On Philosophy and Meaning
As a human race, perhaps we are doomed to forever search for meaning, whether it’s there or not. In 1945 Bertrand Russell described philosophy as existing in the no-mans-land between theology and science. Where theologians study dogma and myth, concerning themselves with transcendental and moral conceptions, scientists practice empiricism and reproducibility, with a view to classify observable phenomena and their interrelations. The negotiating role of philosophy then, is to speculate on matters that have eluded definite knowledge, but to do so while appealing to human reason rather than the self-authenticating authority of tradition or divine intervention; becoming a means of systematically seeking comprehension and establishing order in what would otherwise be chaotic to reason. It is this drive towards comprehension that defines us as cognizant beings, however this same biological impetus might prove antithetical to realising the meaning we seek.
Philosophy as a study has held divergent applications throughout the centuries, with notable iterations leaning to favour the church, monarchy, or secular states depending the societal propensities of the time. Its persistent objective, however, has remained to investigate the utility and limits of knowledge, becoming a means of categorising the world not just in its physical or empirical states, but to ultimately account for the entire realm of possible experience. This inclination towards higher intellectual closure inevitably leads its proponents to question the nature of being; is there a transcendent reality beyond the physical? Or an internal realm of the mind? Or truth claims in moral/ethical judgements? Throughout recorded history this spirited line of inquiry has demonstrated that there are significant areas of human interest that prove impossible to approach through a scientific lens alone. Bertrand Russell is clear in stressing that all definite knowledge belongs to the sciences, but if we accept this empirical evidence as the hard limits of our understanding, then we immediately dismiss a myriad of circumstances that inform our reality as self-aware, existential beings. Inevitably questions are raised whether this search for metaphysical meaning is justified; a common allegation against philosophy claims the discipline is nothing more than a primitive form of science, analogous to alchemy or astrology, that has since been superseded by more effective systems of knowledge acquisition. Bertrand Russell anticipates this criticism; he goes on to describe what he calls a historicist reading of philosophy:
Ever since man became capable of free speculation, their actions, in innumerable important respects, have depended upon their theories as to the world and human life, as to what is good and what is evil. This is as true in the present day as at any
former time. To understand an age or a nation, we must understand its philosophy…There is here a reciprocal causation: the circumstances of men's lives do much to determine their philosophy, but, conversely, their philosophy does much to determine their circumstances.
While no living creature exists in isolation, humans have evolved to be more capable than most in altering the environment they inhabit. To exemplify this point, consider the societal advancements brought on by language, agriculture and industrial revolution, these are all positive testament to the adaptive capacity of humans to acquire, retain and develop knowledge across generations. As each new pragmatic or intellectual age flourishes and resolves in the minds of the population, these shifting conditions inspire novel speculations regarding the existential role of the individual and wider society, often in the form of explanatory ontological narratives; these narratives can be understood as encapsulating that culture’s philosophy. In this respect philosophy is comparable to mythology, where both emerge as a means of comprehending the circumstances of existence through a speculative theory.
Mythology as used here will follow the definition provided by David Leeming, ‘Myths are for the most part religious narratives that transcend the possibilities of common experience and that express any given culture’s literal or metaphorical understanding of various aspects of reality’, so myths exemplify a markedly distinct mode of knowledge acquisition than that of scientific discovery, it is an explanatory account that appeals to a human receptiveness to stories as a form of knowledge. As we continue, mythology will be closely linked to both religion and philosophy as a means of understanding the world through conjecture and hermeneutics, residing largely outside the scientific method, but with crucial areas of overlap.
It’s worth noting that Russell attributes this reciprocity between philosophy and causality to man’s capacity for free speculation, a uniquely human attribute potentially present in all endeavours involving cognitive arbitration. Due to the ubiquitous nature of free speculation, even the methodological rigour of science is susceptible to the failures of ideological oversight. In The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper posits that all statements based on observations are theory-laden, and as a result, wholly empirical data is just as likely to reflect subjective interference as it is of describing objective reality. He notably holds that observation-based science cannot logically ground its hypotheses to any a priori truth, and that empirical evidence is perhaps best utilised in its capacity to disprove facts or to denote high statistical probability of outcome. Popper outlines a scientific method based on falsifiability which considers David Hume’s classic Problem of Induction in response to modern scientific claims. As seen here, philosophy remains capable of elucidating truth claims and even contributes to contemporary scientific debates, but philosophy within science has become
unspecified, shifting to broader epistemological and systematic aims. It has become more concerned with the methods used by scientists to arrive at their conclusions than the technical applications of those results. It is precisely this overarching view of philosophy that prevents it from being dismissed as merely an archaic practice; as long as human actions are influenced by ideology or intellectual unknowns, these lapses in judgement are worth exploring systematically to avoid unintended, potentially catastrophic, consequences or prejudices.
