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Page 221
lieved. It is the name we give to a sequence of actions or behaviors through which we infer that human beings have a sort of otherwise imperceptible and fundamentally unknown substantial form. We detect that humans are rational because we infer the existence of such a qualityin the same way in which a cause is inferred through its usual symptomby considering the human activity of knowing, thinking, and speaking (Summa th. 1.79.8). We know our human spiritual potencies "ex ipsorum actuum qualitate," through the quality of the actions of which they are the origin (Contra gentiles 3.46. See Eco 1984:2.2.4).
Myths are myths, but we need them. I have simply opposed a bad myth to a good one, where the baptismal ceremony does not christen things, but contextsnot individuals supposed to undergo stories of which their name does not know anything, but stories in the light of which we can find out the definition that identifies their actors.
I hope that my revised myth will not be considered as perverse as the separated pseudosciences I have criticized. I only wanted to put into acceptable narrative form my appeal for a collaboration among semantics, pragmatics, and text semiotics.

 
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