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4.3.3. False Ascription in Error |
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The Claimant does not coincide with B and does not know that Oa does not exist. The Claimant claims in good faith that Ob is identical with Oa (of which the Claimant has heard by uncertain report). This is what happened with those who received and took the Corpus Dionysianum for a work by a pupil of Saint Paul, with those who believed and still believe in the authenticity of the Book of Enoch, and with the Renaissance Neoplatonist who ascribed the Corpus Hermeticum, not to Hellenistic authors, but to a mythical Hermes Trismegistos, who was supposed to have lived before Plato in the time of the Egyptians and presumably to be identified with Moses. In this century, Heidegger wrote a commentary on a speculative grammar which he ascribed to Duns Scotus, though it was shown shortly afterward that the work was composed by Thomas of Erfurt. This seems also to be the case with the ascription of On the Sublime to Longinus.
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5. The Fake as a Fake Sign |
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The topology presented above suggests some interesting semiotic problems. First of all, is a fake a sign? Let us first consider the cases of Downright Forgery (where Oa somewhere exists). |
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If a sign isaccording to Peirce (1934:2.228)"something which stands to somebody for something in some respects or capacity," then one should say that Ob stands to the Claimant for Oa. And if an iconstill according to Peirce (2.276)"may represent its object mainly by its similarity," then one should say that Ob is an icon of Oa. |
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Ob succeeds in being mistaken with Oa insofar as it reproduces the whole of Oa's properties. Morris (1946:1.7) suggests that a "completely iconic sign" is no longer a sign because "it would be itself a denotatum." This means that a possibly completely iconic sign of myself would be the same as myself. In other words, complete iconism coincides with indiscernibility or identity, and a possible definition of identity is "complete iconism." |
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But in forgery there is only an alleged identity: Ob can have all the properties of Oa except that of being Oa itself and of standing at the same moment in the same place as Oa. Being incompletely iconic, can Ob be taken as a sign of Oa? If so, it would be a rather curious kind of sign: it would succeed in being a sign insofar as nobody takes it as a sign and everybody mistakes it for its potential denotatum. As soon as one recognizes it as a sign, Ob becomes something similar to Oaa facsim- |
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