Reading with fascination – I love how approaching the same topic (e.g., how meaning is constructed) through different lenses can spark new ideas. (And you’re doing a great job of leading me through the process here.) A few random reactions … I haven’t had a chance to work through the third part yet in detail:
Fascinating that, in this framework, the legisign is understood as a subjective/emergent thing constructed by the observer, whereas under a formal logic framework I suspect it would fall in abstractness in between the abstract quality and the specific token. I.e., that the concept of “red rose” would be considered to be a subset of “redness” and that specific flowers would be considered a subset of the concept “red rose”. Or, from another angle, that one might view specific flowers as the most objective concrete part of the framework, with the first level of abstraction being the category “red rose”, and the next level of abstraction being “redness” and “rosiness”. I suspect some aspects of the legisign approach might be more accessible in the case of more complex and more subjective type-categories. I.e., without the distraction of the possibility of defining the type by apparently “necessary and sufficient” conditions (e.g., “absorbs light wavelengths in the following spectra”, “belongs botanically to the following range of species”). This is touched on in your example of the three rose tokens.
In the definition of “index”, defined as requiring a spatio-temporal contiguity, my mind immediately leapt to a feature used in ASL (and I am exceedingly ignorant about sign language in general except in how I’ve been introduced to it via linguistics, so I don’t know the technical term for this feature). Basically, in a statement concerning multiple “third person” individuals or objects that are not present in the signer’s vicinity, those persons/objects will be…well, let’s say “indexed” to specific locations in the sign-space, and signs performed in that space (or directed toward that space) are understood as relevant to the “indexed” entity. So—very much the same underlying concept as how “index” is used in this framework but abstracted away from the spatio-temporal contiguity requirement.
I’ve been having fun with the concepts of reference/definition/specification in the context of my fiction, where the characters are grappling with the logical and philosophical underpinnings of a type of formal sympathetic magic. How do you create a “science” by which abstract ritual actions/utterances can be focused to produce specific, targeted results? And what are the ways the process can go wrong?
(By the way, I hope you don't mind the extensive comments here. I know how much work goes into this sort of post, and I know that reader engagement is like oxygen for the process!)
no subject
Fascinating that, in this framework, the legisign is understood as a subjective/emergent thing constructed by the observer, whereas under a formal logic framework I suspect it would fall in abstractness in between the abstract quality and the specific token. I.e., that the concept of “red rose” would be considered to be a subset of “redness” and that specific flowers would be considered a subset of the concept “red rose”. Or, from another angle, that one might view specific flowers as the most objective concrete part of the framework, with the first level of abstraction being the category “red rose”, and the next level of abstraction being “redness” and “rosiness”. I suspect some aspects of the legisign approach might be more accessible in the case of more complex and more subjective type-categories. I.e., without the distraction of the possibility of defining the type by apparently “necessary and sufficient” conditions (e.g., “absorbs light wavelengths in the following spectra”, “belongs botanically to the following range of species”). This is touched on in your example of the three rose tokens.
In the definition of “index”, defined as requiring a spatio-temporal contiguity, my mind immediately leapt to a feature used in ASL (and I am exceedingly ignorant about sign language in general except in how I’ve been introduced to it via linguistics, so I don’t know the technical term for this feature). Basically, in a statement concerning multiple “third person” individuals or objects that are not present in the signer’s vicinity, those persons/objects will be…well, let’s say “indexed” to specific locations in the sign-space, and signs performed in that space (or directed toward that space) are understood as relevant to the “indexed” entity. So—very much the same underlying concept as how “index” is used in this framework but abstracted away from the spatio-temporal contiguity requirement.
I’ve been having fun with the concepts of reference/definition/specification in the context of my fiction, where the characters are grappling with the logical and philosophical underpinnings of a type of formal sympathetic magic. How do you create a “science” by which abstract ritual actions/utterances can be focused to produce specific, targeted results? And what are the ways the process can go wrong?
(By the way, I hope you don't mind the extensive comments here. I know how much work goes into this sort of post, and I know that reader engagement is like oxygen for the process!)