"In Parts 1 and 2, I traced meaning from its origins in goal-directed life forms through its implementation in neural mechanisms. But human meaning extends beyond individual brains. We share meanings, argue about them, and record them in books. How did biological meaning become social? This isn't merely about communication but about a fundamental transformation in how meaning works. Animal meanings are largely immediate and individual. Human meanings are public, abstract, symbolic, and cumulative across generations."
"Signs are meaningful signals that organisms respond to: a scent trail means food, a posture means threat. These work through direct association, learned or evolved responses to specific cues. They're context-bound and largely automatic. Symbols are qualitatively different. They refer by convention rather than natural association. The word "tree" doesn't resemble a tree, doesn't smell like one, and doesn't trigger climbing."
Human meaning extends beyond individual brains to become public, symbolic, and cumulative across generations. Animal signs are context-bound cues that trigger learned or evolved responses, while symbols operate by social convention and can refer to absent or hypothetical objects. Symbolic capacity enables flexible combination, conditional and counterfactual expression, and relies on analogical reasoning to map relational structures across domains. This shift transforms semiotic capacity from immediate interpretation to abstract, transitive reference. Symbols raise a grounding problem because their meanings depend on relations within the symbolic system rather than direct natural associations to the world.
Read at Psychology Today
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