Philosophical origins of “felt meaning”: presentation slides and quotes at the Gendlin Symposium 2023
The Gendlin Symposium 2023 was recently held online. I was invited as a featured speaker at the symposium, so I am uploading my presentation slides.
My presentation at the Symposium was on the philosophical origins of “felt meaning.” When Gendlin wrote his doctoral dissertation, the original "Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning," he was forced to assert the term in order to claim the significance of his philosophical position to the mainstream in North America at the time. In proposing the term, he adopted his doctoral advisor's framework for mediating between logical positivism and pragmatism. Within this framework, he secretly incorporated the ideas of Dilthey's philosophy, from which he himself came. These are my views.
My presentation consisted of the following sections:
[Introduction]
1 Transition of activities in early Gendlin
2 Gendlin’s master’s thesis and Dilthey’s philosophy
3 Incompatibility of Dilthey’s philosophy with logical positivism
4 Mediation between philosophies by a pragmatist, Morris
5 Derivation of “felt meaning" and secret incorporation of Dilthey’s philosophy
6 Conclusion
Although not explicitly stated on the slides, the quoted texts include the following:
[Introduction]
Perhaps the most radical impact of my philosophy today stems from Wilhelm Dilthey. It is something Heidegger approached but lacked. This vital part of Dilthey’s works (vol. 7) was published later, when Heidegger was no longer reading Dilthey. (Gendlin, 1997, p. 41)
2 Gendlin’s master’s thesis and Dilthey’s philosophy
Understanding will differ in kind and scope in relation to different classes of manifestations of life. (Dilthey, 1927a, p. 205; 2002c, p. 226)
… concepts, judgments, and larger thought-formations … have been detached from the lived experience in which they arose .... (Dilthey, 1927a, p. 205; 2002c, p. 226)
Thus a judgment is ... transported unchanged from the possession of the speaker to the one who understands it. (Dilthey, 1927a, pp. 205–6; 2002c, pp. 226–7)
At the same time, however, such understanding does not disclose how the logical content that has been thought is related to the dark background and the fullness of psychic life. There is no indication of the peculiarities of the life from which it arose, and it follows from its specific character that it does not set up any expectation to go back to any psychic nexus. (Dilthey, 1927, p. 206; 2002c, p. 227)
It is quite different with the expression of lived experience. A special relation exists between it, the life from which it stems, and the understanding that it brings about. (Dilthey, 1927, p. 206; 2002c, p. 227)
... emotional expressions, figurative speech and the works of art and literature. (Gendlin, 1950, p. 35)
Remember that the sense is always more than the word or image or other symbol that describe it. This is a place where our language can confuse us, if we start referring to the place as “the tightness” or “the sadness” or whatever description the person had used, as if that is what it “is.” Focusing teaches us that the sense has more to it than any description can capture. The guide has the responsibility to remember the distinction between the sense itself and the description of it. (Cornell, 1993, p. 31)
... understanding leaves the sphere of words and their sense and does not look for the sense of signs but for the much deeper sense of a manifestation of life. (Dilthey, 1927b, p. 234; 2002b, p. 254)
3 Incompatibility of Dilthey’s philosophy with logical positivism
Dilthey
Science in its traditional form constitutes no unity .... (Carnap, 1931, p. 433; 1934, p. 31)
... the subject matter of ... the Geisteswissenschaften [human sciences] ... are of a nature fundamentally different from the subject matter of natural science and cannot be understood by the methods of natural science. (Carnap, 1931, p. 434; 1934, p. 36)
Nature we explain, but psychic life we understand. (Dilthey, 1924, p. 144; 2010, p. 110)
Carnap
Opposed to this opinion is the thesis defended in this paper that science is a unity .... (Carnap, 1931, p. 433; 1934, p. 31)
… all states of affairs are of one kind and are known by the same method. (Carnap, 1931, p. 433; 1934, p. 31)
… all branches of Science are part of the unified Science, of Physics. (Carnap, 1931, p. 465; 1934, p. 101)
4 Mediation between philosophies by a pragmatist, Morris
... in the main the pragmatists have had close contacts with the life sciences, while the logical positivists bear the imprint of the mathematical and physical sciences. (Morris, 1936, p. 130)
Nevertheless, it is the contention of this paper that the two movements are essentially complementary, and that much is to be expected from a conscious cross-fertilization of the two tendencies. (Morris, 1936, p. 130)
