In all these cases, semantic information about how best to fit in has been mindlessly gleaned from the cycle of generations, and notice that it is not encoded directly in the organisms’ nervous systems (if they have any) or even in their DNA, except by something akin to pragmatic implication. Linguists and philosophers of language use the term pragmatics to refer to those aspects of meaning that are not carried by the syntax and “lexical” meanings of the words but conveyed by circumstances of particular utterances, by the Umwelt, in effect, of an utterance.
