What Does It Mean to Understand?
"Information without context does not give rise to meaning."— MAC DD#9
Slide between meaning as discovered vs created (MAC DD#9 opening).
“Meaning does not exist until a recipient creates it. The author offers potentialities only.”
Middle ground: potential meanings collapse into actual meaning when observed.
Follows rules perfectly but does not understand Chinese.
Does the person understand?
→ No — syntactic manipulation only.
Which coffee-cup claims require more than raw pixels? (Intentionality — DD#9)
Select properties that go beyond the visible front face.
"What is meaning — discovered or created? Do LLMs understand or only manipulate symbols?"
Barthes vs Platonist framing; Chinese Room applied to LLMs; intentionality and aboutness; mapping-as-intelligence debate.