[Cincincinati Spiritus]

". . .and am still confused"

And I will tell you honestly that the debate on the meaning of meaning, or "do words have meaning", is perhaps the most confusing debate to engage in. For if you conclude that words have no meaning, how can you have won the argument? Aristotle has a very interesting sentence or two on this subject but I cannot remember where (or I may be absorbing his story of a certain radical skeptic):

Essentially he says that if words have no meaning we cannot speak. Then he procedes to show the instance of a man who concluded that words have no meaning: the man did not speak for the rest of his life. Ancients were much more consistent in their logic and action than any moderns. Today those who argue that words have no meaning continue speaking as if they had lost the argument on meaning.

I try not to think too much about it because the arguments lead to absurdities. The fact that we speak and understand one another disproves the conclusion in my opinion and the debate has no merit.

[liberallarry]

Again, I think you go too far. Words have meaning, sentences have meaning, paragraphs have meaning, documents have meaning. But the more complex the ideas, the more room there is for interpretation. The farther we are from the time and culture of the writers the more difficult it is to grasp their intention - to put ourselves in the unstated context which made their meaning clear. The more complex the ideas the greater the chance that there are contradictions or implications which only become clear with time. The farther we are from the time and culture of the writers the greater the chance that ideas which were valid in their world are no longer valid in ours.