----- Original Message ----- From: "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> >By jargon, I guess, I was thinking about Hobbes. Take any treatise in 'scholastic' philosophy, although Hobbes claimed he was beyond that, and you find things like: signs get divided into: 'natural' and 'conventional'. Think of all the jargon that Peirce derived from that:> In other words, perhaps, JLS took one look at "sign", in the case of a small innocent town somewhere, and went off the deep-end into scholasticism. (If that town is twinned with "Hell" then they may form an exclamation appropriate to some of JLS' posts). >Since 'say' is quite a stretch when speaking of signs which can be 'visual'. Like the sign of a cigarette as crossed out, meaning, "Smoking forbidden". It would be odd to say that the sign "says", never mind its own "sense" (whatever that is).> If W is suggesting that a sign may 'say' (or be treated as saying), then I see nothing wrong in it - or odd. No more wrong or odd than a person saying 'Can't you see what the sign says?'. For the sense or meaning or content of a sign may be tranlated into something we can 'say' - like "Smoking forbidden". We simply take 'say' in a wide sense to encompass 'what may be said' (if translated into words). If we are scholastically bothered, we can do away with 'say' here and instead say 'Is the sense of a sign signed by the sign?' - but this comes to the same thing as 'Does the sign say its own sense?' imo. There is no philosophically important "stretch" here that operates to W's discredit - on the contrary, in this regard W's POV shows an admirable lack of scholasticism and the obscurantism that lurks behind such scholasticism. His remarks as to the interchangability of modes of expression - so that words, and sign-language and pictorial signs etc can be used to perform the same deeds [and have the same sense] - seem worth mentioning, not least because they may be correct. JLS' tendency to spark off 'what is said' in posts, and then shoot off like a Catherine Wheel, does not help generally nor help the Gricean cause. He also has a notable habit of converting 'what is said' into a claim that is not 'what is said' but even its opposite or some contrary offshoot ['Donal claims 'The sign says its own sense''] Dnl Ldn Look away now if you do not want a soccer sign M U 4 Evton 4 [FT]