10 votes
Accepted

Did Confucius say "Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws"?

It is not true. The Analects do contain "If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be ...
Colin McLarty's user avatar
6 votes

Did Confucius say "Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws"?

I believe the quote is apocryphal. Some of the sentiment might be compatible with Confucianism but there are several problems for supposing Kongzi would have said this or that this would be found in a ...
virmaior's user avatar
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5 votes
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What is the difference between properties and sets?

I suppose you are looking for reasons not to identify properties to sets. (1) A set is a particular ( an abstract particular) , but properies are often considered as universals . (2) A property is ...
Floridus Floridi's user avatar
5 votes

Origin of Charles Sander Peirce's model of triadic signs diagram?

Peirce' Theory of Signs is complex and - unfortunately - there are no complete treatises dedicated to semiotics by Peirce himself : Across the course of his intellectual life, Peirce continually ...
Mauro ALLEGRANZA's user avatar
4 votes

Enantiodromia--How Do Symbols Undergo an Inversion of Meaning?

In linguistics, a reclaimed or reappropriated word is a word previously used as a perjorative against some group X and now used as a signifier of in group status (amongst other things). If you are ...
emesupap's user avatar
  • 2,099
3 votes
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What does 'denote' mean in language and mathematics?

According to some point of view, denotation and reference are synonyms; see your link: To say that an expression E denotes a specific object B means that E refers to B [...] B is sometimes called the ...
Mauro ALLEGRANZA's user avatar
3 votes

Are there in-depth theories of parentheses?

Formal grammars are such a theory. They are covered in any good book on theory of computation, usually in conjunction with automata theory. They also serve as the basis of Chomsky's generative ...
Roger V.'s user avatar
  • 1,543
3 votes
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References for the study of language

Daniel Chandler wrote a book Semiotics: the Basics and also supplies an online version here. For a large part of English speaking academia, after Chomsky's reformulation of linguistics into the field ...
Not_Here's user avatar
  • 2,841
3 votes
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How do we understand and fix reference for scientific units of measure?

Unfortunately, we do not have a satisfactory theory of meaning (semantics) of natural languages, i.e. of understanding words, or even of using them (pragmatics). Kripke's causal theory of reference ...
Conifold's user avatar
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3 votes
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What does Barthes mean when he calls boxing a "Jansenist sport"?

I think that Barthes' sentence "boxing is a Jansenist sport" may be more conspicuously rendered like this: the common form of boxing (unlike the common form of wrestling) is a genuine sport. First, ...
Ram Tobolski's user avatar
  • 7,311
2 votes

Origin of Charles Sander Peirce's model of triadic signs diagram?

Peirce invented the so-called "existential graphs". A good description of this is found in §4.7 "The geometry of thought: Existential graphs" (pp. 69-72) of Peirce: A Guide for the Perplexed by ...
Geremia's user avatar
  • 7,817
2 votes
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The index finger of Socrates and Plato

Looking at the philosophy expounded by Plato, one thing comes to mind: the Ideas, set in another realm, above the material, quite abstract. Thus, it could mean that the raised index finger points to ...
Motanovici's user avatar
2 votes

Linguistic meaning among evolved artificial agents

It seems that the situation is entirely analogous to our current situation, modulo any hypothesis about God or other designers. Then, the answer to your question is easily obtained by an answer to the ...
emesupap's user avatar
  • 2,099
2 votes
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Are there in-depth theories of parentheses?

The general term is "bracketing notation" or "brackets". Brackets are just operators that surround their arguments {2} [2] rather than proceeding their arguments as prefix ...
David Gudeman's user avatar
2 votes

Semiotic triangle and abstract concepts

Maybe this version of the triangle makes it clearer. The referent would be a set of external phenomena. There might be a visible colour, & there will be a radiation spectrum. Affects on mercury or ...
CriglCragl's user avatar
  • 20.5k
2 votes

Is there an established symbol that means 'symbol'?

In philosophical logic, we often use the square half-brackets to denote “the code of” - 「S」 is often something like “the Gödel numbering of formula S. (It’s usually upper square brackets on both ...
Paul Ross's user avatar
  • 5,381
1 vote

Is there an established symbol that means 'symbol'?

There is, in software design, the notion of a wildcard character, which: ... is a kind of placeholder represented by a single character, such as an asterisk (*), which can be interpreted as a number ...
Kristian Berry's user avatar
1 vote

Is a letter of the alphabet considered something?

The phrase, "the letter U" can mean several different things depending on context. "See that fly just above the letter U in the sign?" Here the "the letter U" refers to ...
David Gudeman's user avatar
1 vote

Linguistic meaning among evolved artificial agents

First, I'm not sure why you introduce these "artificial" agents and then retract the idea that there is any human input. Human input is their environment. Why not just ask the same about ...
Nelson Alexander's user avatar
1 vote

Looking for Marxist or Frankfurt-style critiques of advertising

I’m not sure there is a reliable field called “marketing” today. Marketing itself can’t really reliably deliver the customer anymore. I’m thinking of marketing as mass marketing. The key is the ...
Gordon's user avatar
  • 1,719
1 vote

Looking for Marxist or Frankfurt-style critiques of advertising

I know it is not much as I do not know which works have been translated but generally the guy to look into if you want to read about advertising in the context of (early) critical theory is Walter ...
Philip Klöcking's user avatar
  • 13.5k
1 vote

How does indexicality relates to causality?

Semiotic theory of American philosopher and mathematician C.S. Peirce elaborates philosophy of index according to reference here: Peirce argued that logic is the formal study of signs in the broadest ...
Double Knot's user avatar
  • 3,843
1 vote

Has Semiotics been adopted by any mainstream academic philosophers?

“Has semiotics been adopted by any mainstream academic philosophers?” Ironically, I think it is philosophers like Derrida who would be most pertinent to analyzing what the question seems to assume. ...
Julius H.'s user avatar
  • 136
1 vote

what is a "discursive site"?

Roland Barthes uses the term "discursive site" in the preface to A Lover's Discourse: Everything follows from this principle: that the lover is not to be reduced to a single symptomal ...
Sonja's user avatar
  • 11
1 vote

What is difference between semiotics and memetics?

Where semiotics is essentially the study of symbols and their manipulation for their own sake, memetics is a "neo-Darwinian" evolutionary theory of the ideas communicated via those symbols. Besides ...
Guy Inchbald's user avatar
  • 2,522
1 vote

Origin of Charles Sander Peirce's model of triadic signs diagram?

It's not the Charles Key Ogden & Ivor Armstrong Richards diagram, that uses the terms Symbol, Thought or Reference and Referent and there is no indication of Semiosis. I think I may have ...
garrettlynchirl's user avatar

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