Frances to William and others... My understanding of integrationism is that the thesis holds integrationist linguistics to deal only with verbal language, because for integrationism there is no other language. For integrationism, if there is no verbal language then there is no sign and no communication. If communication occurs it is with humans in social groups using verbal language signs. Any nonverbal device like a gesture or posture is merely an unnecessary supplemental redundancy to verbal language. Integrationism posits that there is no nonverbal language and no nonlingual signage. Integrationist linguistics is an exceedingly narrow kind of nominalism, and is only useful to account for verbal language within that limited framework.
In regard to consciousness, it is held by realists to be the pure feeling of all live organisms from microbes to humans, and without any logical or linguistic reason to be so. Consciousness however has been found by realist pragmatism to be represented immediately to the self as a basic kind of iconic subsign and then referenced dynamically to the self as a natural kind of indexic signal. It is a sign that is prone to interpretation and inference on the part of the human experiencing it. Consciousness under realism is signage that is prior to language, but is necessarily preparatory to all kinds of advanced signs. All signages and languages in turn are potential metasigns that can be used to engage consciousness. To link human consciousness with verbal language is nonetheless indeed promising for both semiotic and linguistic research. The idea of seeking how far those signs that integrationists call lingual symbols within language systems might go outside the mind and how far such symbols might go inside the mind is most intriguing. It is clear in going outside the mind that scribed letters are written literal symbols that stand for spoken oral symbols, and that other literal codes are lingual symbols that stand for literal writings, and that these codes can be further signed by yet other kinds of numeral and digital symbols. In going inside the mind it is however not as clear whether the spoken symbols of speech are further symbolized or more broadly signed by yet deeper signage or language systems within say the consciousness of the psyche. The discursive thought that the mind is in after all will be made of lingual symbols, unlike nondiscursive or recursive thought, so that discursive thought is not that which the symbols refer to. The thought of any kind is not likely made of some deeper system hidden in the dark mystical reaches of the psyche. The signs and their symbols are the thoughts. This is why pragmatists hold the mind to be a brain full of signs. William wrote... Frances still seems to think that Integrationist linguistics is all about language. Harris makes it clear over and over that there are non-verbal modes to language, such as gesture, grunts, whistles, and other acts, syntactic counting, etc., that communicate. For Harris, if I understand him correctly, any form of communication is a form of language. He does not limit language to words alone. I'm struck by V.S. Ramachandran's neuroscience (see The Tell-Tale Brain 2011) indicating that brain visual pathways go through language centers. No proofs but the suggestion he wants to research further is that visual symbols are mixed with language before consciousness.
