Theory Of Meaning. Intentionality Vision

This dissertation is to present a theory of meaning in the framework Of the theory of intentionality of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology, with techniques of language-analysis from analytical philosophy. Transcendental phenomenology, which is regarded as content analyses, is designed to resolve the problem of attaining the object, and the main task in analytical philosophy of language is to fix the reference. There forms a parallel relation, which is the start point of this paper, in respect of the situation of problem between these two drastically different streams of philosophy.Instead of its consciousness analyses, my attention is focused on the strategy of transcendental phenomenology against skepticism, which is based on the possibility of the object. By this I gain a critical point of view toward analytical philosophers' disposal of the problem of meaning, and get a guideline for the overall position of the researching program of this paper. I take meaning as normative institution rather than entities which bear contents, thus to expose meanings is to make sense of their pattern of construction and essential conditions. Accordingly, reference is some kind of meaning connected with the notion of things-in-themselves, which functions as a necessary presupposition and a fundamental element in the institution of meaning.The main steps can be outlined as follow. Firstly, I get a theory of category by studying the pattern of subject-predicate sentences. A category is a form shared by understanding and sentences. Through the exposition of categorial structures we can make clear the essential condition for understanding meanings, namely, the intentional faculty, and can learn that a meaningful sentence is a sentence restrained with a categorial structure. The correspondence between intentional facum and structure of sentences make it possible to form and understand sentences. Secondly, predicative meanings, identification, the concept of object, and sentential meanings can be exposed in the light of the theory of category. As formal constraint on meaningful sentences, categorial structures, which make it possible to grasp possibilities as concepts, are definition of possibilities. Based on the notion of possibility, the notion of information connected to sentential contents can be defined. We can naturally define predicative meanings as the function of categorial structures, with objects as argument. Accordingly, I make a necessary defense for the correspondence theory of truth. Thirdly, based on the notion of possible world and the holistic character of belief I provide a exposition of cognitive significance. I define the word 'to know' as to have warranted believes about the actual world. The actual world and the whole of belief are constructed with the same mechanism of intentional institution and the same inference mode. I prove that, without the condition of closure being satisfied, it is neither possible to get meaningful concept of possible world nor to attain relevance that is necessary to cognitive inference. Having specified the condition of closure, I make a profile of world construction and the mode of cognitive inference respectively, and expose the notion of cognitive significance by introducing the formal concept of instance. Finally, I suggest a general idea about reference that reference is a necessary part of cognitive significance and the latter confines the fixing of reference.