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Word and Meaning the Jaina Point of View
• Dr. Harendra Prasad Verma, Bhagalpur University, Bhagalpur (Bihar)
The present day philosophy has a great leaning towards semantics. Semantics is the science of meaning which discusses the relation between language and reality. Meaning purports to be the sole object of philosophical investigation these days. As Morritz Schlick pointed out, “We see in philosophy not a system of cognition but a system of act; philosophy is that activity through which the meaning of statements is revealed or determined."'1
In the western philosophy we have two chief theories of meaning. (1) Denotive theory or 'picture theory of meaning' and (2) Non-denotive theory or 'Use theory of meaning'. Wittgenstein, in his Tractatus Logico - Philosophicus, propounded the picture theory of meaning to which the meaning of a word is what it stands for. What a word denotes is its meaning. For example, the word "Table" stapds for the object table, bence the object table constitutes the meaning of the word "table". A word may stand for an object (“table') or quality (ʻredness') or relation ('greater than') or a state of affair ('anarchy') and so on. Thus language stands to reality in relation of picturing. The proposition is a picture of reality.2 “What a picture represents is its sense". says Wittgenstein. There is logical correspondance between language and reality. In Indian philosophy also the Naiyayikas, Vaisesikas, Mimamsakas and Grammarians believed in the denotive theory of meaning. According to them there is the relation of denotative and denotend (Vacya-vacaka sambandba) between Language and reality.
1.
Morrits Schlick, "The Turning Point in Philosophy" in Logical Positivism (Ed.) A. J. Ayer, The Free Press, Illionis, 1960, p. 56. Kegan Paul, London, 1922, 4:01.
Mahavira Jayanti Smarika, 76
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