Related symbolsThe meanings of signs may be arbitrary, but the process of assigning meaning is not; it is the activity of the entire society; individuals are not allowed to change them arbitrarily, even though they may contribute some new meanings. A continuous thread of socially recognized meaning requires that the allowed meanings of individual signs be related. The relatedness of signs was formally recognized by Charles W. Morris, who divided semiotics into three fields, based on "the three dimensions of semiosis:"[6]"...syntactics studies the relation between a given sign vehicle and other sign vehicles,semantics studies the relations between sign vehicles and their designata, and pragmaticsstudies the relation between sign vehicles and their interpreters....These types of relatedness allow a finite set of signs to be combined into a potentially infinite number of meaningful utterances. WIKI fullsekhar --- On Mon, 10/5/10, BruceD <blroadies@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: From: BruceD <blroadies@xxxxxxxxx> Subject: [Wittrs] Re: Constitution vs Causation To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Date: Monday, 10 May, 2010, 6:37 AM --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Joseph Polanik <jPolanik@...> wrote: > I would not say that diamond and coal are identical at a particle level; > because, at a particle level, there is neither coal nor diamond except, in so far as we see the particles are arranged as diamond or coal. Which suggests to me that "what exists" and "what is identical" is a conceptual choice. Thanks for an interesting discussion. I'll be gone for a month and check in then. bruce ========================================= Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/