Re: SUO: Core Meanings and the SUO
>Jon,
>
>I think that is a good way to put it:
>
> >I do not know if this helps with your particular issue here,
> >but one of the ways that I tend to think of it from within
> >a pragmatic sign-theory framework is to index every sign
> >to the "community of interpretation" that employs it in
> >the way that it does. As limiting and special cases,
> >of course, a "community" can be a single person or
> >even a machine.
>
>The point I was trying to make in my note is that there is
>no major difference between the way that multiple word senses
>arise in natural languages and the way they arise in various
>technical/scientific/artificial/programming languages.
>
>Wittgenstein used the term "language game" for the way some
>community uses a word in some pattern of behavior. The kinds
>of language games that occur in computer science are of the
>same nature as the games that are played in engineering,
>science, business, cooking, law, economics, etc.
>
>I used the word "culture" to describe the origin of the
>multiple word senses. But of course, every culture arises
>from the traditional practices in some community (but I agree
>with Wittgenstein that a community should at least have two
>members -- a family is a typical minimal example).
>
>In fact, I would define "culture" as the hypostatic abstraction
>of a community's semiotic games (including language games as
>a special case).
However, there is a new dimension which arises in the case of
programming and other 'technical' languages, which is that if we
accept this idea than we have to allow machines as semiotic players
in their own right, and indeed players with a special claim to a
unique role in the social games. I am happy to go this route, but we
have to face up to the fact that it goes beyond what Wittgenstein or
(I guess) Peirce would have had in mind.
Pat
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