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mean VERB: Inflected forms: meant ( mnt), mean·ing, means TRANSITIVE VERB: 1a. To be used to convey; denote: “‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things’” (Lewis Carroll). b. To act as a symbol of; signify or represent: In this poem, the budding flower means youth. 2. To intend to convey or indicate: “No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous” (Henry Adams). 3. To have as a purpose or an intention; intend: I meant to go running this morning, but I overslept. 4. To design, intend, or destine for a certain purpose or end: a building that was meant for storage; a student who was meant to be a scientist. 5. To have as a consequence; bring about: Friction means heat. 6. To have the importance or value of: The opinions of the critics meant nothing to him. She meant so much to me. http://www.bartleby.com/61/96/M0179600.html meaning NOUN: 1. Something that is conveyed or signified; sense or significance. 2. Something that one wishes to convey, especially by language: The writer's meaning was obscured by his convoluted prose. 3. An interpreted goal, intent, or end: “The central meaning of his pontificate is to restore papal authority” (Conor Cruise O'Brien). 4. Inner significance: “But who can comprehend the meaning of the voice of the city?” (O. Henry). ADJECTIVE: 1. Full of meaning; expressive. 2. Disposed or intended in a specified manner. Often used in combination: a well-meaning fellow; ill-meaning intentions. SYNONYMS: meaning, acceptation, import, sense, significance, signification These nouns refer to the idea conveyed by something, such as a word, action, gesture, or situation: Synonyms are words with the same or nearly the same meaning. In one of its acceptations value is a technical term in music. The import of his statement is ambiguous. The term anthropometry has only one sense. The significance of a green traffic light is widely understood. Linguists have determined the hieroglyphics' signification. http://www.bartleby.com/61/3/M0180300.html Meaning is the manifestation of significance held in common by similar systems, or existing in a communication between or among similar systems. Meaning is a product of communications among several individual complex systems, therefore, meaning has to be considered in terms of how the systems that share it function. Each individual system must be able to create significance and(or) to communicate significant information to other systems able to recognize the significance of that information in some way similar to the original. The individual system units that carry significance may form a virtual, weblike relationship by which individual significances can be contributed, and the meaning produced can evolve and change over time. Meaning can be determined by the entity that has the most power to distribute and implement information, or it can exist in information widely distributed and held firmly by a group of people.
If significance and meaning do not require the systems that produce them to be intelligent or capable of abstraction, then the forms that carry meaning, and the receivers and decoders that interpret information and find and produce meaning for humans may be very different than forms that are meaningful for a network of computers, or a school of fish. A communication be informative without being meaningful if the communication is only recognized by or significant to the system that interprets it. However, my definitions of significance and meaning assume that the carrier has some degree of (self) awareness for signiicance to exist, and awareness and powers of abstraction and maybe some degree of consciousness for meaning to exist.
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