In Chicago Charles Morris was closest to my philosophical position. He tried to combine ideas of pragmatism and logical empiricism. Through him I gained a better understanding of the Pragmatic philosophy, especially of Mead and Dewey. (Carnap, 1963, p. 34)
5 Derivation of “felt meaning" and secret incorporation of Dilthey's philosophy
Symbols have three types of relation: to a person or persons, to other symbols, and to objects; meaning has three corresponding dimensions or meanings, namely the biological aspect ..., the formalist aspect ..., and the empirical aspect .... (Morris, 1936, pp. 135-6)
It is well known how Carnap went beyond his early interest in the syntactical aspects of language into a consideration of its semantical aspects .... (Morris, 1963, p. 87)
The term ‘pragmatics’ has obviously been coined with reference to the term ‘pragmatism.’ It is a plausible view that the permanent significance of pragmatism lies in the fact that it has directed attention more closely to the relation of signs [symbols] to their users [persons] than had previously been done .... (Morris, 1938, pp. 29-30)
Examples of pragmatical investigations are ... a psychological study of the different connotations of one and the same word for different individuals ... etc. (Carnap, 1942, p. 10)
Some logicians seem to have a generalized fear of contradictions, forgetting that, while contradictions frustrate the normal uses of deduction, they may be perfectly compatible with other interests. Even linguistic signs have many other uses than that of communicating confirmable propositions…. (Morris, 1938, p. 39)
Meaning is not an event but a functional process …. (Morris, 1936, p. 135)
... they [semiotical terms] do not stand for isolated existences but for things or properties of things in certain specifiable functional relations to other things or properties. (Morris, 1938, pp. 44-5)
... there are at least two dimensions of meaning: (1) the relations of symbols to each other and to objects, and (2) our experience of the meaning. (Gendlin, 1958, p. 1; 1962/1997, p. 44)
If meaning were only these “formal” and “objective” relationships, our speaking would be like the speech of a phonograph record. ... When we human speak, think, or read, we experience meaning. (Gendlin, 1958, pp. 1-2; 1962/1997, pp. 44-5)
The present essay deals with meaning as experienced. The terms “felt meaning” or “experienced meaning” will be employed. The reader is asked to allow these terms to name the experienced dimension of meaning, as he experiences it. (Gendlin, 1958, p. 2; Gendlin, 1962/1997, p. 45)
We found that “meaning” had to be defined in terms of various functional relationships between symbol and feeling. ... Apart from them, it is not clear what a “symbol” is, nor can we call feeling “felt meaning.” ... These functions must be stated in a “functional relationship” since they depend on each other. (Gendlin, 1958, pp. 83-4; Gendlin, 1962/1997, p. 110)
The linguistic sign must be capable of voluntary use for the function of communicating. Such terms need more extended analysis than is here possible, but Mead’s account, in Mind, Self, and Society, of the linguistic sign (which he calls the significant symbol) seems to cover the point. (Morris, 1938, p. 36)
In trying to express a message in something less than ten words, we merely want to convey a certain meaning, while the poet is dealing with what is really living tissue, the emotional throb in the expression itself. There is, then, a great range in our use of language; but whatever phase of this range is used is a part of a social process, and it is always that part by means of which we affect ourselves as we affect others and mediate the social situation through this understanding of what we are saying. (Mead, 1934, p. 75)
... the lion does not appreciably frighten itself by its roar ... (Mead, 1934, pp. 63-4)
Let us say that our poet has a felt meaning or many felt meanings, and wishes to symbolize them. No extant symbols exactly mean his felt meaning. Hence, he seeks to put symbols together in a new way so that these symbols will create that experience in a reader, or in himself qua reader. (Gendlin, 1958, p. 93; 1962/1997, p. 117)
... the other side of the process in which the psychic nexus is grasped as an object is the progression toward apprehensions of the lived experience that bring what is contained in it to more adequate, more stable, and more fundamental expression. And that is also the basis of the double relationship of the adequate representation of lived experiences and of the transcendence that originates in apprehension. (Dilthey, 1927c, p. 30; 2002a, pp. 51–2)
... the resulting symbolization does symbolize the original felt meaning. In another sense it specifies it, adds to it, goes beyond it, or reaches only part of it—in short, changes it. We are concerned with just this double sense: it somehow accurately symbolizes the original felt meaning while at the same time it somehow also changes it. (Gendlin, 1958, pp. 96-7; 1962/1997, p. 120)
References
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