MEANING AND MEANINGFULNESS

If you ask, what is Neuro-Semantics about? The most direct answer and the most literal is to focus on the words themselves. In that case, Neuro-Semantics is about meaning in your body.

Neuro- refers to the neurology of your body, your physiology and all that goes on in your brain and nervous systems. Semantics refers to meaning—how it is constructed, what it is comprised of, how it works, etc.

What meaning is in your body? When you “make sense” of things in your world (meaning1), this understanding gets into your body to create your “programs” for functioning. This then serves as our “instincts” since we human beings do not have instincts in the same way that animals do. They have information coded into their genes and so just naturally know what things are, how to operate, who to eat, who eats them, etc. We do not have that. For information, we have to search it out, learn it, and incorporate it.

When we learn and incorporate understanding into our neurology, that understanding becomes our meanings which then inform and govern how we think, feel, speak, act, relate, etc. The meanings that we learn then drive our performances. These performances range from all of the things that you externally do, your responses to the world around you and to other people. It also includes your internal responses.

Now about meaning, there are two words which sound the same and yet refer to two very different phenomenon—meaning and meaningfulness. Because they sound similar, it is easy to confuse them and treat them as if they are the same. They are not. To many, this distinction is not obvious.

Meaning1 refers to mind, comprehension, understanding. This refers to making sense of something intellectually. It refers to something being “logical,” reasonable, and rational, that is, we have reasons by which we consider something legitimate. Meaning2 (or meaningfulness) refers to values and significance. This refers to what is personally significant and valuable. Something can have meaning, but not be important. To convey its importance, we mention values and/or tell a story.

When effectively coordinated, reasonable meaning and felt meaningfulness combine to create a powerful internal influence. Combining these two—meaning and meaningfulness—gives us two critical variables for making our communications persuasive. To do that, be sure your communications make sense (have meaning) and offer something significant (have meaningfulness).

One way we often refer to these two facets is in terms of reason and emotion. But there’s a problem with this, namely, “reason” and “emotion” sound like two independent things. They are not. They are part of a single system. The mind-body-emotion system is a singular system that we cannot actually divide and treat as dichotomous. Yet we can only do that in language. We can talk about each separately. But “mind” and “emotion” are intricately related as they are part of the same system. Where there is thought, there is feeling. Where there is feeling, there is thought. Given this, effective communicators fully utilize this “dynamic duo” as a whole.

With these the two aspects of “meaning,” we start with meaning and then go to meaningfulness.

1) Meaning as facts, information, understanding, knowledge.

2) Meaningfulness, full-of-meaning, as significance, emotions, value.

What and So What? In Neuro-Semantics we explore the construction of meaning in multiple ways. We look at kinds of meaning from representational meaning, cinematic meaning, associative meaning, metaphorical meaning, and so on. We also look at the number of meanings, from one-valued meaning, to two-valued semantics, to multiple and to infinite-valued semantics (this comes from Korzybski). Another aspect is the quality of meaning: from futility, to trivial, to conventional, to unique, to legacy or spiritual (all of this is in the book, Neuro-Semantics, 2012). One of the short-cuts that we have provided in recent years is to look at meaning in terms of four questions:

1) What is it? The selection and identification of something. What do you call it?

2) How does it work? Causational meaning, how it functions, what does it do?

3) What is its significance? Its meaningfulness, value, importance?

4) What’s your intention with it? Intentional meaning, what’s your purpose with it?

There are more, but we start here for the purpose of understanding what a person has constructed (selected and identified). With that we want to know what he understands and comprehends in terms of its function and operations, X causes or makes what Y? Then when a person so maps out the world using these meaning constructs, we will want to know its significance to her, what importance does she give to it (how she semantically loads it with meaning) and the intentions she then develops about it that guides her actions.

All of this starts with the construct of meaning. But that alone is not sufficient. That’s just understanding, even knowledge. We then want to know what the person values about it so that we begin to understand how that meaning will move, motivate, influence, mobilize emotions, and guide behavior. Meaning gives substance, meaningfulness gives pizzazz. Meaningfulness activates the person’s energy system as it answers the questions: “So what? Why is it important? What difference does it make?” What is Neuro-Semantics? It is a process for exploring both what you know and the feelings that then activate your responses. And, it all makes sense. Even the craziest behaviors make sense when seen in terms of the person’s “model of the world,” i.e., semantic constructions. Then, knowing that, we know how to begin to change things so that emotions, behavior, and performances transform for the better. That’s why we say—this is to your highest meanings and your best performances.