The Nature of Meaningfulness

The Nature of Meaningfulness Synopsis

In this important new work, Robert K. Shope presents a unified perspective on meaningfulness, spanning such varied topics as the meaningfulness of linguistic expressions and conventional signs, Freud's conception of the meaningfulness of various mental phenomena and instances of behavior, a person's meaning to do something, meaning in the arts, and even life's having a meaning. Shope's perspective is based upon a 'constitutive' analysis of what it is for one item to represent another. He construes this type of representing broadly enough to encompass even examples that do not involve something's being about something else. Criticizing the views of philosophers who attempt to analyze such representing in causal terms, or merely in epistemological terms, he show that a successful analysis needs to invoke both types of considerations.