ONT Re: Aristotle's Approximation
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We have just seen one of the reasons why I refer to Aristotle's account
of the sign relation as an "approximation" to the full complexity and
the full potential of sign relations, but the fact that this account
was read as a factorization, or a reduction of the 3-adic relation
to a couple of its 2-adic projections, is not entirely or exactly
on Aristotle's account, but due to its subsequent interpretation.
But Aristotle does explicitly make an approximation at this point:
| But the mental affections themselves, of which these words
| are primarily signs (semeia), are the same for the whole
| of mankind, as are also the objects (pragmata) of which
| those affections are representations or likenesses,
| images, copies (homoiomata).
This dictum expresses two assumptions of constancy or uniformity,
holding that the domain of pragmata and the domain of pathemata,
which the pragmatic theory of signs will treat as "objects" and
as "interpretant signs", respectively, are the same two domains
for all human interpreters and users of signs. Perhaps this is
a measure of human commensurability that is fated to become true
in the long run, perhaps we just hope or wish it were so, but it
is entirely within the scope of sign relations in general to take
it as just an optional possibility and not an obligatory necessity.
This assumption is the lionized share of what I mean when I describe
this initial approach to sign relations as "Aristotle's Approximation".
I will be discussing the consequences of this assumption as we go along.
Jon Awbrey
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Reference Material:
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/inquiry/fall95/awbrey.html
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journals/Details/issue/abstract/ab017772.html
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/integrat.htm
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