" is a strange question. It's like asking for your lifetime of experiences with oranges.

Its meaning to you emerges from every orange you've seen, touched, and tasted. It includes memories of breakfast tables, its fragrances, and what you know about vitamin C. Everything that has influenced how you relate to oranges has shaped what they mean to you, constantly evolving. All of this makes it impossible to fully express what an orange means to you.

That's why we naturally narrow the answer to what we think the person is not understanding, or we assume they're asking about the most salient aspects of our relationship with oranges. Yet even when narrowed, language can't capture the full depth. Like describing the taste of an orange to someone who's never had one.

Meaning as a model

I think there is a more intuitive way to think about meaning.

Close your eyes. You know who you are and what you just did, what would happen to your coffee if dropped, and how an orange skin feels. None of this comes from your external senses right now.

Your mind holds a model for each person, object, and experience known to you. Your entire reality is modeled inside you.

These representations blend everything you know. Your model of a tree combines formal knowledge like photosynthesis, sensory memories of bark texture, and personal experiences like climbing its branches as a child.

These models let you predict, and through prediction, navigate the world.

Meaning is what we seek when these models feel incomplete. It's our way of asking for the missing pieces that would make our understanding whole.

This analogy might seem strange because we have internal models of everything, while we only ask for meaning in specific cases. This is because we don't question things that are perfectly consistent in our experience, like gravity or the passage of time. Instead, we seek meaning for things that are harder to make sense of. That's why the use of meaning is biased toward confusing or existential questions like the meaning of life.

I'll use "meaning" and "model" almost interchangeably. "Meaning" usually points to specific gaps in understanding, while "model" better captures our complete system of understanding. Using "model" aids discussion by reducing philosophical baggage while highlighting qualities like knowledge, experience, and prediction.

What it means to me

This is what I mean by meaning... filtered through language and constrained by my model of your attention span.

If I'm dedicating myself to write a newsletter instead of a single piece, it's because there's much more in my model that I want to share.

When I started researching, I didn't know what I was after. I wanted to build digital tools that were in perfect alignment with my mind. At some point, I realized there was a bottleneck: deep philosophical gaps in understanding about the nature of information and "what something is".

As I progressed, meaning emerged as the central piece of the puzzle, "the meaning gap". The more things clicked, the clearer it became that understanding meaning had implications far beyond building better tools, almost a requisite to make sense of our existence.

At the time of writing this, I have spent about 6 years in full-time dedication to this inquiry. It's a risky bet, but I don't think I will stop any time soon.

These words aren't meant to impress but to show the depth of my motivation and will to understand. It's very scary to me to publicly explore these existential inquiries without any credentials. While I know there are powerful insights, my models are also flawed and incomplete. That's why I'm sharing them, that's where you can help.

Next, I'll explore how we understand each other despite meaning being subjective. We'll stay at a high level for a few more articles before diving into nuances.