The meeting point between these disciplines is that they all make claims towards a mode of knowledge, in some instances they make claims towards truth. But what we shall see in this text is that access to empirical certainty is not as straight forward as it would intuitively appear. The primary issue with all attempts at truth, is that initial speculations inevitably pass through the subjectivity of mind, which is susceptible to ideological bias. While attempts are made to create frameworks independent of subjectivity (the scientific method, formal logic, mathematics etc.) to account for a lack of objectivity present in human reasoning, these nonetheless remain sensitive to influence, and are perhaps more susceptible to distortion due to the perceived certainty of the methods used. We will be exploring how semiotics and myth give rise to various forms of social narratives, which are themselves an expression of ideology. In Time’s Lie, Leo Cookman echoes an argument made by Hume, that humans are subjective creatures that have the tendency to narrativise the world around them, being driven by emotion rather than reason. Cookman states that these narratives don’t represent reality and are a form of ideological intervention, a lapse in perception. He goes on to describe this phenomenon to be of particular interest in our contemporary political climate, pointing to the recent proliferation and attention given to narratives that exist outside of literary fictions. This phenomenon is perhaps best exemplified through the dual notions of ‘post-truth’ and ‘fake news’. The book goes on to frame concepts that are generally accepted as obvious, or philosophical givens, to be in actuality narrativised accounts, distorted by subjective perception. He includes in this category the common understanding of time, referring to the human instinct to read situations as having a beginning middle and end, and how this affects even the most basic assumptions regarding the structure of our lives. In this essay we will be studying various theorists who discuss these potential lapses in judgement, this will be framed as a consequence of a human capacity for abstract thought, imagination and narrativization; essentially defining perception and reflection as creative processes. To this end, parallels will be drawn between art – as a form of articulating meaning through metaphor – and the underlying systems of our conscious perception.
The emergence of contemporary science, as with most history, is often recounted through a linear lens: our prehistoric ancestor’s attempt at cosmology formed the earliest religions, this then cleared the path for philosophy, which then gave birth to science. And while this mapping might suffice for the purposes of general historical demarcation, it would be reductive to claim that any subsequent discipline outrightly superseded the previous one. Each of these remain very much a contemporary phenomenon involving different aims and fulfilling unique needs. In his Introduction to Human Behavioural Biology, Stanford University professor Robert Sapolsky warns about the risk of falling into the trap of categorical thinking. He recites an anecdote where a simple animal behaviour is interpreted in radically disparate ways by numerous scientific disciplines; an endocrinologist would attribute the behaviour to oestrogen in the bloodstream, an anatomist would describe skeletal and muscle mechanics, an evolutionary biologist would cite gene mutation through natural selection and a neurologist would claim that synaptic processes caused the animal to behave as it did – all responding to the inevitable punchline ‘why did the chicken cross the road’. His point is that humans as a species are prone to categorical thinking, which can often result in overlooking more nuanced connections. This capacity for categorical thinking while useful in many practical applications, is detrimental when attempting to understand complexity, it tends to draw the subject towards what is familiar. With this warning in mind, we will approach the following text as artists; primarily looking at semiotics and myth, but questioning how these might
relate to broader topics. Here a subject like philosophy remains useful as an intermediary discipline precisely due to its ability of studying interconnections and the overarching implications of these more specified subjects. The rest of Sapolsky’s lecture series methodologically analyses specific biological behaviours using various categories and then systematically removes them to demonstrate how each are dependent on each other. He describes through behavioural biology how certain human behaviours are similar to those of other animals, before proceeding to detail instances in which humans are definitely not like any other
living creature. The greatest point of divergence between humans and other species all fall within Homo sapiens capacity for abstract thought.
