Hi Azamat,
You wrote:
"That confuses me no end if Peirceans can’t
tie the theory to some commonly understood reality for me. Is there a
more fruitful description that explains the language used and chosen for that
representation?"
Rich,
The nature of signs and symbols and significations,
their definition, elements, and types, was mainly established by Aristotle,
Augustine, and Auquinas.
According to these classic sources, significance is a
relationship between two sorts of things: signs and the kinds of things they
signify (intend, express or mean), where one term necessarily causes something
else to come to the mind. Distinguishing natural signs and conventional signs,
the traditional theory of signs sets the following threefold partition of
things:
- There are things that
are just things, not any sign at all;
- There are things that
are also signs of other things (as natural signs of the physical world and
mental signs of the mind);
- There are things that
are always signs, as languages (natural and artificial) and other cultural
nonverbal symbols, as documents, money, ceremonies, and rites. see a brief
but comprehensive account, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign
Azamat Abdoullaev
Thanks for your view on this; it helps me
compare and contrast my own theoretical understanding with yours.
So a familiar sign S represents another
sign S2 in one agent’s mind, yet can represent only S itself in another
agent’s mind, while simultaneously representing S3 (money, a document …)
to still another agent?
Another interesting aspect of your answer
is that you use the word “thing” as the most general of all
thingish words like object, plurality, stuff, material …; is that your
mental image of the word “thing”, as the most abstract of all
objects?
Can a “thing” include an
action, method, plan, history of the foregoing?
Thanks for the stimulating viewpoint,
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
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