Does Meaning Evolve?

TL;DR

This paper explores the analogy between radical interpretation and biological evolution to understand how meaning evolves over time, highlighting key differences and similarities to uncover underlying mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a comparative analysis of radical interpretation and biological evolution, focusing on their time-dependent aspects to better understand the evolution of meaning.

Findings

More differences than similarities between the theories

Analogies help clarify the nature of time dependence in meaning

Potential to uncover underlying mechanisms of meaning evolution

Abstract

A common method of making a theory more understandable, is by comparing it to another theory which has been better developed. Radical interpretation is a theory which attempts to explain how communication has meaning. Radical interpretation is treated as another time-dependent theory and compared to the time dependent theory of biological evolution. The main reason for doing this is to find the nature of the time dependence; producing analogs between the two theories is a necessary prerequisite to this and brings up many problems. Once the nature of the time dependence is better known it might allow the underlying mechanism to be uncovered. Several similarities and differences are uncovered, there appear to be more differences than similarities.