Frances replied again... Not from his book but from the opinions of other writers, it seems Polanyi relies on a kind of relative function in a social context for the meaning of things to be made by users, the main goal of which is for the group to get knowledge and then mainly give it to science. It is reported that for him the only things capable or worthy of being conferred with meaning are signs and symbols, but he offers no overall genus as an umbrella for this dual set of species. His semantic typology is therefore a vague dyadic system of signification. There is nonetheless a difference noted by some reviewers in how his meaning is assigned to signs and symbols. Signs are causal and natural with their meaning somehow emerging from their contiguous or contagious form, but that is intuitively taken by users. Symbols are conventional and social with their meaning being intentionally given by users, but where the form of symbols may be motivated or arbitrary. The symbols however can include signifying devices found in religion, myth, art, language, culture, commerce, medicine, philosophy, and science. In my opinion, his theory of meaning would likely appeal in the main to subjectivists, mentalists, nominalists, and rationalists.
Frances replied... Understood and agreed so will try to get at his definition of meaning; but even if his meaning of a sign is deemed an objective entity in the outer world, then his theory might still be good as a "special" semantic theory of say formalism or materialism or relativism or realism, and thus worthy of some study, albeit limited to a particular circle of linguistic and epistemic interest. Cheerskep requested... Frances or Chris, you could do us all a good turn to see if in the book he provides a defintion of 'meanng' -- i.e what HE HAS IN MIND with the word. If he believes that "meaning" is somehow a mind-independent entity "corresponding" to something like a universal notion, or even to just a word, that will save us much time.
