Faithin Omaha eBook Collection

Download or read book The Nature of Meaningfulness written by Robert K. Shope and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1999 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shope presents a unified perspective on meaningfulness, spanning such varied topics as the meaningfulness of linguistic expressions and conventional signs, Freud's conception of the meaningfulness of various mental phenomena and instances of behavior, a person's meaning to do something, meaning in the arts, and even life's having a meaning. Shope's perspective is based upon a 'constitutive' analysis of what it is for one item to represent another. Criticizing the views of philosophers who attempt to analyze such representing in causal terms, or merely in epistemological terms, he shows that a successful analysis needs to invoke both types of considerations.