[lit-ideas] Re: 'Significant' "Significant"
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2012 16:45:11 +0100 (BST)
Surely the obvious point is that there are different meanings of meaning,
different senses of 'sense', and different ways something may be significant
too. (In some of these, meaning, sense and significance may even be synonymous
- but not in others).
Among the reasons W of the PI does not seek to pin down what constitutes
'sense' [aside from the fundmental one that, for W, any such attempt would be a
doomed attempt to say something that goes beyond the limits of language] is
that there are myriad ways something may have sense: a 'Good morning' may have
(in some sense) the same sense whether it is said by a husband to a wife at
breakfast or by a soldier addressing his firing-squad - yet (in some other
sense) the 'Good morning' may have a very different sense on these different
occasions. These differences and similarities are, for W, not said by 'Good
morning' but may be shown when we consider the tone, context etc. It might even
alter the sense if the soldier was speaking to a gloomy silent firing-squad or
a chatty, joky one. (See the book).
Donal
London
From: "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, 24 July 2012, 14:12
Subject: [lit-ideas] 'Significant' "Significant"
In a message dated 7/24/2012 3:37:14 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
cblitid@xxxxxxxx writes:
interested in what's "culturally,
historically, or aesthetically significant",
Part of the problem is Grice.
Grice read Peirce, and found him confusing ('crypto-technical'). Peirce was
adapting the Greco-Roman terminology of semeion-signum. Instead, Grice
preferred the Anglo-Saxonism, 'mean' -- and, to some, he failed.
In Greco-Roman parlance,
x is significans
iff x signifies.
Notably, for the Greeks (and later the Romans) there were two types of
'signs':
a word, which signifies a thought -- as the word "love" which is
significant of the thought, 'love'.
a thought, which signifies a thing -- as the thought of love usually
correlates with the act of love.
----
From there, it is not difficult to modify the 'significans' into:
aesthetic significans
historic significans
cultural significans
--- and so on.
Note that the opposite is cultural, historic, and aesthetic INsignificans.
Note that unlike "semein", which is Greek for 'signify', the Romans add,
typically, since they were go-getters, practical types, the idea of 'make'
(the "-fy", in "signify"). So the question, in Roman, is _what is this making
a sign of?
Note that one of Grice's examples does not apply: a rainbow signifies rain
has occurred -- i.e. besides cultural, historic and aesthetic significans,
there's NATURAL significance (of things) -- or insignificans.
Grice's example:
"Those spots signify measles -- to the doctor; but not to me. To me, the
spots were naturally insignificant".
For Grice, the test is factiveness.
If those spots signify measles, then the boy has measles.
This for NATURAL significans -- for historical, cultural or aesthetic
significans the standard is NON-factiveness, usually ("The significance of
Napoleon", "The significance of "the Mona Lisa"", "The significance of "Elvis
Presley"", and so on.)
Cheers,
Speranza
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