“Words are arbitrary references,

… not actual referents.”

Words (i.e. names or tags) do not in any way describe their referents. There is no actual, indeed meaningful connection between a reference (i.e. a mark on a map) and its referent (an actual object, real or imagined). Language (to wit, a sensory stimulus system, like French or Maths) serves as a merely private (or agreed by a group) mapping system, obviously useful. In short, a map is not an actual territory.

All communications systems (i.e. mapping modes) are complex (albeit step by step, hence quantised) virtual references to unknowable (complex) actualities. Words are the communications (tapping codes) of blind men. In this regard I refer you to the ancient Indian story ‘The blind men and the elephant.’

For instance, the word ‘love’ in no way describes the extraordinary complex syndrome of sensations and functions that combine together as the ‘love’ experience. No one yet has described the referent, that is to say, the functions syndrome, for the word ‘God’.