Sex and Conversation

Recognizing that meanings are species-like suggests a range of questions. Meanings seem relatively static in the short to medium term. When meanings change, that is sometimes driven by relatively simple learning processes. In other cases such change looks to be Darwinian: one can see the individuals constituting a meaning as reproducing, with change in the distribution of meaning-relevant properties in succeeding generations determined by the advantages of one’s lexicon embedding one such property instead of an alternative. Whether the processes of meaning change are Darwinian or not, one can ask to what extent they are essentially arational, and to what extent conscious intervention in conceptual change could be an effective way to change what words mean. This chapter discusses these questions. Its goal is not to definitely answer them but to examine ways we might think about sharpening them enough to have interesting questions to which we might find answers.