Survey of Theories of Meaning Petros A.M. Gelepithis <<Published in Cognitive Systems, 2, 2, pp 141-162, 1988>> Abstract Despite the centrality of Semantics in Cognitive Science a critical, comprehensive survey of the basic tenets of this field was not available. The major aim of this paper is to provide such a survey. All current theories of meaning are classified in four categories: philosophical, linguistic, formal, and biological, and each theory's contribution to the current debate on 'what is meaning?' is discussed. In particular, the fundamental thesis (or theses) of a 'theory', the fundamental objections to it (or them) and the essential, if any, rejoinders, are presented. Two of the many conclusions drawn are: (i) the inadequacy of all examined 'theories', and (ii) the dependance of meaning on human beings. These are intended to open up the way for an inductively defined, mathematical model of semantic memory. Keywords: Meaning, Semantics. 1. Introduction In general classifications of theories of meaning either exclude certain views (Encyclopaedia Brittanica, for instance, does not include the AI approach to meaning), or arbitrarily subsume some theoretical conceptions of meaning under hardly related headings. On the other hand it is a fact that there is no unique placement (i.e., classification) of semantics on a general map of human knowledge in terms of the ontological commitments underlying each theory. On these grounds a classification scheme which considers all different theories of meaning and classifies them according to their answer to the fundamental ontological question concerning the nature of meaning may well be found useful and convenient. Table 1. p 3 summarizes the key characteristic of each theory along with their main advantages and disadvantages. The eight theories surveyed are classified in four categories: philosophical, linguistic, formal, and biological. Each of the second, third, fourth, and fifth sections deal with each of the four categories respectively. Section six conludes our survey. Another point I want here to notice is that certain conceptions concerning meaning have not been included in this survey. Concretely we have excluded physicalism (in its sense of the doctrine that all meaningful statements can be translated into the language of Physics) and Peirce's and Quine's views. These ommissions may