Frances to listers... This message was recently posted to the Discussion Forum of the Peirce List by its member Ben Udell and is sent here unilaterally by me in the interests of members on this list. It is intriguing for me that an admitted logician and semiotician who is reported not a linguist or grammarian would even consider such matters of verbal language, except perhaps to clarify issues turning on the logic of symbols via the analogous use of linguistic symbols. Peirce held that linguistics was a practical science and unnecessary for the theoretical sciences like logic. The address for the Peirce List archive of messages is http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/?forum=peirce-l ------------
The popular definition of "symbol" is as a visible sign for something that isn't seen or can't be seen, but which it represents by association of ideas, for instance the lion in general is considered a symbol for courage, likewise a stylized little drawing of a lion. A pair of interlinked golden rings, shown between two people - e.g., photo of one person, photo of the interlinked golden rings, photo of the other person, the photos overlapping somehow, and then the composite image presented as a finished product - seems a symbol of their being married, without any suggestion that those are the specific wedding rings of the two involved and without any definite assurance that the two people possess wedding rings. I'm not sure how Peirce would classify cases like that of the lion-idea and courage, and of the golden bands and a pair of people, or of pictograms more generally. Peirce doesn't use the words "pictogram" or "pictograph" in the Collected Papers, but below is that which he said about hieroglyphics and ideographs. Hieroglyphics that are pictorial ideographs are, he said, icons. By his eventual definitions of the ten classes of signs (In CP 2.254-264 taken from "Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations, as far as they are determined,"--a manuscript continuation of the "Syllabus," c. 1903), propositions expressed in hierogyphics would still be dicent symbols, and their individual replicas would be "dicent sinsigns of a peculiar kind." I.e, the individual hieroglyphic expression of a sentence is a dicent (and indexical) sinsign, and isn't iconic. The Collected Papers (2): Elements of Logic, Book 2: Speculative Grammer, Chapter 3: The Icon, Index, and Symbol, Section 1: The Icon and Hypoicon, in a passage 278-80 from "That Categorical and Hypothetical Propositions are one in essence, with some connected matters," c. 1895, following 339. QUOTE FROM CP 2.280. That icons of the algebraic kind, though usually very simple ones, exist in all ordinary grammatical propositions is one of the philosophic truths that the Boolean logic brings to light. In all primitive writing, such as the Egyptian hieroglyphics, there are icons of a non-logical kind, the ideographs. In the earliest form of speech, there probably was a large element of mimicry. But in all languages known, such representations have been replaced by conventional auditory signs. These, however, are such that they can only be explained by icons. But in the syntax of every language there are logical icons of the kind that are aided by conventional rules. . . . END QUOTE Collected Papers (2): Elements of Logic, Book 2: Speculative Grammer, Chapter 4: Propositions, Section '6. Rudimentary Propositions and Arguments. Section 6 is from "That Categorical and Hypothetical Propositions are one in essence, with some connected matters," c. 1895: QUOTE FROM CP 2.354. There are many languages in which the simplest assertions which we make in categorical form, take, as far as we can comprehend the psychical process, hypothetical forms. There is one of these tongues a smattering of which is not an uncommon accomplishment--a smattering sufficient to carry the student into the spirit of the language--I mean the Old Egyptian. There are few words in this language which are distinctively common nouns. Every general word excites a pictorical idea. Even to the modern student, the pictorial ideograph becomes a considerable part of the idea it excites; and the influence of the hieroglyphics, the modes of expression, etc., is to make "a composite of pictures" particularly expressive in describing the idea conveyed. Now our word "is," the copula, is commonly expressed in Old Egyptian by a demonstrative pronoun. It is evident that this demonstrative has in such sentences the force of a relative. Where is the verb? We feel that it is contained in the general words. In short, "man is mortal" is expressed in Old Egyptian in a form which expressed the following psychological process of thinking, "What is spoken of is man, which what is spoken of is mortal." END QUOTE. Collected Papers (4): The Simplest Mathematics, Book 1: Logic and Mathematics (Unpublished Papers), Paper 2: The Essence of Reasoning, Section 3: The Nature of Inference. Paper 2 comes from Chapter 6 of the "Grand Logic." QUOTE FROM CP 4.49. The fact that hieroglyphics came so easy to the Egyptians shows how their thought is pictorial. END QUOTE. ------------
