Meaning, Thought and Reality

Meaning, Thought and Reality

1. Action of picking out or identifying with words

   • Referring
     • moment by moment relationship
   • Denotating
     • not dependent on any one use of a word

2. Approaches

   • Referential
     • We can give the meaning of words and sentences by showing how they relate to situations
   • Representational
     • Our ability to talk about the world depends on our mental models of it

3. Prototypes

   • A model of concepts which views them as structured so that there are central or typical member of a category

4. Abstraction

   • set of characteristic features, to which we compare real items

5. Conceptual hierarchies

   • concepts are represented by nodes in a network, to which attributes can be attached and between which there are links

6. Ostensive definition

   • idea that everyone acquire concepts by being directed to examples in the world

7. New concepts are invented and new words or new senses of old words given to them.