While we will be briefly looking at mythological and scientific endeavours as well as subjects spanning anthropology, linguistics and art, it is only in order to create a framework in which to talk about a human search towards meaning and how it might relate to cognition. We will seek to establish art and mythology as key examples of abstract thinking, with a specific focus on how the creative process manifests narratives, and how these narratives in turn alter material reality. Part of this discussion will explore the role of categorical thinking in the creation of cultural and ideological norms.
A Consequence of Language
The word meaning in its common use denotes a form of evaluative interpretation, the Cambridge dictionary provides two entries for the term: (1) The meaning of something is what it expresses or represents - this describes a semiotic process, e.g. the meaning of the word chair symbolises a type of furniture we sit on, the meaning of a facial expression represents a corresponding emotion, prolonged rain means the drought is over. It is a process of indicating what is understood or intentioned by a particular symbol/object/situation. Due to its referential nature, there can be multiple meanings behind any one concept, as is the case with linguistic homographs or homonyms, the word lying can equally mean telling an untruth, or reclining to repose. The second entry, (2) denoting importance or value - is relational, it implies that an article gains significance when understood in association to a subject. An example of this is found in the sentence ‘this family heirloom means a lot to me’, where meaning is loosely used as a placeholder for the unspecified circumstances that lead to significance. If questioned further the owner of this heirloom might add sentimentally ‘it has survived many generations’ or appeal to its monetary value ‘it’s very expensive’ or any other factor that might account for its importance to the individual. However due to the abstract and referential nature of meaning, these situations might not be known to the subject at all, strong sentiment towards the heirloom is enough to qualify it as being significant. In both these instances, the word meaning can suggest multiple outcomes, acting as a form of reference rather than expressing any concrete attribute. The word significance might prove an appropriate synonym, as it describes both the process of signifying in the semiotic sense, and of having significance in terms of relational importance.
To discuss the ambiguities of meaning and its practical implications, we will turn our attention to the problem of demarcation in art. The subject and practice of contemporary art provides a useful access point due to the historical difficulties in establishing a fixed meaning for the word. Let us consider a standard dictionary definition: ‘the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects’. On the surface this would appear broad enough to encompass most art forms, but if the purpose of a definition is to identify and isolate a concept against all others, then problems start to arise. ‘The conscious use of skill and creative imagination’ can equally refer to an original invention of engineering, for instance, as it does the production of an artwork. The second premise ‘especially in the production of aesthetic objects’ already contains within it the caveat that this isn’t always the case, making it immediately less useful as a definition. The term aesthetic object contains its own difficulties; aesthetics is a broad philosophical discipline that would require a lengthy digression to unpack, for our purposes we will use the term to describe an intellectual, sensory and emotional affectation in the
viewer, this is usually described as the aesthetic experience. Aesthetics then is phenomenological in nature and reveals little about the material properties of the object or situation that triggers this response. Following the above definitions, we aren’t any closer to understanding the specific characteristics of an artwork or what constitutes art more generally.
At this point, it would be useful to introduce relevant thoughts in semiotic and literary theory, we will refer to Ferdinand de Saussure on linguistics and Jacque Derrida on post-structuralism. It’s worth clarifying from the outset that while Saussure focuses on spoken language and Derrida on writing, they are both using their respective fields to discuss the sign in a more general sense. This position is described by Daniel Chandler as; ‘signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects, but such things have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we invest them with meaning’, this definition has developed from John Locke’s empiricist observations in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Geoffrey Bennington explains that linguistics prior to the 19th century held a primarily nomenclature view of language, he summarises this approach as ‘there is no intrinsic reason to call a tree a tree, but we do so because sometime in the past our forefathers agreed, by convention, to call it that’. This position was notably held by Locke but was the common view as far back as Aristotle. Bennington goes on to discuss the limits of this interpretation:
The nomenclature view of language conjures up a completely mythical image of a time in the past, when people sat around and agreed on what to call things…Even if this did work with simple objects and their names, which it doesn’t, it rapidly runs into all sorts of difficulties with more complex or abstract objects, and of course with the many parts of language that aren’t nouns.