Meaning (philosophy)

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Meaning is the sense or significance of something. It is what expressions, representations, or events convey, stand for, refer to, or make intelligible. Meaning is often understood as a relational concept that links an entity to what it signifies, such as the connection between the word dog and a four-legged mammal. Philosophical inquiry is particularly interested in linguistic meaning: how words, sentences, and utterances acquire content, convey information about the world, and evoke emotions. It distinguishes between what an expression conventionally means and what a specific speaker intends to communicate, and between literal and figurative meaning. Central debates address the relation between sense and reference; aspects of meaning such as vagueness, ambiguity, and context-dependence; and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on the meanings of its parts. Philosophers also discuss non-linguistic meaning associated with gestures, pictures, actions, and natural signs, such as...

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