(This abstract was recently accepted by the North Texas Philosophical Association for the 2014 Annual Meeting which will take place at the University of North Texas, April 3-5, 2014. I will be presenting a paper based on this abstract. I am honored to be accepted and eagerly anticipating the conference.)

Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s first major work, The Structure of Behavior, this paper explores how the concept of meaning can be both connected to the human and to the world. We first look at how the world offers us meaning as displayed in reflex and animal behavior and then turn to the unique human capacity to seek out this meaning. From these descriptions, I argue that meaning is not imposed on the world by the human nor is it intrinsic to the world, but is found in the relation between them forming, what I call, the dialectic of meaning.