Meaning, Sarah A. Fisher
Meaning, Sarah A. Fisher
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Meaning
A Very Short Introduction

Author: Sarah A. Fisher, Emma Borg

Narrator: Katherine Anderson

Unabridged: 4 hr 9 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 04/22/2025


Synopsis

Our ability to find meaning in things is one of the most important aspects of human life. But it is also one of the most mysterious. Where does meaning come from? What sorts of things have meaning? And how do we grasp the meaning others want to convey? Meaning: A Very Short Introduction is shaped by exploring possible answers to these questions.

Human societies have one particularly important device for expressing and sharing meaning: language. Since our words are paradigm examples of things which have meaning, in this book, Emma Borg and Sarah Fisher use meaning in language as a case study for exploring meaning more generally. They focus on three possible sources for word meaning: things in the world, things in the mind, and social practices, exploring the key approaches thinkers have put forward in each of these arenas. Finally, they end by looking at some concrete applications of the ideas and approaches introduced in the book.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Nat on March 08, 2025

The book manages to give a really comprehensive, balanced view of how philosophers think about meaning in language in a very short space (I re-read this while sitting in a coffee shop for a couple of hours waiting for my hotel room to be ready). That is a rare gift in philosophy. By way of contrast,......more