I feel like if meaning itself was simply contained or even encoded in the words we write, the world would be a very different place to us. How could we ever find ourselves, as we do, arguing about the meaning of a text? Even then driest prose can sometimes lead to different interpretations.
Is there "meaning" somehow inside the novel on my desk? Can you extract it and manipulate it? If I had no body, environment, temporality, what even could the book mean to me? Even more, if nobody could teach me the meanings of the words themselves in the book, what could it ever be to me but a collection of certain patterns?
but it is exactly human-kinds ability to put meaning to words that make us unique. That give us language and communication, artistry and music. Words mean nothing without meaning. It's not encoded, it's inferred. There's nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc and some of them are tied to the same word. That's very important. The chain of words derives it's meaning in context so having a system that operates on meaning is, dare I say, meaningful. It's the whole point.
Is there "meaning" somehow inside the novel on my desk? Can you extract it and manipulate it? If I had no body, environment, temporality, what even could the book mean to me? Even more, if nobody could teach me the meanings of the words themselves in the book, what could it ever be to me but a collection of certain patterns?