Azamat Abdoullaev wrote:
>
> The nature of signs and symbols and significations,
> their definition, elements, and types, was mainly
> established by Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas.
>
> 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:
>
> 1. There are things that are just things, not any sign at all;
>
> 2. There are things that are also signs of other things
> (as natural signs of the physical world and mental signs
> of the mind);
>
> 3. There are things that are always signs, as languages
> (natural and artificial) and other cultural nonverbal
> symbols, as documents, money, ceremonies, and rites.
> ... (01)
One of the occupational hazards of the working ontologist seems to be
the Fallacy Of Misplaced Essences (FOME) -- I was going to call this
the Fundamental Ontological Error (FOE) by virtue of its analogy to
the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) in social psychology, but
the opportunity to invoke both Vonnegut and Whitehead in a single
acronym was way too tempting to pass up. (02)
In the case of sign relations, as defined by Peirce's best definitions,
we have to remember that there is no ontology to being objects, signs,
or interpretant signs. There may be an ontology of whole sign relations,
but there is no "essence" that distinguishes the "accidents" of being in
the role of an object, a sign, or an interpretant sign, respectively. (03)
See http://www.chss.montclair.edu/inquiry/fall95/awbrey.html (04)
Jon (05)
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