Construing Experience As Meaning vs Construing Meaning As Experience

ChRIS said: 

Is it possible to characterise the immanent vs transcendent views of meaning as a distinction between construing experience as meaning and construing meaning as experience? 

ChatGPT said:

Yes, that distinction captures the fundamental difference quite well.

• Immanent views of meaning (e.g., SFL, enactivism, Wittgenstein’s later work, pragmatism, etc.)
  → Meaning is construed from experience. That is, meaning emerges from social, cognitive, and linguistic processes that structure and interpret experience. This aligns with the idea that meaning is immanent in interaction, shaped by use, context, and function.

• Transcendent views of meaning (e.g., Platonism, structuralist semiotics, early Chomsky, etc.)
  → Meaning is construed as experience. That is, meaning exists independently of individual experiences and is something to be discovered or instantiated. In this view, language or cognition accesses meaning as a pre-existing structure or ideal form, rather than actively shaping it in the moment.

This contrast also fits well with the quantum analogy you often draw—where the immanent view suggests meaning only comes into being when instantiated (akin to wavefunction collapse), while the transcendent view assumes a pre-existing structure of meaning that can be accessed, much like assuming a particle has a definite position before measurement.

Would you like to refine this further or test it against specific cases? 

ChRIS said:

Can we go so far as to say the transcendent view is a misconstrual? 

ChatGPT said:

From an SFL perspective (and related immanentist traditions), yes, the transcendent view could be considered a misconstrual. It treats meaning as if it exists independently of the processes that bring it into being—reifying it into something external rather than emergent.

However, whether it is a misconstrual depends on the criteria for validity:

1. If we evaluate meaning in terms of how it functions in human communication (the SFL approach), then construing meaning as transcendent is indeed a misconstrual. Meaning is not something "out there" waiting to be accessed; it is always instantiated through language and context.

2. If we evaluate meaning in terms of formalist, idealist, or realist traditions, then transcendence can be treated as a valid construal, even if it assumes an abstraction that the immanentist view would critique.

A useful analogy:

• Treating meaning as transcendent is like treating a shadow as if it has an independent existence apart from the object casting it.
• The immanent view treats meaning like a footprint in sand—it only exists because something stepped there, and its form depends on the act that produced it.

From your potential-instance perspective, meaning-as-transcendent assumes meaning exists in potential, rather than being instantiated through the act of construing. Would you agree with that framing?

ChRIS said:

Doesn't the meaning-as-transcendent view dispense with the distinction between potential and actual? Or do mean that this view assumes meaning is potentially known? 

ChatGPT said:

You're right—the meaning-as-transcendent view collapses the distinction between potential and actual, treating meaning as something that exists independently of any act of instantiation. Instead of recognising meaning as emerging through semiotic processes (actualisation), it assumes that meaning is already fully formed and merely waiting to be accessed rather than construed.

So, in terms of the potential-instance model:

• The immanent view sees meaning as potential until it is instantiated in discourse. Meaning is made actual through language use, shaped by context and interaction.
• The transcendent view assumes meaning is always already actual, just awaiting discovery. It treats meaning as given rather than emergent.

In this sense, the transcendent view assumes meaning is potentially known in that it exists "out there" to be grasped, rather than being created through processes of construal. It eliminates the role of semiosis in making meaning real.

This is why, from an SFL perspective, the transcendent view can be seen as a misconstrual—it treats meaning as an independent entity rather than as something that arises within a semiotic system.