Pragmatic Naturalism: An Introduction

9. Signs, Symbols, and Meanings

PRA G MATIC NATURALISM 72 9. Signs, Symbols, and Meanings Contemporary philosophy has shown a growing interest in the philosophy of language, in the role of signs, meanings, and symbols in human behavior. Much of the groundwork in theory and in terminology for the study of language was put forth by Peirce and Mead. Peirce worked out an elaborate and complex theory of signs, and his views continue to be a stimulus to discussion about this topic. Mead's theories of symbolic behavior have had a significant impact upon philosophers and social scientists who share his approach to language. Dewey acknowledged his debt to Peirce and Mead; he built upon their insights, and he worked out his own statement of the nature of signs, meanings, and symbols. Because of the complexity of the symbolic process, it is not easy to find a starting place for exposition and analysis. The various functional parts of the contextual whole of the symbolic situation are so intertwined that abstraction of one part for description and analysis is likely to distort the picture of the whole, even to give the part selected an oversimplified function when viewed from its place in the larger context. This is a difficulty, however, which attends any analysis of a philosophy of context and process, and these cautions should be kept in view. The starting place of this account of the pragmatic naturalists' theories of the various functional aspects of the symbolic situation will begin with the nature and function of signs. At the outset, we meet a difficulty, for the term "sign" has many connotations, and present theory has not settled the matter.12 As a preliminary and simplified starting KNOWLEDGE 73 place, we will say that a sign is a quality taken to be connected with another quality. 13 In commonsense experience, we often use expressions like "smoke means fire" and "dark clouds mean rain." Here we mean that the greyish-blackspiraling qualities which we call "smoke" are connected with the yellowish-glowing qualities which we call "fire.// Somehow in natural occurrences, the qualities of smoke are connected with the qualities of fire. Again, if we saw darkcloud qualities appearing in the sky, we would likely say that these cloud qualities are connected with rain (qualities of wetness, and so forth). From commonsense experience we have come to understand the connection of cloud qualities with rain qualities. If one observed a funnel-shaped cloud appearing in the sky, surely he would infer that this "shape quality" of a cloud is a sign of a tornado, and tornadoes have qualities all their own. If one expands his observation of sign connections in his experience, it should be obvious how tremendous is the role which qualities take as signs have in our lives. A baby's cry (sound quality) may be a sign to the mother of the baby's hunger. A rash appearing on the body is a sign of some disease. When we see our lawns turn yellow and brittle (color qualities and tactual qualities), we take these to be signs of lack of moisture (the qualities of dryness ). After we have had experience of the connection of smoke with fire, if we were to see smoke qualities in a distance , we could infer that there is a fire, even though the fire is not presently observed. If someone asks us what evidence we have that there is a fire, we could reply that the smoke qualities which we see are evidence of the fire qualities which we have experienced to be connected with them. Thus, inference and evidence are built upon the experiences of quality connections. Qualities, such as colors, shapes, sizes, movements, along with smells, tastes, hard, smooth, and so on, play an important role in both common sense and science. In fact, scientists in every field of subject matter PRAGMATIC NATURALISM 74 must learn how to read the signs, the meanings and connections of the qualities they encounter. Attention is called to the word "taken" when it is said that a quality of an object is taken to be a sign of some other quality in another object. In the cases mentioned above, it is assumed that these qualities taken as signs of their connections with other qualities actually occur in existence. That is, smoke is actually connected with fire, or there is a kind of existential involvement of smoke qualities with fire...