At first glance meaning seems simple: we speak, we think, we experience, and meaning appears. But as machines become more fluent a deeper question arises: Where does meaning come from, and can something without lived experience ever possess it? In this meetup we will explore that question.

This is the real issue behind the Turing Paradox. A machine can produce language that looks meaningful, yet meaning is more than well-formed sentences. Searle’s Chinese Room makes the point clearly: a system can manipulate symbols perfectly while understanding nothing. Syntax is not semantics.

Human meaning is embodied. It grows from hunger, joy, pain, memory, and the pressures of being alive. We mean things because we care—because we have needs, goals, and histories. A machine has none of this. It generates language, but does it experience the world that language refers to?

Some argue meaning might emerge from complexity—recursive models and feedback loops. Maybe machines could develop their own kind of meaning.

Others insist meaning requires a body, emotions, and vulnerability—conditions silicon systems lack.

This is the heart of the debate. As AI grows more convincing, the gap between what machines can say and what they can understand becomes harder to see. We’re forced to ask not only whether machines can mean, but what meaning itself really is.

In the end, the question remains: Is meaning an emergent property of any complex system or something rooted uniquely in human life?
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CJ Fearnley's book "Collaborating for Comprehensivity," is a unique exploration of comprehensive thinking, inquiry, and collaboration, is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and free PDF formats.

1. The free PDF version can be downloaded here: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bapsUhFtRDSPdAW6zRBe7omBlcghz-yi/](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bapsUhFtRDSPdAW6zRBe7omBlcghz-yi/)
2. Available on Amazon Kindle for the lowest price Amazon allows of $0.99 here: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CW1K18B5/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CW1K18B5/)
3. Available as a paperback on Amazon for the lowest price Amazon allows of $8.31 here: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D11GHC9V/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D11GHC9V/)

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Welcome to the series "Comprehensivist Wednesdays." Transdisciplinarity, Renaissance humanism, homo universalis, and Polymathy are some of the ways of describing this approach which Buckminster Fuller called Comprehensivity and described as “macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive.”

See the calendar at [https://www.meetup.com/52LivingIdeas/events/calendar/](https://www.meetup.com/52LivingIdeas/events/calendar/)
We record all our Meetups and post them on YouTube. Feel free to keep your video on or off as you prefer. [Watch Past Meetups here](https://www.youtube.com/c/52LivingIdeas?sub_confirmation=1).

**Welcome to "Comprehensivist Wednesdays"**
Explore transdisciplinarity, Renaissance humanism, homo universalis, and polymathy in ways Buckminster Fuller described as “macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive.”

**A Meetup Every Day, Every Week, For Everyone!**
Join us every weekday at 8 pm or 9 pm ET. We record all our meetups and post them on YouTube. Feel free to keep your video on or off as you participate.
[Watch Past Meetups here](https://www.youtube.com/c/52LivingIdeas?sub_confirmation=1).

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Comprehensivist Wednesdays: Can Machines Mean What We Mean?

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Comprehensivist Wednesdays: Can Machines Mean What We Mean?

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