For some time now I’ve been making a distinction between meaning and semantics, where I use meaning as a function of intention, in the more-or-less standard philosophical sense of intention as “aboutness.” When I talk of semantics I am talking about the elements in the language system. I have now decided that semantics has two aspects: relationality and adhesion.
I suppose we can think of meaning as inhering in the intentional relationship between the person – and we are talking about human beings here, but we could be talking about animals or maybe, just maybe, artificial minds ...
