What is sense, what does it mean in the expression “making sense” or to “not make sense”? Isn’t this the sense of sensory experience, the experience of information one receives about the world through her or his senses? Sometimes it seems to me this term is being pushed to mean something logical, rational, conceptual, or intellectual. But, primarily, sense has to do with what we experience through our senses, and that which makes sense is that which is not contradicted by this experience. What corresponds to our experience of sensory perceptions—the experience of listening to music or feeling bare feet on wet grass or the caress of another or the smell of plants or the sight of light streaming through trees or the sound of bustling traffic or crashing waves or the feel of a cool breeze or the taste of a stimulating meal—these are things that make sense.
And what about meaning and truth, or our sense of meaning and our sense of truth? How might these concepts tie together? I think these things arise from experiential relationships. I don’t think we can talk about absolute or objective truth, because that implies extra-species knowledge. Human beings can only perceive a narrow band in the spectrum of light waves, or sound waves, we have a limited set of senses, and a certain consciousness that has evolved in relation to our language, technology, needs, abilities, and experience. Since we can never get beyond this, all the concepts or knowledge we have about anything is largely determined by the experience of a specific group of human beings. Our concepts of meaning and truth are therefore rooted in the specific experiences and relationships that people have with the world and others. In some important, fundamental ways what is true is that which makes sense.
These concepts are pulled in both a personal or subjective direction and also towards a widespread and common direction—which is usually thought of as objectivity, but I don’t think it is really, instead it seems to be a view that is or can be widely agreed upon by many human beings, or sites of subjectivity. So, whether the notions are broad or specific, they still have their root in individual experience, and the necessary relationship that arises from experiencer and experience. It is in this relationship between experiencer and experience, between the thought/feeling or affect of subjective awareness and the thing or event perceived or apprehended where truth is manifested. It is how the knower is connected to the known. In this way, a high degree of truth might come from a highly thought and felt sensory experience, where a low truth value would result from a weak or flimsy connection between the subjective affect and the world of experience.
Meaning is related to the exchange of expressions or statements of feeling-thoughts/affects. When these can be expressed accurately, in a way that makes sense in the experience of a perceiver/interpreter and fits into the relations of the world, then these expressions can be meaningful. Must these expressions or statements be understood to have meaning? Meaning does appear to be related to the understanding of a sign within a certain relational context, but a sign doesn’t have to be understood to be a carrier of meaning, and might have a type of meaning regardless of being understood. Consider a person making an utterance in a crowd of people, where no one understands what it means. Yet it still might mean something to someone, it might trigger a thought or reaction that means something or it might just mean a nuisance or noise. For another person who comes along and understands perfectly, perhaps the person speaks the same language or has had past experiences that enable a higher degree of understanding, there will be a different kind of meaning. Or, consider a book lying about unread. It carries the potential of meaning even though it might not be presently engaged in any meaningful relationships. It might mean something to someone as a paperweight, but that is a meaning detached from the inner text. Someone else reads the book, understands some of it, and unpacks a certain amount and type of meaning. Another person reads it, understands it differently, perhaps more, and unpacks another amount and degree of meaning. The quality of meaning seems to be linked to the relation of understanding between the experiencer/interpretter and the sign-thing/event, the carrier of meaning of the experience. And this quality or degree of understanding and meaning is also dependent on that which makes sense, and connected to the truth-value, with truth and sense providing a ground for meaning and understanding. And this process of apprehending a truth that is expressed in a form through the senses so that it is meaningfully understood all happens in the event of experience where a conscious body is connected to the world by an awareness of the presentation of an aspect, statement, sign, or expression of the world.