Why Meaning Cannot Exist Inside a Single Mind

Heidegger and Wittgenstein, despite founding the continental and analytic traditions respectively, converge on a radical claim: there is no such thing as private meaning. Meaning is irreducibly communal — created, curated, and sustained through shared practices and dialogue. This convergence is not incidental; it points to something fundamental about the structure of cognition and understanding that transcends the analytic-continental divide.

The practical implication targets what John Vervaeke calls "propositional tyranny" — the assumption that all knowledge reduces to a coherent set of propositions held by an individual. This assumption systematically obscures the non-propositional dimensions of knowing where Relevance realization primarily operates: procedural know-how in skilled action, perspectival knowing of what it is like to inhabit a situation, and participatory knowing through coupling and belonging. Relevance realization — the process by which cognition zeroes in on what matters — is the core machinery of understanding, meaning, and wisdom. When people remain locked at the propositional level, they are ghettoized from these deeper cognitive processes.

This disconnection carries political stakes. Non-propositional processes do not stop operating simply because people are unaware of them; instead, economic and political forces exploit them precisely because they remain unexamined. Educating people in non-propositional knowing is therefore an act of empowering agency and selfhood. Dialogical practice aims not at mere logical validity but at reducing self-deception and increasing genuine connection — two goals that are deeply intertwined. Others are our best corrective for cognitive biases we cannot see in ourselves. This is the Socratic insight: Logos as shared communal processing requires actual participation across different perspectives.