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A sign-function correlates a given expression to a given content. This content has been defined by a given culture irrespective of whether a given state of the world corresponds to it. 'Unicorn' is a sign as well as is 'dog'. The act of mentioning, or of referring to, them is made possible by some indexical devices, and 'dog' can be referred to an individually existent object, whereas 'unicorn' cannot. The same happens with the image of a dog and the image of a unicorn. Those which Peirce called iconic signs are also expressions related to a content; if they possess the properties of (or are similar to) something, this something is not the object or the state of the world that could be referred to, but rather a structured and analytically organized content. The image of a unicorn is not similar to a 'real' unicorn; neither is recognized because of our experience of 'real' unicorns, but has the same features displayed by the definition of a unicorn elaborated by a given culture within a specific content system. The same can be demonstrated apropos of indexical devices (see Eco, 1976). |
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The self-sufficiency of the universe of content, provided by a given culture, explains why signs can be used in order to lie. We have a sign-function when something can be used in order to lie (and therefore to elaborate ideologies, works of art, and so on). What Peirce calls signs (which to somebody stand for something else in some respect or capacity) are such just because I can use a representamen in order to send back to a fictitious state of the world. Even an index can be falsified in order to signify an event which is not detectable and, in fact, has never caused its supposed representamen. Signs can be used in order to lie, for they send back to objects or states of the world only vicariously. In fact, they send immediately back to a certain content. I am thus asserting that the relationship between signifiant and signifié (or between signvehicle and significatum, or between sign and meaning) is autonomous in itself and does not require the presence of the referred object as an element of its definition. Therefore it is possible to elaborate a theory of signification on the grounds of a purely intensional semantics. I am not saying that an extensional semantics is devoid of any function; on the contrary, it controls the correspondence between a sign-function and a given state of the world, when signs are used in order to mention something. But I am stressing the fact that an extensional semantics can be elaborated (and that processes of reference or mention can be established) only because an intensional semantics is possible as a self-sufficient cultural construct (that is, a code or a system of codes). |
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Can we say that the texts of Peirce entitle us to accept this perspective? Obviously, in the Peircean framework, when signs are applied to concrete experiences or haecceitates, they are related to the indicated objects. |
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